Tag Archives: folk speech

If you don’t eat your rice….

Nationality: Japanese/Chinese/American
Age: 20
Occupation: College student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: May 1, 2013
Primary Language: English

Material

If you don’t eat all of your rice then when you’re sleeping your soul will leave your body and look for the rice cooker (laughs) and then you will get trapped in it or something like that (laughs).

Context

The informant told me that her friend told her this belief when the informant was nineteen but that the belief is usually told to little kids when they do not want to eat their rice.

Informant Analysis

According to the informant she believes that this folk belief is told to kids by their parents so the kids will eat all of their rice and not be wasteful. She believes that the parents tell their kids this because they think scaring their kids will work. Although my informant heard about this saying from a friend her friend was told about this belief from her parents. The informant’s friend is Chinese born in the Philippines so the informant believes the belief exists among all Asians, although in different forms. She believes this because she was also told about a belief pertaining to not eating rice by another friend who is Asian as well. I asked the informant if her parents ever told her anything pertaining to something bad happening if she did not eat her rice and she said no, her parents just told her to eat her rice.

My informant is currently 20 years old and is a student at USC. She is of Asian descent but does not speak any other language besides English. She is very involved in the USC Nikkei Association which is an Asian club on campus.

The other belief

 If you don’t eat your rice….then….they said something about worms like eating…eating your soul or something weird like that (laughs)

Analysis from the Collector

I enjoyed hearing about these beliefs because I have never heard any of them before. I agree with my informant that these beliefs are mainly told to little kids as an effort from their parents to get them to eat their rice. Not knowing many Asians myself, I would not be able to say whether these beliefs are common among all Asian groups like my informant believes. I think these are the type of beliefs that are taken very seriously when the person is young but are taken as being silly when the person grows and are just remembered as childhood folklore.

 

Little Willie mean as hell, threw his sister in the well, mother said when drawing water, “Gee it’s hard to raise a daughter.”

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 1 2013
Primary Language: English

Will’s grandparents would watch him and his siblings when his parents went on trips. Whenever Will would act up or do something wrong, his grandpa used to say to him “Little Willie mean as hell, threw his sister in the well, mother said when drawing water, ‘Gee it’s hard to raise a daughter.’” When his grandpa would say this to him, it was a sign of disappointment. It was a way of making Will feel bad about whatever he had done wrong without actually getting angry with him. Will would protest and say that he wasn’t mean, and he would try and disprove his grandpa the first few times his grandpa would say the phrase to him. There were other versions of the saying that Will’s grandpa used to say to him, but he can’t remember exactly what they were.

Know How To Make God Laugh?

Nationality: Irish, German
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Nashville, Tennessee
Performance Date: March 28, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“You know how to make god laugh? Tell him your plans.”

Clip from Interview

Informant: I know a saying, I think its pretty common though:

“You know how to make god laugh? Tell him your plans.”

Interviewer: “Who did you hear that from, was there any background to the occasion you heard this saying?”

Informant: “I don’t know who told me, I think it was my mom, I want to say. I don’t know, I come from the south so it is like bible belt, so I definitely heard it while I was back home in Nashville. I don’t know it is just a very Christian community, I think I was like telling someone about what I wanted er what I what I wanted to do with my life or something and that is what they came back with. I think it was like you never know sort of what lies ahead of you. God has it all planned out and you have no idea what it is.”

Interviewer: “Why did you like this saying, like why did you remember it until now?”

Informant: “I just think that it’s a good way to look at the world. I believe in God and I believe he does have a plan for all of us. Um, and I also just I never thought I would be a screenwriting major um until junior year and its like you know you just…” “and I also believe that… I’ve just been looking back on my life and I go there is no way this is all just circumstance or this is all just random. It was obviously because A has led to B which has led to C which has eventually led me here. I just think it is a good saying and like you know, just trust in God cause he has answers. You never really know what’s in store”

 

The informant is a student at the University of Southern California studying screenwriting. She is a Caucasian female and comes from Nashville. She is Christian herself and comes from a religious background. The informant heard this folklore from another person in her community, possibly her mother, when asked about her college plans.

As stated in the interview, the informant was impacted by the saying. She still remembers it and can recall the saying rather quickly. She does believe in Christianity and so she found the statement to ring true with her beliefs that God is an omniscient figure who “has it all planned out.” The informant interpreted this saying as an instruction to have faith in God because he will take care of it. The informant related her understanding of this saying to the movie Marley and Me stating that although the main character “had all these plans, they didn’t work out, but she was happy in the end.”

In comparison to some of the other folk beliefs I was able to gather, this informant had a very close connection to this saying; a connection which was apparent in her mannerisms and speech during the interview.

 

I’m so hungry I could eat a corpse and chase the mourners

Nationality: Irish, Dutch
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Mission Hills (San Diego), California
Performance Date: April 9, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: None

Informant: “I’m so hungry I could eat a corpse and chase the mourners.”

 

The informant is a young man who comes from suburban Mission Hills, San Diego and describes himself as relatively “quiet and introverted” and “nerdy” as well as very involved in politics. The informant is a sophomore neuroscience major at USC and works in a neuroscience image and understanding lab, which focused on visual research.

The informant heard this metaphor when he was about 14 years old as a freshman in high school from a photography teacher. The informant described this teacher as very eccentric, with a “very unique” and hilarious personality who would say this metaphor in a very happy way. The informant says that because of this, he associates the saying with something positive and likes to use it himself. Additionally, the informant stated, “we had his class right before lunch and sometimes he would say ‘oooh (raised vocal inflection) I’m so hungry, I could eat a corpse and chase the mourners,’ and start hustling down the stairs.” The informant likes this saying because “it is just so bizarre ” and it just stuck in my mind because “he said it a lot and it was said in such a fantastic way.”

The informant does not know exactly what saying is suppose to mean, but the informant thinks that perhaps it means that the speaker is so hungry they could eat a corpse and then would still be hungry enough to chase the mourners to eat them as well. However, the informant also pointed out that “because there are mourners the corpse must still be fresh.” Ultimately, he thinks the saying is just supposed to be bizarre.

This is a somewhat unique variant of the “I’m so hungry I could eat a ___” folk metaphors. Typically the blank is filled with something like a cow, a horse, some other large animal, or a mass quantity of food such as 1000 hamburgers. This variant on the other hand, refers to cannibalism and death. The change in the normal usage is slightly disconcerting and creates a form of death-humor paradox as the metaphor becomes humorous when it is so unexpected.

Door to Life or Death

Nationality: Irish-Armenian American
Age: 19
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2013
Primary Language: English

Form of Folklore:  Folk Belief (Riddle)

Informant Bio:  The informant was born and raised primarily in Glendale, California; he only left the United States for a two year period (from age fourteen to fifteen) to live in London, England.  Most of his knowledge of folklore is from his mother (of Irish decent), his father (of Persian-Armenian decent), and media such as the internet and television.

Context:  The interview was conducted on the porch of the informant’s house in the presence of two other informants.

Item:    So there’s the riddle of two doors and two guards; one door leads to life, one door leads to death, one guard will always tell the truth and one guard will always lie.  And the two guards are not attached to the doors; the truth teller is not, for example, attached to the door of life, nor is the liar attached to the door of death.  It could be in front of either one.  Your objective is to find out which one… your objective, should you choose to accept it… is to find out which door leads to life, by asking one guard one question.

The answer to the riddle is:  you ask whichever guard you wish, “what will the other guard say is the right door?”  If the guard you ask happens to be the truth teller, he will truthfully tell you that the other guard will point to the wrong door.  And if you ask the liar, “what will the truth teller say?” the liar will lie about what the truth teller will say and will point to the wrong door.  So either way, if you ask “what will the other guard say is the right door?” the guard you’re talking to will point at the wrong door.  And you go through the other one.

Informant Comments:  The informant was introduced to this riddle when he was in the sixth grade.  He believes it is an interesting riddle which helps students develop strong analytic skills starting from a very young age.  Personally, the informant enjoys riddles like this one, mainly because he likes to enhance his own way of thinking.

Analysis:  This riddle is mainly used to challenge those who attempt to solve it.  Having to figure out which question, when addressed to either the liar or the truth tell, would eliminate the importance of which guard you are talking to, forces those who are introduced to this folklore to use logical reasoning and laws of negation in order to identify the door to life.  Though they may not be aware of it, people are strengthening their reasoning skills by hearing this riddle and trying to solve it.  As a pleasant addition to the riddle, the informant added some humor by referencing a famous line from the Mission Impossible films.  By pausing to say, “your mission, should you choose to accept it”, the informant gave the riddle a lightened humorous feel.  This offered a nice balance to the performance of this folklore; the riddle was challenging and yet entertaining at the same time.