Paper short abstract:

The paper tries to deal with two epistemological issues connected with ethnography-based narrative research, i. e. with dynamics between spoken narratives and social behaviour and with issue of degrees of veracity of specific kind of narratives within different social spaces.

Paper long abstract:

The paper tries to deal with two major epistemological issues connected with ethnography-based narrative research which the author encountered during his last book project(s) dealing with oral narratives about preternatural phenomena in the Central Europe in the first half of the 20th century. First one deals with dynamics between spoken (or written) narratives and social behaviour; i. e. with different forms which narratives about specific kind of behaviour could take, and/or with different forms which certain social behaviour can take, inspired by specific kind of narratives. Some of this dynamics had been historically explained by semiotic approaches, e. g. by Yuri Lotman and Linda Dégh (with her concept of ostension), but more refined approach is needed to thoroughly interpret this complicated phenomenon. The second one deals with issue of degrees of veracity of specific kind of narratives within different social spaces; although positivist search for "true" narratives is still prevalent in some strands of folklore research, more complex approach is also needed, especially in contemporary age of post-truths and fake news.