Urban Legends Interview: Discovering Language

Assuming these widely-shared tales are not actually true, what makes them endure? 

Urban legends are those fanciful tales that grip listeners and are spread widely across continents and oceans while repeated by individuals often claiming the facts reported in the tale happened to a “friend of a friend,” or are based on “facts” reported in news reports that the teller of the tale had allegedly read in the past. 

• A classic example of an enduring urban legend is the enduring tale of the blind, white alligators that inhabit the sewers of New York. In the legends, sun-seeking tourist return from Florida with pet alligators, small babies that quickly became unmanageable and their owners, unwilling to kill them, simply flush them down the toilet. In this environment rich in food (rats), but lacking in sunlight, the alligators became blind albinos, witnessed by the occasional unwary New Yorker of urban legend.
• they are not necessarily urban nor are they legends in the strict sense of the term. What they are is popular folklore that seeks to transmit popular lore—the knowledge or wisdom of the people—that are spread from individual to individual usually through narrative retelling of the tales. 
• Unlike traditional legends, urban legends are reported as contemporary events: the narrative power is derived from the narrative performance of the urban legend in which the audience—a friend, a group of colleagues on break, or fellow students in a dorm—are recounted a story that “actually” happened. 
• Urban legends are invariably localized and contemporized: though the underlying story remains unchanged, the facts are changed to make it fit into the locality and the time period.
• Although an urban legend may have a grain of truth (as we shall see below), the origins of the legend—if it can be found— is often far removed from the tale that the listener will hear and has often been changed considerably as local details will be added to localize the legend. 

Types

• Many of the tales can be described as cautionary tales, articulating some of the fears and anxieties of society. One such tale is the “old woman” and her new microwave. Gifted a new microwave by her children, the woman decides to use it to dry off her dog. Returning a few minutes later, she discovers that her dog had been cooked from the inside out. The legend highlights the danger of technology: new technology, though useful, may conceal hidden dangers.
• One characteristic of a successful urban legend is the unexpected twist at the end of the narrative: it is outlandish, but seemingly plausible, and thus is taken as truth. It often mixes humor and horror, appealing to an individual’s sense of morality or hidden anxieties to touch a chord of empathy. In the case of the Porsche, the listener will empathize with the wife and feel a certain sense of satisfaction that the unfaithful husband got what was coming to him.

Technology: Although urban legends are primarily oral narratives, they can be transmitted using a variety of means. As noted, urban legends often appear in newspapers reported as “true” events. They are also integrated into popular culture in television and movies and e-mail and the Internet has given urban legends new life. Although urban legends have always demonstrated the remarkable ability to travel far and wide, with instantaneous communication of e-mail, new forms of urban legend are emerging.

.New urban legends continually emerge, and the Internet is serving as a medium to record this new folklore. However as mediums of communication change along with North American society, folklore will invariably live on, enthralling new generations.

1. Firstly, tales of the supernatural may be especially appealing since they are “minimally counter-intuitive”, combining both the familiar and the bizarre. “They depart from what's expected and as a result push us to process the information more deeply,” says Ara Norenzayan at the University of British Columbia, “so we remember more and are more likely to retell them.” 
2. Counter-intuitive elements could include a talking animal, or a pumpkin that turns into a chariot – but it’s not so much the nature, as the number of these narrative devices that seems to be crucial. The most popular stories – as measured by the number of times they have been cited online – only have two or three supernatural surprises. Our brains, it seems, have only so much room for the bizarre before it becomes too confusing to be enjoyable.The tale offers just enough hints of the eerie to pique our curiosity, without leaving us feeling too alienated.

Delighting in disgust

In terms of their wider themes, psychologists have found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most popular tales also tend to evoke strong emotions – and the feeling of DISGUST seems to make a story particularly potent.

1. We are drawn to both disgust and themes of survival – which is why many stories deal with life and death. That makes sense, given our evolution – stories would have been an important way of transmitting valuable information that could save our skin at a later point.
2. The most memorable tales involve some kind of social connection; we just can’t forget a piece of lurid gossip. 

There is a change in the way that we craft folk tales thanks to the internet. 

1. social stories may be more memorable but they weren’t necessarily more enjoyable, Memorability would have been crucial when stories were passed mouth to ear, but with the cut and paste buttons on our desktop, it perhaps plays less of a role. 
2. “We may find social content easier to remember, but actually, we are just as likely to want to hear about stories relevant to survival and to pass them on – so the advantage of social information over other biases disappears,” 
3. In other words, as more stories are shared on the internet, our stories may lose some of their social nuances, and become even more ghoulish. “It is certainly feasible that story-telling in the digital age may evolve in a very different way from the fairy tales of the past, which were shaped by the cognitive constraints of oral transmission,” 

In break out rooms, elicit an "urban legend" from your partner. Then analyze the cultural elements you find in this legend. What makes these urban legends popular? What makes you want to retell them?