Linda Dégh (18 March 1918 – 19 August 2014) was a folklorist and professor of

Folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

& Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, USA. Dégh was born in Budapest,

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

and is well known as a folklorist for her work with legends, identity, and both rural and urban communities in Europe and North America. In 2004, as professor emerita at Indiana University, she was awarded the AFS Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award. Dégh also served as president of the American Folklore Society in 1982.

Personal

Dégh was born in Budapest, Hungary, on March 18, 1920 and died in Indiana on August 19, 2014. She was married to Andrew Vázsonyi (1906–1986) for 28 years.

Career

Linda Dégh earned her degree from Péter Pázmány University, in Hungary. After graduating, she began teaching at Eötvös Loránd University in the folklore department. In 1965, she began teaching at the Folklore Institute of Indiana University, Bloomington and by 1982, Dégh had become a Distinguished Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. While teaching, Dégh founded the journal ''Indiana Folklore'' in 1968, which she edited until the journal folded. The journal continued publication until 1980 and was the official journal of the Hoosier Folklore Society. She would also serve as president for the Hoosier Folklore Society in 1967 and 1968. Dégh became a Fellow of the American Folklore Society in 1971. Folklorists are chosen as Fellows of the American Folklore Society for "their outstanding contributions to the field." In 1982, Dégh was the president of the American Folklore Society and in 2004, she was honored by the Society for her work as a folklorist with the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award. Dégh published 18 books and wrote over 200 articles and essays. She is well known for her work with legends and for applying the concept of ostention to the study of contemporary legends. In 1983, she and Andrew Vázsonyi wrote "Does the Word 'Dog' Bite? Ostensive Action: A Means of Legend Telling" and argue that legends can be acted out as well as told. Building on the semiotic work of Ivo Osolsobě, Umberto Eco, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, they proposed five theoretically possible forms of ostention in folklore: ostention, pseudo-ostention, quasi-ostention, false ostention, and proto-ostention.

Awards and honors

*1968: American Philosophy Fellowship *1970: Guggenheim Fellowship *1971: Fellow of the American Folklore Society *1984: Fulbright Research Fellowship in Germany *1989: American Folklore Society: Centennial Recognition Award *1990-91: National Humanities Center Fellowship *1991: Hoosier Folklore Society Achievement Award *1993: International Society for the Study of Contemporary Legend Outstanding Contribution Award *1993: Folklore Fellows of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, Helsinki, Finland *1995: Sigillo D'Oro, Pitrè-Salomone Marino Prize, Palermo, Italy *1995: Ortutay Medal - The Hungarian Ethnographic Society Budapest *2002: Chicago Folklore Prize from the American Folklore Society for ''Legend and Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre'' *2003: Choice Outstanding Academic Book for ''Legend and Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre'' *2004: Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award from the American Folklore Society

Works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Degh, Linda 1920 births 2014 deaths Hungarian folklorists Hungarian women folklorists 20th-century Hungarian women writers Indiana University faculty Writers from Budapest Pázmány Péter Catholic University alumni Hungarian emigrants to the United States Presidents of the American Folklore Society