LOCAL TEXT OF A PROVINCIAL TOWN IN INTERNET FOLKLORE

In the given paper the authors suggest a peculiar way of studying the 'local text' of a town on the material of the Internet folklore created by local population. Any town has an oral history reflected in residents' folklore both in its traditional and contemporary forms. To the latter the authors refer such genres of the Internet folklore as memes, gifs, and demotivators that are posted by a city's residents on public pages of social networking services. The above-mentioned genres have not been studied properly yet, especially in the aspect of their contribution to the issue of urban folklore and local text. The issue of the local text is an important matter in modern anthropology and folklore studies. The given paper is based on the material concerning the local text of the town of Yoshkar-Ola (Russian Federation), a provincial town but still a unique one in a variety of aspects. The authors have been monitoring the contents of the public page called Typical Yoshkar-Ola located on the popular Russian social networking service VKontakte and have made a collection of 343 memes revealing this or that aspect of the city life. Overall, the analysis of this collection displays a vivid picture of citizens' concerns and perception of the hometown. In the paper some elements of the local text (experience of feeling provincial, citizens' reaction to construction works in the town, to the city's routine and current problems, etc.).