Urban Legends are always false

[Terrifel]

@Johnny L.A.

A friend insists that by definition an ‘urban legend’ is false. It were not false it would cease to be an urban legend and become ‘urban fact’. He won’t budge on this.

I entirely agree that the term ‘legend’ doesn’t automatically mean ‘false.’ Roberto Clemente has been described as a ‘legendary’ athlete, but that doesn’t mean he never existed. (At least I hope it doesn’t, because that would probably affect the value of my autographed picture of him.)

I’m also curious as to whether an ‘urban legend’ necessarily has to involve a city, by definition. Are there any ‘non-urban legends’ left these days? Sewer alligators aside, many ‘urban legends’ seem to have more of a ‘suburban’ feel to them anyway, as opposed to either entirely ‘urban’ or ‘rural.’ I don’t regard trick-or-treating anxieties as particularly urban in flavor, for example.

[Zoe]

Dan Norder: Myths and legends (and some but not all folklore) are not at all fiction.

According to a definition given in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, any invented story is a myth. It goes on to list fiction as a synomyn.

I guess they have a right to their humble opinion too.

In my own thinking, a legend may or may not be false; a myth is always fictitious.

[Wendell_Wagner]

“Urban” in “urban legend” doesn’t mean that it’s about an event in a city. It means that it’s about a modern society, one where most people live in cities. In some cases, an event that’s almost exactly like the one described in the urban legend happened. It’s still an urban legend. The people who tell the urban legend claim that it happened somewhere that it didn’t happen, to someone to whom it didn’t happen.

[Dr.Drake]

#1 “Urban legend” is a technical term in the field of folklore, with definitions that Dan Norder and **Danalan ** have pointed out. Folklorists now, in fact, prefer “contemporary legend.” It may or may not be partially true; it must have narrative content; it is never a myth.

#2 “Urban legend” has been popularized as a term meaning “false belief,” equal to “myth” (thus <shudder> “Mythbusters” and “urban myth”). In that sense, an urban legend MUST be false, because that’s what the term means in common usage.

Since I’m a folklorist, I only ever use #1 and #2 drives me nuts, but equally since I’m not in sole charge of the English language, I have to accept it. (#2 is folk speech…) So in a sense both sides are right, one just has a few years’ seniority.

If you think that conflicting definitions will eventually drive each other out, the world “folklore” means both “untrue stuff” and “lore of the people which may or may not be true,” and both definitions have been around for more than a century.

[Terminus_Est]

From the SDSAB report on urban legends:

Are urban legends necessarily false? It depends on whom you ask. Take the “Unsolvable Math Problem”–a student solves a problem he sees on the blackboard in class, thinking it’s homework, when actually it’s a famous example of an unsolved problem. The story turned out to be based on the real experience of George Dantzig while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Many professional folklorists would insist this isn’t an urban legend because it’s true, except perhaps in the details–legends, including urban legends, are false by definition; if a story like this is true, it’s a sort of anecdote.

Folklorists aren’t always consistent in using the term legend, though. Richard Dorson found what he thought was the real-life origin of the “Death Car” (in which an automobile is sold for cheap because the previous owner died and decomposed in it, and it’s pervaded with the stench of death). Yet he continued to call the story a legend despite believing it was true.

Today most people who use the phrase urban legend aren’t folklorists, and most folklorists avoid the term in their professional writing. Most non-professional aficionados of urban legends would say that urban legends aren’t a subset of legends as that word is strictly defined. Rather the term is an omnibus classification that includes certain legends, anecdotes, rumors, hoaxes, cyberlore, xeroxlore, and so on. Some of these wild stories turn out to be true. That’s the official position of the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, commonly known as AFU.