ostension

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED calls "ostension"  'Now rare," with only one ex. since 1936, a 1998 from
the _Fortean Times_ that says, "But as we have seen, this bogeyman has
apparently come to horrible life in a process known to folklorists as
ostension."

I believe that the def. needs to be tweaked to not that "ostension" is now a
technical term in folklore (app. introduced in 1983 by Linda Degh and Andrew
Vazsonyi). E.g.:

1991 G. A. Fine in _Journal of American Folklore_ CIV 179: Here was an
example of ostension in action. Ostension refers to teh process by which
people act out the themes or events found within folk
narratives....Halloween posionings are most likely the result of parents or
other kin attempting to make it appear that strangers did the dirty work;
letting folk villains take the blame....

In brief, folkloric ostension is the conscious performance of an action
evidently learned straight from some widespread cultural narrative. Fine's
ex. is the collection of aluminum pop-tops for the supposed purpose of
helping to save terribly ill children.  This is a practice that seems to
have to have started out as only a strange rumor. Fine was astonished to
discover that Ronald McDonlad House, years later, had decided to put the
rumor into practice as a way of raising funds.  Through the miracle of
ostension.

Ostension would also describe one reason why, when I was a bit younger, I
dressed like Davy Crockett.  It was because I thought that the coolest guys
were supposed to dress like Davy on TV. (Eventually I discovered my
blunder.)

Ostension is thus a very specific subspecies of imitation.

BFD, right?  Well, my impression is that, except among folklorists,
"ostension" really is "rare."  Very rare. But as a technical term it's
in common use among certain scholars.

OED please note.

JL

"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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