Between them Chicago sociology and French sociological theatre studies extended the range of what could be considered to be performed human behaviour. In order to think about this activity, they initially drew analogies from aesthetic theatre, but this work was then moved away from explicit theatrical models by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham's (CCCS) study of culture as text and by Burns's work on conventions. While this all began to put in place an object of study that was neither theatre nor everyday behaviour, it tended not to be called ‘performance’. The development of the use of that term came instead from elsewhere, from a specific branch of ethnography which studied folklore. ‘During the past quarter century’, said William Hugh Jansen, in 1957, ‘there has been growing concern among folklorists about a rather imponderable quantity called performance – particularly performance of the folktale and folksong.’ In order to make it somewhat less imponderable Jansen proposed a system for classifying the performance of verbal folklore. He also recommended that, in addition to the study of the content of folklore, ‘there should be more consideration of the manner of folklore, of that dual but inseparable process of performance and reception.’ In making this recommendation he was at the same time extending what might be meant by the word ‘performance’. He acknowledges that in speaking of oral verbal folklore ‘one must employ the term performance in something like its theatrical or dramatic definition’, but then he notes that folklore compels a new application of the word:

From here Jansen offers some illustrative situations showing the potential range across what we might call performance's functions as efficacy and entertainment, and he then suggests ‘three ways to weigh the degree of performance or the anticipation of performance’: the form of the performed item, its particular function, the actual performer (Jansen 1957: 110, 112–13).