Not trying to start a fight, Suibhne - I know you love all this stuff. However...

"the language of which will always be couched in terms of classification and taxonomy even by more casual practitioners, which wouldn't be the case in (say) UK Hip Hop..."

That's not wholly untrue, and of course I plead guilty - although if I were playing a pub gig (which I don't do often these days but have some form at), I think I'd be soft-pedalling the classification and taxonomy. And I didn't hear too much of that at the Folk Awards (on TV) either - they were pretty much indistinguishable from any other kind of award ceremony.

On the other hand, traditional songs by their nature come from somewhere and someone, and it's not necessarily a matter of academic pretension to acknowledge the fact onstage - in much the same way that Dolly Parton, or Cedric Watson, or La Bottine Souriante, or Toumani Diabaté might do.

"This accounts for the demographics and the general rarity of the thing"

I don't think it does - it's more that it sounds so different from most of the music around us that a lot of people just can't get a handle on it.