HUSBAND AND WIFE AS CONSTANTS OF TRADITIONAL FOLK CULTURE IN THE SPEECH OF THE DIALECTAL LANGUAGE PERSONALITY

The paper analyses the verbalization of the concepts husband and wife and meanings connected with them in the idiolect of the language personality of V. P. Vershinina (1909–2004), the speaker of the Siberian old-timer Middle Ob dialect. The broad stock of common Russian and dialect lexemes used for the nomination of spouses, their developed paradigmatic and syntagmatic connections, paroemias on the topic of matrimony testify to the significance of the concepts under consideration as nuclear units of family ties axiologically marked in the peasant community.

The language material allows the authors to identify a number of worldview constants of traditional culture, including the need for marriage as a social norm; the importance of timely marriage for both men and women; the approval of entering into a marriage in church or in a civil registry office; a balanced approach to the formation of a married couple supported by the institution of matchmaking.

The analysis of the characteristics of the fiance and the fiancee, the husband and the wife in stories about family life of fellow villagers and relatives shows the demands of the society to the spouses and the family as a whole. The zone of positive evaluation includes, first of all, diligence and spirituality in the relations of the spouses. Drunkenness and adultery, leading to a divorce, are evaluated negatively.

The mental orientations of the dialect speaker are a result of the specifics of living in the peasant society; they are based on the postulates of Orthodoxy and on the unwritten laws of folk life. These ancient traditional cultural constants that the language personality under study formed at the beginning of the 20th century remained unchanged throughout life, despite the global changes in the modern world.