On cultural dialects in Slavic ethnolinguistics

Abstract

In the article the author considers the basic ideas of the Moscow ethnolinguistic school on the basis of several examples from the South Slavic cultural dialects. The methods are similar to the technique of isolating certain linguistic dialects and cultural dialects; much attention is paid to justification of the concept “cultural dialect.” Eastern Serbia and western Bulgaria were taken as an example for the analysis of dialects based on phonetic, grammatical features and those that are observed in folk culture and which are reflected in its terminological vocabulary. Research was carried out into one of the main arealogical regularities that is linked to the interaction between cultural and language contexts of its functioning (in the sphere of beliefs and rituals, in folklore texts - legends, stories about encounters with supernatural beings, etc.). For example, “bear’s day” shows the areal scheme of concentric circles, according to which the central place belongs to the terminological vocabulary, as far as the distance from the center is concerned, there are only rituals and beliefs associated with the “bear” symbols of the holiday, and the wide range covers the extent of the legend of St. Andrew riding a bear. The paper concludes with a description of the geographic background in the ethnolinguistic dictionary Slavic Antiquities, whose main purpose is a reconstruction of old Slavic culture aided by the linguistic method of study of folk culture, i.e. the study of verbal expressions for a number of cultural phenomena (lexical and phraseological items).

Keywords

• ethnolinguistics
• dialectology
• arealogy
• South Slavic languages
• eastern Serbia
• western Bulgaria
• cultural dialect
• Slavic antiquities