Associative Fields of Culturally Marked Lexemes <i>Chyl-Pazhy</i> and <i>Chalama</i> in the Language Consciousness of Shorians: A Psycholinguistic Experiment

Abstract

Ethnically-specific concepts and bilingual consciousness are topical issues of cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, cultural studies, and language theory. Associative fields of culturally-marked vocabulary make it possible to study ethnic worldviews. The authors used the psycholinguistic method of associative experiment to study the associative fields of Shorian words Chyl-Pazhi (a New Year celebration) and chalama (a festive ribbon) in the language consciousness of the Shor people who live in the Kemerovo Region, Western Siberia. The survey yielded 412 associations to the stimulus Chyl-Pazhi and 359 associations to the stimulus chalama. The psycholinguistic experiment involved 89 members of the Shor ethnic group aged 14–65 y.o. and was conducted on October 29, 2022, in the settlement of Sheregesh during a local festival of national cultures. Shorian and Russian New Year traditions appeared to merge with those of other indigenous peoples of Western Siberia, which was obvious even at the level of spelling as many respondents used Khakas or Russified variants. Chyl-Pazhy was conceptualized as a holiday when multi-colored chalama-ribbons are tied to a birch tree while black ones are burned in a fire-well. As a New Year celebration, Chyl-Pazhy could be described as a seasonal holiday of sunlight and spring that remains integral to the contemporary Shorian worldview. Chalama-ribbons were associated with making wishes, and that was the only aspect that linked this stimulus with the Russian New Year.

Keywords

• associative experiment
• associative field
• linguistic consciousness
• indigenous small people
• shorians
• shor people
• chyl-pazhi
• chalama