The Concept “Family” in the Oral Autobiographical Stories of Siberians

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the implementation of the concept “family” in the speech genre of an autobiographical story. The research material is 200 oral autobiographical stories, which were recorded in the villages of Tomsk Oblast during dialectological expeditions from 1946 till 2021. The informants are residents of villages of Tomsk Oblast; they are representatives of different types of speech culture (native speakers of dialect and literary language). All stories are characterized by a relatively stable theme, means of language implementation, and structure, which allows qualifying them as a speech genre whose communicative purpose is to tell about life from the moment of birth to the moment of communication. The novelty of the article is connected with: (1) its appeal to the problem of interaction and mutual influence of the concept and the speech genre in oral everyday discourse, (2) the identification of cognitive features of the concept, (3) the definition of factors of transformation of ideas about the family in ordinary consciousness. The analysis of the concept makes it possible to obtain new data about the speech genre of the autobiographical story and its construction. The speech genre shows the dependence of the features of the content and implementation of the concept “family” on the sphere of functioning. This factor determines the theoretical significance of the results obtained. The analysis of the concept in the speech genre is carried out using the method of modeling and description of the conceptual, figurative, and value layers in the structure of the concept. As a result of contextual analysis, 16 cognitive features were identified; they are represented in the conceptual layer of the concept “family” and actualized in the speech of informants (family size, social status, compliance with moral norms, relations between family members, attitude to work, etc.). The conceptual layer is developed in detail in the oral everyday communication of Siberians. It is represented by a large number of lexical units. The figurative layer of the concept is characterized by single actualizations. At the same time, the variety of their expression is noted: metaphor, metonymy, comparisons are used. The world of the family can form the initial and resulting spheres of metaphorical models. In the initial sphere, the world of plants (roots, mushrooms), products (noodles) is mainly reflected; the semantics of unity and kinship is actualized in the initial sphere. The value layer of the concept “family” is well represented in the oral autobiographical discourse. It indicates that the family occupies one of the main places in the system of life values of peasants. The specifics of structuring this concept in the oral everyday discourse are determined mainly by the attitudes, norms of traditional culture (the family should be large, friendly, hardworking, young members of family honor the older ones, etc.). At the same time, changes in the system of family values determined by sociohistorical processes are noted. These changes are evaluated ambiguously by informants, and the family is still one of the main values of life for them. Regional (natural, social, historical, geographic) specificity is reflected in the actualization of the concept.