Linguistic representation of the ethnographic realia of Russia Germans (by the example of the novels “My Children” by G. Yakhina and „Wir selbst“ / “Ourselves” by G. Sawatzky)

Abstract

The aim of the study is to identify German ethnographic realia in novels and the peculiarities of representation of these realia in the linguistic consciousness of Germans and Russia Germans. The paper attempts to determine the psycholinguistic significance of German realia on the basis of associative experiment data and to establish their nuclear-peripheral organisation for these ethnic groups. The study is original in that it is the first to identify and systematise German ethnographic realia based on the material of novels about Volga Germans, as well as to describe mental representations of German everyday and ethnographic realia in the two ethnic groups and to compare these representations with the image of realia in the artistic reality of the novels. As a result of the study, it has been found that the authors most often use ethnographic realia, especially everyday realia, including food and drinks, clothes and shoes, housing and property, to describe the life of Russia Germans. The ideas of Germans and Russia Germans about German realia most often coincide in the semantic aspect, but differ in the evaluation component.