Lexical Semantic Field of Verbalizers of the Concept “Horse/Mare”: General Cultural and Regional Specifics

Abstract

The aim of study is to reveal the common linguocultural character and regional peculiarities of the concept “horse” by analyzing the structure and content of the semantic field of this concept`s verbalizers. The novelty of the research is due to the fact that we have used the dictionaries of local dialects of the Kuban region as a source of lexical items — verbalizers of the semantic field of the concept “horse”. The results obtained show that the general cultural concept “horse” is one of the significant concepts in a retrospective picture of the world of the Russian people. For native speakers, horse was mainly a domestic animal — used for field work or transportation — and, therefore, an emotionally and materially valuable object. At the language level, we could reveal the regional specific character of the concept “horse”. For the Kuban Cossacks a horse was a charger. The charger was a symbol of the military character of Cossacks as the service class whose main duty was to stand guard over the state borders of Russia. The value constituent of the concept was even more significant than in the all-Russian language picture of the world — a horse was of great importance in a Cossack’s life and indicated a high social status.