Lexicon of Dialect Speakers in the Ethnolinguistic Aspect: Problems, Methods, Research Objectives

The paper presents a comprehensive approach analysis on the lexicon of dialect speakers, chosen for the purpose of ethnolinguistic study of this research object. Attaining the objectives set contributes to the consideration of the problems relevant to the modern paradigm of scientific knowledge. Following the established methodological principles of linguistic units interpretation and using the recordings of the Don and Ukrainian dialects speakers as research material, the authors present a multilevel classification of a vast array of facts registered while surveying the informants in the residential areas with mixed population in the Volgograd region. The methods of differentiation of the vocabulary with an explicitly or implicitly expressed ethnocomponent of meaning are proposed, the means of linguistic continuum segmentation are determined. It is noted to reflect indirectly the realia, phenomena, processes and signs characteristic of traditional material and spiritual folk culture. The methodological system of dialectological, functional-and-semantic, and ethnolinguistic analysis of lexical units is introduced. It allows to present the person's ethnic identification means in the speech of Russian and Ukrainian speakers, taking into account the content-and-semantic principle of detailing information in the text (within the framework of themes and microthemes) and the semantic-and-categorial method of ethnocultural meanings verbalization in the context (within situations and microsituations). The fundamentals of the field modelling technique embracing a vast array of facts are characterised, their application enables presenting lexicon of dialect speakers as the hierarchical structure, and the ethnolinguistic significance of its individual segments and their components identification is discovered.