Keywords as Markers Indicating Lifestyle of People in Altai Ditties of the 1930s–1950s

The work examines key words in Altai ditties as markers covering different aspects of people’s lives over several decades. Having studied existing approaches to understanding, isolating and establishing the functions of keywords, as well as correlating them with markers, we defi ned keywords as a sign, a marker indicating a stage, time, segment of the life of individual people or an entire generation. This is the relevance of the work. Because of keywords, which turn out to be so solely in connection with the designated topic of research, and not with the leading themes of ditties serving as research material, readers have the opportunity to imagine what people did, how they spent their free time, what kind of work they did, what kind of clothes and shoes were worn. The purpose of the study is to identify key words in the texts of Altai ditties dating back to the period of the 1930s–1950s as markers, thanks to which it becomes possible to determine the interests and lifestyle of people at a certain time in a certain area. The methodological basis of the study is a combination of a number of methods: semantic, extralinguistic, contextual analysis and classifi cation method which do not exist in isolation but in interaction with others. Thanks to a comprehensive methodology for studying key words as markers in the texts of Altai ditties, it becomes possible to establish what young people did, what interested them and what they cared about in the 1930s–1950s. This study shows only some aspects of the life of people in a certain area.The research material seems interesting from the perspective of philology, cultural studies, history, and expands the understanding of the life of people mainly in rural areas in the Altai Territory in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. The prospect of the work is seen in expanding the research material, which would allow us to “fi ll” existing thematic groups and identify new ones, to go “beyond the boundaries” of the period analyzed