FOLKLORE TEXTS OF KRASNY YAR VILLAGE: LEXICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF MATERIAL CULTURE IN RUSSIAN SETTLER SONGS OF BASHKORTOSTAN

This study examines the material culture lexicon within Russian folklore songs from Krasny Yar village (Republic of Bashkortostan), where 16 songs from a manuscript collection serve as ethnographic capsules preserving 19th-20th-century settler life. Analyzing 127 lexical units, we identify nine semantic fields (e.g., tools, housing, clothing), revealing how everyday objects encode cultural memory, social hierarchies, and emotional codes. Dominant categories include labor tools (19 lexemes, e.g., saban "wooden plough"), housing (18 lexemes, e.g., seni "entryway"), and clothing (12 lexemes, e.g., sorochina"coarse linen shirt"). Key findings demonstrate three functions of this lexicon: (1) cultural conservation of archaic terms (e.g., gorilka "samogon" persisting despite obsolescence in central Russia); (2) social stratification via oppositions (e.g. sarafan "finely woven dress" vs. sorochina marking wealth disparity); and (3) symbolic emotional coding (e.g., shelkovaya pletochka" silk whip" as a metaphor for domestic tyranny). Methodologically, lexico-thematic and contextual analyses highlight genre-specific patterns: ballads weaponize vocabulary (sablya "sabre"), while humorous songs repurpose tools for absurdity. The study underscores folklore’s role in preserving dialectal isoglosses (tyzhola vs. tyazhela "heavy") and adapting to socio-historical shifts (e.g., WWI-era innovations in military ballads).