BIG CITY LIFE: THE REFLECTION OF URBANIZATION IN THE LYRICS

This article examines the phenomenon of the urbanization of the Kazakh language through its reflection in song lyrics. Since the early 2000s, Kazakhstan has been undergoing a process of urbanization, that is, the migration of people to cities. This phenomenon is not limited to a mere change in the habitual living environment of Kazakh citizens but leads to its complete transformation. In this regard, observing the way the citizens perceive the urban environment and integrate into the new surroundings from the linguistic viewpoint becomes one of the most relevant issues. Language factor plays a crucial role in easing and accelerating the process of integration into the city space. However, the transformation of the linguistic environment among people who have recently settled in cities is, in itself, a complex phenomenon. At the same time, observing linguistic perception in the adoption of urban environments by Kazakhstan’s residents is one of the most relevant issues today. In this regard, the article seeks to answer the following question: What is the image of the city in the mind of a Kazakhspeaking resident who has recently moved to an urban area? In accordance with this research goal, the article attempts to demonstrate the process of urbanization through the analysis of Kazakh-language song lyrics. The corpus for this study consists of Kazakh-language song texts that were popular in Kazakh pop music from 2014 to 2025. The study analyzes the frequency of city names in the lyrics, the dominant patterns in the description of Kazakhstani cities, and attitudes toward the urban environment. The article considers the impact of urbanization on musical culture and its stylistic movements, the reflection of the urban rhythm of life in song lyrics, and the cultural phenomena inherent to the cityscape. The research uses methods of statistical analysis, descriptive analysis, semantic analysis, and comparative analysis.The research findings reveal the social nature of the urban settlement process in Kazakhstan and offer a novel perspective on urbanization. The analysis of society’s attitude toward urbanization based on song lyrics contributes to deepening the theoretical understanding of sociolinguistic processes.