Reflection of Cultural Codes in Pavel Bazhov’s Works: the Noun “Malachite” Functions

Abstract

The author explores cultural codes’ refl ection in Pavel Bazhov’s tales. One of the promising areas of modern Russian linguistics is the study of cultural codes’ structure and content in their general linguistic and individual author’s versions. The cultural code is understood as a system of signs of material and spiritual worlds, carrying some cultural meanings. The choice of the works of Uralian writer’s, who represents culturally determined regionalistic linguistic picture, is motivated by insuffi cient description of the peculiarities of Pavel Bazhov’s worldview and idiostyle. Based on the use of corpus and linguoculturological analysis, the study demonstrates some features of culturally marked values formation in the nominations of socio-natural environment objects on the example of the noun “malachite”. The research material was selected from the “Malachite Box” collection; in particular the stories describing methods of malachite mining and processing, professional secrets of malachite masters, legends and folk tales about the secrets of ornamental stone. I helped to recognize “malachite” as a cognitive dominant of Bazhov’s idiostyle. By using the Russian National Corpus, there were found 45 word forms of the noun ‘malachite’ in Bazhov’s works. The author presents the results of quantitative analysis and describes the semantics of case forms. It was proved that the most common word forms (nominative, instrumental and dative cases), convey the denotative meaning of the lexeme under study, as it happens in functioning of the language in general). As a result of the linguoculturological analysis of the tales, the connotative meanings of the lexeme ‘malachite’ were revealed, as well as neologisms, derived in the process of Bazhov’s creative linguistic work and refl ecting the metaphorical rethinking of the realities of the socio-natural environment. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the lexeme usage allowed to conclude that ‘malachite’ in Bazhov’s tales is presented as a kind of Urals symbol, associated with the peculiarities of the production activities of this region inhabitants, their way of life, and with the traditional images of the Ural folklore.

Keywords:

Pavel Bazhov, cultural codes, author’s style, corpus analysis, linguocultural analysis