Conceptualization of an artificial landscape in Siberian old-timers’ speech: Ogorod (based on the speech of Tomsk Oblast rural residents)

The aim of the article is to analyze the representation of the concept “ogorod” [vegetable garden] based on the speech of residents of villages in Tomsk Oblast. The research material is oral stories of rural residents of Tomsk Oblast bom at the end of the 19th-20th centuries. The main source of the material is audio recordings of speech made in dialectological expeditions from the 1940s to July 2024, then decoded and partially placed in the Tomsk Dialect Corpus. Illustrative material from dialect dictionaries and audio recordings from the authors’ personal archive are also used in the research. The novelty of the proposed analysis lies in its inclusion in the general problem of describing the cultural and linguistic landscape of Siberia as a region with crossborder characteristics. The concept “vegetable garden” is one of the key concepts of rural culture, which determines the relevance of its study. A concept is a unit of consciousness that is represented by means of language units and reflects the peculiarities of culture. The method of analysis is based on the description of conceptual, figurative and axiological layers in the concept structure. The methodology of the conceptual metaphor theory is also used in the description of the figurative layer. To nominate a vegetable garden in the speech of rural residents of Tomsk Oblast, the lexical unit of the same name and its dialect variants igorod, gorod, as well as the forms of subjective assessment formed from them ogorodishche, ogorodchik, ogorodishko, igorodishko are used. The concept is also verbalized with derivative words: ogorodnik, ogorodnitsa, gardening / igorodnichestvo, gardening; gardening, etc. A vegetable garden as a plot of land for growing vegetables, berries, etc. is presented in the speech practices of rural residents as a space requiring care, labor; as a marker of hard work, acting as a tool for forming social ties; as an indicator of local, age, gender identity; as an object of real estate; as an object of superstition, signs. The figurative layer of the concept is represented by a few units, lexemes can form a target sphere and a source sphere. The vegetable garden and everything growing in it is presented as a living being. In the “human being” sphere, linguistic units with the semantics of a vegetable garden mainly describe appearance, actions, social and personal relationships. The axiological layer actualizes the understanding of the vegetable garden by rural residents as having a utility value: as a source of food for the family and livestock, as a source of income. As an aesthetic value, a source of love and joy, the vegetable garden is represented in a few statements. The analysis showed that, in the perception of rural residents, the vegetable garden is one of the main elements of the house, representing a value-based part of human life, a source of vital activity and life support for the family. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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