THE COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF THE SUPERSTITIONS CONNECTed with FUNERALS IN THE ENGLISH, RUSSIAN AND MARI LANGUAGES

Ekaterina Fliginskikh1*, Svetlana Yakovleva2, Tatyana Soldatkina3, Ksenia Vavilova4

1Senior Lecturer, Mari State University, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, katenasmile@mail.ru
2Associate Prof., Mari State University, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, zavkaf1@gmail.com
3Assistant Prof., Mari State University, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, fia.solta@gmail.com
4Assistant Prof., Mari State University, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, vuk_2004@mail.ru
*Corresponding author

Abstract

The article is devoted to the superstitions in the English, Russian and Mari languages that are connected with funeral and burial traditions. Funerals play a very important role in traditions of every people as presenting the farewell ceremony to pay the last respects to the nearest and dearest people and send them to glory. In the course of the research and analysis all superstitions were divided into five semantic fields. The fields contain lexical-semantic groups. Semantic field 1 ‘The Day of Funerals’ includes superstitions describing the day and the weather on the day of funerals. Semantic field 2 ‘General Instructions about the Funerals’ gives general instructions for the funeral ceremony. The lexical-semantic groups are distinguished according to the people mentioned in the superstition. Semantic field 3 ‘Instructions Connected with the House’ presents instructions that shall be followed in the house after the body of the deceased is taken away to the cemetery and when people come back into the house after the burial ceremony. Semantic field 4 ‘Instructions Connected with the Funeral Procession’ includes instructions to those who participate in the funeral procession or come across the funeral procession. Semantic field 5 ‘Instructions Connected with Burial’ gives the instructions what to do during the burial ceremony to provide happy life of the deceased in another world and protect him or her from the evil spirits, as well as to protect the living people from the deceased one. The analysis of superstitions of different languages helps to find the superstitions which are common to different languages under consideration and which do not have the analogues. It allows identifying features which are universal to different peoples and which are peculiar to make the people unique.

Keywords: superstitions, funerals, burial, the English language, the Russian language, the Mari language.


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CITATION: Abstracts & Proceedings of SOCIOINT 2018- 5th International Conference on Education, Social Sciences and Humanities, 2-4 July 2018- Dubai, UAE

ISBN: 978-605-82433-3-0