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Paper short abstract

There are semantic differences between nominating soil in ritual speech and naming it in oral narratives in Russian. In our report, we will try to determine what symbolic meaning the soil has in ritual actions, speech, and oral narratives.

Paper long abstract

In the Northern Russian tradition, soil as a substance is often used in magical practices. A healer takes soil from a special locus to treat adults and children. Mothers still bless their sons with soil before they join the army or go to war. Often people who leave home, take the soil with them to not miss their native land. If the person did not die in his homeland, their relatives try to bring the soil from the deceased person's grave and place it in the family's tombs. There are many more similar examples.

The word ‘soil’ in the Russian language has a female gender. In сharming speech, it is called a ‘mother’ and is described as ‘damp soil’. Sometimes the actions are accompanied by charm words. In ritual speech and in сharms, the ‘mother earth’ is always a participant in communication for people. When the soil is an object of ritual acts, our interlocutors use (‘zeml’a’ (full form) and ‘zemel’ka’ (diminutive form)).

Often in Russian diminutives is not to show the size of the subject, but the quality and relationship with it. As we consider the diminutive as a marker of the shared focus of the interlocutors.

In our report, we will try to determine what symbolic meaning the soil has in ritual actions and speech and look at what situations the diminutives appear in and what it is a marker of. The material for the report is the recordings of the Russian ‘Daytodaydata’ archive.