Nominations of a son / a groom / a son-in-law in Karelian wedding poetry

Introduction: in the present article, based on the texts of Karelian jojga, runes and laments, it is examined how the verbalization of key male wedding roles is carried out in wedding lyrics. Objective: to reveal and describe the lexical representations of the nominations a son / a groom / a son-in-law. Research materials: published in folklore collections variants of Karelian jojga, wedding rune songs and laments that were in use in the second half of the XIX – first half of the XX centuries. Results and novelty of the research: it has been established that in Karelian wedding poetry, the semantics of the male characters in question are revealed through symbolic characteristics. Common nominations (a son / a groom = apple / child) were identified, the existence of which stems from the possibility of a man fulfilling two roles in parallel in the context of the ritual. Symbolic features, with the exception of the concept of a son-in-law, are expressed through various poetic constructions. The nominative fields of these concepts are revealed through the prism of blood and non-blood kinship, which corresponds to the opposition of “one’s own = good” and “someone else’s = bad”. The positive or negative connotations of these concepts depend on the social relationships within the family. The opposition of “one’s own” and “someone else’s” is not limited to a single genre, but on the basis of the totality of the analyzed works. In Karelian jojga and certain wedding runs, the young man is portrayed as a son (a blood relative, “one’s own”), which is perceived positively. In laments and certain wedding rune plots, he is presented as a groom or son-in-law (a non-blood relative, “someone else’s”), which gives him a negative connotation

Context (archaeology · Folklore · Key (lock · Novelty · Opposition (politics · Poetry · Social life · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · European Linguistics and Anthropology · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies