The Relationship Between Culture, Religion and Mythology in Kazakh Curses

Abstract

The curse belongs to the most ancient genres of oral communication in the Kazakh culture. It is based on belief in the magical function of the word, in the ability to bring harm and evil to the cursed with the help of sacral and magical powers. Kazakh kargys is a pattern, stable verbal formulas are preserved in the linguistic consciousness of the modern native speakers, despite the fact that the archaic foundations may not be fully understood by them. The aim of the article is to analyze the specifics of the propositional structure of the genre of curse Kazakh language, to typologize the nature of harm and evil inflicted on the addressee, to identify some cultural, religious, linguistic and pragmatic features of the genre. The pragmatic and semantic features associated with the ancient Turkic mythology and religion are revealed. For the feasibility and strength of the influence of the kargys, the status of the one who curses and the one who is cursed is important – the age, the family, the social status. The objectification of the verbal predicate in the kargys is significant and fundamental, even the contracted forms preserve it. The actants in the structure of the proposition of curse are optional; their elimination is carried out on various semantic and pragmatic grounds. The Kazakh language provides formulas for counteracting the destructive genre of curse, including the formula for depriving the force of the curse and the formula for returning it to the one who curses.