A cultural linguistic apporoach to Ayaz Ishaki's novel "the Tatar's Daughter"

Culture is the sum of a nation's literature, art, history, traditions, music, and material and spiritual values. Since culture maintains its vitality in every era, it can pass on its existence to future generations thru language, even if the nation it originated from ceases to exist. Language is an important tool in the formation of worldview. Western linguists and philologists say that even if a language has become extinct in a certain place and time, it is transmitted to future generations thru written and oral culture. In this context, researchers approach the works with special care, with the meticulousness of an archeologist. Thus, by examining both the form and content of the language, they can understand human culture. While each nation may have its own unique cultural elements, there are also shared cultural values among brother nations. In this respect, the literary heritage of the Kazan Tatars, who possess rich cultural values, holds a special place. Especially the early 20th-century Kazan Tatar literature, composed of works based on the real lives of the society, is noteworthy in terms of national cultural elements that had been shaped over centuries and were fully expressed during this period. The strong literary masters of the period known as the Golden Age, such as Ayaz İshaki, Alimcan İbrahimov, Aliesgar Kamal, and Mirheyder Feyzi, have made significant contributions to the enrichment of the Tatar lexicon thru the cultural elements in their prose and drama works. In the thesis, the novel "Tatars' Daughter," written by Ayaz Ishaki during his exile period with a longing for his homeland and richly portraying the values unique to Kazan Tatar culture, has been examined from a literary and cultural-linguistic perspective. Concrete cultural elements such as kinship relations, the concept of homeland and land, national cuisine, and national clothing are addressed under headings, while abstract concepts encompassing the inner world of humans, such as those describing a person's qualitative and moral world, those characterizing feelings and emotions, and those exploring a person's inner world, are examined under subheadings. The unchanging characteristics of culture, which continue to exist in language thru linguistic elements and are reflected in works, have been identified; thus, an attempt has been made to analyze the worldview of a nation thru its unique vocabulary.