Aksjologiczne pojęcie dusza w białoruskim języku i kulturze
The concept of soul (душа) in Belorusian linguaculture

Summary/Abstract: The article investigates the concept of soul (душа) as part of the Belarusian linguistic worldview based on the data extracted from the dictionaries of the literary language, as well as from dialectal dictionaries. The study aims to discover differences and similarities between how the soul is viewed in contemporary Belarusian society and its perception in folk worldview, which is characterized by extreme ambivalence in this regard. The paper addresses the following questions: (i) What is the soul? and (ii) Who gave the soul to humans? Having arrived at the conclusion that in the Belarusian folk consciousness the soul is viewed within an essentially pagan framework, the author seeks to establish whether this understanding underwent any changes in contemporary society, whose members went through the propagation of atheism in the 20th century, but also experience present-day Neo-Christian ideas.

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