Euphemisms on Death in Gagauz GAGAUZLARDA ÖLÜM İLE İLGİLİ ÖRTMECELER
Milli Folklor, cilt.17, sa.132, ss.140-149, 2021 (AHCI, Scopus, TRDizin)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 17 Sayı: 132
- Basım Tarihi: 2021
- Dergi Adı: Milli Folklor
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, TR DİZİN (ULAKBİM)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.140-149
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Conceptualization, Death, Euphemism, Gagauz, Taboo
- Kırklareli Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Euphemisms that are a part of sociolinguistics is a phenomenon that is seen in every society from the past to the future. Euphemisms enable prohibited or undesirable words and expressions to be used without damaging social fabric. In this regard euphemisms assume an important function in social life. This function of euphemism concerns their feeding on taboos. One of the factors that give direction to social life, taboos mostly present themselves in language as well. Reflection of taboo on language, euphemisms especially present themselves in events such as death, sexuality, religion, and illness that have certain social rituals and prohibitions. Especially it can be seen that euphemisms related to death have not changed substantially from primitive societies to today’s modern societies. They have only changed in form from time to time. Freud assessed this situation from a psychoanalytical outlook in his book Totem and Taboo and mentioned taboos regarding death also reflect on language. Such taboos that reflect on language confront us at written and verbal literature of Turkish dialects through euphemisms. Turkish dialects have a rich euphemism literature and euphemisms around death and related factors are quite diverse and they are recorded in various scientific studies. This situation is valid not just for modern Turkish dialects, but also for historic Turkish dialects. The fact that in ancient Turkish period expressions such as adrıl-, alkın-, arıl-, arta-, boguzlan-, kaç-, kal-, kamıl-, kergek bol-, öl-, tınsıra-, tor-, tüş-, uç-, üzül-, yit-, yitlin-, yod-, yo:k bol-were used to denote to the verb die according to existing sources is a clear indication of existence of a rich euphemism. When it comes to modern Turkish dialects, despite existence of many scientific studies covering euphemisms that are directly related to death, euphemisms regarding death in Gagauz and Gagauz language that are quite close to Turks and Turkish in Turkey have remained uncovered. Death and related beliefs and taboos in Gagauz that are a Turkish com-munity that adopted Orthodox Christian faith are quite ancient. Beliefs and taboos that date to pre-Christianity are seen in Gagauz after they adopt Orthodox Christianity. Such transitions are naturally reflected on euphe-misms. However, detecting euphemisms and especially euphemisms on death in Gagauz is quite difficult. The reason is small number of written sources and inexistence of studies on Gagauz folklore at desired level. Establishment of written language at a later period can also be included in such reasons. There are some recent studies exploring death and related beliefs in Gagauz folklore. It is possible to derive some data out of these studies. Nevertheless, euphemisms on death were not covered in a separate category in these studies. This reveals the necessity of using data received directly from the field. One issue that draws attention in Gagauz euphemisms is Islamic source of some words. However, such words with Islamic sources were conceptualized again according to Orthodox Christianity theology that Gagauz follow. Among these one can cite words such as can, Allah, şaraat (sharia), zeet (torment) etc.