Ethnocultural Characteristics of Everyday Life

(Based on the Example of Khevsurian Ethnographic ocabulary)

Abstract

In the thorough study of the ethnic history of the Georgian people and of the common Georgian culture – formed on the basis of a shared self-consciousness –together with its local characteristics, it is of the utmost importance to compare the everyday-life characteristics conveyed through the ethnographic terms present in the dialects and speech of the inhabitants of Georgia’s various historical-ethnographic units, both with one another and with those attested in the literary language; and likewise to investigate the cultural realities of past and present as described through meanings that are, in some cases, similar and, in others, divergent.

This consideration – together with the subject of our forthcoming study (a „Dictionary of Ethnographic Terms“) and the thematic focus of the conference –determined the choice of Khevsurian ethnographic terms as the subject of the present analysis.

We compared a number of lexical units of an everyday-cultural, religious, and social character, selected from the Dictionary of the Khevsurian Dialect authored by Aleksi Chinch›arauli, with ethnographic terms of similar content that we ourselves gathered during individual and group ethnographic expeditions in various regions of Georgia.

Using methods of complex-historical and comparative analysis, and drawing on data from the specialized scholarly literature, we investigated these ethnographic terms.