THE SEMIOTIC BASIS OF KAZAKH CULTURE: ORNAMENT AS AN ETHNO-SIGN CODE

The relevance of the study of ornament in a semiotic way is confirmed by the active research in the world semiotic science enriching its methodological reserve more and more. The results of studies on problems of ornament as a semiotic structure and ethnographic code since the mid-twentieth century are illustrated by dozens of works on the material of different cultures: Slavic, Balkan, and many others. However, it should be acknowledged that at the moment all the diversity, beauty, intelligence, plasticity, aesthetics and semantics of Kazakh (and wider Turkic) ornament are little known outside Kazakhstan. Many aspects of Kazakh ornament remain insufficiently studied from the standpoint of semiotic research, which will expand the horizons of understanding not only ornamental art itself as a “chronicle of culture”, but also its symbolic nature and code system. Ornament in such a reading appears as a special kind of language, a sign system that exists in structural unity with other structures of the cultural whole. On the one hand, ornamental design functions in the field of various types of traditional art and crafts: textile art and costume, wood and stone processing, jewelry, pottery, architecture, rock art, tamgas, and others; thus, considering ornament as a special kind of a sign system, we should also remember the polysemantic nature of ethno-sign codes. On the other hand, the internal structure of ornament correlates with other languages of culture: music, poetry (oral culture), writing, dance, etc., as well as with the phenomenon of Tengrian calendar, which is seemingly incommensurable in its functionality. The article presents the results of a study of the structural model of ornament in its correlation with the languages of other phenomena of Kazakh culture.

ornament, Kazakh culture, semiotic basis, ethno-sign code