Kazakh Traditional Riddles as a Specific Form of Translation of Cultural-Historical Experience

Abstract

This article develops the ideas of M.M. Mukanov about the importance of a psychological approach to the product of oral creativity in ethnico-historical terms. Ethnic mentality corresponds to social and historical realities of the life of the ethnos creating a unique culture. An important part of the manifestation of ethnic mentality belongs to the works of oral creativity — the product of the mental activity of many generations. John M. Dienhart (Dienhart) argued that riddles “can serve as a useful identifier of cultural norms and worldview” [34]. Thus, the article discusses riddles as a specific element of Kazakh culture, as a special cultural tradition; the role of riddles in the translation of cultural and historical experience; how exactly the peculiarities of mentality manifest themselves in riddles; what the specificity of the guessing process is. In conclusion, we discuss what the common and the different in guessing riddles compared to solving educational and creative tasks. It is shown that the difficulties of guessing are associated with the disguise of the sought under the shell of the ethnic context and a special way of “stamping” the riddle. In a creative task, the most important moment is a reflexive effort aimed at awaring and changing the way of action. And the Kazakh riddle combines the correlation of two contents according to gestalt, thinking by analogy, transduction and ethno-cultural context. In this sense, guessing the Kazakh riddle is “three in one”: mastering cultural and historical experience (the enclosed content), mastering the method of metaphorical thinking (thinking in modeling representations), mastering the ethno-cultural context. Thus, it corresponds to Archer Taylorꞌs thesisthat the riddle is a universal art [38]