Critical Survey

Cultural identities shape our collective memories, values and ways of life. In a globalised world, the preservation of these identities has become more crucial than ever before. Tangible heritage includes physical artefacts (buildings, monuments, artworks); intangible heritage covers traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals. Both forms of heritage serve as bridges between past and present and shape the future of communities and nations. In recent decades, the importance of preserving cultural identities has gained increasing recognition on the global stage. UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, adopted in 2003, marked a significant milestone in acknowledging the value of non-material cultural expressions. This convention complemented earlier efforts focused on tangible heritage, such as the 1972 World Heritage Convention.

Modernisation, particularly urbanisation, significantly impacts the economic and social spheres, altering self-consciousness, cultural views and traditions. This is crucial to observe in large countries like Kazakhstan, where remote regions and underdeveloped infrastructure have hindered active urbanisation. The aim is to analyse urbanisation's impact on the cultural and value-based orientations of Kazakhstan's people. Comparison and statistical methods were used in this study. This article is valuable for researchers studying the influence of global processes on national culture and self-consciousness, as well as those interested in Kazakhstan's history.

The richness of the spiritual culture of the people can be found in the ethnographic nature of poems and songs related to family customs and traditions. The active use of traditional poetry in family ceremonies, rituals and everyday life of modern Kazakh society predefines the research relevance. The research aims to investigate ethnographic peculiarities of the poetics of Turkic-speaking peoples and to study the understanding of historical context and symbolism in the traditional family poems of the Turks. The following methods were used: historical-typological method, cultural-historical analysis, comparative method, and survey. The research studies the traditional family poetics of Kazakhstan and Great Britain, relying on the peculiarities of the cultural traditions and history of these countries.

Ritual folklore has always been in the spotlight of scholars and researchers of folk poetry, as it has a profound social context. In turn, Turkic culture is rich in wedding ceremonies and folklore, which is relevant to research, based on studies of predecessors and innovations of the time. The research aims to study the artistic richness of the Turkic people. Comparative, historical-typological methods, surveys and analysis have been used in the research to analyse the multinational folklore heritage of Turkic-speaking peoples. The issue of poetics of wedding ritual folklore of Turkic-speaking peoples, its current state and attitudes towards folklore elements among young couples who were not married at the time of the research have been studied.

This article analyses the historical development of Kazakh culture and its impact on the ethno-religious and socio-cultural state of modern Kazakhstan, focusing on adaptation to modernisation. The study explores the formation of the Kazakh ethnic group and the role of traditionalism in contemporary society using various historical and comparative methods. The research clarifies the stages of Kazakh ethnogenesis, emphasising the influence of nomadic migrations and cultural contacts, particularly the blending of Turkic and Turkic-Mongolian tribes. The syncretism of Islam and pre-Muslim beliefs established traditional religiosity, crucial for early Kazakh statehood and legal systems. Modernisation during Russian and Soviet periods displaced traditional norms to the family level, shaping ethno-religious identity. Today, traditionalism remains significant in family, domestic and religious spheres, vital for national identity.

This article explores the relevance of preserving directors’ stylistic individuality and narrative conveyance in contemporary film production, amidst digital advancements. It focuses on identifying and studying cinematic techniques, particularly counterpoint, as a means of forming directors’ commentary. Research methods such as analysis, synthesis, comparison and generalisation were employed, alongside systematic, structural and functional approaches. Counterpoint is singled out as a distinctive audiovisual technique that distinguishes directors’ works, drawing from both Eastern and Western interpretations. Examples from Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Luc Besson, Hugh Hudson and Christopher Nolan illustrate its use for purposes like ethical disclosure, philosophical reflection and dramatic enhancement. The study concludes that despite variations, directors share motives including ridicule and decharacterisation. It contributes by deepening theoretical understanding and defining counterpoint's cinematic universality.

This study investigates lexical transformations in Kazakh-Russian translation of collectivisation terminology, addressing the scarcity of research in this domain. Employing lexical, comparative, contextual, statistical and analytical-synthetic methods, it analyses lexical groups including terms identifying the Soviet regime, social status, propaganda processes, and collectivisation itself. The Russian translation notably increases the frequency of collectivisation-related terms, often introducing new terms absent in the original text. Major lexical transformations observed include semantic development (fourteen contexts), concretisation (eleven contexts) and holistic transformation (nine contexts). Statistical analysis quantifies the frequency of these transformations. Future applications include exploring translation strategies in Kazakh-Russian fiction, refining lexical categories of collectivisation terminology, and developing structural templates for automated literary translation processes.

The Alash movement preserved the national-cultural code of Kazakhs under imperial rule. To understand this code, it is important to study not only the heritage of Alash, but also how it popularised the image of the ‘father of the nation’, Abai Kunanbayev. The aim of this article is to determine the place of Abai Kunanbayev and his work in the ideology of the Alash movement and the creative, scientific heritage of its individual representatives. Using the historical-comparative method, the study considers Alash activists’ views on Abai's role in Kazakh literature and national identity. The results are valuable for further research on the Alash movement and Kazakhstan's early twentieth-century national liberation. They highlight Abai as central to the semantic and aesthetic content of the Kazakh national-cultural code.

The growing global interest in Ukrainian history and culture is intensifying research aimed at translating Ukrainian historical prose. This prompts a detailed study of archaisms and historicisms, which are key elements in creating an authentic historical context. This study aims to analyse the strategies and methods of translation of Ukrainian archaisms and historicisms found in Valeriy Shevchuk's novel The Meek Shall Inherit. The analysis shows that the main challenges for the translator are to preserve the historical accuracy and cultural identity of the original text. The results showed that Valeriy Shevchuk uses 160 lexical archaisms, which make up 54% of the total number of archaisms in the text, with a significant variety in their use. This forces the translator to choose between a literal translation and adaptation for a modern reader, which may include lexical, semantic or stylistic transformations.

The need for a comprehensive study of this key topic for understanding the way of life of the Kazakhs forms the relevance of this study. The purpose of the article is to determine the geographical spread of Kazakh children's folklore. In the process of the research, various methods were used, including analysis and synthesis, the ascent from the abstract to the concrete and vice versa, the descriptive method, the comparative method, the comparative typological method, the historical chronological method, the method of critical analysis and the scientific dialectical method. The article is a study of the geographical area of Kazakh children's folklore. As a result of the study, it was concluded that its history and formation go back to the beginning of the ethnogenesis of modern Turkic peoples.

The relevance of the research lies in the fact that it contributes to the study of history. The study of mythical concepts in the epic ‘Manas’ is of practical value for literary scholars, historians and Kyrgyz people. The purpose of the study is to determine the fairy-tale and mythological descriptions in the epic ‘Manas’. The following methods of scientific cognition were used: methods of synthesis and analysis of information, and the method of analysis of literary sources. In the course of the research, it was determined that fairy-tale and mythological descriptions are commonly encountered in the epic ‘Manas’. It is safe to conclude that mythical concepts are largely fictional and are developed by creative people. The results of this article can be used to study myths and literature in general. This research is of practical value for literary criticism.