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Festivities are one of the most stable forms of spiritual culture, which nowadays undergo significant transformations: the spectrum of festivities, their functions, traditions, the attitudes of people and their knowledge about the festive culture are changing. The influence of western European festivities is another significant trend that has become evident in contemporary Latvia. The research analyses the specificity of the perception of Halloween in the south-eastern region of Latvia – Latgale (the major objec...

The modern Russian language is characterized by the increase in the use of invectives in speech. Invectives are a socially significant phenomenon; therefore their study is relevant for both linguists and the society. The increase in the use of invectives deserves a special consideration taking for the study the dialect material extracted from one dialect system, since it can provide an insight into the functioning of invectives in a separate social stratum. Research material: the whole corpus of invectives recorde...

Today there is an increasing interest in reviving folk festivities and outdoor celebrations. At the same time, the attempts of modern society to properly identify and understand the roots of these festivities and celebrations oftentimes resemble a costume show, or a theatrical performance with a new twist, in which once deep and meaningful traditions and rituals, with original historical and cultural significance, are lost, devoid of any meaning to a modern observer or participant. Realia more familiar to modern c...

In folk speech within the scope of one utterance, synonyms and word-doublets can be encountered, which in linguistics are usually called dual constructions. Their necessity is caused by communication between representatives of different generations, as well as by communication of village residents with representatives of the city and other villages. At the same time, due to the interaction among different time layers of lexis, coexisting in one historical epoch, and / or due to the development of the historical po...

Nowadays the debate on national character has become one of the central issues in the context of ever-growing globalization tendencies and the most recent expressions of nationalism. Contrary to the big nations that most often take for granted who they are, the Latvians have always dwelled upon the aspects of their identity and a range of issues associated with it. Being the “culture of a closed type”, i.e. an issue of an individual choice, Latvianness acquires also the features of the “culture of the open t...

The aim of the study is to perform and present the synchronic and diachronic analysis of the Russian writer’s, Anton Chekhov’s (1860 – 1904), reception in Latvia in four most significant cultural historical periods that determined the establishment and formation of the writer’s “literary reputation” (I. Rozanov) in Latvia. The material of the study is essays, dedication poetry, translations, and staged performances to trace the borrowings and direct influences that form the “outer” and “inner” rec...

{{The aim of the present study}} is to trace the logic of selection and the specificity of the actualization of the names of professions as a basis of comparison (the component, to which something is compared) on the Russian and Latvian literary material. {{The material of the study}} is the comparisons used by two chronologically and thematically related writers – Anna Brigadere (1861 – 1933) and Ivan Shmelev (1873 – 1950). The Latvian writer and playwright A. Brigadere surprisingly actively introduces comp...

Disability studies as an independent branch of social sciences and humanities was established and initially developed in English-speaking countries (the USA, Great Britain, Canada) and at the end of the 20th century coincided with the contemporary topicalities of sociology, philosophy, feminism, post-structural criticism and the theory of national minorities (this issue has been considered from various perspectives by Miles Beauchamp, Wendy Chung, Alijandra Mogilner, Ashutosh Singh, Viktorija Sukovataja, Svetlana ...

The paper analyses the reception of the Irish-born British writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) in Latvia following the translations of his works into Latvian and the most vivid expressions in Latvian authors’ creative writing. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the poetics of cross-cultural influences in Latvia was very diverse: one of the most striking being the aesthetic vector marked by the crucial influence of Wilde’s personality and his literary heritage. The dialogue held between Latvian national a...