The Semiosphere of Kyrgyz Women’s Poetry: A Sociolinguistic Study of Cultural Crisis and Identity Formation
Chapter from the book:
Kırcı Çevik,
N.
&
Buğan,
M.
F.
(eds.)
2025.
Theory, Research and Debates in Social Sciences - 3.
Synopsis
This paper examines Kyrgyz women’s poetry through the theoretical lens of Yuri Lotman’s semiosphere and the sociolinguistic dynamics of gendered expression. Kyrgyz women poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries write within a complex cultural environment shaped by oral tradition, nomadic cosmology, patriarchal structures, Soviet legacies, and contemporary globalization. Their poetry forms a gendered semiotic space in which cultural memory, symbolic structures, and linguistic identities are simultaneously preserved, contested, and transformed. Integrating Lotman’s concepts of the semiosphere, including boundary, core/periphery, translation, dialogue, and cultural memory—with sociolinguistic insights into gendered language use, this study investigates how women’s poetic voices articulate resistance, negotiate belonging, and reconfigure dominant cultural codes. A semiotic analysis of the poem Доор ыйлайт / The Epoch Cries by Zhazgul Zhamangulova demonstrates how cultural crisis, identity erosion, and boundary collapse are translated into powerful symbolic imagery. The findings reveal that Kyrgyz women’s poetry functions not only as an artistic medium but also as a catalytic cultural force: it exposes structural disruptions in the Kyrgyz semiosphere, reactivates ancestral memory, and urges re-evaluation of identity and values. Ultimately, the paper argues that Kyrgyz women’s poetry constructs a dynamic semiosphere in which linguistic creativity and cultural agency converge to reshape contemporary notions of gender, identity, and nationhood.
