The Concepts of Health and Disease in the Speech of Inhabitants of the Vologda Region

The article deals with the studying of Vologda inhabitants' language picture of the world, in particular, some peculiarities of verbalization of their perceptions of health and disease. The material for the research includes ethnographic and lexicographical works of the beginning of the XXth century (M.K. Gerasimov, P.A. Dilaktorsky, etc.), published volumes and a card index of the Vologda dialects Dictionary, containing speech recordings from the 60-ies of the XXth century, answers to questions on the Folk Medicine programme of Lexical atlas of Russian folk dialects, which were made in the late XXth - early XXIst century, as well as data from interviews of patients in rural health facilities during recent years. As a result, conclusions about the dynamics of perceptions about a healthy and a sick man were made; sustainable indicators of health as one of the basic values in the northern Russian peasant's picture of the world were identified; differences in verbalization of ideas about a disease: about the list of diseases, their causes, means and methods of treatment were revealed.