Geographical Concepts in Turkish Lullabys

In this study, a collection of lullabies which have an important place in Turkish culture and which form an important genre in folk literature are examined to find out distribution and presentation of geographical terms in the lullabies in this collection. In the study, 2480 lullabies in Turkish Lullabies (10) which is one of the leading collections in Turkey and 1320 lullabies, which were still being collected when the study was conducted, have been examined. These lullabies were accepted as linguistic sample of the study. Content analysis and discourse analysis were used in the study. Lullabies were transformed to the computers, their word counts and lists have been obtained. Among these words, the one related to geography were grouped and content analysis was conducted. Later on, the lullabies were submitted to content analysis, and the researcher depicted how geographical terms were presented. Results of the study indicated that approximately 10% of the words in the lullabies are related to geography. The lullabies presented environmental and geographic information from immediate environment to remote environment and starting from concrete and experiences. In the respects, lullabies can be used as instructional materials to teach geography to children aged 0 to 6. It is suggested that lullabies should be collected, saved and used in education as primary source of information in linguistic development and in other fields in pre-school period.