ERGONYMS AS A MIRROR OF CULTURAL VALUES: THE CASE OF KAZAN, THE REPUBLIC OF TATARSTAN

The linguistic landscape research of the city of Kazan presented in modern public signage and advertisements show a strong tendency to westernization. The cognitive and onomasiological analysis of the ergonyms, a class of urban toponyms designating social institutions collected in the city of Kazan from 2010 to 2014 demonstrated various lexical blends, 'contamination' of the state languages (Russian and Tatar), appearance of new concepts which are likely to lead to changes in ideological and cultural values of the population and possible erosion of ethnic and national stereotypes. The meaning of the majority of the eronyms studied contain the semantic components of 'style', 'glamour', 'beauty', 'simplicity' thus strongly contrasting with the Soviet ergonyms the positive connotations of which was interwoven into their communist ideology. The article contains references to the documents making the language policy of the Republic of Tatarstan which on the one hand provide for the public signs to be in Tatar and Russian but allow keeping the source language of the goods on public signs, thus, leading to westernization of the linguistic landscape of the city of Kazan.