Ukrainian National Dumas: National Perceptions in the Process of Intercultural Communication

The article presents the results of empirical research on ethnopsychological groups of people living in different regions of Ukraine in the context of intercultural ideological systems. In particular, residents of Ukraine and foreign students from Africa and Middle East, which study at Sumy State University, were invited to share their impressions from the listened dumas, performed by Canadian bandurist Victor Mishalow during his concert tour in Ukraine. They also watched and listened to video recordings of such folk dumas as «Cossack Golota», «Marusya Boguslavka» performed by kobzar Mykola Budnyk and bandura player Fedir Zharko. Students analyzed the characters’ images, expressed their understanding and attitude to characters’ actions and compared them with the national heroes of their own countries. The national peculiarities of the worldview of Ukrainians, representatives of Africa and the Middle East expressed in their language are defined. The language itself is the core of people’s psyche, way of thinking, and identity of ethnic group’s moral and ethical norms of life. The analysis of folk art helps to emphasize the peculiarity of foreign students’ perception of words, rhythm, music, and the symbolic system of folk poetic works. Author notes that the psychological of figurative system of Ukrainian dumas and folk songs of the mentioned peoples has a purely national color: it is a category of national outlook and at the same time is a artistic and aesthetic category. The solution of these problems forms an understanding of the specific of national characters and the national world in folk poetic works of the peoples of Africa, the Middle East and Ukrainian folk dumas, which is the main purpose of the study and its novelty, because such typological comparisons are investigated for the first time. These experimental studies, the development of the ideas of dumas studies and studies on a national character, the peculiarities of a national world perception, world outlook and world expression have substantiated the need for a deeper study of Ukrainian dumas’ role in the formation of the national personality during intercultural communication.