INVESTIGATION OF NURSERY RHYMES ACCORDING TO THE CLASSIFICATION OF SEMANTIC FIELDS AND VALUES

Nursery rhymes are quite important in terms of developing children’s language skills. It was observed that there is a paucity of research looking at semantic fields and value regarding nursery rhymes; therefore, this study was intended to fill that gap in the literature by investigating nursery rhymes in terms of semantic fields and value. In this study, forty-eight nursery rhymes sung were investigated, using content analysis. While, according the results of the study, semantic domains of people, animals, vehicles, body parts, clothing, toys, furniture, household items and utensils are similar to Clark’s (1995) classification, number, nature, place, tool, musical instrument, material and time semantic domains were added and thus the original classification was expanded. Moreover, in fifteen out of the forty-five nursery rhymes, values were mentioned. The nursery rhymes were found to be featuring the values of punishment, mercy, industriousness, violence, robbery, loyalty, respect, love, breaking promise, cruelty to animals, lying and disloyalty. Like all texts affecting the world of children, nursery rhymes should be examined in terms of their content on whether they affect children negatively or not. Article visualizations