A STRUCTURAL, CONTENT, AND FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE KAZAKH FAIRY TALE TRADITION

This article has been prepared as a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of fairy tales, one of the richest and most functional genres of Kazakh folk literature, within the axis of their structural characteristics, historical development processes, genre classifications, and their effects on the cognitive, cultural, and moral development of human beings. Kazakh fairy tales, by their origins, are multi-layered narratives that feed on the steppe culture with a long history, the nomadic life philosophy, and the common mythological heritage of the Turkic world, reproducing social value judgments on an intergenerational level. Within the scope of the research, the historical course of Kazakh fairy tale studies, which started with pioneering researchers such as Radloff, Altynsarin, and Potanin since the 19th century, has been examined, and it has been revealed how this process laid the groundwork for today's modern Kazakh folklore research. In the pedagogical discussion part, which forms the center of the study, the transformative power of fairy tales on cognitive development, the expansion of imagination capacity, abstract thinking skills, and psychological resilience in children has been addressed. Based on the argument that the fairy tale is the "main cradle of pedagogy," the fundamental role of the individual in the construction of the self, positioning oneself in the world, and acquiring national identity consciousness has been theoretically examined. Furthermore, the quality of the fairy tale as a living social phenomenon has been emphasized through the performance skills of the "Ertekshi" (narrator), who is the indispensable subject of the fairy tale storytelling tradition, their position in the context of gender roles, and the narrator-listener interaction. In the analysis, it has been revealed that Kazakh fairy tales are functional educational tools that develop children's interactive intelligence development with the environment, their ability to empathize with other people and beings, and their linguistic performance skills in contemporary educational processes, rather than being a folkloric data store belonging to the past. As a result of the evaluations made in the article, it has been concluded that in the post-independence process, fairy tales have a very important founding and protective function in terms of preserving the mother tongue and the formation and maintenance of national and cultural consciousness in Kazakhstan.