Sözlüündeki

Sözlüündeki is a Turkish linguistic term that appears in scholarly discussions to denote material or phenomena found in oral form rather than in writing. The expression combines sözlü, meaning verbal or oral, with a suffix pattern that marks “in” or “within” a referenced source. In practice, sözlüündeki is used to refer to data, expressions, or variants preserved through speech and collected from conversational or fieldwork sources rather than from manuscripts or print media. The usage is most common in studies of oral tradition, folklore, and sociolinguistics.

Compared with yazılı (written) sources, sözlüündeki data often exhibit greater variability and region-specific forms, reflect spontaneous utterances, and reveal pronunciation, prosody, and discourse features that surviving written texts may not capture. Turkish researchers sometimes contrast sözlüündeki expressions with their yazılı counterparts to analyze shifts, improvisation, and genre differences. The term is more frequent in academic Turkish than in everyday language, and its exact applicability may vary by discipline or author.

Examples of usage include sentences such as: “Çalışmada sözlüündeki ifadeler, yöresel söyleyişleri ortaya koyuyor” or “Sözlüündeki veriler, yazılı metinlerle karşılaştırıldığında daha büyük varyantlar içerir.” The term thus serves as a shorthand for origin in oral sources and helps distinguish data collection methods within linguistic, folkloristic, and historical research.

See also: oral tradition, oral history, sözlü edebiyat, linguistics of Turkish, dialectology.