Folk songs, which are anonymous folk poems sung with various melodies, are one of the oral cultural elements that reflect the cultural characteristics of a region. Symbols and concepts used in folk songs reflect the culture of that region. At the same time, it is one of the most important indicators showing the vocabulary of the region where folk songs are written and sung, and it also contains the vocabulary of the region it belongs to. Vocabulary of a language is accepted as the basic words of that language and due to the qualities of this vocabulary, it forms the first referenced word categories in language studies such as language teaching, language history and grammar. The names of numbers, names of animals, elements of nature, food names, color names, and the names of the items used in the vocabulary of languages are accepted as basic words by linguists. The aim of this study is to determine the appearance of the traditional culture of the Malatya region in folk songs through the vocabulary in folk songs. Within the framework of this purpose, the topics covered in the folk songs belonging to the Malatya region, which entered the TRT repertoire, were determined and the motifs and symbols included in the folk songs were determined. The data of the study consists of the words/concepts in the examined works. In this descriptive study, the data were analyzed by content analysis. Obtained data were expressed statistically. Considering the vocabulary element in the folk songs, the purposeful, meaningful and distinctive features were taken into consideration, the folk songs were classified in terms of content and various suggestions were made based on the data.

Vocabulary, folk song, content analysis.