Аннотация
This article examines the utilitarian function, cultural-historical continuity of ethno-folkloric plots in contemporary Kazakh and Kyrgyz stories. The semantic core of these ethno-plots, deliberately employed by the authors, originates in ritual practices that played a decisive role in ancient communities’ life, including religious motifs, mythological consciousness, magical-ritual actions. Such traditions once performed an essential spiritual function in shaping the worldview of early societies. Today, they contribute to the cultural foundations of a society grounded in national values. The study aims to identify both shared, distinctive features of ethno-folkloric plots in Kazakh and Kyrgyz prose and to examine their transformation within contemporary national consciousness, acquiring new semantic layers.The analysis demonstrates that magical motifs such as curse, sorcery, deliverance from an evil spirit in Kazakh writers' stories—“Boytumar” by Lira Konys, “Kargys”, “Kyzyl Saka” by Esbolat Aidabosyn—undergo functional transformation within the narrative structure. By contrast, archetypal sacred motifs—such as attending a funeral, the forty-day funeral repast, and the ancestral guardian spirit (aruaq)—preserve their traditional configuration in the works of Kyrgyz writers, including Sultan Raev’s Sultan Raev’s “Tuman”, Argen Mazhitov’s “Omirden otsem suyegimdi kim koyady?!”, and Nurzhigit Kadyrbekov’s “Kalpak syry.” Rather than undergoing semantic change, these motifs shift toward a poetic dominant that reinforces the authors’ conceptual intentions.