The article discusses differences in mental attitudes and types of thinking between dialect and standard (literary) language speakers, as well as the ways of refl ection of these differences in language. The discussion relies on Russian vocabulary data. The author reveals a number
of peculiarities of dialect vocabulary that are mainly indicative, from the author's point of view, of specifi cally-sensitive orientation of the consciousness of dialect speakers: “human-typed” structure
of lexical meaning, specifi c “situational” namings, high degree of fragmentation of the semantic space, etc. The analysis of dialectal material is carried out against the background of the literary language data. As for the latter, it is noted that the expansion and development of its vocabulary
is based on the abstract interpretation of reality. The discovered features of the two varieties of language, apparently, refl ect the process of change of human consciousness and human language in the course of social evolution and, to some extent, are comparable to the features of the languages of “primitive” and “civilized” ethnic groups.