This article examines the language of written monuments of medieval Turkic literature in the context of culture. The study was conducted on the material of two major ethnographic and literary monuments of the Karakhanid era – the dictionary “Divani Lugat at-Turk” by M. Kashkari and the poem “Kutadgu Bilik” by Zh.Balasagun. When studying medieval Turkic written monuments, we relied on an anthropocentric paradigm, that is, we consider the language of monuments as an integral part of culture. Special attention is paid to the study of the nature of proverbs and sayings in Turkic monuments, their similarities with proverbs and sayings in the Kazakh language, i.e. their paradigmatic connections. Cultural and linguistic information was emphasized in the monuments that characterize the ethnic culture and worldview of the Turks. Analyzing the ethnocultural vocabulary in two medieval monuments, it was found out that the Turkic peoples were engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry in the Middle Ages. The general similarities of the lifestyle and worldview of the ancient Turkic peoples with modern Turkic peoples, including the Kazakh people, are emphasized. The article proposes a thematic classification of ethnographic vocabulary recorded in two written monuments. As the analysis showed, M.Kashkari’s dictionary contains ethnocultural vocabulary that provides valuable information about the life and culture of the Turkic peoples. We determined the correspondence of the lexical and poetic means of the poem “Kutadgu bilik” with Kazakh poetry.