Theoretical foundation to Linguaculturology

LECTURE 1

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

1. Language and culture

2. Interaction and interrelation

3. Approaches to study language and culture

4. Functions of language and culture

 

Questions for self-examination:

1. Give definitions to the notion of culture and language.

2. Prove the idea of the interconnection and interrelation character of culture and language.

3. What are the basic functions of culture and language?

4. Give example on the influence of language in advertising.

5. Characterize USA/GB/Kazakhstan discourse communities.

 

In recent decades, the works of Western culturologists A.J. Toynbee, T.Parsons, K.Levi-Strauss and Russian scientists D.S.Likhachev, L.N.Gumilev, V.V.Vorobyev, V.A.Maslova, E.I.Kukushkina, E.M.Vereshchagin, V.G. Kostomarov, Yu.V.Rozhdestvensky, Kazakhstan linguists M. Kashgary, Ch.Valihanov, I.Altynsarin, E.N.Zhanpeisov, A.T.Kaydarov, D.Shokparov, Zh.A.Mankeeva gave a broad scientific understanding of culture and language. The prominent scholars of the XIX (W.von Humboldt, A.A.Potebnya) understood language as a spiritual force. Language is considered our environment, without which we cannot live. By W.von Humboldt, language is "world that lies between the world of external phenomena and the inner world of man"

S. Stepanov wrote that the term culture has two main meanings:

1) totality of the achievements of people in all spheres of life, not to consider separately, but together - in industrial, social, and spiritual spheres

2) high, up-to-date level of all human achievements.

Language is one of the components of culture, which is reflected through culture, but at the same time, language is an independent system.

Language - a fact of culture because:

1) it is an integral part of culture we inherit from our ancestors;

2) language - the main tool by to learn the culture;

3) language - the most important of all the phenomena of cultural order, because if we want to understand the essence of the culture - science, religion, literature, you should consider these phenomena as the codes formed in language, so the conceptual understanding of culture can only happen through natural language.

According to N.D.Arutiunova, "Language is developing system of discrete (articulate) sound marks, arisen spontaneously in human society and serving for the purposes of communication and to express the totality of knowledge and understanding about the world". According to E.Sapir, "language is a communicative process in its pure form in every society known to us." "Culture can be defined by what the society is doing and thinking. Language is also the way people think ".

The variety of approaches to understanding the culture offered by V.A.Maslova, extended and supplemented in the following classification.

1) The social approach.

The essence of the social approach is to consider culture separate from nature, from the biological and physiological background, not just relevant to an individual, but relevant to the group of people connected by communication. In this approach, the focus is on the fact that people are not born with a particular culture, but acquire it in the course of communication, on the basis of social activities (V.Osvalt)

2) The cognitive approach to understanding the culture focuses on culture as knowledge and learning. Culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior or emotions. It is rather an organization of these things. Culture consists of its members willing to learn and get knowledge according to their abilities and level (V.Gudinaff).

3) The dialogic in which culture - a "dialogue of cultures" - a form of communication and interaction of its constituent parts. There are ethnic and national cultures created by individuals, people, and nations. The national cultures are divided into subcultures. This is the culture of certain social level and groups (subculture of the youth, criminals etc.). There is also meta-culture, which brings together different peoples, such as the Christian culture. All these cultures come together in dialogue. The more developed national culture, the more it tends to dialogue with other cultures (S.S. Averinsev, B.A.Uspensky).

4) Informational. The culture is presented as a system of creating, storing, using and transferring of information, it is - a system of symbols used by the society in which social information is encoded, i.e. the meaning and content invested by people themselves (Yu.M. Lotman). Hence, culture - is informational provision of society, social information, which is stored in a society with the help of sign systems.

5) The spiritual. Proponents of this approach define the culture as the spiritual life of society, as the flow of ideas and other products of the spiritual creativity. Spiritual existence of society and culture (L.Kertman).

6) The active approach, in which culture is understood as a peculiar way to meet the needs of a person, as a particular kind of activity. This approach has its origins in B.Malinovsky, and the Marxist theory of culture: culture as a way of human activity (Y.Sorokin, E.F.Tarasov).

7) Normative, where culture is - a set of rules and regulations governing the lives of people, a living program (V.N.Sagatovsky). These concepts also developed by Y.M. Lotman and B.A.Uspensky who understand culture as a system inherited collective memory, which is manifested in certain systems of prohibitions and regulations.

8) The typological (M.Mamadashvily, S.S.Averintsev). Meeting with other people, people tend to perceive their behavior from the perspective of their own culture, that is, as it were, "to measure them to your own background." For example, when Europeans who come into contact with the Japanese, Japanese speak with smile when they talk about the death of loved ones, which Europeans see as a sign of callousness and cruelty. From the standpoint of a Japanese culture - is exquisite politeness, the reluctance to disturb the other people with their problems.

9) The hermeneutic, which relates the culture as a variety of texts. Culture is a set of texts, to be exact - the mechanism that creates a set of texts (Y. M.Lotman). Texts - the essence of culture. They can be viewed as a repository of information that needs to be removed, and as a unique generated by originality of the author's personality masterpiece, which is valuable in itself. The disadvantage of this approach - the impossibility of a clear understanding of the text.

10) Descriptive, which lists the individual elements and expressions of culture - a custom, activities, values, ideals, etc., by this approach, culture is defined as a set of institutions and achievements, which differs us from the life of the animal-like ancestors (Z. Freud). The disadvantage of this approach - obviously an incomplete list of manifestations of culture.

11) The symbolic approach focuses on the use of symbols in the culture. Culture - a "symbolic universe" (Y. M.Lotman). Some of its elements, acquiring particular ethnic sense, become symbols of nations a white birch, cabbage, samovar, sandals, balalayka - for Russian, oatmeal and legends about ghosts in castles - for the English; spaghetti - for Italians, beer and sausage - for the Germans and etc.

12) Functional approach, which characterizes the culture through functions that it performs in society: information, adaptive, communicative, regulatory, normative, evaluative, integrative, socialization, etc. The disadvantage of this approach is the absence of common definitions and classification.

13) A system of values, in which culture is treated as a set of spiritual and material values created by people. Every person should aware of values, their classification, and typology, before create and understand them.

14) The semiotic approach to the definition of culture is based on understanding it, first of all, as a system of signs, representing the world, which can then be used as a means of communication. The culture is a set of symbols that embodies and represents the understanding, message, and knowledge of its nation.

As we can see, the above mentioned 14 approaches define the notion of culture to full extent. Language is a way of verbal culture existence, and at the same time the cultural-historical phenomenon, therefore language and culture is interconnected and intersected.

W.von Humboldt believed that language is universal in its core and is nationalistic in various forms of expression. He claimed that every single language is “the only product of linguistic consciousness of the nation... and, therefore, the main questions about the origins of language and the inner life cannot be properly answered, not rising to the point of view of spiritual power and national identity”.

Basic concept of W.von Humboldt can be summarized as follows:

1) material and spiritual culture is embodied in the language;

2) every culture is national, its national character is expressed in language by means of a special reference of the world, every language has a specific to each language inner form;

3) The inner form - is an expression of "national spirit", its culture;

4) Language is a mediator between man and the world around him.

The concept of W.von Humboldt has original interpretation in the works of A.A. Potebnya, Sh.Bally, Zh.Vandries, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, R.O.Yakobson and other researchers.

Speaking of the interaction of language and culture, one should point linguistic sciences dealing with these issues. They are Ethno-Linguistics, Lingua-countrystudy, and Linguaculturology.

Z.K.Sabitova believes that the commonality of these two phenomena (language and culture) is due to their nature (human nature), functions and conditions of origin. Language and culture are united in the genetic aspect (originated simultaneously), material (they have a semiotic character), and functional aspects.

According to V.N.Teliya:

1) Culture as well as language - a form of consciousness, reflecting the worldview of a person;

2) Language and culture exist in dialogue with each other;

3) The subject of culture and language - is always an individual or a society, a person or community;

4) Normative character - common feature for both the language and culture;

5) Historicism - one of the essential qualities of culture and language;

6) Language and culture characterized by antinomy "dynamics - statics".

The relationship between language and culture is often characterized by metaphors that emphasize the crucial role of language in describing culture: the language is the foundation of culture, building material, the demiurge - V.N.Toporov, D.B.Gudkov, instrument of culture, the reality of the spirit, the hypostasis, the storage of culture - W.von Humboldt, a cultural phenomenon, a manifestation, the face of culture - V.A.Maslova; a factor of development, the condition of the existence of culture - K.Levi-Strauss; guide to culture - E.Sapir etc.

Let us consider essence of the basic functions of language and culture.

1. Cognitive (epistemological) function of culture is manifested most in its implementations, such as science, scientific and technological progress. Cognition is carried out basically through language, through the language we understand the world and themselves, as the language calls and expresses knowledge and cognition. Studying the works of language, we master previous eras and cultures of other people (social and ethnic communities).

2. Informational function of culture is to record the results of material and spiritual activities of the people and transfer them in time and space, which in its turn ensures the continuity of generations and thus the development of human society. Whereas, the language - a repository of knowledge, the store of language texts and information about all the achievements of the human experience. At the same time, the language - it is a means of sharing experience, recorded in texts.

3. Semiotic function of culture is manifested in the fact that any product of culture can become a symbol, a sign of a particular national culture.

For example, шаңырақ - a symbol of the Kazakh people, күй,домбыра - a symbol of Kazakh folk music. Semiotic function of language is also based on the fact that language signs can symbolize various notions.

4. The communicative function of culture is based on the representativeness of the culture, it carries out the exchange of the benefits of culture between different human communities and individuals, making it possible to cross-cultural communication. The language is a means of exchange and cross-cultural communication.

5. Axiological (estimated) function of culture is specific in the sense that it is relative in content, since all ethnic groups and nations systems of values are different. Language is a means of realization of the axiological function of culture.

6. Regulatory (normative) function is based on the axiological. Some cultural researchers (the U.S., including Parsons) consider it basic, fundamental. It manifests itself at different levels of culture and has varying degrees of commitment. The regulatory function of culture supports the balance in society, conflict prevention, providing a normal existence in society.

The language is also characterized by the regulatory function, but it concerns the speech of a society which is graded from the rigid rules of spelling and Orphoepics to less rigid stylistic norms. Thus, the regulatory functions of the culture and language are interrelated.

7. Expressive and emotional function common to many species and varieties of culture: religious genres such as prayer, preaching, sacred texts, folklore texts. Sometimes this is called magic, because it acts as a spell, ritual dances, etc.

8. Integrative and differentiating function of culture is manifested in the fact that, on the one hand, culture is the basis for the differentiation of people according to their social, ethnic, age, territorial and other parameters (see, for example, the Kazakh culture, Russian culture, European culture, youth culture, elite culture, mass culture, etc.). This function is also typical to language, reflected in the form of the theory of national-linguistic world picture, the theory of translatability / translatability of vocabulary, phraseology, and the theory of bilingualism, etc.

9. Socializing, individualizing function of culture can make a transition from socialization to individualization. The function helps an individual to discover and develop their abilities and use them in the society.

The combination of group (national-social) and individual in the language, the transition from the first to the second and from the second to the first provides the formation of natural languages and, at the same time, the creation of individual languages as idiolects and even idiostyle that was the basis to the formation of the theory of linguistic identity.

The influence of language on thought and behavior can perhaps best be seen in the world of advertising. The culture - beliefs, attitudes, overt and covert aspirations, pragmatic designs and fantasies, actions and reactions - is studied by advertisers around the world to find the basis for the concepts and language that will inspire the people of any given locale to buy a product of one manufacturer rather than that of another. What sells in Chicago may also sell in Kyoto, but not through the same advertising. Language is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways.

To begin with, the words people utter refer to common experience. They express facts, ideas or events that are communicable because they refer to a stock of knowledge about the world that other people share. Words also reflect their authors' attitudes and beliefs, their point of view that are also those of others. In both cases, language expresses cultural reality.

But members of a community or social group do not only express experience; they also create experience through language. They give meaning to it through the medium they choose to communicate with one another, for example, speaking on the telephone or face-to-face, writing a letter or sending an e-mail message, reading the newspaper or interpreting a graph or a chart. The way in which people use the spoken, written, or visual medium itself creates meanings that are understandable to the group they belong to, for example, through a speaker's tone of voice, accent, conversational style, gestures and facial expressions. Through all its verbal and non-verbal aspects, language embodies cultural reality.

Finally, language is a system of signs that is seen as having itself a cultural value. Speakers identify themselves and others through their use of language; they view their language as a symbol of their social identity. The prohibition of its use is often perceived by its speakers as a rejection of their social group and their culture. Thus we can say that language symbolizes cultural reality.

People who identify themselves as members of a social group (family, neighborhood, professional or ethnic affiliation, and nation) acquire common ways of viewing the world through their interactions with other members of the same group. These views are reinforced through institutions like the family, the school, the workplace, the church, the government, and other sites of socialization throughout their lives. Common attitudes, beliefs, and values are reflected in the way members of the group use language; for example, what they choose to say or not to say and how they say it. Thus, in addition to the notion of speech community composed of people who use the same linguistic code, we can speak of discourse communities to refer to the common ways in which members of a social group use language to meet their social needs. Not only the grammatical, lexical, and phonological features of their language (for example, teenage talk, professional jargon, political rhetoric) differentiate them from others, but also the topics they choose to talk about, the way they present information, the style with which they interact, in other words, their discourse accent. For instance, Americans have been socialized into responding 'Thank you' to any compliment, as if they were acknowledging a friendly gift: 'I like your sweater!''Oh, thank you!' The French, who tend to perceive such a compliment as an intrusion into their privacy, would rather downplay the compliment and minimize its value: 'Oh really? It's already quite old!' The reactions of both groups are based on the differing values given to compliments in both cultures, and on the differing degrees of embarrassment caused by personal comments. This is a view of culture that focuses on the ways of thinking, behaving, and valuing currently shared by members of the same discourse community.

 

 

LECTURE 2

LECTURE 3

LECTURE 4

LECTURE 5

LECTURE 6

OBJECT OF LINGUACULTUROLOGY

1. Reasearch object of Linguaculturology

2. Research subjects of Linguaculturology

 

Questions for self-examination:

1. Define the notions of research object and subject.

2. What is object of LC?

3. What are subjects of LC?

4. Give example on LC subjects.

The object of the LC is the study of the culture through the prism of language (in the context of language); the study of the interaction of language, which is the translator of cultural information, culture and its attitudes and preferences and the person who creates this culture using the language. The object is placed on the "intersection" of several basic sciences - Linguistics and Cultural studies, Ethnography, Psycho-linguistics.

The subject of the study - language units that have acquired symbolic, standard, figurative and metaphorical meaning in culture, and summarize the results of human consciousness - recorded in the myths, legends, rituals, traditions, folklore and religious discourses, poetry and prose literary texts, phraseology and metaphors, symbols, proverbs and sayings.

1) non-equivalent lexicon and lacunas, which are the subject of research of Lingua-countrystudy as well;

2) mythologized language units; archetypes and mythologemes;

3) paremiological fund of language;

4) phraseological fund of language;

5) standards, stereotypes and symbols;

6) metaphors and images of language;

7) stylistic description of language;

8) speech behavior;

9) speech etiquette.

Let's consider in more detail each of them:

1. Non-equvalent language units – lexical units of the source language or dialect that does not have regular (full or partial) lexical correspondences in the target language (V.Vereshchagin, 1983).

To the category of Non-equivalent vocabulary primarily include words denoting specific things and events in the life of this cultural-linguistic community (realia, historicism, and lacuna). Thus, Esquire, cricket firmly associated with England and English culture, words ikebana, sakura, geisha - Japanese; dekhanin, village made irrigation ditch - with Central Asian (Vinogradov, 2001; Mechkovskaya 2000).

A. Sorokin and I.Yu.Markovina called lacunas all that foreign cultural text recipient noticed, but does not understand, everything that seems strange to him and require interpretation, the presence of which means that text is formed from national-specific elements of the culture, namely lacunas. (e.g. watch, clock- часы, дедушка и бабушка-grandparents, квас)

2. Mythologized language units: archetypes, mythologemes, ceremonies, beliefs, rituals, customs fixed in language. In each concrete phraseological unit is reflected not a complete myth, but a mythologeme.

Mythologeme - is an important mythological character, theme, situation, it is like a "main character" of the myth, which can move from myth to myth, or repeated in myths of different nations, cultures (ад, рай, богиня мать). At the heart of the myth, as a rule, there is archetype. Archetype - is a stable image, which appeared everywhere in the individual minds and has a wide spread in culture (S.Senderovich) (архетип мать, герой, спаситель -Геркулес, Синдбад, мудрый старик, старуха). Mythology is the repository of archetypes.

Rite unlike ritual is more durable over time, has a more complex structure and involves several steps. It is accompanied by special songs, dramatic action, dances, mummers, fortune telling, etc. (wedding, funeral).

Ritual is a system of actions made on strictly established order, traditional way and during certain time. According to V. Terner, ritual is an important means of maintenance of the general norms and values of people as a difficult system of ritual is connected with a symbol and so forth action becomes ritual when it loses expediency and becomes a semiotics sign. Ritual magically connected people with nature powers, with personified mythical beings, gods. Rituals are of demonstrative nature committed often in a festive atmosphere, with its ultimate goal to inspire people with certain social sense.

Ceremony. Any action can become a ceremony if it loses expediency and becomes a semiotics sign. The ceremony is closely connected with myths and ritual. The ceremony unlike ritual has more difficult structure, includes some stages and is longer in time.

Charm, spell, incantation, i.e. the harm put with a word, came from ancient times. To get rid of incantation, charm is necessary.

3. Paremiological fund of language, as the majority of proverbs are stereotypes that bear national consciousness. Not all proverbs can be regarded as a subject of LC, since they should reflect cultural identity of people.

4. Phraseological fund of language – the most valuable source of data on culture and mentality of people.

5. Standards, stereotypes, symbols.

A standard -an accepted or approved example of something against which others are judged or measured. A standard figuratively measures the world. It reflects a national outlook of people.

A stereotype is a fixed general image or set of characteristics representing a particular type of person or thing, but which may not be true in reality.

A symbol is something that represents or stands for something else, usually by convention or association, especially a material object used to represent something abstract; an object, person, idea, etc., used in a literary work, film, etc., to stand for or suggest something else with which it is associated either explicitly or in some more subtle way.

6. Metaphors and images. An image is a major language essence which contains the main information about word and culture connection. An image is a mental picture or association of ideas evoked in one’s mind; a mental representation or picture; idea produced by the imagination that which exists in the mind as the product of careful mental activity. Figurativeness is a real property of language units which causes "picture" in our consciousness. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance. A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare). One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol: "Hollywood has always been an irresistible, prefabricated metaphor for the crass, the materialistic, the shallow, and the craven" (N.Gabler).

7. Stylistic description of language- the forms of language existence. Stylistic norms are regular, customary stylistic standards, rules considered to be acceptable in a language; a definite pattern of stylistic usage, departure from which renders a person liable to some kind of censure.

8. Speech behavior, and also any other behavior fixed in nominative units (grammatical and stylistic). Speech behavior is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group.

9. Speech etiquette - socially defined and culturally specific rules of human speech behavior in everyday situations, in accordance with their social and psychological roles, personal relations in the formal and informal communication environments. Etiquette - conventional requirements as to social -behavior; proprieties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion; a prescribed or accepted code of usage in matters of ceremony, as at a court or in official or other formal observances; the code of ethical behavior regarding professional practice or action among the members of a profession in their dealings with each other: medical etiquette.

LECTURE 7

LECTURE 8

NOTION OF LINGUACULTURE

1. Types and elements of culture

2. Unit of culture- meme

 

Questions for self-examination:

1. Explain the concept of culture.

2. Name the characteristic features of any culture.

3. Define the notion of cultural evolution.

4. Give example on Internet meme.

5. How do memes spread in your community?

 

Culture is a part of language, just as language is a part of culture and the two partly overlapping realities can intersect in many ways –where the term “linguaculture” may serve. Culture is the sets, associations and cybernetic networks of patterns, regularities, symbols and values (and ideas about them), behavioral, linguistic, and ideological, explicit and implicit, rational and emotional, conscious, unconscious and subconscious, that are differentially shared, transmitted in history, and created (or recreated) by the members, as individual agents or collectively, of a given society si situated in concrete time and space.

Culture is perhaps the most complex and comprehensive category in the history of mankind, which is comparable just to the phenomenon of life in general. Culture (Latin: cultura, lit. "Cultivation") is a modern concept based on a term first used in classical antiquity by the Roman orator Cicero: "cultura animi" (cultivation of the soul). This non-agricultural use of the term "culture" re-appeared in modern Europe in the 17th century referring to the betterment or refinement of individuals, especially through education. During the XVIII and XIX century it came to refer more frequently to the common reference points of whole peoples, and discussion of the term was often connected to national aspirations or ideals. Some scientists such as Edward Tylor used the term "culture" to refer to a universal human capacity. In the 20th century, "culture" emerged as a central concept in Anthropology, encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance. Specifically, term "culture" in Anthropology had two meanings:

1. Evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and

2. Distinct ways that people, who live differently, classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.

Culture is described as an integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not a result of biological inheritance.

Culture – set of patterns of human activity within a society or social group and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Customs, laws, dress, architectural style, social standards, religious beliefs, and traditions are all examples of cultural elements.

Elements of culture

The Arts – vast subdivision of culture composed of many creative endeavors and disciplines. The art encompasses visual arts, literary arts and the performing arts.

Gastronomy – the art and science of good eating, including the study of food and culture.

Food preparation – act of preparing foodstuffs for eating. It encompasses a vast range of methods, tools, and combinations of ingredients to improve the flavour and digestibility of food.

Food and drink-

Cuisines – a cuisine is a specific set of cooking traditions and practices, often associated with a specific culture.

Literature – the art of written works.

Children's literature – stories, books, and poems for children.

Fiction – any form of narrative which deals, in part or in whole, with events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary and invented by its author(s). See below.

Non-fiction – form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be factual.

Poetry – literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning.

Critical theory – examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities.

Performing arts – those forms of art that use the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium.

Dance – art form of movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction, or presented in a spiritual or performance setting.

Film – moving pictures, the art form that records performances visually.

Theatre – collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place.

Music – art form the medium of which is sound and silence.

Music genres

Jazz – musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States, mixing African and European music traditions.

Opera – art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score.

Musical instruments – devices created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds.

Guitars – the guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with either nylon or steel strings.

Stagecraft – technical aspects of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes, but is not limited to, constructing and rigging scenery, hanging and focusing of lighting, design and procurement of costumes, makeup, and procurement of props, stage management, and recording and mixing of sound.

Visual arts – art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature.

Architecture – The art and science of designing and erecting buildings and other physical structures.

Classical architecture – architecture of classical antiquity and later architectural styles influenced by it.

Crafts – recreational activities and hobbies that involve making things with one's hands and skill.

Drawing – visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium.

Film – moving pictures.

Painting – practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface with a brush or other object.

Photography – art, science, and practice of creating pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or electronic image sensors.

Sculpture – three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials - typically stone such as marble - or metal, glass, or wood.

Entertainment – any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie.

• Games – structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment, involving goals, rules, challenge, and interaction and presence as a medium.

• Fiction – any form of narrative which deals, in part or in whole, with events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary and invented by its author(s).

• James Bond – fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming. Since then, the character has grown to icon status, featured in many novels, movies, video games and other media.

• Fantasy – genre of fiction using magic and the supernatural as primary elements of plot, theme or setting, often in imaginary worlds, generally avoiding the technical/scientific content typical of Science fiction, but overlapping with it

• Middle-earth – fantasy setting by writer J.R.R. Tolkien, home to hobbits, orcs, and many other mystical races and creatures.

• Science fiction – a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible (or at least nonsupernatural) content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities. Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas".

• Sports – organized, competitive, entertaining, and skillful activity requiring commitment, strategy, and fair play, in which a winner can be defined by objective means. Generally speaking, a sport is a game based in physical athleticism. Ball games

• Basketball – team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules.

• Cricket – bat-and-ball team sport, the most popular form played on an oval-shaped outdoor arena known as a cricket field at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard (20.12 m) long pitch that is the focus of the game.

• Tennis – sport usually played between two players (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles), using specialized racquets to strike a felt-covered hollow rubber ball over a net into the opponent's court.

• Canoeing and kayaking – two closely related forms of watercraft paddling, involving manually propelling and navigating specialized boats called canoes and kayaks using a blade that is joined to a shaft, known as a paddle, in the water.

• Combat sports

• Fencing – family of combat sports using bladed weapons. It is also known as French swordfighting or French swordfencing.

• Martial arts – extensive systems of codified practices and traditions of combat, practiced for a variety of reasons, including self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, as well as mental and spiritual development.

• Cycling sport – bicycle racing and track cycling.

• Motorcycling – riding a motorcycle. A variety of subcultures and lifestyles have been built up around motorcycling and motorcycle racing.

• Running – moving rapidly on foot, during which both feet are off the ground at regular intervals (Bronze Age ca. BC 3000 – Late Antiquity ca. AD 300–600); especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

• Mass media – diversified media technologies and their content that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication. Includes radio and television programming; mass publishing of books, magazines, and newspapers; web content; and films and audio recordings.

• Tradition - A tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes (like lawyer wigs or military officer spurs), but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings. Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word "tradition" itself derives from the Latin tradere or traderer literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. While it is commonly assumed that traditions have ancient history, many traditions have been invented on purpose, whether that is political or cultural, over short periods of time.

• Celebration, festivals – entertainment events centering on and celebrating a unique aspect of a community, usually staged by that community.

• Tourism – travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes". Tourism is important, and in some cases, vital for many countries.

Cultures by aspect

• Consumer culture – a society based on consumerism

• High context culture – a culture with the tendency use high context messages, resulting in catering towards in-groups

• Low context culture – culture with a tendency not to cater towards in-groups

• Remix culture – a society which allows and encourages derivative works

• Participatory culture – a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers)

• Permission culture – a society in which copyright restrictions are pervasive and enforced to the extent that any and all uses of copyrighted works need to be explicitly leased

• Primitive culture – a community that lacks major signs of economic development or modernity

Cultural cross-sections

• Children's culture – cultural phenomena pertaining to children

• Children's street culture – cumulative culture created by young children

• Coffee culture – social atmosphere or series of associated social behaviors that depends heavily upon coffee –, particularly as a social lubricant –

• Culture of capitalism – the lifestyle of the people living within a capitalist society, and the effects of a global or national capitalist economy on a population

• DIY culture – refers to a wide range of elements in non-mainstream society, such as grassroots political and social activism, independent music, art, and film

• Dominant culture – the established language, religion, behavior, values, rituals, and social customs of a society

• Drinking culture – the customs and practices of people who drink alcoholic beverages

• Folk culture – traditional culture; traditional cultural traits of a community

• Low culture – is a derogatory term for some forms of popular culture that have mass appeal. Its contrast is high culture. (Reality television, popular music)

• High culture –is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture.

• Official culture – is the culture that receives social legitimation or institutional support in a given society. Official culture is usually identified with bourgeoisie culture.

• Political culture – Political culture is defined by the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences as "the set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behavior in the political system".

• Popular culture – totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that permeate the everyday lives of a given society, especially those heavily influenced by mass media.

• Print culture – is defined by the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences as "the set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behavior in the political system". It encompasses both the political ideals and operating norms of a polity. Political culture is thus the manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimensions of politics. A political culture is the product of both the collective history of a political system and the life histories of the members of the system and thus it is rooted equally in public events and private experience"

• Safety culture – the way in which safety is managed in the workplace, which often reflects "the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety."

• Tea culture – is defined by the way tea is made and consumed, by the way the people interact with tea, and by the aesthetics surrounding tea drinking, it includes aspects of: tea production, tea brewing, tea arts and ceremony, society, history, health, ethics, education, and communication and media issues.

• Trash culture –is used for labeling the cultural by-products of modernism. These include television, fast-food, mass media, cars, popular music, teenage culture, movies, professional sports, tabloids, comic books, cartoons, shopping malls, amusement parks, carnivals, casinos, supermarkets and the like.

• Urban culture –is the culture of cities. Cities all over the world, past and present, have behaviors and cultural elements that separate them from otherwise comparable rural areas.

• Vernacular culture – s a term used in the modern study of geography and cultural studies. It refers to cultural forms made and organised by ordinary people for their own pleasure, in modern societies. Such culture is almost always engaged in on a non-profit and voluntary basis, and is almost never funded by the state.

Subcultures

• Alternative culture – exists outside or on the fringes of mainstream or popular culture, usually under the domain of one or more subcultures.

• Counterculture – Counterculture (also written counter-culture) is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, orsubculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior deviates from the societal norm.

• Oppositional culture – also known as the ‘’blocked opportunities framework’’ or the “caste theory of education”, is a term most commonly used in studying the sociology of education to explain racial disparities in educational achievement, particularly between white and black Americans. However, the term refers to any subculture's rejection of conformity to prevailing norms and values, not just nonconformity within the educational system. Thus many criminal gangs and religious cults could also be considered oppositional cultures.

• Security culture – is a set of customs shared by a community whose members may engage in illegal or sensitive activities, the practice of which minimizes the risks of such activities being subverted, or targeted for sabotage. The term is used in the context of activist groups and movements, particularly ones that might be involved in direct action, but it is also in use in most corporations, and certain arms of government. The main focus of a security culture is keeping infiltrators and other potentially damaging parties out.

Underground culture (disambiguation) – An underground culture is a subculture or counterculture that exists outside the scope of mainstream mass media and popular culture. It may also refer to:

• Underground comix, small press or self-published alternative comic books

• Underground economy or black market, commerce under the radar of taxes and regulations

• Underground film, cinema outside the commercial mainstream

• Underground music, music with a following despite moderate commercial success

• Underground hip hop, a style of hip hop music

• Underground art, art with a following independent of commercial success

• Underground press, the alternative print media in the late 1960s and early 1970s

• UK underground, a 1960s countercultural movement in the United Kingdom

Cultures by ethnicity or ethnic sphere

• Western culture

• Anglo America

• Latin American culture

• Anglosphere

• African American culture

• Indosphere

• Sinosphere

• Islamic culture

• Arab culture

• Tibetan culture

Cultures of continents and major geopolitical regions

• Culture of Africa

• Culture of Antarctica

• Culture of Asia

• Culture of Europe

• Culture of North America

• Culture of Oceania

• Culture of Australia

• Culture of South America

It should be noted that the concept of "units of culture" itself is relatively new. One of the earliest references (1945) about the "unity of culture" belongs to M. Herskovits, famous American anthropologist, one of the disciples and followers of F.Boas. W. Durham, pondering over what could be a unit of culture, expressed the judgment that it should:

1) to include information that is actually or potentially determines the behavior;

2) to fit variable size, type and ways of organizing the information, which represents a set hierarchy and integration;

3) subdivided into arrays of information that is transmitted in the form of various coherent, functional units.

A meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.

The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek mīmēma, "imitated thing") and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches. Proponents theorize that memes may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influence a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Memes generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behaviour. Because humans do not always copy memes perfectly, and because they may refine, combine or otherwise modify them with other memes to create new memes, they can change over time. Dawkins likened the process by which memes survive and change through the evolution of culture to the natural selection of genes in biological evolution.

Memes reproduce by copying from a nervous system to another one, either by communication or imitation. Imitation often involves the copying of an observed behaviour of another individual. Communication may be direct or indirect, where memes transmit from one individual to another through a copy recorded in an inanimate source, such as a book or a musical score. Aaron Lynch described seven general patterns of meme transmission, or "thought contagion":

1. Quantity of parenthood: an idea that influences the number of children one has. Children respond particularly receptively to the ideas of their parents, and thus ideas that directly or indirectly encourage a higher birthrate will replicate themselves at a higher rate than those that discourage higher birthrates.

2. Efficiency of parenthood: an idea that increases the proportion of children who will adopt ideas of their parents. Cultural separatism exemplifies one practice in which one can expect a higher rate of meme-replication—because the meme for separation creates a barrier from exposure to competing ideas.

3. Proselytic: ideas generally passed to others beyond one's own children. Ideas that encourage the proselytism of a meme, as seen in many religious or political movements, can replicate memes horizontally through a given generation, spreading more rapidly than parent-to-child meme-transmissions do.

4. Preservational: ideas that influence those that hold them to continue to hold them for a long time. Ideas that encourage longevity in their hosts, or leave their hosts particularly resistant to abandoning or replacing these ideas, enhance the preservability of memes and afford protection from the competition or proselytism of other memes.

5. Adversative: ideas that influence those that hold them to attack or sabotage competing ideas and/or those that hold them. Adversative replication can give an advantage in meme transmission when the meme itself encourages aggression against other memes.

6. Cognitive: ideas perceived as cogent by most in the population who encounter them. Cognitively transmitted memes depend heavily on a cluster of other ideas and cognitive traits already widely held in the population, and thus usually spread more passively than other forms of meme transmission. Memes spread in cognitive transmission do not count as self-replicating.

7. Motivational: ideas that people adopt because they perceive some self-interest in adopting them. Strictly speaking, motivationally transmitted memes do not self-propagate, but this mode of transmission often occurs in association with memes self-replicated in the efficiency parental, proselytic and preservational modes.

An Internet meme is an idea, style or action which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the Internet, as with imitating the concept. Some notable examples include posting a photo of people in public places lying down planking and uploading a short video of people dancing to the Harlem Shake.

A meme can be considered a mimicked theme, including simple phrases or gestures. An Internet meme may take the form of an image, hyperlink, video, picture, website, or hashtag. It may be just a word or phrase, including an intentional misspelling. These small movements tend to spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, direct email, or news sources.

They may relate to various existing Internet cultures or subcultures, often created or spread on sites and numerous others in our time, or by Usenet boards and other such early-internet communications facilities. Sensations tend to grow rapidly on the Internet, because the instant communication facilitates word-of-mouthtransmission.

 

LECTURE 9

NOTION OF WORLD MODEL

1. Historical background to defining the notion of World Model.

2. Classification of WM

3. Characteristics of SWM and LWM

 

Questions for self-examination:

1. Define the notion of WM

2. Name the types of WM

3. What is the difference between SWM and LWM.

 

The notion of “World Model” is widely used by representatives of different sciences: by philosophers, psychologists, gnosiologists, culturologists, and linguists. Being engaged into the widening circle of the fields of scientific knowledge, the "World model" concept gains co-definitions, such as "science-natural", "historical", "physical", "biological", and "linguistic". But all the same it remains the sort of metaphor, because different scientists fill it with different contents. Hereafter, we shall refer to this notion as to scientific term without any quotation marks world model, trying to concretize this notion in the frames of Linguistics.

In nowadays Linguistics different research workers fill the notion of world model with different content. There exists a wide range of approaches to the definition of this concept. Nevertheless, in all cases of its usage world model as a linguistic notion seems to be properly arranged systematization of the language semantic content. Every national language fulfills two main functions: communicative and nominative ones. As a matter of fact, the last one implies the function of recording and keeping in language lexical and idiomatic staff the whole variety of concepts and ideas about the world, worked out by certain national mentality. So the universal (global) knowledge about the world fixed in language patterns is the result of the efforts of a collective mind. But one can speak about different kinds of a human consciousness: the individual mind of a person, the collective everyday mentality of a nation, the scientific mentality. That's why it is possible to speak about a large number of world models, at least about three of them: scientific world model, world model of national language, world model of a person. Each type of mentality records in language matrices all the results of world comprehension. In linguistic literature the notion of "scientific world model" is usually not being discussed. It appears to be the obvious objective constant in traditional two-member opposition: scientific world model-language world model. Both of the models find their reflection in language of science and in standard national language correspondingly.

Linguists are fully absorbed by analysis of national world model. Meanwhile, the scientific world model is learnt only in the aspect of language it uses for the embodiment of its notions, but the conceptual status of the scientific language remains not elucidated at all. Nevertheless, the adjoining to Linguistics sciences (philosophy for example) pays a lot of attention to the clearing up of the scientific knowledge status.

Many outstanding scientists (A. Einstein, V. Vernadskiy, M. Plank, etc.) have been taking great interest in conceptual meaning of the scientific knowledge, of how this knowledge arranges into a global structure. For example, A. Einstein wrote about human's longing to create the clear and simple model of the world so as to break away from the world of sensations, trying at the same time to substitute this world for the newly created model. According to A. Einstein, that's what artists, poets, philosophers, naturalists do each one in his own manner. Exactly this model becomes the center of human's spiritual life, giving to the man a feeling of confidence and certitude. This definition contains no attempt to separate the scientific world model from presentation of the world by non-scientific consciousness. It is only said, that man tries to replace the reality by some created model, which finds various incarnations in the forms of scientific theories, classifications, pieces of art. This A. Einstein's statement belongs to those numerous interpretations of the scientific world model, which underline only the most common features of this notion. World model is defined here in rather uncertain, approximate way. From definitions of such a sort one can only figure out, that the world models are simplified substitution of the real world by the invented scheme or image of the objective reality.

M. Plank shows more concreteness in defining world model and scientific world model. World model formation goes, according to his opinion, through two stages: the first stage implies subjective sensual perception of the world; at the second stage the "diverse subjective variety" is replaced by the objective order, by universal knowledge about the world. According to M. Plank, people's sensations, provoked by the same subjects, differ, though the image of the world appears to be invariable. M. Plank previews, that the scientific world model will be feeble and dull in comparison with original world model. And it's of no wonder, because the scientific world model is a model of exact science. Such understanding of these notions excludes from the contents of the world model and the scientific world model all things linked with man and society, because the social sphere has never been the object of the exact sciences. Including in the scientific world model of everything, concerned with man and society, makes it universal.

That's why, to the thought of philosophers, in scientific world model must be realized V. Vernadskiy's idea about the integration process in the development of science: separate natural and historical phenomena must merge into a single whole, creating the complete model of the Universe.

M. Heidegger exposes the following understanding of relationship between a man and the world model:

1. man represents the world as a model;

2. man understands the world as a model;

3. the world turns into a model;

4. man conquers the world as a model.

M. Heidegger makes an important conclusion: man represents for himself the world model, composes it and just from this moment his activity starts. For this author the notion of a world model is inseparably connected with the subject of historical process, i.e. with individual, who perceives and changes the world.

For Heidegger the problem of the world model formation is closely connected with a world outlook, because if "the world becomes a model, the man's attitude is understood as an outlook." In Heidegger's interpretation the world model is a kind of representation of the "essence", and the outlook is treated as man's attitude to the "essence." Heidegger doesn't acknowledge two separate world models for nature and history: he combines them into the single one. There is no contradiction between Plank's and Heidegger's points of view. Heidegger's approach adds a lot to Plank's version. For Heidegger the world model appears to be not only a natural category, but also a social one, depending on a man, who perceives and changes the world. To put it briefly, Heidegger's world model comprises the world of nature and the history of society.

The world model definitions examined above belong to "non-strict" ones. They were used by famous naturalists and philosophers of the past. But todays' scientists mostly use the exact definitions.

In nowadays philosophy the question about the world model status seems to be rather complicated. One can point out several directions in definition of the scientific world model. Here they are in brief:

1. Scientific World Model /SWM/ as a part of philosophical knowledge;

2. SWM as a component of scientific outlook;

3. SWM as a form of systematization of scientific knowledge; all concrete sciences taken as a whole;

4. SWM as a research program.

For the purposes of linguistic research the third definition appears to be the most available. A. Kravets also maintains this point of view. In his interpretation the third definition of SWM gains the principal position among the others. Summarizing all existing opinions on the status of SWM, Kravets gives the following notions of SWM:

1. SWM as "ontological part of philosophy."

2. SWM as "integrated elements of today's science (general theories, concepts, ideas)."

3. SWM as "totality of stereotypes of scientific thinking: paradigms, research programs, methodological regulations."

As we see in given above definitions, the notion of SWM gets extremely wide filling. It includes not only the whole system of the scientific knowledge, but also the cognitive process itself in the frames of this or that world outlook.

Generally speaking, "scientific world model" /SWM/ may be characterized as a way of simulating reality, which is based on the separate scientific disciplines. Embracing all branches of knowledge about the world, man and society, it is characterized by universality. It follows that, SWM must use special system of terminology, quite different from logical languages of various disciplines and theories. The most essential features /distinctive signs/ of scientific world model could be formulated in the following statements: