The development of Linguaculturology as a science

1. Linguaculturology as a science

2. Subject matter of Linguaculturology

3. Linguaculturology as a discipline

Question for self-examination:

1. Comment on scientific area of LC.

2. What causes originality, dissimilarity of ethnic cultures?

3. What branches of Linguistics LC is interrelated with?

4. What makes LC different froзm Linguacountrystudy?

5. Define the notion of linguistic-cultural communicative competence.

All sciences connected with the research of language issues permeated cultural and historical content, laying basis to the foundation of cultural studies. Since in most cases the person does not deal with the world itself, but with its representations, the cognitive patterns and models, the world is presented through the prism of culture and language of the people who see the world. Y.S.Stepanov says that “language inconspicuously directs the theoretical thinking of philosophers and other scholars”. Indeed, the most important philosophers of XX century P.A.Florensky, L.Wittgenstein, N.Bohr and others put a central place in their scientific conceptions to language. The greatest thinker of our time X.G.Gadamer directly asserted that "language - the only hope for freedom". M.Heidegger believed “it is language, not the nature and the world around us, primal”, because the language does not only reflect, but also creates that reality in which man lives. In this context, LC is of strategic importance to the methodology of the social sciences.

Since XIX century, the language and culture problem has been constantly in the center of attention of philosophers, linguists and the culturologists leaning on anthropocentric principles of knowledge and the description of the world. At the end of the XX century LC began researching not only language, but also a discourse in which by different language and discursive units the corresponding image of the world is presented. LC, unlike other culturological disciplines, is urged to study live communicative processes in their synchronous connection with the ethnic mentality operating during this cultural era. At such understanding of problems of LC «the archeology of culture» becomes a subject of its research. Linguistic "excavation" of cultural and historical layers here is carried out by means of such categories, as a national picture (an image, model) the world, language (ethno-cultural) consciousness and mentality of the people. The called categories aren't synonyms: each of them is different in content.

A new science Linguaculturology arose at the intersection of Linguistics and Culturology. The researchers V.N.Teliya, V.Vorobyev, N.I.Tolstoy, Y.D.Apresyan, E.A.Yakovleva, V.A.Maslova, A.D.Shmelev and others explored cultural background of the people from the linguistic point of view. It seems rational to distinguish two periods in the development of LC: the first period - the prerequisites for the development of science - the works of W.von Humboldt, A. Potebnya, E.Sapir and others, and the second period - the registration of LC as an independent field of research. The dynamics of the development of science predicts another, the third period - the emergence of the fundamental interdisciplinary science LC.

Linguaculturology (LC) has recently been considered as a new paradigm of Europian Linguistics. However, by the XXI century it has developed so much that become an independent discipline. From one side, LC has developed its own subject matter to separate itself from Country-study, on the other side – it has become a separate branch of Culturology. Today’s LC is developing in several directions. Its purpose is to study the ways in which language embodies, stores and transmits culture.

LC studies language as the phenomenon of the culture. It is a definite vision of the world through the prism of the national language, when the language appears as an exponent of the particular national mentality.

1) How culture is involved in the formation of linguistic concepts;

2) What part of the value of the linguistic sign attached “cultural meanings”;

3) Be aware of whether these meanings the speaker and the listener, and how they affect voice strategy;

LC is closely connected with Cognitive Linguistics. Sometimes reading articles in linguistic journals it is very difficult to differentiate what branch of Linguistics they refer to – Cognitive linguistics or LC. Why is it so?

♦ Firstly, because process of formation of LC has not finished yet; having common object with Cognitive Linguistics LC has not defined the parameters of its own sresearch yet.

♦ Secondly, it tells that it is necessary for LC to search for its own tasks, subject, theoretical platform, methodology, which could differentiate it from other cognitive disciplines – cognitive psychology and Cognitive Linguistics.

The methodology of LC is in the process of formation and development. So far the scientific status of LC as a science, its main tasks haven’t been defined; the specific character of the basic LC terms and concepts haven’t been revealed; the forms of keeping and co-existing of language and culture in human consciousness haven’t been researched sufficiently.

LC is a complex area of scientific knowledge about the relationship and the mutual influence of language and culture. According to V.N.Teliya, "LC- is that part of Ethno-Linguistics, which is dedicated to the study and description of the interaction, embodied in a living national language, material culture and mentality, which manifested in language processes and their dual nature with the language and culture of an ethnic group.

According to V.V.Krasnyh, "LC - discipline that studies the manifestation, reflection and fixation of culture in language and discourse. It is directly connected with the study of the national picture of the world, a language consciousness mental-lingual feature of nation.

V.A.Maslova notes that: LC - science that emerged at the intersection of Linguistics and Cultural studies, investigates reflected and fixed in the language the cultural manifestation of the people; a humanitarian discipline that studies, embodied in a living national language and presented in linguistic processes, the material and spiritual culture. It allows you to explain one of the fundamental functions of language - to be an instrument of creation, development, storage, and transmission of culture.

Since the last two decades of the XX century the term Linguaculturology is even more often used in interface to the term Linguacountrystudy. As well as Lingua-countrystudy, LC studies relationship of language and culture, however, unlike Linguacountrystudy, the main attention is directed to linguistic aspects. LC has a number of specific signs:

• it is the discipline of synthesizing type occupying boundary situation between sciences, studying culture and philology;

• the main object of LC is the interrelation of language and culture and interpretation of this interaction;

• the object of research of LC is the spiritual and material culture, the verbalized artifacts which form «a language picture of the world».

From the point of view of LC, the explanation of identity of ethno-culture is stored in words-images of cognizable subjects and phenomena. In LC, Psycho-linguistics, Pragma-Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics are interrelated. The interrelation of LC and Cognitive Linguistics allows getting into one of the most intimate areas of culture – language consciousness. Pragma-Linguistics gives the chance to highlight ethno-culturological aspects of communication, Psycho-linguistics opens universal and ethno-cultural mental mechanisms of generation and perception of speech, coding and decoding of an ethno-cultural picture of the world; elements of the sociolinguistic analysis are subordinated to find out public factors influencing the formation and development of the language personality and formation of a national and cultural component in semantic space of language.

V.Vorobyov gave a comprehensive and standard definition of LC. In his opinion, it is complex scientific discipline studying interrelation and interaction of culture and language. S.A.Kosharnaya defined it as the scientific discipline studying process of comprehension and reflection in national language of elements of material and spiritual culture of the people.

The analysis of these and other existing definitions of LC allows establishing the following:

• The LC is closely connected with Linguistics and Cultural science and has synthesizing character;

• The LC focuses the main attention on the cultural facts which are explicit in language;

• The LC belongs to linguistic sciences therefore results of its theoretical generalizations can find practical use in the course of training of native and foreign language;

• the main directions in research of LC are: а) language personality; b) language as system of semiotic representation of cultural values.

Thus, the modern LC is the scientific discipline a) studying (and) ways and means of representation of objects of culture in language; b) features of representation in language of mentality of people; c) regularities of reflection of valuable and semantic categories of culture in semantics of language units

In this regard, it becomes important to use linguistic-cultural approach to foreign audiences in teaching language, as lingua-culturological information is a necessary component of the communicative competence of foreign students, particularly embodied in the semantics of linguistic units. Lingua-culturological knowledge necessitates the formation of linguistic-cultural communicative competence. Lingua-culturological approach is one of the most effective methods, aimed at the creation and improvement of skills of intercultural communication through the study of language as a cultural phenomenon. The result is the ability of students to implement cross-cultural communication.

 

 

LECTURE 4