Development of Linguaculturological system of values

1. Unity of culture, language and civilization

2. Culturological categories - values

3. Types of values.

 

Questions for self-examination:

1. Illustrate the development of culture and language (USA/GB/Kazakhstan).

2. List XXI century values of your community (in comparison with the previous centuries).

3. Defend the idea of the ways culture keeps the unity of the nation.

4. In what ways do people acquire language and culture?

 

Language, being a complex cognitive system of getting and delivering information, reflects human experience and perception of the surrounding world in culture that created it. Culture is transmitted from generation to generation through the images of myths, legends, customs and traditions. While the shift of generations is the task of nature, it is the task of human societies to render to new generations cultural achievements as the highest levels of elevating any sphere of human life and primary facts of human experience. In the book “The Philosophy of History” H. Rickert defined culture as “the process of realization of universal social values in the course of historical development”. Culture comprises language, customs, types of economy and technology, art and models of entertainment, morality and religion, that is, everything “by virtue of which members of the group endow their activities with meaning and significance” (the definition from Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy). We would claim here the relevance of two definitions, which, undoubtedly, can’t be full. First of all, culture is sometimes distinguished by its being primarily a state of things, when the emphasis is laid on habits and attitudes, forms and appearances, which can cause immediate attention, later forgotten. Here culture is a stimulus, but not a means of education. By contrast, culture may be understood in terms of constant achievements, productions and artifacts, whose essential value may not be immediately apparent, and which elevate life rather than simply excite it. Secondly, culture may be a manifestation of power or control, of the regulation or restriction of social activity. In contrast to this, culture can reveal the power of creativity, of thoughtful reflection and critical estimation. It is just the values that modify inside, from the depth of individual and social life, what we call culture, and become its core. But it is culture that keeps the unity of a nation, a state and a society, because it is modified by the degree of realization of values and value relations in all spheres of human activity, being primary to economics, politics, law and morality, which are limited by the degree of penetration of universal values into these spheres. And only in religion, morality and art values can be embordered with no limits. Accordingly, since culture is a practical realization of universal and spiritual (ideal) values in people’s actions and relations, the lack of development of value consciousness is one of the main features of the crisis of culture and the society itself. Here, it’s worth mentioning one more notion, which appeared at the same time as culture, in connection with the development of new economic relations, that is, the notion of civilization, which meant a new level of the development of culture. It’s necessary to state that since the end of XIX century philosophers (O.Spengler, A.Toynbee, P.Sorokin) began to oppose these two notions. Later axiologists clarified that the crisis of culture and turning it into civilization does not mean the destruction of values, but their reappraisal. Though up till now the notion of culture in common consciousness is substituted for the notion of civilization. But people very often forget that civilization bases upon the rational, and, as a result, on material values, while it is just the culture that defines the core values and the meanings of life, being the real foundation of civilization with no reasonable alternative, and that the society may function normally, being the unity of culture and civilization. There is another issue that needs philosophic questioning, that is the notion of identity. We can speak here about national (collective) identity, which may or may not be based on a sense of cultural distinctiveness and which is the self-knowledge of a social group with some concrete culture. We also mean here personal identity, self-conception or self-knowledge of one’s own values or what is valuable at a given moment in that group. Like undeveloped consciousness speaks volumes of the crisis of culture and the society we mentioned above, the disorder and instability in values in the mind of individual signals of the crisis of personal identity. In XIX century W.von Humboldt, F.I.Buslayev, A.A.Potebnya and A.N.Affanasyev, and later E.Sapir and N.I.Tolstoy, V.N.Teliya and S.Stepanov, H.Arutyunov, V.Vorobyov researched the issues of language and culture. Language is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system. Estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 6,000 and 7,000.

However, any precise estimate depends on a partly arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli, for example, in graphic writing, braille, or whistling. This is because human language is modality-independent. When used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs with particular meanings. Human language has the properties of productivity, recursivity, and displacement, and it relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a much wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is thought to have originated when early hominins started gradually changing their primate communication systems, acquiring the ability to form a theory of other minds and a sharedintentionality. This development is sometimes thought to have coincided with an increase in brain volume, and many linguists see the structures of language as having evolved to serve specific communicative and social functions. Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture. Therefore, in addition to its strictly communicative uses, language also has many social and cultural uses, such as signifying group identity, social stratification, as well as forsocial grooming and entertainment. Languages, understood as the particular set of speech norms of a particular community, are also a part of the larger culture of the community that speaks them. Languages do not differ only in pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammar, but also through having different "cultures of speaking". Humans use language as a way of signalling identity with one cultural group and difference from others. Even among speakers of one language, several different ways of using the language exist, and each is used to signal affiliation with particular subgroups within a larger culture. Linguists and anthropologists, particularly sociolinguists, ethnolinguists, and linguistic anthropologists have specialized in studying how ways of speaking vary between speech communities.

Linguists use the term "varieties" to refer to the different ways of speaking a language. This term includes geographically or socioculturally defined dialects as well as the jargons or styles of subcultures. Linguistic anthropologists and sociologists of language define communicative style as the ways that language is used and understood within a particular culture. Because norms for language use are shared by members of a specific group, communicative style also becomes a way of displaying and constructing group identity. Linguistic differences may become salient markers of divisions between social groups, for example, speaking a language with a particular accent may imply membership of an ethnic minority or social class, one's area of origin, or status as a second language speaker. These kinds of differences are not part of the linguistic system, but are an important part of how language users use language as a social tool for constructing groups. However, many languages also have grammatical conventions that signal the social position of the speaker in relation to others through the use of registers that are related to social hierarchies or divisions. In many languages, there are stylistic or even grammatical differences between the ways men and women speak, between age groups, or between social classes, just as some languages employ different words depending on who is listening. Some cultures, for example, have elaborate systems of "social deixis", or systems of signalling social distance through linguistic means. In English, social deixis is shown mostly through distinguishing between addressing some people by first name and others by surname, and also in titles such as "Mrs.", "boy", "Doctor", or "Your Honor", but in other languages, such systems may be highly complex and codified in the entire grammar and vocabulary of the language. For instance, in several languages of East Asia, such as Thai, Burmese, and Javanese, different words are used according to whether a speaker is addressing someone of higher or lower rank than oneself in a ranking system with animals and children ranking the lowest and gods and members of royalty as the highest.

A personal value is absolute or relative and ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based.

Some values are physiologically determined and are normally considered objective, such as a desire to avoid physical pain or to seek pleasure. Other values are considered subjective, vary across individuals and cultures, and are in many ways aligned with belief and belief systems. Types of values include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (religious, political) values, socialvalues, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values that are not clearly physiologically determined, such as altruism, are intrinsic, and whether some, such as acquisitiveness, should be classified as vices or virtues. Values have been studied in various disciplines: anthropology, behavioral economics, business ethics, corporate governance, moral philosophy, political sciences,social psychology, sociology and theology to name a few.

Values can be defined as broad preference concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and wrong or what "ought" to be. "Equal rights for all", "Excellence deserves admiration", and "People should be treated with respect and dignity" are representative of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior.

There are the following types of values:

• Vital: life, health, quality of life, environment, etc.;

• Social: social status, status, diligence, wealth, profession, family, tolerance, gender equality, etc.;

• Political: freedom of speech, civil liberty, legality, civil world, etc.;

• Moral: good, benefit, love, friendship, duty, honor, decency, etc.;

• Religious: God, divine law, belief, rescue, etc.;

• Easthetic: beauty, ideal, style, harmony.

According to Morris Massey, values form during three significant periods:

· imprint period - from birth to 7 years

· modelling period - from 8 to 13 years

· socialization period - from 13 to 21 years

Personal values provide an internal reference for what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc. Values generate behaviour and help solve common human problems for survival by comparative rankings of value, the results of which provide answers to questions of why people do what they do and in what order they choose to do them.

Over time the public expression of personal values that groups of people find important in their day-to-day lives, lay the foundations of law, custom and tradition.

Personal values exist in relation to cultural values, either in agreement with or divergence from prevailing norms. A culture is a social system that shares a set of common values, in which such values permit social expectations and collective understandings of the good, beautiful, constructive, etc. Without normative personal values, there would be no cultural reference against which to measure the virtue of individual values and so culture identity would disintegrate.

Values are obtained in many different ways. Individual cultures emphasize values which their members broadly share. One can often identify the values of a society by noting which people receive honor or respect. In the United States of America, for example, professional athletes at the top levels in some sports receive more honor (measured in terms of monetary payment) than university professors. Surveys show that voters in the United States would be reluctant to elect an atheist as president, suggesting that a belief in a God is a generally shared value. There is a difference between values clarification and cognitive moral education. Value clarification consists of "helping people clarify what their lives are for and what is worth working for. It encourages students to define their own values and to understand others' values." Cognitive moral education builds on the belief that students should learn to value things like democracy and justice as their moral reasoning develops. Educationist Chaveen Dissanayake says personal and cultural values can vary according to the living standards of a person.

Values relate to the norms of a culture, but they are more global and abstract than norms. Norms provide rules for behavior in specific situations, while values identify what should be judged as good or evil. While norms are standards, patterns, rules and guides of expected behavior, values are abstract concepts of what is important and worthwhile. Flying the national flag on a holiday is a norm, but it reflects the value of patriotism. Wearing dark clothing and appearing solemn are normative behaviors to manifest respect at a funeral. Different cultures reflect values differently and to different levels of emphasis. "Over the last three decades, traditional-age college students have shown an increased interest in personal well-being and a decreased interest in the welfare of others." Values seemed to have changed, affecting the beliefs, and attitudes of the students.

Members take part in a culture even if each member's personal values do not entirely agree with some of the normative values sanctioned in the culture. This reflects an individual's ability to synthesize and extract aspects valuable to them from the multiple subcultures they belong to.

If a group member expresses a value that seriously conflicts with the group's norms, the group's authority may carry out various ways of encouraging conformity or stigmatizing the non-conforming behavior of that member. For example, imprisonment can result from conflict with social norms that the state has established as law.

Values are generally received through cultural means, especially transmission from parents to children. Parents in different cultures have different values. For example, parents in a hunter–gatherer society or surviving through subsistence agriculture value practical survival skills from a young age. Many such cultures begin teaching babies to use sharp tools, including knives, before their first birthdays. Italian parents value social and emotional abilities and having an even temperament.Spanish parents want their children to be sociable. Swedish parents value security and happiness. Dutch parents value independence, long attention spans, and predictable schedules. American parents are unusual for strongly valuing intellectual ability, especially in a narrow "book learning" sense.The Kipsigis people of Kenya value children who are not only smart, but who employ that intelligence in a responsible and helpful way, which they call ng'om.

In language values can be represented as universal, national, class, group, family, individual

Universal values are admitted by the greatest number of people, both in time, and in space. To them refer the major everyday truth, masterpieces of the world art, steady norms of moral (love and respect to near person, honesty, mercy, wisdom, aspiration to beauty, etc.). Many moral precepts coincide in world religions; they are reflected in fundamental human rights.

National values take the major place in life of any people and personality. Thus it is necessary to remember the expression of L.N.Tolstoy: «It is silly, when one person considers himself better than other people; but is even sillier, when the whole people consider themselves better than other people». Unlike universal, national values are more concrete and materialized. For Russian people they are verbalized by such words and expressions, as the Kremlin, Pushkin, Tolstoy, the first satellite, etc.; for Frenchmen – Louvre, Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, etc. In other words, national values create specifics of ethno-culture.

Group values unite rather small groups of people both in a place of their accommodation, and on age. They are various language representations of such ideas as "brotherhoods", sects, casts or associations such as "rockers", "punks", etc.

Family values. The family, according to V. Hugo, society "crystal", its basis. It is society in a miniature, prosperity of all mankind depends on physical and moral health. They play a huge role in formation of culture passing from father to son. All positive family traditions refer to them (moral, professional, art or even purely household).

Individual and personal values include ideas and the subjects which are close to separately taken person. They can be borrowed in the surrounding socio-cultural environment or created as a result of individual creativity.

Cultural values can pass from one level to another, rise from individual and personal to the universal. So, works of great thinkers at the moment of creation were individual and personal values, but gradually "rose" through local and group, class and national levels till universal, becoming factors of a world civilization.

The mobility of cultural values lays implies their movement from one level to another, from individual to universal human personality. Thus, the works of the great thinkers of the time were creating individual personal values, but gradually develop through group, caste, class, national levels to universal recognition, becoming factors of global civilization.

Exaggeration, fanatical defense of the special role of any kind of values implicates worshiping an idol. The supporter of universal human values may become a cosmopolitan, or a person without a country, excessive fan of national values - a nationalist; class - a revolutionary or a terrorist, group - a marginal or bohemia etc.

LECTURE 5