Fundamentals of linguoculturology [ tutorial] Khrolenko Alexander Timofeevich
3. Conceptual and linguistic pictures of the world
The idea of a picture (sometimes a model) of the world is connected with mentality. Going back to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the position that the language reflects the "naive" model of the world (picture of the world) has now become generally recognized. " Cards-on the world* in contrast to the worldview - the totality of worldview knowledge about the world, "the totality of the subject content that a person possesses" (Jaspers). The picture of the world is born by the human need for a visual representation of the world. It is believed that the picture of the world is a synthetic panoramic representation of concrete reality and about the place of each specific person in her.
It is possible to single out a sensory-spatial picture of the world, a spiritual-cultural, metaphysical one. They also talk about physical, biological, philosophical pictures world [FES 1998: 201]. It turns out that there can be much more hypostases of the picture of the world: this language picture of the world, folklore picture of the world, ethnic picture of the world, etc.
The concept of "language picture of the world" has several terminological designations ("linguistic intermediate world", "linguistic organization of the world", "linguistic picture of the world", "language model of the world", etc.). More commonly used language picture of the world.
The concepts of "mentality" and "picture of the world" are distinguished by the degree of awareness: "picture of the world" is a conscious representation, and "mentality" is not reflected by consciousness. Nevertheless, the originality of the mentality is judged by the specifics of the picture of the world.
"Picture of the world" becomes one of the central concepts of many humanities- philosophy, cultural studies, ethnography, etc. There are a considerable number of definitions of the term picture of the world. Each definition depends on what differentiating feature is indicated before this phrase, for example, language picture of the world. According to Yu.D. Apresyan, every natural language reflects certain way perception and organization ("conceptualization") of the world. The values expressed in it add up to a certain single system views, a kind of collective philosophy, which is imposed as a mandatory requirement for all native speakers. The picture of the world reflects naive ideas about inner world of a person, it condenses the experience of introspection of dozens of generations and therefore serves as a reliable guide to this world [Apresyan 1995].
Linguistics, the most rigorous of the humanities, takes the idea of a picture of the world as a methodological device, and this allows you to see what was not noticed before (see, for example: [Yakovleva 1995]).
The idea of a picture of the world takes shape at the beginning of the 20th century. It was implied by O. Spengler in his work “The Decline of Europe”: “Each culture has a strictly individual way of seeing and knowing nature, or, which is the same, for each There is its own peculiar nature, which no other kind of people can possess in the same form. Similarly, for each culture, and within a single culture, with smaller differences, for each individual person, have your completely special kind history…” [Spengler 1993: 198].
Russian poet A. Bely about the same time convincingly showed the presence individual painting peace with Pushkin, Baratynsky and Tyutchev. These poets have a different sky: Pushkin's "firmament" (blue, distant), Tyutchev's "favorable firmament", the sky is "native", "living", "cloudy" of Baratynsky. Pushkin will say: "The distant sky shines"; Tyutchev: "Fiery firmament looks"; Baratynsky: "cloudy sky native" [Bely 1983].
Pictures of the world are structured by categorical, classification schemes, which should be studied by the history of mentality. M. Foucault believed that a person has a "grid" of ideas - the skeleton of a picture of the world. The sum or intersection of different "grids" gives mentality. The picture of the world, like a mosaic, is made up of concepts and connections between them, which is why it is sometimes called conceptual painting peace.
The concept, in the understanding of the Voronezh scientific school, led by prof. Z.D. Popova, is a global mental unit, which is a quantum of knowledge (here and below - a presentation of the concept from the book: [Popova, Sternin 1999]). Concepts are ideal and encoded in consciousness by units of a universal subject code, which are based on individual sensory images that are formed on the basis of a person’s personal sensory experience. The images are concrete, but they can be abstracted and turn from a sensual image into a mental image. Many, if not all, concepts retain their sensory nature, such as those represented by the words sour, sweet, smooth, cigarette butt, pit, spoon, table, chair and under. The concept, unlike the concept, does not have a clear structure, rigid sequence and relative position of layers.
According to the content, the concepts are divided as follows: 1) representation (mental picture)- apple, pear, cold, sour, red, rough, heat, etc .; 2) scheme- a concept represented by some generalized spatial-graphic or contour scheme: a schematic image of a person, a tree, etc.; 3) concept- a concept that consists of the most general, essential features of an object or phenomenon, the result of rational reflection and comprehension: a square is a rectangle with equal sides; 4) frame - conceivable in its entirety constituent parts multi-component concept, three-dimensional representation, some set: a store, a stadium, a hospital, etc.; 5) scenario- the sequence of episodes in time: a visit to a restaurant, a trip to another city, a fight, an excursion; 6) gestalt- a complex, holistic functional structure that streamlines the diversity of individual phenomena in the mind: school, love, etc.
Conceptual features are revealed through the semantics of the language. The meanings of words, phrase combinations, sentence schemes, texts serve as a source of knowledge about the content of certain concepts. Concepts are represented by words, but the whole set speech means does not give complete picture concept. The word with its meaning in the language represents only a part of the concept, hence the need for synonymy of the word, the need for texts that collectively reveal the contents of the concept. "Torment of the word", drafts, self-editing and literary editing - a consequence of limitation language tools to verbalize the concept. Hence the conclusion that word creation, speech creation and artistic creativity- the eternal right and duty of man.
There are cases when there is a concept, but there is no lexeme for its verbalization. This is called a lacuna (in Russian there is newlyweds, but no - old-timers). There are illogisms - the absence of lexemes and semes in the presence of a concept, due to the lack of need for an object (there are rabbit breeders, but no tokens for rhinoceros breeders).
The ethnic community subjects the image to a certain standardization, as a result of which the concepts become national, group or personal. The totality of concepts in the collective consciousness of an ethnos began to be called concept sphere. Concepts have national specifics. The national concept sphere is a set of categorized, processed, standardized concepts in the minds of the people. A number of concepts are inherent in one ethnic group, and therefore non-equivalent (untranslatable) vocabulary is possible (for example, ingenuity, life, waiting list, countryman and etc.). However, a significant part of the concept spheres of different ethnic groups coincides, which explains the possibility of translation from one language to another.
Verbalization, linguistic representation, linguistic representation of the concept by means of lexemes, phrases, statements is the subject of cognitive linguistics, which is interested in which aspects, layers, components of the concept entered the semantic space of the language, how they categorize it, in what parts of the system specific language the researched concept is revealed. The goal is to present in an ordered form and comprehensively describe the part of the language system that verbalizes this concept.
So, concepts are realized primarily with the help of lexemes. As a result, a linguistic picture of the world emerges. <Языковая картина мира - this is the image of the whole existing as an integral and multi-part world, worked out by the centuries-old experience of the people and carried out by means of linguistic nominations, in its structure and in the connections of its parts comprehended by the language, representing, firstly, a person, his material and spiritual life activity and, secondly, everything what surrounds him: space and time, animate and inanimate nature, the area of myths created by man and society” [Shvedova 1999: 15].
It can be assumed with a high degree of certainty that the conceptual and linguistic picture of the world are correlated. Pictures of the world, and even more so linguistic ones, are ethnically specific. National identity is seen in the presence / absence of certain concepts, their value hierarchy, the system of connections, etc. This can explain the observation of the French researcher that the relatively poor system that the Homeric language has cannot give the same division of the color spectrum as possible, say, in modern French [Turina 1998: 408].
The question of the genesis of the language picture of the world in the minds of every native speaker of a given language is logical. At first glance, it seems that it develops in a person gradually as he gains everyday experience and masters the language. According to the French philosopher, language theorist J. Derrida (born 1930), from childhood, a person learns the names of objects without reasoning and at the same time - a system of relations, some accents that determine ideas, for example, about politeness, about male and female, about national stereotypes, i.e., in fact, all the original postulates that determine the picture of the world, which are “smuggled in” in linguistic expressions (see: [Weinshtein 1992: 51]).
However, there are also opposite judgments about the picture of the world as an innate phenomenon. According to J. McIntyre of the European Laboratory for Applied Neuroscience, who explored the "intuitive" physical knowledge that is characteristic even for people ignorant of science, the experiment confirms the idea that the brain is based not so much on direct observations, but on an internal model of the physical world, which and are used to predict the “behavior* of objects around us [Search. 2001. No. 27. S. 15].
It becomes obvious that the study of individual linguistic and speech units in order to identify ethnically distinctive features in a language is very limited. Today it is impossible to understand why Homer calls the sea "wine", and it is difficult to explain why it is impossible to translate into French the English word humor[Turina 1998:408]. We need a "total", systematic approach to solving the problem. HELL. Shmelev, for example, believes that it is very promising to compare the “Russian picture of the world”, emerging as a result of the semantic analysis of Russian lexemes, with the data of ethnopsychology. Such a comparison will clarify the conclusions made within the framework of both sciences [Shmelev 1995: 169]. The realization of this perspective was the work of A.D. Shmelev "Russian language model of the world: Materials for the dictionary" (M., 2002).
The way out is also seen in the study of entire linguistic fields corresponding to fragments of the picture of the world. House, as shown by the participants of the ethnolinguistic conference "Home in Language and Culture" (Poland, Szczecin, March 1995), is a very important element of culture, language and literary texts. In the report on the topic "House in Polish and English Phraseology" it was shown how much there is in common in the structure of Polish and English phraseological units and proverbs on this topic [Plotnikova, Usacheva 1996:63].
The idea of a linguistic picture of the world is heuristic in nature. So, a comprehensive analysis of the Old English lexical units naming the arable field makes it possible to visualize what an important role in the economic activity of the Anglo-Saxons was played by the field that was sown (32 names), the role of the field under fallow (7 names) is less significant, and even less - the compressed field (2 titles). It turns out that the cult of the field passed to the Anglo-Saxons from the ancient Germans and Indo-Europeans [Khopiyainen 2000: 331].
Through the picture of the world, mentality is connected with culture. The naive picture of the world of the speakers of this language is reflected by the structure of the meanings of words and is determined by the culture and mentality of the era, the place of a person in the social space, his self-identification as "I" and as "We" [Frumkina 1999: 8].
It is believed that the basic unit of mentality is the concept of a given culture, which is realized within the boundaries of a verbal sign in particular and language in general and appears in meaningful forms as an image, as a concept and as a symbol (Nikitina 1999]. The idea of a profile picture of the world, or “pictures of the world" [Shvedova 1999: 5]. For example, a folklore cultural and linguistic picture of the world within various folk poetic genres can appear as "pictures of the world" with one cultural model.
It turns out that the seemingly purely theoretical concept of "image of the world" should be taken into account in the process of training specialists in various fields, for whom the problem of "building a professional destiny" is important. (See the textbook "The Image of the World in Diverse Professions" [Klimov 1995].)
Summing up the achievements of linguistics of the 20th century, among the problems that have not yet been fully resolved, along with the problem of language and thinking, they also include the problem of the national picture of the world close to it [Alpatov 1995: 18].
1. Babushkin A.P. Types of concepts in the lexico-phraseological semantics of the language. Voronezh, 1996.
2. Baksansky O.E., Kucher E.N. Modern cognitive approach to the category "image of the world" // Questions of Philosophy. 2002. No. 8. S. 52–69.
3. Popova Z.D., Sternin I.A. Language and national picture of the world. Voronezh, 2002.
4. Radchenko O. A. The concept of the language picture of the world in the German philosophy of language of the XX century // VYa. 2002. No. 6. P. 140–160.
5. Uryson EV. Linguistic picture of the world VS Everyday representations (a model of perception in Russian) // VYa. 1998; No. 3. S. 3-21.
6. Shmelev A.D. Russian language model of the world: Materials for the dictionary. M., 2002.
From the book Japan: Language and Culture author Alpatov Vladimir MikhailovichChapter 3 JAPANESE NATIONALISM AND PICTURES OF THE WORLD 3.1. Japanese language nationalism Let's return to the ideas of nihonjinron. It can be seen that they, like similar ideas of publications of an earlier time, with different arguments and application to seemingly different phenomena of culture and language,
From the book Everyday Life in California during the Gold Rush by Crete Lilian3.3. Pictures of the world and Japanese uniqueness A special place in research on nihonjinron is occupied by works related to the most important problem - the problem of the Japanese language picture of the world; we will talk about it further in this and in the next chapters. Here we take a critical look at some
From the book Social Communications author Adamyants Tamara Zavenovna From the book History and Cultural Studies [Izd. second, revised and extra] author Shishova Natalya Vasilievna§ 13. Questionnaire and working apparatus of a comprehensive interdisciplinary study of "the picture of the world of modern children in the light of the paradigm of tolerance"
From the book Live in Russia author Zaborov Alexander Vladimirovich§ 14. "Pictures of the world" of modern schoolchildren in the light of the paradigm of tolerance: the experience of a comprehensive interdisciplinary research Any research related to children should begin with a comprehensive multifactorial diagnosis of their ideas about reality -
From the book Noospheric Scientific School in Russia. Results and prospects author Subetto Alexander Ivanovich From the book Modern Language Situation and Speech Culture [textbook] author Chernyak Valentina Danilovna From the book The Language of the Russian Emigrant Press (1919-1939) author Zelenin Alexander From the book Fashion and Art author Team of authors8. Conceptual ecology of N. F. Reimers as the first step towards the formation of noospheric ecology
From the book The Image of Russia in the Modern World and Other Plots author Zemskov Valery BorisovichThe Language Component of Humanitarian Education The processes taking place in the modern world community have fundamentally changed the view of the role and place of education in it. One of the most significant trends in the development of domestic education has become its
9. Language game Considering the linguistic features of different waves of emigration, E. A. Zemskaya draws the following conclusion: “[People. - A. Z.] of the last waves of emigration (the third and fourth ...). […] Representatives of the first [wave. - A. Z.] emigration assimilate someone else's
From the author's book5 Conceptual fashion by HAZEL CLARK Any mention of conceptual fashion instantly refers us to conceptual art. Conceptual art, established by 1970, affirmed the superiority of the idea over the external form, self-reflection over decisiveness,
From the author's bookFactors influencing the formation of a picture of the world Among such factors - almost everything that determines being, life and history. These are natural-geographical, climatic, civilizational, ethnic, religious-confessional, historical-cultural factors, the level
In this part of the monograph, we will focus on the concept of “worldview”, which is actively used by representatives of various sciences: philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, cognitive science, etc. As a rule, to more specifically designate one or another aspect of the worldview, researchers add clarifying definitions ”, “physical”, “linguistic”, etc. The task of this study does not include a detailed analysis of various pictures of the world; let's just say that there is a huge variety of them, strictly speaking, each person has his own individual picture of the world. As for such pictures of the world as physical, chemical, biological, informational, religious, etc., the corresponding fields of knowledge are engaged in their study. We are also interested in the linguistic picture of the world as a unique way of modeling reality and as a means of reflecting the way of life of the people.
It is interesting that for the first time the term "picture of the world" began to be used not in philosophy, as one might expect, but in physics. One of the first at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. G. Hertz began to use it in relation to the physical picture of the world, interpreted by him as a set of internal images of external objects, from which one can logically obtain information about the behavior of these objects. M. Planck also used this concept and distinguished between a practical picture of the world and a scientific picture of the world. With the first, he connected a person's holistic view of the world around him, which he gradually develops on the basis of his experiences. He interpreted the scientific picture of the world as a model of the real world in an absolute sense, regardless of individuals and all human thinking. The idea that the creation of a picture of the world by a person is a necessary moment of human life was also developed by A. Einstein (see [Serebrennikov 1988: 12-13]).
The concept of a picture of the world is based on the study of a person's ideas about the world, it is "the result of processing information about the environment and a person" [Tsivyan 1990: 5]. According to A.N. Leontiev is a “semantic field”, a “system of meanings”, but not a simple set of pictures, since it is not a direct reflection of reality, but also includes a person’s attitude to these objects, that is, their cultural and social value for a given society [Leontiev 1983 : 251].
The general definition of the picture of the world can be found, for example, in the philosophical dictionary - it is a holistic image of the world, which has a historically determined character. However, the very concept of "picture of the world", as noted above, is too abstract and general and requires clarification. In the framework of this study, we are interested in the linguistic picture of the world, as well as its relationship with the conceptual picture of the world.
Domestic philosophers and linguists (G.A. Brutyan, Yu.N. Karaulov, G.V. Kolshansky, V.I. Postovalova, B.A. Serebrennikov, V.N. Telia) distinguish between conceptual and linguistic pictures of the world. We can talk about the commonality of the conceptual picture of the world among different people, since the mechanisms of thinking are generally the same, and national linguistic pictures of the world only add certain shades. However, many studies show that completely different concepts can be hidden behind the same word, both among speakers of one language and among representatives of different languages. At the same time, we do not in any way deny the general mechanisms of thinking inherent in all mankind.
An outstanding domestic linguist N.D. Arutyunova notes that "our conceptual system, displayed in the form of a linguistic picture of the world, depends on physical and cultural experience and is directly related to it" [Arutyunova 1998: 123]. E.S. Kubryakova points out that “the speaker has a relative freedom of choice. After all, different language forms are chosen or created by the speaker, firstly, in a certain type of discourse, correlated, secondly, with a certain social activity of a person; thirdly, they are due to a certain mental state of the person himself and what type of linguistic personality he is and what duties he has. But no less significant factor in this choice are the resources actually presented in his native language, and they lead to the obligatory transmission of certain grammatical categories adopted in the system of his native language, using the methods of modeling secondary units of nomination that exist here, etc.” [Kubryakova 2004: 20]. Thus, scientists prove that the language in some way limits, and, therefore, determines the way the speaker expresses his thoughts.
The question of the relationship between the linguistic picture of the world and the conceptual picture of the world, as one of the facets of the problem of the relationship between language and thinking, continues to be debatable. The fact that there is a connection between language and thinking is recognized by all researchers. However, the question of the nature and quality of this connection is solved in different ways: some argue that the mechanism of thinking is associated with language and without language there can be no thinking, others believe that thinking can be both verbal and non-verbal (sensual-figurative ).
The former include, for example, F. de Saussure (“In language, neither thought can be separated from sound, nor sound from thought”), A.F. Losev (“Thought and language are in fact completely inseparable and flow into the common boundless sea of objective reality”), A.A. Reformatsky (“There can be no thinking without language”), G.V. Kolshansky, V.Z. Panfilov and many others (cited in [Morkovkin 1998: 3-9]). These ideas are also covered in sufficient detail in
B.A. Serebrennikov, where he quotes from the works of such researchers as V.Z. Panfilov, I.D. Andreev, K.K. Koshevoy, A.G. Spirkin, A.D. Budagov, etc. Here is one of them: “Thinking and language are not in mechanical interaction, but in continuous organic connection. They cannot be separated from each other without destroying both. Not only does language not exist outside of thinking, but also thoughts, ideas do not exist apart from language... The process of thinking does not precede and cannot precede in time the process of verbal expression of thinking. Thinking takes place not before it is dressed in the form of language, but on the basis of language. Thinking and the formation of thought in words are not two processes that are sequential in time ... but a simultaneous, unified process of verbal thinking and meaningful speech” [Serebrennikov 1988: 70]. Thus, a person is denied the opportunity to think otherwise than with the help of language. In addition, according to these scientists, it turns out that the linguistic sign is a simple reflection of reality, which is very doubtful. In this case, we would have to talk about the connection of the sound form with the nature of the object.
Some linguists, relying on the postulate that language never, at any stage of its formation or development, acts as an independent creative force, come to the conclusion that language does not create its own picture of the world. It only captures the conceptual world of man, which has as its original source the real world and activity in this world. Thus, language is initially connected directly with thinking, and in the epistemological plan, the relationship is really not “language - thinking - the world”, but “linguistics - the world”. Therefore, it is proposed to speak not about the linguistic picture of the world, but about the linguistic picture of the world, that is, about the conceptual picture of the world [Kolshansky 1990: 32-37]. Reduction to such a relation (linguistics - the world) of the totality of relationships and states of man, society and nature does not allow us to find convincing arguments in favor of abandoning the name of the picture of the world "linguistic" in favor of "conceptual". Concepts are mental units, and depending on various thematic features, they form not only a linguistic, but also a value picture of the world, which in turn is formed from numerous thematic concept spheres, such as religious, ethical, legal, etc. Thus, the conceptual picture of the world can be an independent subject of research as a higher level of abstraction in relation to the language picture of the world, which is precisely the actualization of concepts at various language levels: lexical, phraseological, syntactic, etc., which is reflected in the practical part of this work.
Another point of view is represented by such researchers as N.I. Zhinkin (“No one has yet been able to show on the facts that thinking is carried out only by means of natural language. This was only declared, but experience revealed something else”), B.A. Serebrennikov (“Thinking without words is just as possible as thinking based on words”) and others (cited in [Morkovkin 1998: 3-9]).
According to V.A. Maslova, for example, the linguistic picture of the world precedes the conceptual one and forms it, because a person is able to understand the world and himself only thanks to language [Maslova 2004: 52]. However, this statement can be called controversial, since it seems that it is the world around us that is the basis for the formation of concepts, and not otherwise. Moreover, it is unreasonable to claim that all concepts have a linguistic expression, such as smells or some tastes and colors. At the same time, one cannot but agree that it is in the language that socio-historical experience is recorded, which undoubtedly has an impact on human development. We are close to the second point of view about the possibility of non-linguistic thinking, although the whole life of a person takes place almost exclusively in language - this is a continuous process. languaging.
Next, let's move on to what the linguistic and conceptual pictures of the world are, and give some of their definitions. According to A.K. Brutyan, the conceptual picture of the world means not only knowledge, which acts as a result of a mental reflection of reality, but also the result of sensory cognition. The linguistic picture of the world is all information about the external and internal world, fixed by means of living, spoken languages. The core of the conceptual picture of the world is the information given in the concepts, while the main thing in the linguistic picture of the world is the knowledge enshrined in the words and phrases of specific spoken languages [Brutyan 1973: 109].
According to V.B. Kasevich, the linguistic picture of the world is understood as a plan for the content of a dictionary and grammar, that is, in fact, as a language system, a conceptual picture of the world - as a plan for the content of a certain set of texts of an encyclopedic nature [Kasevich 1996: 145]. This definition seems to be incomplete, because
affects only a small part of the language system and the outside world.
Texts of an encyclopedic nature do not reflect the full range of language usage.
Yu.N. Karaulov, speaking about the meaningful interpretation of the concepts of "linguistic picture of the world" and "conceptual picture", concludes that the main constituent elements of the linguistic picture of the world are semantic fields, "whereas the conceptual model consists of units of higher levels - groups and superconcepts, which are "Constants of consciousness" [Karaulov 1976: 271]. According to the researcher, the boundaries between these pictures seem to be unsteady and indefinite, since from a purely linguistic point of view, behind the opposition of linguistic and conceptual pictures of the world is the eternal problem of concept and meaning for linguistics. Yu.N. Karaulov also gives the following definition of the linguistic picture of the world: “The linguistic picture of the world is taken in its entirety, the entire conceptual content of a given language” [Karaulov 1976: 246].
According to Yu.D. Apresyan, the linguistic picture of the world “represents the ways of perceiving and conceptualizing the world reflected in natural language” (quoted from: [Maslova 2004: 53]). That is, the tools that a particular language offers the speaker to describe reality may vary depending on the language, for example, the form of expressing the future or unreality.
According to O.A. Kornilov, there are rather complex relations between the conceptual and linguistic worldview, since language is the main means of access to the conceptual worldview, but cannot fully reflect it. In addition, the conceptual picture of the world is more subject to change, while the linguistic picture is more inert and often lags behind it. We all know expressions like the Sun is rising, It is snowing, which reflect outdated ideas of a person about the world around, but are still actively used in speech [Kornilov 2003], since they turn out to be sufficient for effective orientation in the world and are part of ordinary linguistic consciousness, a naive picture of the world.
As can be seen from the above material, there are different approaches to the definition of the concept of "language picture of the world" and the relationship of linguistic and conceptual pictures of the world, which can be divided into two main groups. Proponents of the first point of view believe that thought is formed along with the word and exists only on the basis of language, that is, the linguistic picture of the world is actually the only one possible for representatives of a particular language.
Supporters of the second point of view believe that verbal thinking is just one of the ways of thinking, which is probably the most effective for communication purposes. At the same time, they assign an important role to figurative, practical thinking, etc., emphasizing the possibility of sensory cognition, which does not need verbal realization. That is, the existence of both a linguistic and a cognitive picture of the world, independent of a particular language, is recognized. Below we will trace how these two approaches were formed and developed.
As has already been shown, there are many definitions of the language picture of the world. Following A.A. Dzhioeva takes the following definition as a working definition in this study: “The linguistic picture of the world is a system of ideas about the world that has historically developed in the minds of a given linguistic community and is reflected in the language, a certain way of conceptualizing reality” [Dzhioeva 2014: 15]. Such a formulation seems to most clearly reflect the essence of the linguistic picture of the world, its historical nature, and the fact that each nation has its own ideas about the world, categorizes it in its own way. It is these characteristics that are most important in describing the linguistic picture of the world in this study.
A person as a subject of cognition is the bearer of a certain system of knowledge, ideas, opinions about objective reality. This system in different sciences has its own name (picture of the world, conceptual system of the world, model of the world, image of the world) and is considered in different aspects. The picture of the world is understood by many modern linguists as the original global image of the world that underlies the human worldview. concept "conceptual picture of the world » used by various sciences.
One of the scientific disciplines involved in the study of the conceptual picture of the world is cognitive linguistics. The key concept of cognitive linguistics is concept.
For the first time in domestic science, the term concept was used by S.A. Askoldov-Alekseev in 1928.
D. S. Likhachev at about the same time used the concept concept to designate a mental unit that reflects the phenomena of reality depending on the education, personal experience, professional and social experience of a native speaker and allows those who communicate to overcome the individual differences between them in the understanding of words. (Likhachev 1993: 5).
Popova Z.D. and Sternin I.O. define the concept as mental formation, which is the result of the cognitive (cognitive) activity of the individual and society and carries complex, encyclopedic information about the reflected object or phenomenon, about the interpretation of this information by public consciousness and the attitude of public consciousness to this phenomenon or object » (Popova, Sternin 2007: 25). That is, the concept is a kind of representation of a fragment of the world or a part of such a fragment.
According to Yu.S. Stepanov, the concept is, as it were, a clot of culture in the mind of a person; that in the form of which culture enters the mental world of man. And, on the other hand, the concept is something through which a person - an ordinary, ordinary person - himself enters the culture, and in some cases influences it. (Stepanov 2004: 43)
Let's take, for example, the ideas of an ordinary person, not a lawyer, about "legal" and "illegal" - they are concentrated, first of all, in the concept of "law". And this concept exists in the mind (in the mental world) of such a person, of course, not in the form of clear concepts about the “separation of powers”, about the historical evolution of the concept of law, etc. That “bundle” of ideas, concepts, knowledge, associations, experiences that accompanies the word law, and there is the concept of "law". Unlike concepts in the proper sense of the term (such as, say, “decree”, “legal act”, “text of law”, etc.), concepts are not only thought, they are experienced. They are the subject of emotions, likes and dislikes, and sometimes clashes. The concept is the main unit of culture in the mental world of a person. (Stepanov 2004: 43)
I call the term concept the content of the concept; thus, the term concept becomes synonymous with the term sense. While the term meaning becomes synonymous with the term scope of the concept. Simply put, the meaning of a word is the object or objects to which this word is correct, in accordance with the norms of the given language, and the concept is the meaning of the word.
Let's take an example. In Russian, the word cock has "meaning" and "meaning". Its "meaning" is all birds of a certain appearance (to which their zoological characteristic corresponds): a walking (non-flying) bird, male, with a red crest on its head and spurs on its legs. The “meaning” of the word rooster will be something else (although, of course, in accordance with the “meaning”): a) a poultry, b) a male chicken, c) a bird that sings in a certain way and marks the time of day with its singing, d) a bird , named for its special singing: rooster from the verb to sing (the same connection exists in the Lithuanian language, which is closely related to the Slavic languages: gaidys “rooster”, gaida “melody, melody”, giesme “solemn song”); e) a prophetic bird, with which many beliefs and rituals are associated. (Stepanov 2004: 44)
The structure of the concept displays features that are functionally significant for the corresponding culture.
An example can be given from contemporary Russian life. Everyone knows that in recent decades in the life of the current active population of Russia, the day of February 23 was the annual “holiday of men”, and the day of March 8 was the “holiday of women”. On the first of these days, all men, regardless of their profession and age, were the subject of celebration - at home, at enterprises, in schools from the first to the last grade, and even in kindergartens, boys received congratulations and small gifts from girls. On the second of these days, men and boys do exactly the same thing to women and girls. This fact of cultural life forms a concept. In this case, we also have a “double concept”, consisting of two related ideas about two holidays. Let's designate the described state of affairs as "state of affairs 1".
It is equally well known that these two holidays are not related to each other in their origin. February 23 was celebrated (and is still such in the life of the older generation) as "Soviet Army Day", i.e., the holiday of the military. March 8 was celebrated as "International Women's Day", i.e. the day of the struggle for the equality of women with men. As such, the two holidays are not related to each other ("state of affairs 2").
Finally, historians and some of the simply educated people know (and more about February 23 than March 8) the historical facts of the distant past that led to the establishment of these memorable days. On February 23, 1918, the Red Army won a major victory over the German troops near Narva and Pskov. This event is closely connected with the name of L.D. Trotsky. March 8 as a holiday was determined at the initiative of Clara Zetkin, an active figure in the international women's and communist movement; she was one of the founders of the German Communist Party ("status 3").
It is quite obvious that all three states of affairs - (1), (2), (3) - are reflected in the "concept of the days of February 23 and March 8" that exists in our minds. But they are reflected in different ways, with varying degrees of relevance, as different components of this concept. Component (1) is the most relevant, in fact, it is the main feature in the content of the concept "holiday". Component (2) is still involved in the concept of "holiday", but not so vividly, forming it, as it were, an additional, "passive" feature. Component (3) is no longer realized in everyday life, but is the "internal form" of this concept. The same components, or “layers”, are found in other concepts and phenomena of spiritual culture in general and modern Russian culture in particular. (Stepanov 2004: 46)
Dividing the picture of the world into linguistic and conceptual, a number of researchers (G.V. Kolshansky, E.S. Kubryakova, V.I. Postovalova, B.A. Serebrennikov) notice that the conceptual picture of the world is richer and wider than the linguistic picture of the world.
“A concept does not necessarily have a linguistic expression - there are many concepts that do not have a stable name and at the same time their conceptual status is not in doubt (for example, there is a concept and a word newlyweds, but there is no word “old-timers”, although there is undoubtedly such a concept in the concept sphere of the people)” (Popova, Sternin 2007: 26).
Thus, the conceptual picture of the world is a system of information about objects, actually and potentially represented in the activity of an individual. The unit of information of such a system is the concept, the function of which is to fix and update the conceptual, emotional, associative, verbal, cultural and other content of objects of reality included in the structure of the conceptual picture of the world.
A modernist form of artistic expression in which specific concepts or ideas (generally personal (occurring in the mind of the artist) and complex) take the form of abstract, irrelevant images based on the denial of aesthetic principles. According to the definition of the pioneer of this direction, the American artist Saul Le Witt, in conceptualism the idea or concept (concept) is the most important aspect of the work. This means that the decision is made in advance, and its implementation is just a formality. The idea turns into a mechanism.
Generally speaking, conceptual art is a combination of different trends rather than a closely related movement. And it has many forms (including: installations, performances, happenings, ephemera). It originated in the first half of the twentieth century not as an artistic direction, but as a certain philosophy that questions the meaning of art itself. The Dadaist Maurice Duchamp, who introduced the practice, argued that the idea of a piece is more important than its physical presentation. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, conceptual artists created works that completely rejected the traditional ideas of art: aesthetics, expressiveness, craftsmanship (including conformity to market requirements).
However, it is important to understand that conceptual art developed in a succession of avant-garde movements (cubism, etc.) that succeeded in greatly expanding the boundaries of the Conceptualists themselves (in the strict sense) are the finalists of the avant-garde tradition. In truth, it doesn't matter if this extremely complex intellectual view fits the subjective idea of what art should be, as long as the fact remains. Some works of conceptualists are perceived by museums, collectors, art dealers as masterpieces of world art.
Borrowing various methods (such as minimalism), conceptual artists sought to rethink pop art forms that did not rely on the theoretical foundations of art. Strongly influenced by the aforementioned minimalism (its simplicity), they, at the same time, categorically rejected its concepts, which were embodied in sculpture or painting, characteristic of perceptual or “felt” art (it is created primarily for visual perception). In relation to it, "conceptual" pursues completely different goals. expressing ideas in a very subjective and highly symbolic way, may serve to some extent as an association to it. The idea, according to artists, can take shape in any physical form. The relationship between the artist, who uses all available elements of expression, his work, and the viewer is completely transformed.
Conceptual art is not just a description of nature in all its diversity. The artist expresses his attitude to social, political, technological things and processes. In many cases, the viewer and the artist himself become an integral part of this art and its basic concepts. Starting as a movement among the numerous art trends of the sixties, conceived to demonstrate the priority of the artist's idea, today it is seen as a whole (as an aesthetic point of view of Conceptualism), having a great influence on modern ways of artistic expression.
UDC 415.412
F. G. Samigulina
THE CONCEPTUAL PICTURE OF THE WORLD AND THE SPECIFICITY OF ITS FORMATION
The concept is presented as a mental polymodal product of a non-linear nature. The transformation of meaning is based on the change of figure-background relations as one of the properties of the perception of any type of information.
In the article the concept is presented as a mental multimodal nonlinear product. Changing of the figure-background relations as a basic mechanism of the perception of any kind of information appears as a ground of the transformation of the meaning of the concept.
Key words: concept, meaning, meaning, figure-background relations.
Key words: concept, meaning, sense, figure-background relations.
The problem of the relationship between language, culture and thinking, which is relevant for modern linguistics, is the problem of cognition. Cognition, or human cognitive activity, is realized, as is known, in two forms: conceptualization and categorization. If in the process of conceptualization there is a selection of information, its comprehension and subsequent transformation into knowledge, then during the categorization, previously selected and meaningful information about something is subjected to further generalization, namely: it correlates with existing concepts, united in categories, present in the human mind . Thus, knowledge appears as a product of the processing of verbal and non-verbal experience, forming a conceptual picture of the world. In this case, the unit of knowledge, or the main carrier of information, is the concept. In modern linguistics, various interpretations of the term "concept" and different views on its relationship with such terms as "concept", "meaning", "meaning" coexist simultaneously. It is this terminological inconsistency that often leads to the inevitable confusion of the concepts of "picture of the world" and "linguistic picture of the world". The terms "concept" and "concept" are identified by some scientists to one degree or another, while others refer to different sciences. Currently, there is a tendency to distinguish between them, since the content of these terms is not identical: not all components presented in the structure of the concept are present in the structure of concepts, therefore, they have a simpler organization. A full-fledged concept is created only when different types of perception are combined in the human mind.
The main difference observed in the content of the terms "concept" and "notion" is associated with the specifics of their formation, which is expressed in the fact that not only the left hemisphere, but also the right hemisphere thinking, which is responsible for the emotional perception of information by a person, actively participates in the creation of the concept. In this regard, the concept is a quantum of structured knowledge, a global polymodal mental unit that also carries a sensory component of reality reflection. Language as a semiotic system, in turn, is only one of the ways of forming concepts in the human mind. For the formation of the concept and the completeness of its presentation, one language is not enough. This determines the existence of both verbalized concepts, i.e., realized through a verbal sign, and non-verbalized ones, presented in the form of signs of a different nature (intonation, facial expressions, gestures). In addition, in the process of verbalization, the content of mental concepts may change, which is reflected in the rethinking of lexical meanings in connection with the different consitution of the verbal communication itself. The existence of this phenomenon is due to the specifics of the figurative and background relations that underlie perception as a basic cognitive mechanism. Only in a specific act of communication (in context, or against the background) does meaning (or figure) arise.
In modern linguistic literature, the terms "concept" and "meaning" are sometimes used interchangeably. In psycholinguistic studies, they are differentiated by their content. So, even in the works of L. Vygotsky, “meaning” is distinguished as a generally accepted system of associations behind the word, and “meaning” as the individual content of the word, associated with personal subjective experience and a specific situation of communication. Meaning is a unit of the plane of thought: it is precisely this that corresponds to thought. The value refers to the plan of the language and is the unit of the language system. The transformation of personal meaning into a commonly understood meaning, forming the necessary statement, illustrates the movement from thought to word. Thought is initiated by human needs, behind which there is a strategic intention to realize their communicative goals. Therefore, the formation of the concept of speech (the transformation of thought into a word) begins with the work of a fundamentally non-verbal communicative education. In this connection, the understanding of the message is a search for meaning, the selection of a figure from a certain context: open a window, open a window to Europe, open the truth; He touched the handle (child, ballpoint, door). The meaning is not discrete, therefore its understanding is simultaneous, although it is presented dissected and is constructed during perception from a sequentially presented series of meanings. Except
Bulletin of the Russian State University. I. Kant. 2010. Issue. 2. S. 46 - 50.
Moreover, the meaning of a sign is always larger than the generally accepted meaning of a sign, since the meaning of a word conveys only a few basic conceptual features that are essential for the message in a particular communicative act. The gesture is also capable of performing this function. The concept as a unit of knowledge is formed and functions in a certain cultural environment. Consequently, it acts as a culturally marked meaning, represented in terms of expression by a number of linguistic implementations that form the corresponding lexico-semantic paradigm. In this regard, it is more expedient to compare the concept with the meaning than with the meaning, since the meaning of the word is the name, the name of the subject to which this word is applicable in accordance with the norms of this language. As you know, meanings are ideal entities that a person operates in inner speech, whose main unit is the universal subject code (UCC), which is the basic component of thinking of a fundamentally non-verbal nature and is a system of signs that have the character of a sensual reflection of reality in consciousness. This is the language in which the primary recording of personal meaning takes place. Concepts equated to meaning are also ideal and are encoded in the mind by the units of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Code of Criminal Procedure is universal due to the fact that all native speakers without exception have it, although it is different for each individual, since it reflects the subjective sensory experience of a person personally received in life through his senses (cf. understanding of the words friendship, love by a child adolescents and adults, women and men). At the same time, the unit of the Code of Criminal Procedure is the most stable part of the concept, while the randomness of the image (for example, a different representation called by one word an apple in the minds of people) that makes up this unit does not prevent it from performing coding sign functions for the concept. The concept should also be attributed to the plane of thought. Accordingly, the picture of the human world will be formed both with the help of verbal-logical and visual-figurative thinking, which is explained by the structure of the brain, which consists of two unequal hemispheres. Only with the interaction of the two hemispheres does knowledge of the surrounding world occur. A purely left-hemispheric picture of the world will be schematic, unambiguous and incomplete, since the completeness of the reflected picture of the world in the human mind is impossible without participation in the knowledge of the right hemisphere of a person. The concept, non-linear in nature, is the main unit of storage of knowledge in interhemispheric thinking, which is reflected in the subjectivity of its comprehension. Therefore, the concept is not identical to the concept: in addition to abstract-logical information, it contains figurative-emotional information.
The conceptual picture of the world formed at the same time determines the basis of individual and social consciousness. The completeness of knowledge, their specificity differ not only among people of different cultures, but also among representatives of the same culture. In addition, speakers of different languages may have similar conceptual pictures of the world under certain conditions, while speakers of the same language may have different ones. Consequently, in the conceptual picture of the world, the interaction of the universal, national and personal is carried out. In the minds of one person or all representatives of an ethnic group as a whole, there may exist pictures of the world that are different in scope and content. In this regard, in cognitive linguistics, the concept of "volume of concept" is introduced. In the concept-maximum, the reality in the mind of the individual is reflected most fully, in all its diversity, in contrast to the concept-minimum, in which the same reality is represented fragmentarily. Thus, the law in the form of a minimum concept is presented and reflected in the everyday consciousness of speakers of the general literary and colloquial language, and in the form of a maximum concept - in the minds of the speakers of a subcode (for example, a legal professional language). On this basis, two pictures of the world are distinguished: naive, operating with concepts-minimums, and scientific, operating with concepts-maximums. A naive picture of the world, in which the objective way of perception prevails, characterizes the ordinary consciousness of the linguo-cultural community. Its main feature is its evaluative nature, since the world is always comprehended through the prism of needs. Thus, there is the surrounding world, the image of which is more or less fully represented in the human mind and fixed in linguistic units. Accordingly, the picture of the world is presented in the language, but is not it. Note that on this issue in modern linguistics, as before, there is no consensus. A number of researchers identify the selected concepts, which implies that human behavior is determined not by his thinking, but by a system of linguistic signs, which serves as a means of transmitting information about a person’s needs, thoughts and at the same time is a product of his brain activity (this idea was previously presented by E. Sapir and B. Whorf). There is also an idea that the very categories of “picture of the world” and “linguistic picture of the world” are myths and have nothing to do with objective reality. More objective is the position of scientists who defend the fact of the existence of both pictures of the world, but distinguish them. Thus, the anthropocentric picture of the world displayed in the human mind is the existence of the objective world in the form of a certain simplified mental model, and the linguistic picture of the world is a reflection of the secondary existence of the picture of the world in linguistic signs. According to their content, internal content, they are unequal and are different categories. The semantic system of a language may not coincide with the model of the world that is valid for a given team, which is explained by the constant development of knowledge, leading to a change in the conceptual picture of the world in the human mind, while the linguistic picture of the world keeps traces of obsolete knowledge for a long time (the sun rises and sets ). Each natural language only reflects a certain way of perceiving and organizing the world, which can subsequently change due to the development of scientific thinking.
From a psycholinguistic point of view, it is necessary to differentiate the real world that surrounds us and its image (i.e., the picture of the world) that is created in the human head. First, the world is more diverse and richer than its reflection in our minds. This is due to the fact that a person perceives it in accordance with his needs, choosing from all the information about the picture of the world only that is significant for him, which is later fixed in the public consciousness and transmitted to subsequent generations. If culture is a way of adapting to the environment, then "cultural information" is information that accumulates behavior patterns that contribute to survival in this environment. In this regard, people in different natural conditions may have different needs, respectively, different cultural traditions will form, which entails the existence of different pictures of the world. The difference in the natural conditions of existence can be reflected in the appearance, for example, of a differentiated name for rice in Japanese: kome "rice in the grain", ine "rice on the vine", komai "last year's rice", shimmai "rice of the new harvest", hakumai "peeled rice ", genmai "unpeeled rice". The reason for the discrepancy in linguistic pictures can be such components of human existence as climatic, geographical conditions of life, features of flora and fauna. Secondly, the picture of the world is the first degree of abstraction in human thinking. This leads to the fact that it is no longer identical to the surrounding reality, since the image of the world in our minds has a schematic character, which is associated with the specifics of the work of the left hemisphere. In addition, the created pictures of the world may differ in the degree of abstraction, for example, depending on in whose mind this picture of the world is formed: in the mind of a child or an adult, a scientist. The content of the picture of the world can depend not only on nationality, cultural values, but also on the psychology of a person, his abilities, therefore, within the framework of one society, in the minds of people, the existence of various pictures of the world is noted, the specificity of which is due to the needs of individuals, their intellectual characteristics and interests. Subsequently, all this is reflected in linguistic signs, which, in turn, form a linguistic picture of the world. The difference in the volume and specificity of the content, i.e., in the information content of the concept, leads to a communicative failure (CF) in mono- and inter-society interaction and a cultural conflict in inter-society communication, which may be due to different semantic content of lexemes. At the same time, CI stimulates the systemic factor in intersocial interaction, and the individual factor in monosocial interaction. The systemic factor is understood as the absence of a common cognitive base, a culture-specific fund of knowledge, due to the existence in various linguistic cultures. The individual factor of CI lies in the unequalness of mental units (volume of the concept) among communicants, determined by the multi-level structure of society and the psychophysiological features of the speech-cogitative activity of individuals (IQ, gender, age), which in turn proves the semantic nature of the concept, as well as a significant difference between such categories, as a picture of the world and a linguistic picture of the world.
Drawing conclusions, it should be noted that the linguistic picture of the world explicates the various pictures of the human world and reflects the general conceptual picture of the world. If the picture of the world contains a concept, then the linguistic picture of the world contains a meaning. At the same time, the conceptual picture of the world is primary in relation to the linguistic one. However, it is with the help of language that various cultural national pictures of the world are realized (i.e., verbalized) and knowledge about them is stored.
Bibliography
1. Boldyrev N. N. Cognitive semantics. Tambov, 2000.
2. Vygotsky L. S. Thinking and speech // Psychology of human development. M., 2003. S. 664 - 1019.
3. Zhinkin N. I. Language. Speech. Creation. M., 1998.
4. Krivonosov A. T. Thinking, language and the collapse of myths about “linguistic relativity”, “linguistic picture of the world” and “Marxist-Leninist linguistics. Moscow; New York, 2006.
5. Maslova V. A. Cognitive linguistics. Minsk, 2004.
F. G. Samigulina - Ph.D. philol. Sciences, Associate Professor, Southern Federal University, [email protected].
F. G. Samigulina - PhD, associate professor, Southern Federal University, [email protected].
