Each person belongs to a certain national culture, including national traditions, language, history, literature. Economic, cultural and scientific contacts between countries and their peoples make topics relevant to the study of intercultural communications relevant to the study of the relationship of languages and cultures. Even E.Sepir wrote: «Language is a guide that acquires increasing importance as a guiding principle in the scientific study of culture» [1].
The tendency to interpenetrate different branches of scientific knowledge is one of the defining characteristics of the science of the twentieth century. In the field of humanitarian disciplines, the expression of this desire for synthesis has been the intensification of cultural studies, i.e. Studies of the phenomenon of culture, which includes all the diversity of human activities and its objectified results [2, p. 2].
The aim of the paper is to review the main approaches to the study of linguoculturology as an integrated field of scientific knowledge.
Lingvoculturology as an autonomous region of linguistic research emerged in the 70's. According to Emil Benveniste's forecast, «on the basis of the triad — language, culture, human personality» in order to provide the scientific basis for the presentation and activation of data on the country and the culture of the language being studied using the philological methodology of teaching. This area of linguistic research represents linguoculture as a lens through which a researcher can see the material and spiritual identity of an ethnos [3, p. 79]. In its development, linguoculturology has evolved from general to linguistic culturology itself, and then from «neutral», «universal» to comparative linguoculturology, in which the phenomena and elements of a foreign language and culture are given in comparison with the native language and culture of the country [4].
Nowadays linguoculturology is one of the leading directions of linguistic research, its rapid formation and development is observed. Karasik explains this phenomenon for several reasons [5, p. 3]:
– Firstly, it is the rapid globalization of world problems, the need to take into account the universal and specific characteristics of the behavior and communication of different peoples in solving a wide variety of issues, the need to know in advance those situations in which there is a high probability of intercultural misunderstanding, the importance of defining and accurately denoting those cultural values, which underlie communicative activity.
– Secondly, it is an objective integrative trend in the development of the humanities, the need for linguists to master the results obtained by representatives of related branches of knowledge (psychology, sociology, ethnography, cultural studies, political science, etc.).
– Thirdly, it is the applied side of linguistic knowledge, the understanding of language as a means of concentrated reflection on collective experience, which is encoded in all the richness of meanings of words, phraseological units, well-known texts, etc., and this experience is the essence of the foreign language being studied.
Due to the fact that linguocultural research is actively carried out by many scientists (A.Vezhbitskaya, R. M. Keesing, V.Maslova, V. I. Karasik, S. G. Vorkachev and others), there are many definitions of this direction of linguistic research.
V. Maslova defines the essence of science in this way: «Linguoculturology is a science that originated at the intersection of linguistics and cultural studies, and which explores the manifestations of the culture of the people, reflected and fixed in the language» [6, p. 109]. V. Telia believes that linguoculturology is a science devoted to the study and description of correspondence of language and culture in their synchronous interaction [7, p. 4]. V. V. Vorobiev relies on the fact that linguoculturology studies the national and cultural semantics of linguistic units in order to understand them in their entirety of content and colors, to the extent most closely approximated to their perception by the bearers of a given language and a given culture. According to his definition, linguoculturology is an aspect of linguistics that studies the problem of reflecting the national culture in language [4].
Despite the fact that these definitions have different shades, their essence boils down to the following: linguoculturology has to do with both the science of culture and the science of language. It represents a certain set of knowledge about the national and cultural specifics of the people and its reflection in the language.
Linguistic culture is «a humanitarian discipline that studies the material and spiritual culture embodied in a living national language and manifested in linguistic processes» [8, p. 46]. It allows one to establish and explain how one of the basic functions of language is implemented — to be an instrument for creating, developing, storing and broadcasting a culture. Its goal is to study the ways in which the language embodies in its units, stores and translates culture.
According to V. Telia, the task of linguoculturology is to study and describe the relationship between language and culture, language but also of the ethnos, language and people's mentality [6, p. 107]. V. N. Maslova sees the task of linguoculturology in exploring the cultural significance of the language unit (i.e. cultural knowledge) on the basis of correlating the prototype situation of phraseology or another linguistic unit, its symbolic reading with those culture codes that are known or can be offered to a native speaker by a linguist [8, p. 10–11]. V. Shaklein believes that the task of linguoculturology is to consider the phenomena of language and culture that cause each other, which, first of all, presupposes a multidimensionality of the problems of linguoculturology, the possibility of various systemic approaches to the solution of linguistic questions [9, p. 138]. Summarizing the above, it should be noted that the generalized version of the problems of linguoculturology is the following: the study and description of the language and culture in their interaction. Methods of linguoculturology are a set of analytical techniques, operations and procedures used in the analysis of the relationship of language and culture. Since cultural linguistics — an integrative field of knowledge, to absorb the results of the study of linguistics and cultural studies, cultural anthropology and ethnolinguistics, is a complex of cognitive techniques and installations, grouped around the center of the semantic «language and culture». In the process of linguistic and cultural analysis, methods of culturology and linguistics are used selectively. Linguistic, as well as cultural and sociological methods can be used — linguistic analysis, narrative analysis, ascending to V. Propp, methods of field ethnography (description, classification, etc.), open interviews, used in psychology and sociology, the method of linguistic reconstruction of culture used in the school of N. I. Tolstoy; can be investigated by conventional methods like material Ethnography and methods of experimental cognitive linguistics, wherein the most important source language material protrude carriers [8, p. 17]. A special area of research is the linguistic and cultural analysis of texts, which are precisely the true custodians of culture. A variety of methods and methods of investigation are used here, from interpretational to psycholinguistic [8, p. 21]. Accepting the opinion of V. V. Vorobyova note that linguoculturology as a scientific discipline is characterized by a number of specific features [4]:
– This is a scientific discipline of the synthesizing type bordering between the sciences studying culture and philology (linguistics)
– The main object of linguoculturology is the interrelation and interaction of culture and language in the process of it’s functioning and study of the interpretation of this interaction in a single systemic integrity
– The subject of linguoculturology — the national forms of society being reproduced in the system the topic of language communication and based on its cultural values, i.e. everything that constitutes «a language picture of the world».
– cultural linguistics focuses on the new system of cultural values put forward new thinking and modern life of society, to the full, objective interpretation of facts and events, and information on the various fields of cultural life of the country.
– The objective, complete and holistic interpretation of people's culture requires the systematic presentation of cultural linguistics culture of the people in their language, in their dialectical interaction and development, as well as the development of the conceptual series that formation of modern cultural thinking. Its necessary indicate that cultural linguistics to date took shape several directions [8, p. 33]:
– Linguoculturology of a particular social group, ethnos in some culturally bright period, that is, the study of a specific linguocultural situation
– Diachronic linguoculturology, i.e., studying the changes in the linguistic and cultural status of an ethnos over a period of time
– Comparative linguoculturology investigating Linguocultural display different but related ethnic groups.
– Comparative cultural linguistics, which is just beginning to develop. To date, it is represented by only a few works, the most interesting of them is the work of M. K. Golovanivskoy «French mentality in terms of native speakers of Russian», which features the French mentality studied from the perspective of the carrier of the Russian language and culture. The material for the analysis were the abstract nouns in Russian and French — the fate, hazard, luck, soul, mind, conscience, thought, idea, etc.
– Linguocultural lexicography compilers lingvocountry-study dictionaries. In conclusion that knowledge of linguacultural industry requires its own concepts and terminology apparatus to adequately designations content side of the sign, which would remove the functional limitations of the traditional values and meaning, and in a cat rum would be organically merged logic-psychological and linguistic categories. The basis for such an apparatus was the concept of the concept, actively developed lately. It is the study of the main concepts of English artistic works and will be the prospect of our further research.
References:
- Krasavsky N. A., Dynamics of emotional concepts in German and Russian linguocultures: Author's abstract. Dis.... Dr. Philol. Sciences. — Volgograd: «Change», 2001. — 38 p.
- Vorkachev S. G., Methodological Foundations of Linguo-Conceptology // Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Issue. 3: Metacommunication aspects. — Voronezh: «VSU», 2002. — P. 79–95
- Vorobiev V. V., Linguistic and intercultural communication: http: //www.csu.ru/Lingvо/pаrt4/lingvо/cаdr9.html
- Karasik V. I. About categories of linguoculturology // Linguistic personality: problems of communicative activity: Sat. Sci. Tr. — Volgograd: «Change», 2001. — P. 3–16
- Palashevskaya I. V. Concept law in English and Russian linguocultures: Abstract. Dis. — Cand. Philol. Sciences. — Volgograd: «Change», 2001. — 23 p.
- Maslova V. A. Lingvokulturologiya: Textbook. Allowance for stud. Higher education Education, institutions. — Moscow: Publishing Center «Academy», 2001. — 208 p.
