S.A. Osokina

Алтайский государственный университет, Россия

Thesaurus as the Form of Social Knowledge

Thesaurus studies compose one of the newest branch of cognitive linguistics. This branch changes traditional views on the language thesaurus which original definition was connected with the idea of an ideographical (or ideological) dictionary. Since the 1950s with the development of the theory of information, appearance of information retrieval thesauruses, as well as intensive study of the artificial intelligence the notion of the thesaurus has been given new interpretation.

Thus, Y.N. Karaulov uses the term “thesaurus” to name the lingua-cognitive level in the structure of the language personality [1, p. 53-54]. E.S. Kubryakova describes thesaurus as the source of information stored in memory as a result of an individual’s experience, knowledge, and evaluations; this information regulates the individual’s speech and behavior [2, 380].

Also, the term “thesaurus” is rather frequently used in sociological and culturological studies to name the system of knowledge formed by the life experience with the help of the language. M.S. Mirimanova, a sociologist, considers that the thesaurus provides the possibility of interaction between an individual’s inner world and actual reality keeping information about both of them [3, p. 30]. Culturologists Val.A. Lukov and Vl.A. Lukov agree that the world comes into an individual’s mind in a definite order determined by the structure of the thesaurus which works as a kind of filter selecting, evaluating and converting information of the outer world [4, p. 4].

The conceptions of the thesaurus developed in sociology and culturology are connected with similar conceptions in synergy studies in which the thesaurus is seen as the verbal system used by an individual to receive the incoming information and to produce one’s own information.

As it is clear from the given review, today’s science sees the thesaurus as the verbal system which composes an individual’s knowledge of the world and defines parameters of one’s orientation in the world. It means the thesaurus exists as both entities: the individual subjective system of knowledge and the objective social system of knowledge.

As the social system of knowledge the thesaurus exists in numerous written texts in a certain language and culture. Belonging to all individuals (since written texts are available to all potential readers) this knowledge is truly social, given to all people.

However, the great number of the available texts provides rather chaotic verbal material. How can this material be organized in a system that specifies the parameters of the individual picture of the world and orientates the individual in the outer world? Obviously, in this seeming infinite space of the written texts there must be a certain systematic regularity which makes even absolutely new texts perceivable and understandable and which makes them function as a new piece of created by the society knowledge.

The possibility to understand new knowledge is determined by the fact that texts consist of regularly repeated collocations of words. These collocations are the units of the thesaurus system. They appear from constant reproducing the same collocations in different texts created by different authors. For example, in most love stories one can find such collocations as fall in love, be in love, for the love of, make love and many others. The process of understanding as well as the process of getting new knowledge is based on recognition of such familiar collocation.

The collocations that can be identified as the units of the thesaurus system are set combinations of words with various syntactic and semantic structures. Some of them can be defined as stereotype collocations used in everyday speech to name usual actions, e.g. to take a taxi, to drive a car, to have lunch, to watch TV, to go to school etc. These collocations are learned through constant conversations and function as “ready for use” units of speech. Speakers use them without concentrating their attention on how to form these collocations, which words and in which order to put. That's why such collocations can be viewed as statistical entities of the language.

Besides everyday collocations we can consider as the thesaurus units set phrases of others types, such as traditional sayings and proverbs, famous rhymes and expressions, e.g. an apple a day keeps doctors away, to be or not to be, a golden mean etc. Also we can include in this list a number of so called precedent-related texts, connected with world-known books, films, plays, e.g. the green mile, a rainy man, Harry Potter. All these phrases play their roll in orientating an individual in the space of culture.

As we see, the thesaurus units can be so different in syntactic and semantic structure that there are no any unified criteria to specify them. The only criterion is their repetition in different texts. Their relatively regular appearance in different culture products makes these collocations familiar; their appearance in new texts works for understanding and accepting new knowledge. That’s why set collocations of words can be recognized as the units of the thesaurus, i.e. the units of social knowledge system and the epistemological units of the language.

References:

1. Караулов, Ю. Н. Русский язык и языковая личность / Ю.Н. Караулов. – М. : Изд-во ЛКИ, 2007. – 264 с.

2. Кубрякова Е.С. Язык и знание: на пути получения знания о языке. Части речи с когнитивной точки зрения. Роль языка в познании мира / Е.С. Кубрякова. – М. : Языки славянской культуры, 2004. – 560 с.

3. Мириманова, М.С. Конфликтология: Учебник для средних педагогических учебных заведений / М.С. Мириманова. – М. : Академия, 2003. – 320 с.

4. Луков, Вал.А. Тезаурусный анализ мировой культуры / Вал.А. Луков, Вл.А. Луков // Тезаурусный анализ мировой культуры: Сб. науч. тр. – М. : Изд-во Московского гуманитарного университета, 2005. – Вып. 1. – С. 3 – 15.