Kostyuchenkova N. V.
Novgorod State University
named after Yaroslav the Wise, Novgorod the Great,
Language as
a reflective means of national cultural consciousness
Cognitive structures, being reflected in a language, embody various
culture phenomena. The contemporary linguistics deals with such terms as cultural concept, conceptualized field, etc. Thus, it is quite reasonable to view the
interrelations between culture and language.
B.A. Uspensky compares language to a “filter” arranging information
we obtain, in a definite way. Simultaneously, the filter somehow unites all the
individuals who comprehend the information in the equal manner. He considers
language not to be just a system of communication between people. Actually, it
is a system of communication between an individual and the environment [8]. The
Thus, a language, a nation and its culture are interrelated. A language within
the ethnic boundaries of its speakers is not only a means of communication, but
also national memory, history and world outlook accumulated from generation to
generation.
When speaking about national originality, one cannot but advert to the
notion of a concept in the cultural
aspect. While a mental concept is
treated as a cognitive structure, a “unity of consciousness characterized by a
definite and whole contents” [6]; a linguistic
concept – as a means that identifies and makes the former one clear, then a
cultural concept is “absorbed in the
domain of culture” [6]. A.P. Babushkin attracts his
attention to the idea of a concept as
a “discontinuous meaningful unity of the collective mind that reflects an
object from the real or ideal world and is kept in the national memory of language-speaking
individuals in a verbal way” [1]. A. Wiezbicka remarks that in any natural language there exist equal elementary cultural
concepts (“primitives”). Every set of the primitives should be regarded as
“a single linguistically specific manifestation of the universal fundamental
human being’s set of concepts” [9]. Due to the above mentioned set,
communication between representatives of different cultures is possible.
It is necessary to distinguish a notion
and a concept. The essence of concept is more profound than that one
of notion. Concept is related to
culture domain. “Concept is like a
culture clot in a human consciousness”. Simultaneously, it is “something due to
that a plain individual…penetrates into the domain of culture himself and
sometimes influences it” [5]. In other
words, concept can be
considered to be the main cultural niche in the mental world of a human being. From
the linguistic-cultural perspective, concept
includes notion and amounts to more
than the latter. It embraces all the contents of a word that reflects the idea
of a phenomenon from the view point of individuals belonging to a certain
culture. For instance, in spite of the well-known fact that the objective space
is dismembered, the concept of it is stamped differently in consciousness of
the Russians, Englishmen and Norwegians. The Russian- and Norwegian-speaking
people, unlike the Englishmen, conceive the space as an integral constitution,
a certain extension outspread in all directions. That is proved by the deep
meanings of the words referring to the concept in question. The Russian word “prostranstvo” is
associated with such senses as “forward”, “in breadth”, “outside”, etc.; the
Norwegian “rom”
has some coherence with “expanse”, or “extent”,
as well (for instance, see the noun derived from the archaic Old-German
adjective “ruma”
denoting “roomy”, “wide”). On the contrary, the semantic capacity of the
English “space” has less to do with
“width” and “boundlessness” if for no other reason than its etymological roots are in the Latin “spatum” (from “spatior” – “to
pace”), i.e. the inner semantics of “space”
implies something like “limits”, “evenness”, “flatness” (two-dimensional
space). So, the English “space”
reflects, first of all, motion along the imagined axle “forward – backward”
(“along”), unlike the Russian “prostranstvo” and the Norwegian “rom”, associated with “circular”,
“all-round” horizontal space.
Thus, the linguistic manifistations of the
concept space is quite various in the
consciousnesses of different nations. It is caused by some image apriority of a
nation’s mind that turns out to be a basis of the certain concepts [2].
References:
[1] Babushkin A.P. Types of concepts in lexic-phraseological semantics of language,
[2] Gachev
G.D. National images of the world:
[3] Klepp P.K. På
stier mellom nature and kultur,
[4] Pichkur A.I. National-cultural component
of the semantics of the German and Russian ornitonyms,
Samara, 1998, pp. 98-104 (Russian).
[5] Stepanov Y.S.
Constants. The Dictionary of the Russian Culture, M., 1997,
p.40 (Russian).
[6] Tilman Y.D. Cultural concepts in the
language picture of the world (Poetry by F.I. Tyutchev),
M., 1999, p.28 (Russian).
[7] Toporov V.N. Space and text, M., p. 277-285 (Russian).
[8] Uspensky B.A. Selected works, vol. 1, M.,
1994, p. 6 (Russian).
[9] Wierzbicka A. Semantics, culture and
cognition: Universal human concepts in culture. Specific
configurations,