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Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

State educational institution

Higher professional education

"Chelyabinsk State University» (FGBU VPO "ChelGU")

Faculty of Linguistics and Translation

Department of Romance Languages and Intercultural Communication

On the topic: “Linguistic picture of the world”

Chelyabinsk 2014

Introduction

2. Language as a mirror of culture

4. Conceptual analysis

5. Interrelation of pictures of the world

Conclusion

Introduction

Over the past decades, both in Russia and in the world, there has been an increasing interest in the study of culture from the perspective of linguistics and psycholinguistics, primarily in what lies behind language, behind speech, behind speech activity, i.e., in the person himself as a carrier , as a subject of speech activity. A person, as a bearer of a certain culture and speaking a certain language, is considered in close relationship with the bearer of cultures and languages of the peoples of the world.

The relevance of studying the national and cultural specifics of the picture of the world has recently been recognized by world science and practice, which is in good agreement with the general tendency of various sciences to place culture at the center of theoretical constructions, one way or another related to the study of man. The problem of language and culture concerns the very development of the science of language, which currently is not confined within its own linguistic structure and requires consideration of extralinguistic factors.

A specific study of how linguistic units reflected man himself as a national personality in all the diversity of his manifestations is relevant.

Goals of work:

1) study of the picture of the world and its components;

2) determine the constituent elements of the national linguistic personality;

The practical value of the study is that the results obtained can be used in teaching theoretical and special courses in general and comparative linguistics, typology of languages, psycholinguistics, lexicology, linguoculturology, in the practice of teaching foreign languages and in the compilation of various kinds of dictionaries and teaching aids, and also for developing topics for diploma and term papers.

1. The relationship between language and culture. Language as the basis of culture

From the 19th century to the present day, the problem of the relationship and interaction of language and culture has been one of the central ones in linguistics.

The first attempts to solve this problem are seen in the works of W. Humboldt back in 1895, the main provisions of whose concept can be reduced to the following:

· material and spiritual culture are embodied in language;

· every culture is national, its national character is expressed in language through a special vision of the world;

· language has an internal form specific to each nation. The internal form of the language is an expression of the “national spirit”, its culture;

· language is a mediating link between a person and the world around him.

The idea that language and reality are structurally similar was expressed by L. Elmslev, who noted that the structure of language can be equated to the structure of reality or taken as a more or less deformed reflection of it.

E.F. Tarasov notes that language is included in culture, since the “body” of a sign is a cultural object, in the form of which the linguistic and communicative ability of a person is objectified; the meaning of a sign is also a cultural formation that arises only in human activity. Also, culture is included in the language, since it is all modeled in the text.

Obviously, one will not find culture in a state of uncertainty, since all human societies are composed of human beings who talk, but culture, and in fact this is the case in fact, can be studied in considerable isolation, even more than human the creature is studied in physical anthropology; Meanwhile, linguistics does not study what a human being says, but rather the structure of conversation. What it talks about is called (by both philosophers and semanticists) meaning, but for most anthropologists this is what culture is [Wegelin 1949:36].

Human culture, on the other hand, is not only a repository of isolated acts. Anthropologists (or at least most of them) long ago abandoned the idea that culture is simply a collection of characteristics, acts, and artifacts. Rather, culture is, in the words of Kluckhohn and Kelly, “a historically established system of overt and covert lifestyle patterns that are accepted by all or designated members of a group.” The sum of knowledge acquired by a person in the process of becoming familiar with any culture is an organized (or structured) set of behavior options, from which he selects and uses what is applicable to emerging situations Everyday life. Over time, and especially under the influence of many new situations, for example, during periods of rapid acculturation in a human group, new life arrangements and modifications of previous patterns arose, consciously or unconsciously drawn from the situations and problems faced by group members.

Language fits easily into this concept of culture. Just as culture includes all historically established, structured patterns of behavior that are “accepted by all or designated members of the group,” so language includes patterns colloquial speech with exactly the same attributes. Languages, like other aspects of culture, are diverse and different; Every society has its own language, as well as its own techniques, forms of social and political structure and patterns of economic and religious behavior. Language, like any other aspect of culture, accumulates and constantly transforms “the gigantic and anonymous subconscious work of many generations” [Sapir 1921:235]. Finally, it is absolutely impossible to imagine the origin or development of culture separately from language, for language is such a part of culture that, to a greater extent than any other, enables a person not only to acquire own experience in the process of continuous learning, but also to benefit from the past or present experience and knowledge of other people who are or have been members of the group. To the extent that culture as a whole consists of generally understood elements, its linguistic aspect is its most vital and necessary part.

2. Language as a mirror of culture

Language is a mirror of the surrounding world, it reflects reality and creates its own picture of the world, specific and unique for each language and, accordingly, people, ethnic group, speech group that uses this language as a means of communication. It is possible to compare language to a mirror: it truly reflects the world around us. Behind every word there is an object or phenomenon of the real world. Language reflects everything: geography, climate, history, living conditions. But between language and the real world stands man.

It is a person who perceives and understands the world through the senses and on this basis creates a system of ideas about the world. Having passed them through his consciousness, having comprehended the results of this perception, he transmits them to other members of his speech community using language. In other words, thinking stands between reality and language. The word reflects not the object of reality itself, but the vision of it, which is imposed on the native speaker by the idea, the concept, of this object in his consciousness. The concept is compiled at the level of generalization of certain basic features that form this concept, and therefore represents an abstraction, an abstraction from specific features. The path from the real world to a concept and then to verbal expression is different for different nations, which is due to differences in history, geography, peculiarities of life of these peoples and, accordingly, differences in the development of their social consciousness. Since our consciousness is conditioned both collectively (way of life, customs, traditions, etc., that is, by everything that was defined above by the word culture in its broad, ethnographic sense) and individually (by the specific perception of the world characteristic of this particular individual) , then language reflects reality not directly, but through two zigzags: from the real world to thinking and from thinking to language.

Thus, language, thinking and culture are so closely interconnected that they practically constitute a single whole consisting of these three components, none of which can function (and, therefore, exist) without the other two. All together they relate to the real world, oppose it, depend on it, reflect and at the same time shape it.

3. The concept of a linguistic picture of the world

In the modern understanding, a picture of the world is a kind of portrait of the universe, it is a kind of copy of the Universe, which involves a description of how the world works, what laws it is governed by, what underlies it and how it develops, what space and time look like, how they interact are various objects, what place a person occupies in this world, etc. The most complete picture of the world is given by its scientific picture, which is based on the most important scientific achievements and organizes our knowledge about the various properties and patterns of existence. We can say that this is a unique form of systematization of knowledge, it is a holistic and at the same time complex structure, which can include both a general scientific picture of the world and pictures of the world of individual special sciences, which in turn can be based on a number of different concepts, and concepts constantly updated and modified.

There are three directions in the study and picture of the world:

· Philosophical (from Hegel to the present day);

· Psychological or psycholinguistic (L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, etc.);

· Linguistic (Yu.N. Karaulov, Yu.S. Stepanov, etc.).

The concept of a picture of the world has become central in a number of sciences such as cultural studies, ethnography, psychology, and linguistics. The idea of the picture of the world as some kind of summary knowledge is traditional. The very concept of a picture of the world is not always interpreted unambiguously, as philosophers, psychologists, neurophysiologists, and psycholinguists refer to it. [Zotova M.E. 2013: 8].

The very concept of a linguistic picture of the world (but not the term that names it) goes back to the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt, an outstanding German philologist, philosopher and statesman. Considering the relationship between language and thinking, Humboldt came to the conclusion that thinking not only depends on language in general, but to a certain extent it depends on each specific language. He, of course, was well aware of attempts to create universal sign systems, similar to those available, for example, in mathematics. Humboldt does not deny that a certain number of words of different languages can be “reduced to a common denominator,” but in the overwhelming majority of cases this is impossible: the individuality of different languages is manifested in everything - from the alphabet to ideas about the world; a huge number of concepts and grammatical features of one language often cannot be preserved when translated into another language without converting them.

Cognition and language mutually determine each other, and moreover: according to Humboldt, languages are not just a means of depicting already known truth, but a tool for discovering the still unknown, and in general, language is an “organ that forms thought”, it is not just a means of communication, but It is also an expression of the speaker’s spirit and worldview. Through the variety of languages, the richness of the world and the diversity of what we learn in it are revealed to us, since different languages give us different ways of thinking and perceiving the reality around us. The famous metaphor proposed by Humboldt in this regard is that of circles: in his opinion, each language describes a circle around the nation it serves, the boundaries of which a person can only go beyond insofar as he immediately enters the circle of another language. Learning a foreign language is therefore the acquisition of a new point of view in a given individual’s already established worldview.

And all this is possible because human language is a special world, which is located between the external world that exists independently of us and the internal world that is contained within us. This thesis of Humboldt, voiced in 1806, a little over a hundred years later will turn into the most important neo-Humboldtian postulate about language as an intermediate world (Zwischenwelt).

The merit of L. Weisgerber lies in the fact that he introduced the concept of “linguistic picture of the world” into the scientific terminological system. This concept determined the originality of his linguo-philosophical concept, along with the “intermediate world” and the “energy” of language.

The main characteristics of the linguistic picture of the world, which L. Weisgerber endows it with, are the following:

· the linguistic picture of the world is a system of all possible contents: spiritual, which determine the uniqueness of the culture and mentality of a given linguistic community, and linguistic, which determine the existence and functioning of the language itself;

language culture linguistic specific

· the linguistic picture of the world, on the one hand, is a consequence of the historical development of ethnicity and language, and, on the other hand, is the reason for the unique path of their further development;

· the linguistic picture of the world as a single “living organism” is clearly structured and in linguistic terms is multi-level. It determines a special set of sounds and sound combinations, structural features of the articulatory apparatus of native speakers, prosodic characteristics of speech, vocabulary, word-formation capabilities of the language and the syntax of phrases and sentences, as well as its own paremiological baggage. In other words, the linguistic picture of the world determines the overall communicative behavior, understanding of the external world of nature and the internal world of man and the language system;

· the linguistic picture of the world is changeable over time and, like any “living organism,” is subject to development, that is, in the vertical (diachronic) sense, at each subsequent stage of development it is partly non-identical to itself;

· the linguistic picture of the world creates the homogeneity of the linguistic essence, helping to consolidate its linguistic, and therefore cultural, uniqueness in the vision of the world and its designation by means of language;

· the linguistic picture of the world exists in a homogeneous, unique self-awareness of the linguistic community and is transmitted to subsequent generations through a special worldview, rules of behavior, way of life, imprinted by means of language;

· the picture of the world of any language is the transformative power of language, which forms the idea of the surrounding world through language as an “intermediate world” among speakers of this language;

· the linguistic picture of the world of a particular linguistic community is its general cultural heritage

So, the concept of a linguistic picture of the world includes two related but different ideas:

· that the picture of the world offered by language differs from the “scientific” one (in this sense the term “ naive picture peace").

· that each language “paints” its own picture, depicting reality somewhat differently than other languages do.

The scientific picture of the world differs significantly from the religious concepts of the universe: the basis of the scientific picture is an experiment, thanks to which it is possible to confirm or refute the reliability of certain judgments; and at the heart of the religious picture lies faith (in sacred texts, in the words of the prophets, etc.).

The naive picture of the world reflects the material and spiritual experience of any people speaking a particular language; it can differ quite significantly from the scientific picture, which in no way depends on the language and can be common to different peoples. The naive picture is formed under the influence of the cultural values and traditions of a particular nation, relevant in a certain historical era and is reflected, first of all, in language - in its words and forms. Using words in speech that carry certain meanings in their meanings, a speaker of a certain language, without realizing it, accepts and shares a certain view of the world.

Reconstruction of the linguistic picture of the world is one of the most important tasks of modern linguistic semantics. The study of the linguistic picture of the world is carried out in two directions, in accordance with the two named components of this concept. On the one hand, based on a systematic semantic analysis of the vocabulary of a certain language, a reconstruction of an integral system of ideas reflected in a given language is carried out, regardless of whether it is specific to a given language or universal, reflecting a “naive” view of the world as opposed to a “scientific” one. On the other hand, individual concepts characteristic of a given language are studied, that is, linguistically specific concepts that have two properties: firstly, they are “key” for a given culture, since they provide a “key” to its understanding, and secondly, at the same time corresponding words are poorly translated into other languages: there is either no translation equivalent at all, for example, for the Russian words avos, daring, restless, ashamed; or such an equivalent exists in principle, but it does not contain exactly those components of meaning that are for of this word specific, for example, Russian words soul, fate, pity, gather, get, as it were. In recent years, a direction has been developing in semantics that integrates both approaches; its goal is to reconstruct the Russian language picture of the world on the basis of a comprehensive (linguistic, cultural, semiotic) analysis of linguistic-specific concepts of the Russian language in an intercultural perspective.

4. Conceptual analysis

One of the common methods for reconstructing the linguistic picture of the world is the analysis of the metaphorical compatibility of words of abstract semantics, identifying a “sensually perceived”, “concrete” image, which is compared in the naive picture of the world to a given “abstract” concept and ensures the admissibility in the language of a certain class of phrases, which are also called "metaphorical". So, for example, from the existence in the Russian language of combinations such as: melancholy is gnawing at him, melancholy is stuck, melancholy has attacked - we can conclude that “melancholy” in the Russian linguistic picture of the world appears as a kind of predatory beast. This technique was first independently applied in the book by N.D. Arutyunova “The Sentence and its Meaning”, in the article by V.A. Uspensky “On the thing connotations of abstract nouns”, as well as in the famous book by J. Lakoff and M. Johnson “Metaphors by which we live”.

Expressions like “gnawed by melancholy” or “crushed with grief” introduce two situations into consideration: one, “invisible”, “abstract”, the idea of which we want to convey (i.e., which is our “goal”), and the other, “visible” ", "specific", similarity to which is a "source" of information, a means of creating the desired idea.

To imagine means to “put before oneself” in order to see. This is why a metaphor is needed: in order to imagine something that is difficult or impossible to see, we imagine something that is easy to see and say that “that” is similar to “that.” However, it is rarely the case that some abstract object is in all respects similar to some concrete object. Much more often, the invisible object being sought has several properties, and yet a specific, “imaginable” object with the same set of properties cannot be found. In this case, each property, being an even more abstract and invisible entity, seems to “grow” into a separate object by which it is represented. So, for example, grief and despair, on the one hand, and reflections and memories, on the other, have a certain property that is represented by the image of a reservoir: the first two can be deep, and a person plunges into the second two. If we try to describe this property without using a metaphor (which turns out to be much more difficult), then, apparently, it consists in the fact that the listed internal states make contact with the outside world inaccessible for a person - as if he were at the bottom of a reservoir. Another property of the listed internal states is represented by the image of a living being that has power over the subject or subjects him to violence. Reflections and memories, in addition, can surge (the image of a wave) - here the water element appears again, but it represents a different property: the suddenness of the onset of these states (plus the idea of complete absorption - about the same as being submerged).

Thus, each abstract name brings to life the idea not of one specific object, but of a whole series of different objects, simultaneously possessing the properties represented by each of them. In other words, an analysis of the compatibility of a word of abstract semantics makes it possible to identify a whole series of different and irreducible images associated with it in everyday consciousness. Thus, the idea that conscience is a “little rodent”, restored on the basis of combinations with the verbs gnaw, bite, scratch, sink teeth; remorse (the idea of "small" seems to arise from the fact that conscience in these contexts is thought of as being within a person), reflects the property of conscience to deliver a certain kind of discomfort. What specific kind can only be described through comparison: as if someone small is biting or scratching you. The combinations clear or unclean conscience, “stain on conscience” are based on an image that represents another property of conscience: to direct a person’s actions away from evil (represented by the image of something unclean). Finally, compatibility with the verbs speak, command, exhort, doze, awaken, expressions of reproaches of conscience, voice of conscience, etc., based on the likening of conscience to a person, reflect another property of conscience - its ability to control thoughts, feelings and actions. Perhaps conscience can have some other properties that are represented by other objects.

5. Interrelation of pictures of the world

Modern authors define the picture of the world as “a global image of the world that underlies a person’s worldview, that is, expressing the essential properties of the world in the understanding of a person as a result of his spiritual and cognitive activity” [Postovalova 2001:21]. But the “world” should be understood not only as a visual reality, or surrounding a person reality, but as consciousness-reality in a harmonious symbiosis of their unity for man.

The picture of the world is the central concept of a person’s concept and expresses the specifics of his existence. The concept of a picture of the world is one of the fundamental concepts that express the specifics of human existence, its relationship with the world, the most important conditions of its existence in the world. The picture of the world is a holistic image of the world, which is the result of all human activity. It arises in a person during all his contacts and interactions with the outside world. This can be everyday contacts with the world, and objective - practical human activity. Since all aspects of a person’s mental activity take part in the formation of a picture of the world, starting with sensations, perceptions, ideas and ending with a person’s thinking, it is very difficult to talk about any one process associated with the formation of a person’s picture of the world. A person contemplates the world, comprehends it, feels, cognizes, reflects. As a result of these processes, a person develops an image of the world, or worldview.

“Imprints” of the picture of the world can be found in language, in gestures, in the visual arts, music, rituals, etiquette, things, facial expressions, and in people’s behavior. The picture of the world forms the type of person’s relationship to the world - nature, other people, sets the norms of human behavior in the world, determines his attitude to life (Apresyan 1998:45).

As for the reflection of the picture of the world in language, the introduction of the concept of “picture of the world” into anthropological linguistics makes it possible to distinguish two types of human influence on language:

· the influence of psychophysiological and other types of human characteristics on the constitutive properties of language;

· influence on the language of various pictures of the world - religious-mythological, philosophical, scientific, artistic.

Language is directly involved in two processes related to the picture of the world. Firstly, in its depths a linguistic picture of the world is formed, one of the deepest layers of a person’s picture of the world. Secondly, the language itself expresses and explicates other pictures of the human world, which, through special vocabulary, enter the language, introducing into it the features of a person and his culture. With the help of language, the experiential knowledge acquired by individuals is transformed into a collective property, collective experience. Each of the pictures of the world, which, as a displayed fragment of the world, represents language as a special phenomenon, sets its own vision of language and in its own way determines the principle of operation of language. Studying and comparing different visions of language through the prisms of different pictures of the world can offer linguistics new ways to penetrate into the nature of language and its knowledge.

The linguistic picture of the world is usually distinguished from the conceptual or cognitive model of the world, which is the basis of linguistic embodiment, verbal conceptualization of the totality of human knowledge about the world. The linguistic or naive picture of the world is also usually interpreted as a reflection of everyday, philistine ideas about the world. The idea of a naive model of the world is as follows: every natural language reflects a certain way of perceiving the world, which is imposed as mandatory on all speakers of the language. Yu.D. Apresyan calls the linguistic picture of the world naive in the sense that scientific definitions and linguistic interpretations do not always coincide in scope and even content [Apresyan 1998:357]. The conceptual picture of the world or the “model” of the world, in contrast to the linguistic one, is constantly changing, reflecting the results of cognitive and social activity, but individual fragments of the linguistic picture of the world retain for a long time the vestigial, relict ideas of people about the universe.

Epistemological, cultural and other features of linguistic conceptualization are closely interconnected, and their delimitation is always conditional and approximate. This applies both to the differences in the methods of nomination and to the specifics of the linguistic division of the world.

It should be taken into account that the perception of a particular situation, of a particular object is also directly dependent on the subject of perception, on his background knowledge, experience, expectations, on where he himself is located and what is directly in his field of vision. This, in turn, makes it possible to describe the same situation from different points of view and perspectives, which undoubtedly expands the understanding of it. No matter how subjective the process of “constructing the world” may be, it nevertheless most directly involves taking into account the most diverse objective aspects of the situation, the real state of affairs in the world; the consequence of this process is the creation of a “subjective image of the objective world”

When assessing the picture of the world, one should understand that it is not a reflection of the world and not a window into the world, but it is a person’s interpretation of the world around him, a way of understanding the world. “Language is by no means a simple mirror of the world, and therefore it records not only what is perceived, but also what is meaningful, conscious, and interpreted by a person” [Kubryakova 1967:95]. This means that the world for a person is not only what he perceived through his senses. On the contrary, a more or less significant part of this world consists of the subjective results of human interpretation of what is perceived. Therefore, it is legitimate to say that language is a “mirror of the world,” but this mirror is not ideal: it represents the world not directly, but in the subjective cognitive refraction of a community of people.

There are many interpretations of the concept “linguistic picture of the world”. This is due to the existing discrepancies in the worldviews of different languages, since the perception of the surrounding world depends on the cultural and national characteristics of the speakers of a particular language. Each of the pictures of the world sets its own vision of language, so it is very important to distinguish between the concepts of “scientific (conceptual) picture of the world” and “linguistic (naive) picture of the world.”

6. Russian linguistic picture of the world

Pictures of the world drawn by different languages are similar in some ways and different in others. Differences between language pictures reveal themselves, first of all, in linguistic-specific words that are not translated into other languages and contain concepts specific to a given language. The study of linguistically specific words in their interrelation and in an intercultural perspective allows us today to talk about the restoration of quite significant fragments of the Russian linguistic picture of the world and the ideas that constitute them.

As many researchers note (in particular, N.I. Tolstoy, A.D. Shmelev), the Russian linguistic picture of the world is characterized by the opposition of the “sublime” and the “mundane,” “the world above” and the “world below”, simultaneously with a clear preference for the first . A whole series of important concepts exist in the Russian language in two forms, which are sometimes even called by different words - cf. the following pairs of words, contrasted, in particular, on the basis of “high” - “low”: true And Truth,duty And duty,good And good. A striking example This kind of value polarization can be served by a couple joy is pleasure.

Between words joy And pleasure There are many differences, among which two are the main ones, determining all the others. The first is that joy- this is a feeling, and pleasure just a “positive sensory-physiological reaction.” The second and most important thing is that joy refers to the “high”, spiritual world, while pleasure refers to the “low”, profane, bodily world. Moreover, since the opposition “soul - body” is already included in the system of other axiologically significant oppositions (high - low, heavenly - earthly, sacred - profane, internal - external, etc.), the corresponding distribution occurs in the pair joy - pleasure.

Regarding the place of intelligence in the Russian linguistic picture of the world, the following can be said. The absence of a concept in it that is comparable in significance to soul(the significance of the concept is manifested, in particular, in its elaboration, i.e. the richness of metaphors and idioms. But the main thing is that mind in the Russian linguistic consciousness is of relatively low value. In the famous poem by Tyutchev You can't understand Russia with your mind... contains not only a corresponding explicit statement, but also a hidden implication (arising from the comparison with the next line “a common yardstick cannot be measured”) - that true knowledge is not achieved by the mind. That is, the knowledge that is truly valuable is localized in soul or in heart, not in head.

Comparison of Russian words happy,happiness and English happy, happiness shows that the differences between them are so significant that their equivalence is generally questionable. According to A. Wierzbicka, the word happy is an “everyday word” in English language, and happiness refers to “the emotion that is associated with a ‘real’ smile.” According to supporters of the theory of “basic emotions”, identified on the basis of the corresponding universal features of facial expressions, these include the emotion denoted in English by the word happiness.

Whereas Russian happiness is in no way an “everyday word”: it belongs to the “high” register and carries a very strong emotional charge. Not in any sense happiness is not one of the “basic emotions” in Russian. Unlike the English happy, which states that a person’s state corresponds to a certain standard of emotional well-being, the Russian word happy describes a condition that is definitely deviating from the norm. Happiness belongs to the sphere of the ideal and in reality unattainable (cf. Pushkinskoe There is no happiness in the world...); is somewhere close to the “meaning of life” and other fundamental and incomprehensible categories of existence.

It is often noted that the boundaries between times of day do not coincide in the minds of speakers of different languages. So, for those who speak English or French morning is the part of the day from midnight to noon (for example, one in the morning), whereas for Russian speakers the time immediately following midnight is night, not morning: we say one o'clock in the morning, but not one o'clock in the morning. However, the differences do not end there: the peculiarity of the Russian linguistic picture of the world is that the time of day in it is determined by the activities that fill it.

The Russian language has means for very detailed designation of the first part of the day: in the morning,in the morning,since morning,in the morning,by the morning,in the morning,this morning,in the morning, etc. At the same time, as it turns out, when deciding which one to choose, we take into account, in particular, what the person was doing during, before and after this time of day. Yes, we can say Tomorrow morning I would like to run to the river for a swim - despite the fact that the phrase Tomorrow in the morning I would like to sleep longer sounds a little strange. Really, in the morning You can only engage in some kind of active activity. In the morning expresses readiness and desire to begin daily activities, which begin in the morning; hence the shade of cheerfulness and Have a good mood. Expressions the next morning,in the morning And since morning are used when we talk about situations that have just arisen or have resumed after a break for the night. On the contrary, expressions in the morning And by the morning only acceptable when we're talking about about something that lasted all night. So, if we say that someone drank wine in the evening,and in the morning - cognac, this means that in drinking alcoholic drinks there was a break (most likely for sleep), but if you say We drank wine in the evening,and in the morning - cognac, this will mean that they drank without a break or, in any case, did not go to bed.

So, the designation of the time of day in the Russian linguistic picture of the world depends on what kind of activity it is filled with, in contrast to the Western European model, where, on the contrary, the nature of the activity that should be performed is determined by the time of day. “Now we will have breakfast: every thing has its time,” says the heroine of the opera Cavalier of Roses in response to the rush of passion that gripped her young lover in the morning.

Maybe,I guess somehow. One of the main ideological components of the Russian linguistic picture of the world is the idea of the unpredictability of the world: a person can neither foresee the future nor influence it. This idea is implemented in several versions. On the one hand, it is included in the meaning of a number of specific words and expressions related to the problem of probability, such as but what if?, just in case, just in case, as well as in the famous Russian maybe, which has recently become obsolete. All these words are based on the idea that the future cannot be predicted; therefore, one can neither completely insure against troubles nor exclude the possibility that, contrary to all probability, something good will happen. On the other hand, the idea of the unpredictability of the world turns into unpredictability of the result, including the result of one’s own actions.

Verb going to is one of the very characteristic and difficult to translate words of the Russian language. In modern language it is very frequent, especially in colloquial speech. Most striking feature going to is as follows. Although this verb indicates primarily a certain mental state subject, the idea of process is quite strong in him. This is partly due to the connection with other meanings going to, compare: Letting down your hair,I sat on the bed for a long time,everyone is going to decide something,then she closed her eyes,leaning on the pillow,and suddenly fell asleep(I. Bunin).

The process implied by the verb going to, can partly be understood as a process of mobilizing internal and sometimes even external resources. However, to a much greater extent going to implies a purely metaphysical process that does not have any tangible manifestations. The idea of such a process is the specificity of Russian going to and distinguishes it both from similar words of the Russian language ( mean,intends), and from its equivalents in European languages (which correspond rather to mean, than with going to), cf. English to intend(and to be going to).

Conclusion

The study of the linguistic picture of the world is currently also relevant for solving problems of translation and communication, since translation is carried out not just from one language to another language, but from one culture to another. Even the concept of speech culture is now interpreted quite broadly: it is understood not only as compliance with specific language norms, but also as the speaker’s ability to correctly formulate his own thoughts and adequately interpret the interlocutor’s speech, which in some cases also requires knowledge and awareness of the specifics of a particular worldview contained in linguistic forms.

The concept of a linguistic picture of the world also plays an important role in applied research related to solving problems within the framework of theories of artificial intelligence: it has now become clear that a computer’s understanding of natural language requires understanding the knowledge and ideas about the world structured in this language, which is often associated not only with logical reasoning or with a large amount of knowledge and experience, but also with the presence in each language of unique metaphors - not just linguistic ones, but metaphors that are forms of thoughts and require correct interpretations.

The linguistic picture of the world reflects the everyday-empirical, cultural or historical experience of a certain linguistic community. It should be noted that researchers approach the consideration of the national-cultural specifics of certain aspects or fragments of the picture of the world from different positions: some take the source language as the source language, analyze the established facts of interlingual similarities or divergences through the prism of linguistic systematicity and talk about the linguistic picture of the world; for others, the starting point is culture, the linguistic consciousness of members of a certain linguistic and cultural community, and the focus is on the image of the world. The picture of the world is the central concept of a person’s concept and expresses the specifics of his existence. The picture of the world forms the type of person’s relationship to the world - nature, other people, sets the norms of human behavior in the world, determines his attitude to life

Based on the above, we can say that language acts as a mirror of national culture, its guardian. Linguistic units, primarily words, record content that, to one degree or another, goes back to the living conditions of the people who are native speakers of the language. In the English languages we are analyzing, as in any other, the so-called national-cultural semantics of the language is important and interesting, i.e. those linguistic meanings that reflect, record and transmit from generation to generation the features of nature, the nature of the economy and social structure of the country, its folklore, fiction, art, science, as well as features of life, customs and history of the people.

It can be argued that the national-cultural semantics of a language is a product of history, which also includes the past of culture. And the richer the history of a people, the brighter and more meaningful the structural units of the language.

List of used literature

1. Vezhbitskaya A. Language, culture, knowledge. M., 1996.

2. Levontina I.B., Shmelev A.D. Russian “at the same time” as an expression of life position. - 1996.

3. A.A. Zaliznyak, I.B. Levontina and A.D. Shmelev. Key ideas of the Russian language picture of the world, 2005.

4. Shmelev A.D. The lexical composition of the Russian language as a reflection of the “Russian soul”.

5. E. Sapir. "The status of linguistics as a science", 1993

6. Penkovsky A.B. “Joy” and “pleasure” in the presentation of the Russian language", 1991.

7. http://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/gumanitarnye_nauki/lingvistika/YAZIKOVAYA_KARTINA_MIRA.html

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Section 1. Theoretical foundations of the concept of “linguistic picture of the world”

Weisgerber's theory of linguistic worldview

The theory of the linguistic picture of the world (Weltbild der Sprache) was built by the German scientist Leo Weisgerber based on the teachings of Wilhelm Humboldt “On the Internal Form of Language”. Weisgerber began developing the concept of “linguistic picture of the world” in the early 30s of the 20th century. In the article “The connection between the native language, thinking and action” (Die Zusammenhange zwischen Muttersprache, Denken und Handeln) (1930), L. Weisgerber wrote that the vocabulary of a particular language includes the totality of conceptual mental means that the linguistic community has at its disposal. As each native speaker learns this vocabulary, all members of the language community master these means of thinking, so we can conclude that the native language contains in its concepts a certain picture of the world and conveys it to members of the language community.

L. Weisgerber had used the term “picture of the world” before (for example, he used it in his monograph “Native Language and the Formation of the Spirit,” published in 1929), but in it he had not yet attributed this term to language as such. He pointed out that the “picture of the world” plays only a stimulating role of language in relation to the formation of a unified picture of the world in a person. The scientist wrote: “It (language) allows a person to combine all experience into a single picture of the world and makes him forget how before, before he learned the language, he perceived the world around him.”

In the above-mentioned article of 1930, L. Weisgerber already directly inscribes the picture of the world into the language itself, making it its fundamental accessory. But in it the picture of the world is still being introduced only into the vocabulary of the language, and not into the language as a whole. In the article “Language” (Sprache), published in 1931, he takes a new step in connecting the concept of a picture of the world with language, namely, he inscribes it into the content side of language as a whole. “In the language of a particular community,” he writes, “spiritual content lives and influences, a treasure of knowledge, which is rightly called the picture of the world of a particular language.”

It is important to emphasize that in the 30s L. Weisgerber did not place excessive emphasis on the ideological side of the linguistic picture of the world. Only with time does he leave aside objective basis linguistic picture of the world and will begin to emphasize its worldview, subjective-national, “idioethnic” side, stemming from the fact that each language presents a special point of view on the world - the point of view from which the people who created this language looked at it. The world itself, according to the scientist, will always remain in the shadow of this point of view. Since the 50s, the scientist has identified in the linguistic picture of the world its “energetic” (from “energy” by W. Humboldt) aspect associated with the impact of the picture of the world contained in a particular language on the cognitive and practical activities of its speakers, while in the 30s, he focused on the “ergonic” (from “ergon” by W. Humboldt) aspect of the linguistic picture of the world.

The scientific evolution of L. Weisgerber in relation to the concept of the linguistic picture of the world went in the direction from indicating its objective-universal basis to emphasizing its subjective-national nature. That is why, starting from the 50s, he began to place more and more emphasis on the “energetic” definition of the linguistic picture of the world, since the impact of language on a person, from his point of view, primarily stems from the originality of his linguistic picture of the world, and not from its universal components.

The more in the shadow L. Weisgereber left the objective factor in the formation of the linguistic picture of the world - the external world, the more he turned language into a kind of “creator of the world”. A peculiar reversal of the relationship between the external world and language can be found in Weisgerber’s solution to the question of the relationship between the scientific and linguistic pictures of the world. He did not follow here the path of Ernst Cassirer, who in his “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms” found a completely balanced position in resolving this issue, believing that the scientist’s job, among other things, is to free himself from the bonds of language, with the help of which he comprehends the object of his research to reach it as such. At the same time, he placed language on the same level as myth. “...philosophical knowledge is forced first of all to free itself from the bonds of language and myth,” wrote E. Cassirer, “it must push away these witnesses of human imperfection before it can soar into the pure ether of thought.”

Cassirer recognized the power of language over scientific consciousness. But he recognized it only at the initial stage of a scientist’s activity aimed at researching a particular subject. He wrote: “...the starting point of all theoretical knowledge is the world already formed by language: a natural scientist, a historian, and even a philosopher initially sees objects as the language presents them to them.” Here it is important to emphasize the word “at first” and point out that the scientist must strive, according to E. Cassirer, to overcome the power of language over his research consciousness. Explaining the idea of the unacceptability in science of many ideas about the world enshrined in language, E. Cassirer wrote: “Scientific knowledge, nurtured on linguistic concepts, cannot but strive to leave them, since it puts forward the requirement of necessity and universality, to which languages, as carriers of certain diverse worldviews, I cannot and should not correspond.”

Regarding the solution to the issue of the relationship between science and language, L. Weisgerber formed his own opinion. To facilitate understanding of the issue of the influence of language on science, Weisgerber needed to bring them closer together, to show that the difference between them is not as great as it might seem at first glance to an inexperienced person. He tried to dispel the “prejudice” that science is free from idioethnicism and that the universal reigns in it. He wrote about scientific knowledge: “It is universal in the sense that it is independent of spatial and temporal contingencies and that its results are in the sense adequate to the structure of the human spirit that all people are forced to recognize a certain course of scientific thinking... This is the goal to which science strives , but which has not been achieved anywhere.” According to the researcher, there is something that prevents science from being universal. “The connection of science with prerequisites and communities,” wrote Weisgerber, “that do not have a universal human scale.” It is this connection that “entails the corresponding restrictions on truth.”

According to Weisgerber's reasoning, we can conclude that if people were deprived of their ethnic and individual characteristics, they would be able to get to the truth, and since they do not have this opportunity, they will never be able to achieve complete universality. It would seem that from these reflections a scientist would have to conclude that people (and scientists in particular) should at least strive to free their consciousness from the subjectivism arising from their individuality. E. Cassirer came to this conclusion in resolving the issue of the relationship between science and language. But L. Weisgerber thought differently.

From his point of view, attempts by people (including scientists) to free themselves from the power of their native language are always doomed to failure. This was the main postulate of his philosophy of language. He did not recognize the objective (languageless, non-verbal) path of knowledge. From these premises followed his solution to the question of the relationship between science and language: since science is not able to free itself from the influence of language, then it is necessary to turn language into its ally.

On the issue of the relationship between scientific and linguistic pictures of the world, L. Weisgerber was the predecessor of B. Whorf. Like the latter, the German scientist proposed ultimately to build a scientific picture of the world based on the linguistic one. But there is also a difference between L. Weisgerber and B. Whorf. If the American scientist tried to place science in complete subordination to language, the German recognized this subordination only partially - only where the scientific picture of the world lags behind the linguistic one.

Weissgerber understood language as an “intermediate world” (Zwischenwelt) between man and the outside world. By man here we must also mean a scientist, who, like everyone else, is not able to research activities to free himself from the bonds imposed on him by the picture of the world contained in his native language. He is doomed to see the world through the prism of his native language. He is doomed to explore the subject in those directions that his native language predicts for him.

However, Weisgerber allowed the relative freedom of human consciousness from the linguistic picture of the world, but within its own framework. In other words, in principle, no one can free themselves from the linguistic picture of the world that exists in the mind, but within the framework of this picture itself we can allow ourselves some movements that make us individuals. But the uniqueness of the individual that L. Weisgerber is talking about here is always limited by the national specifics of his linguistic picture of the world. That is why a Frenchman will always see the world from his language window, a Russian from his, a Chinese from his, etc. That is why, like E. Sapir, L. Weisgerber could say that people speaking different languages live in different worlds, and not at all in the same world, which is only labeled with different language labels.

L. Weisgerber resorted to many lexical examples to show the ideological dependence of a person on his native language. You can cite the following one, in which Weisgerber answers the question of how the world of stars is formed in our minds. Objectively, from his point of view, no constellations exist, since what we call constellations actually look like clusters of stars only from our earthly point of view. In reality, the stars that we arbitrarily combine into one “constellation” can be located at enormous distances from each other. Nevertheless, the starry world in our minds looks like a system of constellations. Worldview-wise, the creative power of language in this case lies in those names that are available in our native language for the corresponding constellations. It is they who force us, from childhood, to create our own world of stars in our minds, since, learning these names from adults, we are forced to adopt ideas associated with them. But, since different languages have an unequal number of star names, it follows that their speakers will have different star worlds. Thus, in Greek L. Weisgerber found only 48 names, and in Chinese - 283. That is why the Greek has his own star world, and the Chinese have his own.

The situation is similar, according to Weisgerber, with all other classifications that exist in the world picture of a particular language. It is they who ultimately give a person the picture of the world that is contained in his native language.

Recognizing the high authority of Leo Weisgerber as the author of a very deep and subtly developed concept of the linguistic picture of the world, modern scientists, however, cannot accept its author’s idea that the power of the native language over a person cannot be absolutely irresistible. Without denying the influence of the linguistic picture of the world on human thinking, it is necessary, at the same time, to point out the possibility of a non-linguistic (non-verbal) path of cognition, in which it is not the language, but the object itself that sets this or that direction of thought. Thus, the linguistic picture of the world ultimately influences the worldview, but it is shaped by the world itself, on the one hand, and a conceptual point of view on it, independent of language, on the other.

Sapir–Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity (from the Latin lingua - language) is an assumption put forward in the works of E. Sapir and B. Whorf, according to which the processes of perception and thinking are determined by the ethnospecific features of the structure of language. Certain linguistic structures and vocabulary connections, acting on an unconscious level, lead to the creation of a typical picture of the world, which is inherent in the speakers of a given language and which acts as a scheme for cataloging individual experience. The grammatical structure of a language imposes a way of highlighting elements of the surrounding reality.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), the thesis according to which the systems of concepts that exist in a person’s mind, and, consequently, the essential features of his thinking, are determined by the specific language of which that person is a speaker.

Linguistic relativity is the central concept of ethnolinguistics, a branch of linguistics that studies language in its relationship with culture. The doctrine of relativity (“relativism”) in linguistics arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. in line with relativism as a general methodological principle, which found its expression in both the natural and human sciences, in which this principle was transformed into the assumption that the sensory perception of reality is determined by human mental representations. Mental representations, in turn, can change under the influence of linguistic and cultural systems. Since the historical experience of its speakers is concentrated in a particular language and, more broadly, in a particular culture, the mental representations of speakers of different languages may not coincide.

The simplest examples of how languages conceptualize extralinguistic reality differently are often cited fragments of lexical systems such as names of body parts, kinship terms, or color naming systems. For example, in Russian, to designate immediate relatives of the same generation as the speaker, two different words are used depending on the gender of the relative - brother and sister. IN Japanese this fragment of the system of kinship terms suggests a more detailed division: an indication of the relative age of the relative is mandatory; in other words, instead of two words meaning “brother” and “sister”, four are used: ani “elder brother”, ane “elder sister”, otooto “younger brother”, imooto “younger sister”. In addition, the Japanese language also has a word with the collective meaning kyoodai “brother or sister”, “brothers and/or sisters”, denoting the closest relative(s) of the same generation as the speaker, regardless of gender and age (similar general names are also found in European languages, for example, English sibling "brother or sister"). We can say that the way of conceptualizing the world, which is used by a native speaker of Japanese, involves a more detailed conceptual classification compared to the way of conceptualization, which is given by the Russian language.

IN different periods In the history of linguistics, problems of differences in the linguistic conceptualization of the world were posed, first of all, in connection with particular practical and theoretical problems of translation from one language to another, as well as within the framework of such a discipline as hermeneutics. The fundamental possibility of translation from one language to another, as well as an adequate interpretation of ancient written texts, is based on the assumption that there is a certain system of ideas that are universal for speakers of all human languages and cultures, or at least shared by speakers of that pair of languages with which and to which the transfer is carried out. The closer the linguistic and cultural systems are, the greater the chances of adequately conveying in the target language what was included in the conceptual schemes of the original language. Conversely, significant cultural and linguistic differences make it possible to see in which cases the choice of linguistic expression is determined not so much by the objective properties of the extra-linguistic reality they denote, but by the framework of intralingual convention: it is precisely such cases that do not lend themselves or are difficult to translate and interpret. It is therefore clear that relativism in linguistics received a powerful impetus in connection with the emergence in the second half of the 19th century. the task of studying and describing “exotic” languages and cultures that are sharply different from European ones, primarily the languages and cultures of the American Indians.

Linguistic relativity as a scientific concept originates from the works of the founders of ethnolinguistics - American anthropologist Franz Boas, his student Edward Sapir and the latter's student Benjamin Whorf. In its most radical form, which went down in the history of linguistics under the name “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” and became the subject of ongoing discussions to this day, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity was formulated by Whorf, or rather, attributed to him on the basis of a number of his statements and spectacular examples contained in his articles. In fact, Whorf accompanied these statements with a number of reservations, while Sapir did not have such categorical formulations at all.

Boas's idea of the classifying and systematizing function of language was based on a seemingly trivial consideration: the number of grammatical indicators in a particular language is relatively small, the number of words in a particular language is large, but also finite, and the number of phenomena denoted by a given language is infinite. Therefore, language is used to refer to classes of phenomena rather than to each phenomenon individually. Each language carries out classification in its own way. During classification, language narrows the universal conceptual space, selecting from it those components that are recognized as the most significant within a particular culture.

Born and educated in Germany, Boas was undoubtedly influenced by the linguistic views of W. von Humboldt, who believed that language embodies the cultural ideas of the community of people using a given language. However, Boas did not share Humboldt’s ideas about the so-called “stages”. Unlike Humboldt, Boas believed that differences in the “picture of the world”, fixed in the language system, cannot indicate greater or lesser development of its speakers. The linguistic relativism of Boas and his students was based on the idea of biological equality and, as a consequence, the equality of linguistic and mental abilities. Numerous languages outside Europe, primarily the languages of the New World, which began to be intensively mastered by linguistics at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, turned out to be exotic from the point of view of vocabulary and especially the grammar of European languages, however, within the framework of the Boasian tradition, this unusualness was not considered evidence of “primitiveness.” » of these languages or the “primitiveness” of the culture reflected in these languages. On the contrary, the rapidly expanding geography of linguistic research has made it possible to understand the limitations of Eurocentric views on the description of language, giving new arguments to supporters of linguistic relativity.

The most important stage in the study of language as a means of systematizing cultural experience is associated with the works of E. Sapir. Sapir understood language primarily as a strictly organized system, all of whose components - such as sound composition, grammar, vocabulary - are connected by strict hierarchical relationships. The connection between the components of the system of a particular language is built according to its own internal laws, as a result of which it turns out to be impossible to project the system of one language onto the system of another without distorting the meaningful relationships between the components. Understanding linguistic relativity precisely as the impossibility of establishing component-by-component correspondences between systems of different languages, Sapir introduced the term “incommensurability” of languages. The linguistic systems of individual languages not only capture the content of cultural experience in different ways, but also provide their speakers with diverging ways of understanding reality and ways of perceiving it.

The intralinguistic capabilities of the system, which allow members of the linguistic community to receive, store and transmit knowledge about the world, are largely associated with the inventory of formal, “technical” means and techniques that the language has - the inventory of sounds, words, grammatical structures, etc. Therefore, Sapir’s interest in studying the causes and forms of linguistic diversity is understandable: for many years he was engaged in field research of Indian languages, he owns one of the first genealogical classifications of languages North America. Sapir also proposed principles of morphological classification of languages that were innovative for his time, taking into account the degree of complexity of a word, ways of expressing grammatical categories (affix, function word, etc.), the admissibility of alternations and other parameters. Understanding what can and cannot exist in language as a formal system allows us to get closer to understanding linguistic activity as a cultural phenomenon.

The most radical views on the “picture of the speaker’s world” as a result of the action of linguistic mechanisms of conceptualization were expressed by B. Whorf. It is Whorf who owns the term “principle of linguistic relativity,” introduced by direct and deliberate analogy with A. Einstein’s principle of relativity. Whorf compared the linguistic picture of the world of the American Indians (Hopi, as well as Shawnee, Paiute, Navajo and many others) with the linguistic picture of the world of speakers of European languages. Against the backdrop of a striking contrast with the vision of the world enshrined in Indian languages, for example in Hopi, the differences between European languages seem insignificant, which gave Whorf grounds to unite them into the group of “standard average European languages” (SAE - Standard Average European).

The tool for conceptualization according to Whorf is not only the formal units identified in the text - such as individual words and grammatical indicators - but also the selectivity of linguistic rules, i.e. how certain units can be combined with each other, which class of units is possible and which is not possible in a particular grammatical structure, etc. On this basis, Whorf proposed to distinguish between open and hidden grammatical categories: the same meaning can be expressed regularly in one language using a fixed set of grammatical indicators, i.e. to be represented by an open category, and in another language to be detected only indirectly, by the presence of certain prohibitions, and in this case we can talk about a hidden category. Thus, in English, the category of definiteness/indeterminacy is open and is regularly expressed through the choice of a definite or indefinite article. One can consider the presence of an article and, accordingly, the presence of an open category of definiteness in a language as evidence that the idea of definiteness is an important element of the worldview for speakers of a given language. However, it is incorrect to assume that the meaning of definiteness cannot be expressed in a language where there are no articles. In Russian, for example, a noun in the final stressed position can be understood both as definite and as indefinite: the word old man in the sentence The old man looked out of the window can mean both a very specific old man, who has already been discussed, and some unknown old man, for the first time appearing in the speaker's field of vision. Accordingly, in translating a given sentence into an article language, depending on the broader context, both definite and indefinite article. However, in the initial unstressed position, the noun is understood only as a definite one: the word old man in the sentence The old man looked out of the window can only denote a specific and most likely previously mentioned old man and, accordingly, can be translated into article language only with definite article.

Whorf should also be considered the founder of research on the role of linguistic metaphor in the conceptualization of reality. It was Whorf who showed that the figurative meaning of a word can influence how its original meaning functions in speech. Classic example Whorf - English phrase empty gasoline drums "empty gasoline tanks." Whorf, who trained as a chemical engineer and worked for an insurance company, noticed that people underestimate the fire hazard of empty tanks, despite the fact that they may contain highly flammable gasoline vapors. Whorf sees the linguistic reason for this phenomenon as follows. The English word empty (as, we note, its Russian counterpart, the adjective empty) as an inscription on a tank implies the understanding of “the absence in the container of the contents for which this container is intended to store,” however, this word also has a figurative meaning: “meaning nothing, not having consequences" (cf. Russian expressions empty troubles, empty promises). It is this figurative meaning of the word that leads to the fact that the situation with empty tanks is “modeled” in the minds of the carriers as safe.

In modern linguistics, it is the study of metaphorical meanings in ordinary language that has turned out to be one of those areas that inherit the “Whorfian” traditions. Research conducted by J. Lakoff, M. Johnson and their followers since the 1980s has shown that linguistic metaphors play an important role not only in poetic language, they also structure our everyday perception and thinking. However, modern versions of Whorfianism interpret the principle of linguistic relativity primarily as a hypothesis in need of empirical testing. In relation to the study of linguistic metaphor, this means that the comparative study of the principles of metaphorization in a large corpus of languages of different areas and different genetic backgrounds comes to the fore in order to find out to what extent metaphors in a particular language are the embodiment of the cultural preferences of a particular linguistic community, and which ones reflect the universal biopsychological properties of a person. J. Lakoff, Z. Kövecses and a number of other authors have shown, for example, that in such a field of concepts as human emotions, the most important layer of linguistic metaphorization is based on universal ideas about the human body, its spatial location, anatomical structure, physiological reactions, etc. It was found that in a variety of languages studied - areally, genetically and typologically distant - emotions are described according to the model of “the body as a container of emotions”. At the same time, specific linguistic, intracultural variations are possible in, for example, which part of the body (or the entire body) is “responsible” for a given emotion, in the form of which substance (solid, liquid, gaseous) certain feelings are described. For example, anger and anger in many languages, including Russian (Yu.D. Apresyan and a number of other authors), are metaphorically connected with high temperature liquid-like contents - boiled with anger/rage, rage bubbled, splashed out his anger, etc. Moreover, the seat of anger, like most other emotions in the Russian language, is the chest, cf. boiled in my chest. In Japanese (K. Matsuki), anger is “located” not in the chest, but in a part of the body called hara “abdominal cavity, inside”: to get angry in Japanese means to feel that hara ga tatsu “the inside rises.”

Proposed more than 60 years ago, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity still retains the status of just a hypothesis. Its supporters often claim that it does not need any evidence, because the statement recorded in it is an obvious fact; opponents tend to believe that it can neither be proven nor disproved (which, from the point of view of the strict methodology of scientific research, takes it beyond the boundaries of science; however, these criteria themselves have been called into question since the mid-1960s). In the range between these polar assessments lie more and more sophisticated and numerous attempts to empirically test this hypothesis.

Section 2. Modern vision of the “linguistic picture of the world” and its applied significance

Modern understanding of the “linguistic picture of the world”

As mentioned earlier, the current state of the problem of studying linguistic pictures of the world was voiced in his works by Academician Yuri Derenikovich Apresyan. According to the scientist, ideas about them are as follows.

Natural language reflects one's own way of perceiving and organizing the world. Its meanings form a unified system of views, which is mandatory for all native speakers and is called the linguistic picture of the world. It is “naive” in the sense that it often differs from the “scientific” picture of the world. At the same time, the naive ideas reflected in the language are by no means primitive: in many cases they are no less complex and interesting than scientific ones.

The study of the naive picture of the world unfolds in two main directions.

Firstly, individual concepts characteristic of a given language, a kind of linguistic-cultural isoglosses and their bundles, are examined. These are, first of all, “stereotypes” of linguistic and broader cultural consciousness. For example, we can highlight typically Russian concepts: soul, melancholy, fate, sincerity, daring, will (free), field (pure), distance, maybe. On the other hand, these are specific connotations of non-specific concepts. In this case, we can talk about the symbolism of color terms in different cultures.

Secondly, a search and reconstruction of the integral, albeit “naive”, pre-scientific view of the world inherent in language is being carried out. Developing the metaphor of linguistic geography, one could say that it is not individual isoglosses or bundles of isoglosses that are being studied, but the dialect as a whole. Although national specifics are taken into account here as fully as possible, the emphasis is placed precisely on the integral linguistic picture of the world. Today, scientists are more interested in this approach. Yu. D. Apresyan highlighted its main provisions.

1. Each natural language reflects a certain way of perceiving and organizing (conceptualizing) the world. The meanings expressed in it form a certain unified system of views, a kind of collective philosophy, which is imposed as mandatory on all speakers of the language. Once upon a time, grammatical meanings were opposed to lexical ones as subject to mandatory expression, regardless of whether they were important for the essence of a particular message or not. In recent decades, it has been discovered that many elements lexical meanings are also expressed without fail.

2. The way of conceptualizing reality inherent in a language (view of the world) is partly universal, partly nationally specific, so that speakers of different languages can see the world slightly differently, through the prism of their languages.

3. On the other hand, it is “naive” in the sense that it differs in many significant details from the scientific picture of the world. At the same time, naive ideas are by no means primitive. In many cases, they are no less complex and interesting than scientific ones. These are, for example, naive ideas about the inner world of man. They reflect the experience of introspection of dozens of generations over many millennia and are capable of serving as a reliable guide to this world.

4. In a naive picture of the world, one can distinguish naive geometry, naive physics of space and time (for example, completely relativistic, although pre-scientific concepts of space and time of the speaker and the concept of the observer), naive ethics, naive psychology, etc. So, from the analysis of pairs words like praise and flatter, praise and brag, promise and promise, look and spy, listen and eavesdrop, laugh (at someone) and mock, witness and spy, curiosity and curiosity, give orders and push around, helpful and obsequious, be proud and boast, criticize and denigrate, achieve and solicit, show (your courage) and show off (your courage), complain and sneak, etc. you can get an idea of the fundamental commandments of Russian naive linguistic ethics. Here are some of them: “it is not good to pursue narrowly selfish goals” (soliciting, flattering, promising); “it’s not good to invade other people’s privacy” (spy, eavesdrop, spy, curiosity); “it’s not good to humiliate the dignity of other people” (to push around, to mock); “it’s not good to forget about your honor and dignity” (groveling, servile); “it is not good to exaggerate one’s own merits and other people’s shortcomings” (to brag, to show off, to boast, to denigrate); “it is not good to tell third parties about what we do not like in the behavior and actions of our neighbors” (sneaking); etc. Of course, all these commandments are nothing more than truisms, but it is curious that they are enshrined in the meanings of words. Some positive commandments of naive ethics are also reflected in the language.

The primary task of systemic lexicography is to reflect the naive picture of the world embodied in a given language - naive geometry, physics, ethics, psychology, etc. The naive representations of each of these areas are not chaotic, but form certain systems and, thus, should be uniformly described in the dictionary. To do this, generally speaking, it would be necessary to first reconstruct according to lexical and grammatical meanings a corresponding fragment of a naive picture of the world. In practice, however, in this as in other similar cases, reconstruction and (lexicographic) description go hand in hand and constantly correct each other.

So, the concept of a linguistic picture of the world includes two related but different ideas: 1) that the picture of the world offered by language differs from the “scientific” one (in this sense the term “naive picture of the world” is also used) and 2) that each language “ paints” its own picture, depicting reality somewhat differently than other languages do. Reconstruction of the linguistic picture of the world is one of the most important tasks of modern linguistic semantics. The study of the linguistic picture of the world is carried out in two directions, in accordance with the two named components of this concept. On the one hand, based on a systematic semantic analysis of the vocabulary of a certain language, a reconstruction of an integral system of ideas reflected in a given language is carried out, regardless of whether it is specific to a given language or universal, reflecting a “naive” view of the world as opposed to a “scientific” one. On the other hand, individual concepts characteristic of a given language (language-specific) are studied, which have two properties: they are “key” for a given culture (in the sense that they provide a “key” to its understanding) and at the same time the corresponding words are poorly translated into other languages : a translation equivalent is either absent altogether (as, for example, for the Russian words melancholy, anguish, perhaps, daring, will, restless, sincerity, ashamed, offensive, inconvenient), or such an equivalent exists in principle, but it does not contain exactly those components of meaning , which are specific to a given word (such as, for example, the Russian words soul, fate, happiness, justice, vulgarity, separation, resentment, pity, morning, gather, get, as it were). In recent years, a direction has been developing in domestic semantics that integrates both approaches; its goal is to reconstruct the Russian linguistic picture of the world on the basis of a comprehensive (linguistic, cultural, semiotic) analysis of linguistic-specific concepts of the Russian language in an intercultural perspective (works by Yu.D. Apresyan, N.D. Arutyunova, A. Vezhbitskaya, A.A. Zaliznyak, I.B. Levontina, E.V. Rakhilina, E.V. Uryson, A.D. Shmeleva, E.S. Yakovleva, etc.).

Applied significance of the theory of “linguistic picture of the world”

The analysis of linguistic pictures of the world is of great practical importance, and especially in the modern conditions of globalization and informatization, when the boundaries between countries and regions are erased, and the potential of modern information technologies reached unprecedented heights.

The study of problems of language, speech and their interaction and interpenetration acquires particular relevance in the context of the dialogue of cultures. A word manifesting itself in a specific speech situation one of theirs modern meanings, accumulates all the experience and knowledge (i.e. culture in the broad sense of the word) acquired throughout the development of mankind, and therefore reflects a certain fragment of the linguistic picture of the world. Speaking about speech culture, one must keep in mind that it should be understood not only as compliance with various language norms, but also as the ability, on the one hand, to correctly select the means to express one’s own thoughts, and on the other, to correctly decode the interlocutor’s speech. Therefore, studying the linguistic picture of the world allows us to correctly understand the interlocutor, correctly translate and interpret his speech, which seems important for solving problems of translation and communication.

Computers have entered human life - he relies on them more and more. Computers print documents, manage complex technological processes, design technical objects, and entertain children and adults. It is natural for a person to strive to express himself as fully as possible in algorithmic devices, to overcome the language barrier that separated two different worlds. As already noted, language, man and reality are inextricably linked. Therefore, teaching a computer natural language is an extremely difficult task, associated with deep penetration into the laws of thinking and language. Teaching a computer to understand natural language is almost the same as teaching it to feel the world.

Many scientists consider solving this problem fundamentally impossible. But one way or another, the process of rapprochement between man and his “electronic creation” has begun, and today it is still difficult to imagine how it will end. In any case, a person, trying to model the task of linguistic communication, begins to understand himself much more fully, and therefore his history and culture.

It is important to study the linguistic picture of the world for linguistics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, management, cultural studies, ethics, ethnography, history and other sciences. This knowledge will allow us to study man more deeply, understand the still unknown principles of his activity and their foundations, and open the way to new yet unexplored horizons of understanding human consciousness and existence.

Conclusion

As a result of the work, the task set in the introduction was achieved. The main historical and philosophical aspects of the development of the concept of “linguistic picture of the world” within the framework of various disciplines and directions were considered, and the areas of practical application of accumulated knowledge were also outlined.

It turned out that theoretical basis The subject area under consideration was laid down by the German philologist, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm Humboldt in his work “On the Internal Form of Language”. Further researchers relied on the scientist’s work, modifying it in accordance with their own vision of the problem.

The theory of the linguistic picture of the world was built by the German scientist Leo Weisgerber, based on the teachings of Humboldt. He was the first to introduce the concept of “linguistic picture of the world.” Considering all the merits of Weisgerber as the founder of the theory, modern scientists still do not agree with the idea put forward by him that the power of language over a person is irresistible and believe that although the linguistic picture of the world leaves a serious imprint on the individual, the effect of its power is not absolute.

Almost in parallel with Weisgerber, the hypothesis of “Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity” was developed, which also became the fundamental stone for the study of the linguistic picture of the world. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity is a manifestation of relativism in linguistics. It states that the processes of human perception and thinking are determined by the ethnospecific features of the structure of language. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, the thesis according to which the systems of concepts existing in a person’s mind, and, consequently, the essential features of his thinking, are determined by the specific language of which this person is a native speaker.

Proposed more than 60 years ago, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity still retains the status of just a hypothesis. In the range between the polar assessments of its supporters and opponents, there are increasingly sophisticated and numerous attempts to empirically test this hypothesis, which, unfortunately, have not been successful to date.

Modern ideas about the linguistic picture of the world were outlined by Academician Yu.D. Apresyan and his followers. Briefly they can be presented as follows.

1. Each natural language reflects a certain way of perceiving and organizing the world. The meanings expressed in it form a certain unified system of views, which is imposed as mandatory on all speakers of the language and is its linguistic picture.

2. The view of the world inherent in a language is partly universal, partly nationally specific, so that speakers of different languages can see the world slightly differently, through the prism of their languages.

3. The linguistic picture of the world is “naive” in the sense that it differs in many significant details from the scientific picture of the world. At the same time, naive ideas are by no means primitive. In many cases, they are no less complex and interesting than scientific ones, since they can serve as a reliable guide into the world of this linguistic picture.

4. In a naive picture of the world, one can distinguish naive geometry, naive physics, naive ethics, naive psychology, etc. From their analysis, one can extract an idea of the fundamental commandments of a particular culture or community, which allows one to understand them better.

A large number of scientists study the linguistic picture of the world, among whom are Yu.D. Apresyan, N.D. Arutyunova, A. Vezhbitskaya, A. Zaliznyak, I.B. Levontina, E.V. Rakhilina, E.V. Uryson , A.D. Shmelev, E.S. Yakovlev and many others.

The study of the linguistic picture of the world seems important for many sciences (linguistics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, management, cultural studies, ethics, ethnography, history and others). This knowledge will allow us to study man more deeply, understand the still unknown principles of his activity and their foundations, and open the way to new yet unexplored horizons of understanding human consciousness and existence.

List of used literature

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Anisimov A.V. Computer linguistics for everyone: Myths. Algorithms. Language - Kyiv: Nauk. Dumka, 1991.- 208 p.
Apresyan Yu.D. Selected Works, Volume II. Integral description of language and system lexicography. - M.: School “Languages of Russian Culture”, 1995. - 767 p.
Large electronic encyclopedia of Cyril and Methodius
Luger George F. Artificial intelligence: strategies and methods for solving complex problems, 4th edition - M.: Williams Publishing House, 2005. - 864 p.

Concept(from Lat. conceptus - thought, concept) - the semantic meaning of a name (sign), i.e. the content of a concept, the scope of which is the subject (denotation) of this name (for example, the semantic meaning of the name Moon - natural satellite Earth).

Weisgerber Leo(Weisgerber, Johann Leo) (1899–1985), German philologist. He studied comparative linguistics, German studies, as well as Romance and Celtic studies. Weisgerber studied questions of the history of language. The most important work is the four-volume book “On the Forces German language” (“Von den Krften der deutschen Sprache”), in which the provisions of his linguo-philosophical concept are formulated and substantiated. Of Weisgerber's later works, his book “Twice a Tongue” (“Zweimal Sprache”, 1973) deserves special attention.

Humboldt Wilhelm(1767-1835), German philologist, philosopher, linguist, statesman, diplomat. He developed the doctrine of language as a continuous creative process, as a “formative organ of thought” and about the “internal form of language”, as an expression of the individual worldview of the people.

In Wilhelm von Humboldt, the opposition “ergon - energy” correlates with another opposition: “Language is not a dead product, but a creative process.” Within the framework of the Humboldtian dialectical picture of the world, language and everything connected with it appear either as something ready-made, complete (ergon), or as something in the process of formation (energeya). Thus, from one point of view, the material of language appears as already produced, and from the other, as never reaching a state of completeness, completeness. Developing the first point of view, Humboldt writes that since time immemorial, every people receives the material of its language from previous generations, and the activity of the spirit, working to develop the expression of thoughts, already deals with ready-made material and, accordingly, does not create, but only transforms. Developing the second point of view, Humboldt notes that the composition of the words of a language cannot be represented as a ready-made mass. Not to mention the constant formation of new words and forms, the entire stock of words in a language, while the language lives in the mouths of the people, is a continuously produced and reproduced result of word-forming forces. It is reproduced, firstly, by the whole people to whom the language owes its form, in teaching children to speak and, finally, in the daily use of speech. In language, as in the “eternally repeating work of the spirit,” there cannot be a moment of stagnation; its nature is continuous development under the influence of the spiritual power of each speaker. The spirit constantly strives to introduce something new into language in order to, having embodied this new thing in it, again become under its influence.

Cashier Ernst(Cassirer, Ernst) (1874–1945), German philosopher and historian. Cassirer is the author of the extensive historical work “The Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophy and Science of Modern Times” (“Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit”, 1906–1957), in which a systematic presentation of the problem is followed by its history from antiquity to the 40s 20th century Bringing together the results of his studies in cultural studies, science and history, he published another three-volume work, “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms” (“Philosophie der symbolischen Formen”, 1923–1929). In these and other works, Cassirer analyzed the functions of language, myth and religion, art and history as "symbolic forms" through which man gains understanding of himself and the world around him.

Wharf Benjamin Lee(1897 - 1941) - American linguist, ethnographer. Investigated the problem of the relationship between language and thinking. Influenced by the ideas of E. Sapir and as a result of observations of the Uto-Aztecan languages, he formulated the hypothesis of linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - see below).

Boas(Boas) Franz (1858 - 1942), American linguist, ethnographer and anthropologist, founder of the school of "cultural anthropology". Boas developed the foundations of a strictly descriptive methodology for the analysis of languages and cultures, which became the methodology of cultural anthropology - the most significant school in American cultural studies and ethnography. He was one of the first to demonstrate a comprehensive descriptive approach to the study of peoples and cultures, which would later become the scientific norm of 20th-century anthropology. Unlike most anthropologists of his time, he refused to consider that so-called “primitive” peoples were at an earlier stage of development than “civilized” ones, opposing this ethnocentric view with cultural relativism, i.e. the belief that all cultures, no matter how They were different in appearance, developed and valuable equally.

Yuri Derenikovich Apresyan(born 1930) - Russian linguist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1992). Author of works in the field of semantics, syntax, lexicography, structural and mathematical linguistics, machine translation, etc. Among his works it is worth highlighting: “Ideas and methods of modern structural linguistics (a short essay)”, 1966, “ Experimental study semantics of the Russian verb", 1967, "Integral description of language and systemic lexicography // Selected works", "Languages of Russian culture", 1995.

Isogloss(from iso... and Greek glossa - language, speech) - a line on a map indicating in linguistic geography the boundaries of the distribution of any linguistic phenomenon (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, etc.). For example, it is possible to conduct I., showing the distribution in the southwestern regions of the RSFSR of the word “humor” meaning “to speak.” Along with the general term "I." private ones are also used - isophone (I., showing the distribution of sound), isosyntagma (I., showing the distribution of a syntactic phenomenon), etc.

Http://koapiya.do.am/publ/1-1-0-6

The concept of YCM goes back to the ideas of W. von Humboldt and neo-Humboldians about the internal form of language, on the one hand, and to the ideas of American ethnolinguistics, in particular to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, on the other.

W. von Humboldt was one of the first linguists who paid attention to the national content of language and thinking, noting that “different languages are for a nation the organs of their original thinking and perception.” Each person has a subjective image of a certain object, which does not completely coincide with the image of the same object in another person. This idea can only be objectified by making “its own way through the mouth into the outside world.” The word, thus, carries the burden of subjective ideas, the differences of which are within certain limits, since their speakers are members of the same linguistic community and have a certain national character and consciousness. According to W. von Humboldt, it is language that influences the formation of a system of concepts and a system of values. These functions, as well as the methods of forming concepts using language, are considered common to all languages. The differences are based on the originality of the spiritual appearance of the peoples who speak languages, but the main difference between languages lies in the form of the language itself, “in the ways of expressing thoughts and feelings.”

W. von Humboldt considers language as an “intermediate world” between thinking and reality, while language fixes a special national worldview. W. von Humboldt emphasizes the difference between the concepts of “intermediate world” and “picture of the world”. The first is a static product of linguistic activity that determines a person’s perception of reality. Its unit is the “spiritual object” - the concept. The picture of the world is a moving, dynamic entity, since it is formed from linguistic interventions in reality. Its unit is a speech act.

Thus, in the formation of both concepts, a huge role belongs to language: “Language is the organ that forms thought, therefore, in the formation of the human personality, in the formation of its system of concepts, in the appropriation of the experience accumulated by generations, language plays a leading role.”

The main characteristics of the linguistic picture of the world, which L. Weisgerber endows it with, are the following:

1. the linguistic picture of the world is a system of all possible contents: spiritual, which determine the uniqueness of the culture and mentality of a given linguistic community, and linguistic, which determine the existence and functioning of the language itself,

2. the linguistic picture of the world, on the one hand, is a consequence of the historical development of ethnicity and language, and, on the other hand, is the reason for the unique path of their further development,

3. The linguistic picture of the world as a single “living organism” is clearly structured and in linguistic terms is multi-level. It determines a special set of sounds and sound combinations, structural features of the articulatory apparatus of native speakers, prosodic characteristics of speech, vocabulary, word-formation capabilities of the language and the syntax of phrases and sentences, as well as its own paremiological baggage. In other words, the linguistic picture of the world determines the overall communicative behavior, understanding of the external world of nature and the internal world of man and the language system,

4. the linguistic picture of the world is changeable over time and, like any “living organism,” is subject to development, that is, in a vertical (diachronic) sense, at each subsequent stage of development it is partly non-identical to itself,

5. the linguistic picture of the world creates the homogeneity of the linguistic essence, helping to consolidate its linguistic, and therefore cultural, uniqueness in the vision of the world and its designation by means of language,

6. the linguistic picture of the world exists in a homogeneous, unique self-awareness of the linguistic community and is transmitted to subsequent generations through a special worldview, rules of behavior, way of life, imprinted by means of language,

7. the picture of the world of any language is the transformative power of language, which forms the idea of the surrounding world through language as an “intermediate world” among speakers of this language,

8. The linguistic picture of the world of a particular linguistic community is its general cultural heritage.

The perception of the world is carried out by thinking, but with the participation of the native language. L. Weisgerber's method of reflecting reality is idioethnic in nature and corresponds to the static form of language. In essence, the scientist emphasizes the intersubjective part of the individual’s thinking: “There is no doubt that many of the views and modes of behavior and attitudes that are ingrained in us turn out to be “learned,” that is, socially conditioned, as soon as we trace the sphere of their manifestation throughout the world.”

Language as an activity is also considered in the works of L. Wittgenstein, devoted to research in the field of philosophy and logic. According to this scientist, thinking has a verbal character and is an activity with signs. L. Wittgenstein puts forward the following proposition: the life of a sign is given by its use. Moreover, “the meaning that is inherent in words is not a product of our thinking.” The meaning of a sign is its application in accordance with the rules of a given language and the characteristics of a particular activity, situation, context. Therefore, one of the most important questions for L. Wittgenstein is the relationship between the grammatical structure of language, the structure of thinking and the structure of the reflected situation. A sentence is a model of reality, copying its structure in its logical-syntactic form. Therefore, to the extent a person speaks a language, to the extent he knows the world. A linguistic unit is not a certain linguistic meaning, but a concept, therefore L. Wittgenstein does not distinguish between the linguistic picture of the world and the picture of the world as a whole.

A fundamental contribution to the distinction between the concepts of a picture of the world and a linguistic picture of the world was made by E. Sapir and B. Whorf, who argued that “the idea that a person navigates the external world, essentially, without the help of language and that language is just an accidental means of solving specific tasks of thinking and communication is just an illusion. In fact, the “real world” is largely unconsciously built on the basis of the linguistic habits of one or another social group". By using the combination “real world,” E. Sapir means the “intermediate world,” which includes language with all its connections with thinking, psyche, culture, social and professional phenomena. That is why E. Sapir argues that “it becomes difficult for a modern linguist to limit himself only to his traditional subject ... he cannot but share the mutual interests that connect linguistics with anthropology and cultural history, with sociology, psychology, philosophy and - in the longer term - with physiology and physics."

Modern ideas about NCM are as follows.

Language is a fact of culture, component culture that we inherit, and at the same time its instrument. The culture of a people is verbalized in language; it is the language that accumulates the key concepts of culture, transmitting them in a symbolic embodiment - words. The model of the world created by language is a subjective image of the objective world; it carries within itself the features of the human way of comprehending the world, i.e. anthropocentrism that permeates all language.

This point of view is shared by V.A. Maslova: “The linguistic picture of the world is the general cultural heritage of the nation; it is structured and multi-level. It is the linguistic picture of the world that determines communicative behavior, understanding of the external world and the inner world of a person. It reflects the way of speech and thinking activity characteristic of a particular era, with its spiritual, cultural and national values.”

E.S. Yakovleva understands YCM as fixed in language and specific to the world - this is a kind of worldview through the prism of language.”

“The linguistic picture of the world” is “taken in its entirety, all the conceptual content of a given language.”

The concept of a naive linguistic picture of the world, according to D.Yu. Apresyan, “represents the ways of perceiving and conceptualizing the world reflected in natural language, when the basic concepts of the language are formed into a single system of views, a kind of collective philosophy, which is imposed as mandatory on all native speakers.

The linguistic picture of the world is “naive” in the sense that in many significant respects it differs from the “scientific” picture. At the same time, the naive ideas reflected in the language are by no means primitive: in many cases they are no less complex and interesting than scientific ones. These are, for example, ideas about the inner world of man, which reflect the experience of introspection of dozens of generations over many millennia and can serve as a reliable guide to this world.

The linguistic picture of the world, as G.V. Kolshansky notes, is based on the characteristics of the social and labor experience of each people. Ultimately, these features find their expression in differences in the lexical and grammatical nomination of phenomena and processes, in the compatibility of certain meanings, in their etymology (the choice of the initial feature in the nomination and formation of the meaning of a word), etc. in language “the whole variety of creative cognitive activity of a person (social and individual) is fixed”, which consists precisely in the fact that “in accordance with the boundless number of conditions that are the stimulus in his directed cognition, each time he selects and consolidates one of the countless properties of objects and phenomena and their connections. It is this human factor that is clearly visible in all linguistic formations, both in the norm and in its deviations and individual styles.”

So, the concept of YCM includes two related but different ideas: 1) the picture of the world offered by language differs from the “scientific” one and 2) each language paints its own picture, depicting reality somewhat differently than other languages do. Reconstruction of the JCM is one of the most important tasks of modern linguistic semantics. The study of NCM is carried out in two directions, in accordance with the two named components of this concept. On the one hand, based on a systematic semantic analysis of the vocabulary of a certain language, a reconstruction of an integral system of ideas reflected in a given language is carried out, regardless of whether it is specific to a given language or universal, reflecting a “naive” view of the world as opposed to a “scientific” one. On the other hand, individual concepts characteristic of a given language (language-specific) are studied, which have two properties: they are “key” for a given culture (in the sense that they provide a “key” to its understanding) and at the same time the corresponding words are poorly translated into other languages : a translation equivalent is either absent altogether (as, for example, for the Russian words melancholy, anguish, perhaps, daring, will, restless, sincerity, ashamed, offensive, inconvenient), or such an equivalent exists in principle, but it does not contain exactly those components of meaning , which are specific to a given word (such as, for example, the Russian words soul, fate, happiness, justice, vulgarity, separation, resentment, pity, morning, gather, get, as it were).

Literature

1. Apresyan Yu.D. Integral description of language and system lexicography. "Languages of Russian culture". Selected works / Yu.D. Apresyan. M.: School, 1995. T.2.

2. Weisgerber J.L. Language and philosophy // Questions of linguistics, 1993. No. 2

3. Wingenstein L. Philosophical works. Part 1. M., 1994.

4. Humboldt V. Fon. Language and philosophy of culture. M.: Progress, 1985.

5. Karaulov Yu.N. General and Russian ideography. M.: Nauka, 1996. 264 p.

6. Kolshansky G.V. An objective picture of the world in cognition and language. M.: Nauka, 1990. 103 p.

7. Maslova V.A. Introduction to cognitive linguistics. – M.: Flinta: Nauka, 2007. 296 p.

8. Sapir E. Selected works on linguistics and cultural studies. M. Publishing group "Progress - Universe", 1993. 123 p.

9. Sukalenko N.I. Reflection of everyday consciousness in a figurative linguistic picture of the world. Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1992. 164 p.

10. Yakovleva E.S. Fragments of the Russian language picture of the world // Questions of linguistics, 1994. No. 5. P.73-89.

In the science of language, studies of the so-called linguistic picture of the world are becoming increasingly popular. Linguists believe that people's view of the world is, to one degree or another, determined by the language they speak. The great German scientist Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote almost two hundred years ago: “Every language describes a circle around the people to which it belongs, from which a person is allowed to escape only insofar as he immediately enters the circle of another language.”

There are a lot of examples. One of the manifestations of this “circle” is a certain division of the surrounding world. Anyone who has studied English or French knows that the Russian word hand in these languages two non-synonymous words correspond: English hand And arm, French main And bras. If hand And main can be called brush, then the other two words do not seem to have exact Russian equivalents.

And the further the language is from Russian, the greater the differences. For example, what would it be like in Japanese? give? The question does not have a clear answer: there are five suitable verbs in Japanese. If I give something to someone else, I need to use the same verbs, but if someone gives it to me, the verbs will be different. Another parameter on which the choice of word depends is the degree of respect towards the recipient. And the Russian word water In Japanese there are two corresponding words: mizu for cold and Yu for hot water.

Linguists believe that people's view of the world is, to one degree or another, determined by the language they speak.

Another manifestation of the “circle” is the significance of a word in a language. There are words that are used often, have figurative meanings, form stable phrases, sound in proverbs and sayings - meaningful words. Moreover, they vary greatly from language to language: a word that is constantly present in the Russian vocabulary may be very rare for a speaker of another language.

I once observed how a group of Japanese tourists, having seen goats, spent a long time trying to remember the names of these animals. People really suffered, trying to find the right word in their memory. Finally one of them exclaimed: Yagi. How much joy there was!

In the Russian linguistic picture of the world and goat, and especially goat occupy a much more prominent place. Why does this happen? In the case of goats, it is clear: there is little pasture in mountainous Japan, and animal husbandry has never been particularly developed. But why, for example, are there so many onomatopoeias in Japanese? The Japanese author of one of the Japanese-Russian dictionaries was looking for a translation for a fairly frequently used onomatopoeia that conveys snoring, and found: phi pua. It is unlikely that any of the readers will remember this word, although it was taken from the story of A.P. Chekhov. Apparently, the writer came up with the word, but it did not take hold in the language.

A word that is constantly present in the Russian lexicon may be very rare for a speaker of another language

Language can form a positive or negative assessment of objects and phenomena. In Russian, figurative meanings, set phrases, proverbs associated with dog, as a rule, are negatively colored. This reflects the traditional view of this animal as unclean in a number of religions, including Christianity.

Once upon a time, academician Dmitry Likhachev compiled a dictionary of Ivan the Terrible’s curses in correspondence with Kurbsky, and more than half of them turned out to be “dog.” However, just this example shows that the linguistic picture of the world and social consciousness are not always identical. Over the past 100–200 years, the attitude of Russian speakers towards dogs has changed for the better, but the language has largely retained the same assessments.

The linguistic picture of the world can also, of course, change, but this happens more slowly. Differences may occur at the level literary language and dialects. But in principle, a linguistic picture (“worldview,” as Humboldt wrote) is not the same as a worldview. And a liberal, a conservative, and a communist, if their native language is Russian, will be called water the corresponding liquid of any temperature and distinguish by the meaning of the word wash And wash, although English to wash - one verb. Let's say, Vladimir Lenin and Nikolai Berdyaev, despite a significant difference in worldview, had the same worldview as speakers of the literary Russian language of the same generation.

Once upon a time, academician Dmitry Likhachev compiled a dictionary of curses of Ivan the Terrible in correspondence with Kurbsky, and more than half of them turned out to be “dog”

Nowadays, both in Russia and in other countries, worldview and worldview are often confused, and impossible tasks are set before the study of linguistic pictures of the world. One of the reasons, in my opinion, is that researchers are attracted global problems, for example, “the connection of many actual communicative moments with moral categories, assessments, and evaluative activities,” which determines “the specifics of Russian communication,” as one of our very serious linguists, Vadim Dementyev, writes. He further concludes: “ Russian soul, according to Russian proverbs, phraseological units, Russian texts classical literature“An overly logical and rational attitude to life is contraindicated.”

It is not difficult to give supporting examples (which is what the author does), but how representative are they? And what is the “Russian soul”, how does it relate to the Russian language? And how does the “Russian soul” relate to a dog? It seems that morality cannot be determined by language. But I really want to find the key to Russian morality...

Other, also serious authors, consider the concepts key to Russian-speaking culture melancholy And delete, and for English-speaking - happiness(happy). The Japanese explain the abundance of onomatopoeia in their language by the fact that they are closer to nature than, for example, Americans and Europeans. But how to prove all this? There are even too many facts to study language pictures, but how to select these facts? There is no scientific method for this yet, and will there ever be one?

Linguistic picture of the world.

So, being an instrument of culture, language, like mythology, religion or art, is capable of drawing its own holistic image of the world, which has a historically determined character. Accordingly, we can talk about the existence of such a type of picture of the world as a linguistic picture of the world.

Linguistic picture of the world call the body of knowledge about the world that is reflected in language, as well as ways of obtaining and interpreting new knowledge that influences the linguistic reflection of the latter.

The main features of the linguistic picture of the world, in principle, are correlated with the three features of the conceptual picture of the world, but they have a certain specificity due to the characteristics of language as a form of consciousness. In particular, in contrast to the actual picture of the world, which for convenience we will further call immediate, the linguistic picture of the world belongs to the so-called "mediated" pictures of the world, since it is formed as a result of the materialization of the immediate picture of the world by means of another, secondary sign system - language.

This explains the fact why in most scientific works the essence of the linguistic picture of the world is derived through its comparison with the immediate picture of the world. Taking as a basis the argument that human thinking is “externalized” by language, modern researchers of the linguistic picture of the world draw the conclusion: the study of ideas about reality recorded in language allows us to judge the immediate picture of the world. However, it is emphasized that the direct picture of the world is broader than the linguistic one, since not all ideas have linguistic expression; Only that which has communicative significance is recorded in language. For example, the language does not have a designation for the color of x-rays, which humans simply do not perceive visually. That is why in the immediate picture of the world it is possible to distinguish peripheral areas that are not indicated by the linguistic picture of the world, and the core, the content of which is fixed in the language.

As is known, the direct picture of the world consists of concepts as quanta of knowledge structured in a special way. When forming a linguistic picture of the world, these concepts are subject to the so-called “ verbalization" or "linguistic representation".

In this case, the concept is not necessarily denoted by one linguistic sign (in particular, a word). Often a concept is expressed by several linguistic signs, but may not be verbalized at all, that is, not represented in the language system, and exist on the basis of other sign systems - gestures, music, dance. For example, the concept “stupid” can be expressed using the characteristic tapping of a finger on the forehead. At the same time, it is quite obvious that the content of a concept is best expressed by the entire set of language means. These include:

Nominative means of language - lexemes, phraseological units, as well as a significant absence of nominative units (the so-called “lacunarity”);

Functional means of language - selection of vocabulary for communication, composition of the most frequent linguistic means against the background of the entire corpus of linguistic units of the language system;

Figurative means of language - metaphors, internal forms of linguistic units;

Discursive means of language - special means constructing texts of different genres;

Strategies for assessing language utterances.

The second feature of the linguistic picture of the world, also correlated with the features of the immediate picture of the world, is its integrity. The very metaphor “picture of the world” implies the similarity of the linguistic picture of the world with another system – the visual one. Like the visual image, language is not composed of individual parameters (for example, shape and size); in the linguistic image of the world, these parameters are merged into a single whole.

This approach initially excludes the comparison of different linguistic pictures of the world based on several specific words or statements and encourages researchers to compare holistic images of the world captured in language, however, the picture of the world cannot be fully represented and is not recognized by a person as such in its entirety, even with targeted reflection . It is known, and therefore studied, only in fragments.

Finally, the third feature of the linguistic picture of the world is its subjectivity. Just as in the case of the direct picture of the world, the point here is that a person’s knowledge about the world around him is not simply “objectively reflected” in language; the process of their display is necessarily accompanied by interpretation, which manifests itself, among other things, at the linguistic level. That is why today a number of linguists are studying the value aspect of the linguistic picture of the world, or the linguaxiological picture of the world. Units this aspect are evaluative linguistic units that fix the value of a particular segment of reality for a person. The greater the value, the more versatile designation it receives in the language.

The value-evaluative aspect of the picture of the world can be expressed in language, first of all, in two ways: through evaluative connotations unit, which is the name of the characterized concept, or through a combination of this unit with evaluative epithets.

It should be noted that the linguistic picture of the world, like the direct picture of the world, not only interpretive, but also regulatory function. Of course, this function is performed, first of all, by the direct picture of the world, which serves as a guide for its bearer in carrying out life activities. The linguistic picture of the world, due to its secondary nature, cannot have a direct influence on a person’s behavior and thinking, however, it is thanks to it that a symbolic reflection and consolidation of the results of the activity of a linguistic personality occurs, without which a person’s further life activity, in particular, his acquisition of new knowledge about the world around him, It's simply impossible to imagine.

The linguistic picture of the world is of great importance in the process of communication as an exchange of information, the participants of which are its carriers. It is obvious that in the course of communication, certain problems of understanding inevitably arise due to partial discrepancies in the worldviews of the interlocutors. However, the linguistic picture of the world, which sets the methods for encoding and decoding the meaning of a message, in general always serves as a kind of mediator in the communication of people, ensuring their mutual understanding, and minor differences in individual linguistic pictures of the world can be easily overcome, for example, by including in one of them new language elements.

3. Correlation between linguistic and scientific pictures of the world.

As mentioned above, the linguistic picture of the world is not the only holistic image of the world that can be formed in the human mind, and different shapes consciousnesses “paint” different pictures of the same reality, existing not in isolation, but in close connection with each other. In most studies devoted to the linguistic picture of the world, the latter is compared with the scientific picture of the world, which is understood as a holistic image of the subject of scientific research at a given stage of its historical development. To emphasize their differences, a number of works use the designation synonymous with the linguistic picture of the world - "naive picture of the world". In this way, the pre-scientific nature of the linguistic picture of the world, accumulating only everyday knowledge, its approximateness and inaccuracy is emphasized. However, as E.V. proves. Uryson, language as a system does not always reflect exclusively everyday ideas about the world, since, for example, in the Russian language, situations can be designated using nouns, although from the point of view of everyday views only verbs are used for this purpose. In addition, so-called “naive” linguistic concepts are often no less complex than scientific ones. In particular, ideas about the inner world of man reflect the experience of dozens of generations over many millennia. Therefore, the statement about the “naivety” of the linguistic picture of the world should not be absolutized.

The linguistic and scientific picture of the world differ in other ways. One of them is the degree of awareness of the corresponding knowledge system by its bearer. If the linguistic picture of the world exists in our minds in a rather vague, unformed form, then the scientific picture of the world, on the contrary, is based on conscious cognitive attitudes, mandatory definitions and is the subject of constant reflection by its bearers.

The next basis for distinguishing between the linguistic picture of the world and the scientific picture of the world is the degree of variability of each of them. It is well known that the linguistic picture of the world changes much more slowly than the scientific one, and for a long time retains traces of mistakes made by man in the process of cognition. For example, not a single language has eliminated the phrase “black” from its vocabulary after physicists determined that it is not a color, but the absence of any color.

As follows from the above points of view, many domestic researchers advocate that there are a number of differences between the linguistic and scientific pictures of the world. O.A. Kornilov believes that due to the exceptional diversity of such differences, the implied pictures of the world generally have only one common feature - the object of reflection, that is, the real world. At the same time, the researcher emphasizes that in the linguistic picture of the world, objective reality constitutes only part of the content plan, since linguistic consciousness generates a huge number of mythical objects and characteristics that are not present in the real world.

However, despite the existence of a number of differences between the linguistic and scientific pictures of the world, the fact that there is an inextricable connection between them is irrefutable, since science necessarily relies on the material of human language and any scientific thought is necessarily mediated by the linguistic picture of the world of its bearer.

The concept of a linguistic picture of the world. Modern problems of science and education

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