TYPES AND TASKS OF LINUACULTUROLOGY

1.   Types or directions of Linguaculturology

2.   Tasks and purposes of Linguaculturology

3.   Methodology and Linguaculturological methods

Question for self-examination:

1.   What types of LC do you know? Define each of them.

2.   Define basic purposes and tasks of LC.

3.   What is methodology?

4.   What are the methods used in LC?

Aim of LC - to study the ways in which language embodies, stores and transmits culture. Subject of LC - to study cultural semantics of language signs formed by means of two different codes – language and culture.

LC as an independent branch of knowledge should solve the specific problems and thus answer a number of questions which in most general view can be formulated like this:

1) how culture participates in formation of language concepts;

2) what part of language sign’s meaning «cultural senses» are attached to;

3) whether these senses are realized by speaker and listener and how do they influence speech strategy;

4) whether there is in reality a cultural-language competence of a native speaker, on the basis of which cultural senses are embodied in texts and distinguished by the native speakers;

5) what concept-sphere (set of the main concepts of the given culture) the bearer of the culture has;

6) how to systematize the main concepts of this science.

The types of LC:

1. LC of separate social group, ethnos in any culturally bright period, i.e. research of a particular lingua-culturological situation.

2. Diachronic LC i.e. the study of the changes in lingua-culturological condition of an ethnic group for a certain period of time.

3. Comparative LC investigates lingua-culturological manifestations of different, but interrelated ethnos.

4. Contrastive LC, a relatively new science. It only starts to develop. Today it is presented only by several works; most interesting of them is the work of M.K.Golovanivskaya «The French mentality from the point of view of the Russian speaker».

5. LC lexicography which is engaged in drawing up of dictionaries on Lingua-countrystudy.

LC is a humanitarian discipline that studies embodied in a living national language and linguistic processes, material and spiritual culture (Oparin). It allows you to set and explain one of the fundamental functions of language - to be an instrument of creation, development, storage, and transmission of culture.

The philosophy defines methodology as a system of principles and ways of the organization of theoretical and practical activities (The philosophical encyclopedic dictionary). It is set of the most essential elements of the theory, constructive for development of the science. The methodology is a conception of development of science, and the conception is a methodology of transition from the theory to practice.

The method is certain approach to the studied phenomenon, a certain complex of devices application of which gives the chance to study this phenomenon. Therefore the method always is system, and its specifics are defined by object of research and by research objective. Each method directly or indirectly depends on all-philosophical theories. The methodology of any science includes three levels: philosophical, general scientific and private methodology.

Philosophical methodology is the highest level, for which principles and categories of dialectics (Heraclitus, Platon, the Edging, etc.) are important.

General scientific methodology – generalization of methods and principles of studying by different sciences. The general scientific methodology changes together with the progress in science. As a result new methods and considerable updating of old ones are observed.

Private methodology – methods of a concrete science.

LC methods are a set of analytical devices, operations and the procedures used in the analysis of interrelation of language and culture. In LC it is possible to use linguistic, culturological, sociological methods. These methods are interrelated and connected with different informative principles, devices of analysis, which allows LC to investigate the difficult object – language and culture interaction. The device of metaphor analysis, offered by J.Lakoff allows receiving results, important for language and culture problem. V.N.Teliya offered the method of macro-componential model of knowledge. Except macro-componential model we assume to use actively psycho-socioclturological methods. Special area of research is devoted to lingua-culturological analysis of texts which are considered as original keepers of culture. In LC, you can use the linguistic and cultural and sociological methods - methods of content analysis, frame analysis, narrative analysis, which goes back to V.Propp, methods of field Ethnography, open interviews used in Psychology and Sociology, the method of linguistic reconstruction of the culture used in the school N.I.Tolstoy, and you can explore the material as traditional methods of Ethnography and experimental methods of Cognitive Linguistics, which are the most important source material by native speakers (informants). In this regard, there are several methods of LC:

1. Diachronic method, based on a comparative analysis of the various lingua-culturological units in time.

2. Synchronic method of comparing simultaneously existing lingua-culturological units.

3. Structural and functional method, involving the division of a cultural object into parts and identifying the links between the parts.

4. Historico-genetic method that focuses on the study of lingua-culturological fact from the point of view of its origin, development and future of the whole.

5. Typological method designed to identify the typological proximity of various lingua-culturological units in historical and cultural process.

6. The basis of the comparative-historical method is the comparison of original lingua-culturological units in time and insight into their nature

LECTURE 6