Lecture theoretical foundations of linguoculturology

GLOSSARY Anthropocentric paradigm – a theoretical framework concerned with the problem of “the human” in language, his mental and cognitive activity, the linguistic world picture, representing universal and nationally-specific culture values, national worldview. Conceptual world picture - a global image of the world and its essential features reflected in the individual’s mind as a result of his spiritual activity. Cross-cultural analysis – is based on comparing and contrasting languages and cultures. It consists in cognitive interpretation of a) culturally and conceptually relevant language units in the text (linguoculturemes); b) universal and nationally specific properties of language units including texts; c) cultural concepts manifesting particular domains. Culture specific concept – a culture specific and nationally oriented unit, a multifold mental structure consisting of notional, image-bearing and evaluative layers and characterized by emotional, expressive components and associative links. Cultural categories – stereotypes, symbols, etalons, mythologemes and other signs of national and world culture. Cultural code – a particular system of signs denoting objects of national and spiritual world, and which are categorized, structured and evaluated by the national communities. Cultural code defines a set of images that are associated with particular stereotypes in people’s minds.
Cultural connotation – the perception and interpretation of the denotative or image motivated meanings in terms and categories of culture. Cultural model – representation of cultural knowledge organized and structured in terms of propositional and image-schemas. Cultural values – the commonly held system of standards of what is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong etc., in a society. It penetrates all spheres of human life describing objective characteristics of reality interlaced with national views and personal appraisals. Cultural values are subdivided into the following types: vital, moral, social, political, religious, aesthetic. Cultural connotation – the perception and interpretation of the denotative and image-motivated meanings in terms and categories of culture; Cultural space – culture represented in the human mind. It is formed by the individual and collective consciousness of all representatives of a certain ethnic group, therefore the culture space can be brought into correlation with the cognitive space (Постовалова, 1999); Imagery – an inherent, generic property of the literary text which creates a dual sensory perception of an abstract notion by arousing certain associations between the general and the particular, the abstract and the concrete, the imaginary and the factual. Individual style - a unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to a given writer. It makes the writer’s works easily recognizable. Intertextuality - a peculiar quality of certain texts to corelate with others both semantically and structurally. Intertext contains explicit intertextual markers: epigraph, repetition of text forms (structures, rhythm, lexical units), antonomasia, allusion, quotation, etc.