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 influence 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 direct 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 conclude: 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 are special means of 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. The units of this aspect are evaluative linguistic units that record 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 the evaluative connotations of a 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, but 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 consciousness, and different forms of consciousness “paint” different pictures of the same reality, which do not exist 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 an object scientific research at this 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.

In modern scientific literature, in addition to the term linguistic picture of the world, one can also find the phrases picture of the world, scientific and naive picture of the world. Let's try to briefly define what is behind them and what are the specifics of each of these concepts.
The picture of the world is a certain system of ideas about the reality around us. This concept was first used by the famous Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) in his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (the work was written in 1916-1918 and published in Germany in 1921). According to L. Wittgenstein, the world around us is a collection of facts, not things, and it is determined exclusively by facts. Human consciousness creates for itself images of facts that represent a certain model of reality. This model, or picture of facts, reproduces the structure of reality as a whole or the structure of its individual components (in particular, spatial, color, etc.).
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 interactions between 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 laws 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. 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 the basis of the religious picture is faith (in sacred texts, in the words of 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 the 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.
So, for example, for a Russian person it is obvious that his intellectual life is connected with his head, and his emotional life with his heart: when remembering something, we store it in our head; the head cannot be kind, golden or stone, and the heart cannot be smart or bright (in Russian it’s the other way around); the head does not hurt for someone and we do not feel with it - only the heart is capable of this (it hurts, aches, feels, aches, hope can arise in it, etc.). “The head allows a person to reason sensibly; about a person endowed with such an ability, they say a clear (bright) head, and about someone who is deprived of such an ability, they say that he has no king in his head, that he has wind in his head, porridge in his head, or that he has no head on his shoulders at all. True, even a person’s head can go spinning (for example, if someone turns his head); he may even completely lose his head, this especially often happens with lovers in whom the heart, and not the head, becomes the main governing organ.<…>The head is also an organ of memory (cf. such expressions as keep it in your head, fly out of your head, throw it out of your head, etc.). In this respect, the Russian linguistic model of man differs from the archaic Western European model, in which the organ of memory was rather the heart (traces of this are preserved in such expressions as the English learn by heart or the French savoir par coeur), and is closer to the German model (cf. aus dem Kopf). True, memory of the heart is also possible in Russian, but this is only said about emotional, not intellectual memory. If to throw (throw away) from your head means to 'forget' or 'stop thinking' about someone or something, then to tear out of your heart (someone) does not mean to 'forget', but to 'stop loving' (or 'to make an attempt to stop loving'), cf. proverb: “Out of sight, out of mind.” .
However, such a naive picture of the world, where a person’s inner life is localized in the head (mind, intellect) and in the heart (feelings and emotions), is not at all universal. Thus, in the language of the aborigines of the island of Ifaluk (one of the thirty atolls of the Caroline archipelago, located in the western part of the Pacific Ocean, in Micronesia), the rational and the emotional are, in principle, not separated and are “placed” in the insides of a person. Moreover, the Ifaluk people do not even have a special word for emotions or feelings: the word niferash in their language, which names the internal organs of a person as an anatomical concept, is at the same time the “container” of all thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires and needs of the Ifaluk people. In the African language Dogon (West Africa, Republic of Mali), the role played by the heart is assigned to another internal organ - the liver, which, of course, is in no way connected with any specific anatomical structure of the speakers of these languages. Thus, to become enraged in the Dogon language literally means to feel the liver, to please means to take the liver, to calm down means to lower the liver, to have pleasure means to sweeten the liver, etc.
So, any specific human language reflects a certain way of perceiving and understanding the world, and all speakers of a given language share (often without realizing it) this unique system of views on the surrounding non-linguistic reality, since this special worldview is contained not only in the semantics of lexical units , but also in the design of morphological and syntactic structures, in the presence of certain grammatical categories and meanings, in the features of word-formation models of the language, etc. (all this is included in the concept of the linguistic picture of the world). Let's demonstrate this with another fairly simple example.
Every day we greet each other using greeting formulas that have been established for centuries and without thinking about their content. How do we do this? It turns out that they are very different. So, many representatives Slavic languages, including Russian ones, actually wish the interlocutor health (hello in Russian, hello or zdorovi (zdorovenki) buli in Ukrainian, zdraveite in Bulgarian, zdravo in Macedonian, etc.). English speakers, when greeting each other with the phrase How do you do?, are actually asking How are you doing?; the French, saying Comment ça va?, are interested in how it goes; German greeting Wie geht es? means How is it going?; Italians, when greeting with the phrase Come sta?, find out how you stand. The Hebrew greeting Shalom is a literal wish for peace. In fact, representatives of many Muslim nations also wish peace to everyone, saying to each other Salaam alei-kun! (Arabic) or Salaam aleihum (Azerbian), etc. The ancient Greeks, greeting each other, wished joy: this is how the ancient Greek haire is literally translated. Apparently, in the Slavic picture of the world, health was seen as something extremely important; in the picture of the world of Jews and Arabs (which is not surprising if you remember their history and look at the modern life of these peoples), the most important thing is peace; in the minds of the British, one of the central places are taken up by work, labor, etc.
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 (1767-1835), 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 the attempts to create universal sign systems, similar topics, which, for example, mathematics has. 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 transforming 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 diversity of languages, the richness of the world and the diversity of what we learn in it opens up for 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 limits 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 development of a number of Humboldt's ideas concerning the concept of a linguistic picture of the world was presented within the framework of American ethnolinguistics, primarily in the works of E. Sapir and his student B. Whorf, now known as the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. Edward Sapir (1884-1939) understood language as a system of heterogeneous units, all of whose components are connected by rather unique relationships. These relationships are unique, just as each specific language is unique, where everything is arranged in accordance with its own laws. It was the absence of the possibility of establishing element-by-element correspondence between systems of different languages ​​that Sapir understood as linguistic relativity. To express this idea, he also used the term “incommensurability” of languages: different language systems not only record in different ways the content of the cultural and historical experience of the native people, but also provide all speakers of a given language with unique ways of mastering non-linguistic reality that do not coincide with others. and ways of perceiving it.
As Sapir believes, language and thinking are inextricably linked; in a sense, they are one and the same. And although the internal content of all languages, in his opinion, is the same, their external form is infinitely diverse, since this form embodies the collective art of thinking. The scientist defines culture as what a given society does and thinks. Language is how one thinks. Each language carries within itself a certain intuitive registration of experience, and the special structure of each language is the specific “how” of this registration of our experience.
The role of language as a guiding principle in the scientific study of culture is extremely important, since the system of cultural stereotypes of any civilization is ordered with the help of the language that serves this civilization. Moreover, language is understood by Sapir as a kind of guide to social reality, since it significantly influences our understanding of social processes and problems. “People live not only in the material world and not only in the social world, as is commonly thought: to a large extent, they are all at the mercy of the specific language that has become the means of expression in a given society. 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 problems of thinking and communication is just an illusion. In reality, the “real world” is largely unconsciously constructed on the basis of the linguistic habits of a particular social group. Two different languages ​​are never so similar that they can be considered a means of expressing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are different worlds, and not at all the same world with different labels attached to it.<…>We see, hear and generally perceive the world around us exactly this way and not otherwise, mainly due to the fact that our choice in interpreting it is predetermined by the linguistic habits of our society.”
The term principle of linguistic relativity (by analogy with A. Einstein’s principle of relativity) was introduced by Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941): “We dismember the world, organize it into concepts and distribute meanings one way and not another, mainly because we are parties to an agreement , which prescribes such systematization. This agreement is valid for a specific speech community and is enshrined in the system of models of our language.<…>We are thus faced with a new principle of relativity, which states that similar physical phenomena make it possible to create a similar picture of the universe only if the linguistic systems are similar or at least correlative.”
Whorf is the founder of research on the place and role of linguistic metaphors in the conceptualization of reality. It was he who first drew attention to the fact that the figurative meaning of a word can not only influence how its original meaning functions in speech, but it even determines in some situations the behavior of native speakers. IN modern linguistics studying the metaphorical meanings of words turned out to be a very relevant and productive activity. First of all, we should mention the research conducted by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, starting in the 1980s, which convincingly showed that linguistic metaphors play an important role not only in poetic language, but also structure our everyday worldview and thinking. The so-called cognitive theory of metaphor arose, which became widely known and popular beyond linguistics itself. In the famous book “Metaphors by which we live,” the point of view was substantiated, according to which metaphor is the most important mechanism for mastering the world by human thinking and plays a significant role in the formation of the human conceptual system and the structure of natural language.
Actually, the term linguistic picture of the world (Weltbild der Sprache) was introduced into scientific use by the German linguist Johann Leo Weisgerber (1899-1985) in the 30s. XX century. In the article “The connection between the native language, thinking and action,” L. Weisgerber wrote that “the vocabulary of a particular language includes, as a whole, along with the totality of linguistic signs, also the totality of conceptual mental means that the linguistic community has at its disposal; and as each speaker learns this vocabulary, all members of the linguistic community become proficient in these mental tools; in this sense, we can say that the possibility of a native language lies in the fact that it contains in its concepts and forms of thinking a certain picture of the world and transmits it to all members of the linguistic community.” In later works, Weisgerber fits the picture of the world not only into the vocabulary, but into the content side of the language as a whole, including not only lexical semantics, but also the semantics of grammatical forms and categories, morphological and syntactic structures.
Weisgerber allowed the relative freedom of human consciousness from the linguistic picture of the world, but within its own framework, i.e. the originality of this or that person will be limited by the national specificity of the linguistic picture of the world: thus, a German will not be able to see the world the way a Russian or Indian will see it from his “window”. Weisgerber says that we are dealing with the invasion of our native language into our views: even where our personal experience could show us something different, we remain faithful to the worldview that is conveyed to us by our native language. At the same time, Weisgerber believes that language influences not only how we understand objects, but also determines which objects we subject to certain conceptual processing.
In the mid-30s. Weisgerber recognizes field research as the most important method for studying the picture of the world, and he relies on the principle of mutual limitation of field elements formulated by J. Trier. A verbal field (Wortfeld) is a group of words used to describe a certain sphere of life or a certain semantic, conceptual sphere. It, according to Weisgerber, exists as a single whole, therefore the meanings of the individual words included in it are determined by the structure of the field and the place of each of its components in this structure. The structure of the field itself is determined by the semantic structure of a specific language, which has its own view of the objectively existing non-linguistic reality. When describing the semantic fields of a particular language, it is extremely important to pay attention to which fields look most rich and diverse in this language: after all, a semantic field is a certain fragment from the intermediate world of the native language. Weisgerber creates a classification of fields, distinguishing them both from the point of view of the sphere of reality they describe, and taking into account the degree of activity of language in their formation.
As an example of a specific semantic field in the German language, consider the field of verbs with the meaning “to die”. This example is often cited in a number of works by the scientist himself. This field (as Weisgerber presents it) consists of four circles: inside the first of them is placed the general content of all these verbs - the cessation of life (Aufhören des Lebens); the second circle contains three verbs expressing this content in relation to people (sterben), animals (verenden) and plants (eingehen); the third circle expands and refines each of these particular spheres from the point of view of the method of cessation of life (for plants - fallen, erfrieren, for animals - verhungern, unkommen, for people - zugrunde gehen, erliegen, etc.); finally, the fourth circle contains stylistic variants of the main content of the field: ableben, einschlummern, entschlafen, hinűbergehen, heimgehen (for high style) and verrecken, abkratzen, verröcheln, erlöschen, verscheiden (for low or fairly neutral word usage).
Thus, the linguistic picture of the world is reflected primarily in the dictionary. The main subject basis for it is created by nature (soil, climate, geographical conditions, flora and fauna, etc.), certain historical events. Thus, for example, the Swiss-German dialect displays an astonishing variety of words for specific aspects of mountains, and these words mostly have no corresponding analogues in standard German. At the same time, we are talking not just about synonymous wealth, but about a completely definite and very unique understanding of certain aspects of the mountain landscape.
In a number of cases, such a specific vision and representation of natural phenomena, flora and fauna, which this or that language gives us in the semantics of individual words, does not coincide with scientific classifications or even contradicts them. In particular, in both Russian and German languages ​​there are such words (and the concepts they denote accordingly) as weed (German Unkraut), berry (German Beere), fruit (German Obst), vegetables (German Gemüse) etc. Moreover, many words of this kind, quite clearly represented in our minds and often used in everyday life, are even “older” than the corresponding botanical terms. In fact, such phenomena simply do not exist in nature, some of them could not even be “intended” by nature: based on the criteria established and proposed in botany, it is impossible to identify a certain subset of plants called weeds, or weeds. This concept is obviously the result of human judgment: we classify a number of plants into this category on the basis of their unsuitability, uselessness and even harmfulness to us. The concepts of fruits and vegetables are more culinary or food than scientific; they in no way correlate with the structural morphological classification of the plant world. The concept of a berry, on the contrary, is presented in botany, but its scope (as a scientific concept) does not coincide with our everyday understanding of this object: not all fruits that we call berries, strictly speaking, are such (for example, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries are not berries from a scientific point of view, but drupes) - this is on the one hand; and on the other hand, there are “real” berries that we are not used to denoting with this word (for example, watermelon, tomato or cucumber).
Many natural phenomena are not only seen by languages ​​“incorrectly” (i.e. in the corresponding branch of scientific knowledge there are either no such phenomena or they are understood differently), but also different languages ​​see it differently: so, in particular , the German language does not see the differences between wild strawberries and strawberries, cherries and cherries, a cloud and a cloud, like Russian - i.e. in German, for these cases, one word is “provided”, and not a pair, as we have.
Naturally, such naive ideas about nature, recorded in the lexical units of a language, do not remain unchanged and stable, but change over time. Thus, according to L. Weisgerber, many words related to the animal kingdom had different meanings in Middle High German than those they have in modern German. Previously, the word tier was not a general designation for the entire animal world, as it is now, but meant only four-legged wild animals; Middle High German wurm, unlike modern Wurm ‘worm’, also included snakes, dragons, spiders and caterpillars; Middle High German vogel, in addition to birds, also called bees, butterflies, and even flies. In general, the Middle High German classification of the animal world looked something like this: on the one hand, there were domestic animals - vihe, on the other - wild animals, divided into 4 classes depending on their method of movement (tier 'running animal', vogel 'flying animal', wurm 'crawling animal', visch 'swimming animal'). This, in its own way, completely logical and harmonious picture does not coincide at all with zoological classifications, or with what we have in modern German.
In the history of Russian linguo-philosophical thought, ideas about language as a tool for thinking and understanding the world, first formulated by W. Humboldt, became popular after the publication of the book “Thought and Language” by Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya (1835-1891). Potebnya presents the relationship between language and thinking in this way: thought exists independently of language, since along with verbal thinking there is also non-verbal thinking. Thus, in his opinion, a child does not speak until a certain age, but in a certain sense thinks, i.e. perceives sensory images, remembers them and even partially generalizes them; the creative thought of a painter, sculptor or musician is accomplished without words - i.e. The area of ​​language does not always coincide with the area of ​​thought. In general, undoubtedly, language is a means of objectifying thought.
Potebnya also, following Humboldt, operates with the concept of spirit, but he understands spirit somewhat differently - as a conscious mental activity, presupposing concepts that are formed only through words. And, of course, language is not identical to the spirit of the people.
Language seems to be a means, or instrument, of any other human activity. At the same time, language is something more than an external tool, and its significance for cognition is rather similar to the significance of such organs of sensory perception as the eye or ear. In the process of observing native and foreign languages ​​and summarizing the data obtained, Potebnya comes to the conclusion that the path along which a person’s thought is directed is determined by his native language. And different languages ​​also mean deeply different systems of thinking techniques. Therefore, a universal or universal language would only be a lowering of the level of thought. TO universal properties languages ​​Potebnya refers only to their articulation (from the point of view of their external side, i.e. sounds) and the fact that they are all systems of symbols that serve thought (from the point of view of their inside). All their other properties are individual, not universal. For example, there is not a single grammatical or lexical category that would be mandatory for all languages ​​of the world. According to Potebnya, language is also a form of thought, but one that is not found in anything other than the language itself, and, like V. Humboldt, A.A. Potebnya argues that “language is a means of not expressing a ready-made thought, but to create it, that it is not a reflection of the existing worldview, but the activity that composes it.”
The word gives not only the consciousness of thought, but also something else - that thought, like the sounds accompanying it, exists not only in the speaker, but also in the understander. The word appears in this regard as “a well-known form of thought, like a glass frame, defining the circle of observations and in a certain way coloring what is observed.” In general, a word is the most obvious indicator for consciousness of the completed act of cognition. It is characteristic that, according to Potebnya, “a word does not express the entire content of a concept, but only one of the features, precisely the one that seems to be the most important in the popular opinion.”
A word can have an internal form, which is defined as the relation of the content of thought to consciousness. It shows how a person’s own thought appears to him. Only this can explain why in the same language there can be several words to denote the same object and, conversely, one word can denote dissimilar objects. In accordance with this, the word has two contents: objective and subjective. The first is understood as the closest etymological meaning of a given word, which includes only one feature - for example, the content of the word table as covered, laid. The second can include many features - for example, the image of a table in general. Moreover, the internal form is not just one of the features of the image associated with the word, but the center of the image, one of its features, prevailing over all others, which is especially obvious in words with a transparent etymology. Potebnya believes that the internal form of the word spoken by the speaker gives direction to the listener’s thoughts without setting limits to his understanding of the word.
In a language there are words with a “living representation” (i.e. with an internal form understandable to modern speakers of the language, for example: window sill, bruise, dungeon, blueberry) and words with a “forgotten representation” (i.e. with a lost, currently lost moment internal form: ring, shoot, hoop, image). This is inherent in the very essence of the word, in the way this word lives: sooner or later, the idea that serves as the center of meaning is forgotten or becomes unimportant, insignificant for speakers of a given language. Thus, we no longer correlate with each other such words as bag and fur, window and eye, fat and live, bear and honey, offend and see, although historically and etymologically they were closely related.
At the same time, both Potebnya and Weisgerber note independently of each other, in a number of cases phenomena of a different kind are observed: people often begin to believe that it is possible to extract the interconnection of things from the similarity of the sound forms of the names that call them. This gives rise to a special type of human behavior - determined by folk etymology, which is also a phenomenon of the influence of a particular language on its speakers. Linguistic mysticism, linguistic magic arises, people begin to look at the word “as truth and essence” (Potebnya), a fairly widespread (perhaps even universal) phenomenon is formed - “linguistic realism” (Weisgerber). Linguistic realism presupposes unlimited trust in the language on the part of its speakers, a naive confidence that the similarity of external and internal form words entails the similarity of things and phenomena called by these words. The picture of the world of the native language is perceived by its speakers as a natural given and turns into the basis of mental activity.
How exactly can so-called linguistic realism manifest itself? The simplest and most widespread phenomenon in this regard is folk etymology, which, unlike scientific etymology, is based not on the laws of language development, but on the random similarity of words. In this case, there may be an alteration and rethinking of a borrowed (less often, native) word according to the model of a word in the native language that is close in sound to it, but which differs from it in origin. So, for example, the words mukhlyazh instead of dummy, gulvar instead of boulevard, etc. arose among the people. By modifying words in this way, completely or partially rethinking them due to arbitrary convergence with similar-sounding words, speakers strive to make a word that is unmotivated for them motivated and understandable. Sometimes such an erroneous etymology of a word can become entrenched and preserved in a language, not only in its colloquial or vernacular version, but also in its literary form. Such, for example, is the historically incorrect modern understanding of the word witness in the sense of “eyewitness”, connecting it with the verb to see, instead of the correct original meaning of “informed person”, because Previously, this word looked like a witness and was associated with the verb to know, i.e. know.
This kind of “etymology” is often found in children's speech. A huge number of funny examples are given, in particular, in the famous book by K.I. Chukovsky “From Two to Five.” A child, mastering and comprehending “adult” words, often wants the sound to have meaning, so that the word has a clear and at the same time quite concrete and even tangible image, and if this image is not there, the child “corrects” this mistake, creating his own new word. So, three-year-old Mura, Chukovsky’s daughter, asked for mazelin for her mother: this is how she “revived” the word Vaseline, which was dead for her (this is an ointment that is used to smear something). Another child called lipstick lipstick for the same reason. Two-year-old Kirill, being sick, asked to have cold mocress put on his head, i.e. compress. Little Busya (typically, like some other children) aptly called the dentist's drill a big machine. As K.I. Chukovsky rightly notes, if a child does not notice the direct correspondence between the function of an object and its name, he corrects the name, emphasizing in this word the function of the object that he managed to discern. This is how a children's mallet appeared instead of a hammer (because they use it to beat), a spinner instead of a fan (it spins, after all), a digger instead of a shovel (they use it to dig), a sand shovel instead of an excavator (because it scoops out sand), etc.
Another manifestation of linguistic realism is cases of a certain and very peculiar type of behavior of native speakers, determined by folk etymology, these are even special customs and folk signs, which at first glance seem inexplicable and strange, but are also associated with folk etymological interpretations of names. Under the influence of the external or internal form of words, myths are created among the people that determine the behavior of ordinary people.
Let's show this with specific examples. In Rus', on April 12 (according to the new style - 25) the day of Vasily of Paria is celebrated. The Monk Basil, bishop of the Parian diocese in Asia Minor, lived in the 8th century. When the iconoclastic heresy arose, he advocated the veneration of holy icons, for which he suffered persecution, hunger and poverty. Let's now see what signs are associated among the people with the day when they remember Vasily of Pari:
On St. Basil's Day, spring soars the earth.
On Vasily the earth steams like an old woman in a bathhouse.
If the sun really hovers the earth, then the year will be fertile.
It is obvious that all these statements are due to the consonance of the words Pariysky and soar, behind which in reality nothing stands except for the similarity of appearance.
May 23 is the day of the Apostle Simon the Zealot. Simon received the name Zealot, i.e. zealot, adherent, because preached the teachings of Christ in a number of countries and suffered martyrdom. The Greek name Zealot was incomprehensible to ordinary Russian speakers, but people believed that there was some connection between the words Zealot and gold. Therefore, they look for treasures against the Apostle Simon the Zealot, confident that he is helping treasure hunters. There is another custom associated with this day: on May 23, peasants walk through forests and meadows, collecting various herbs, which are credited with special healing powers, because... in Ukrainian the name of the apostle resembles the word zilla, i.e. medicinal herbs.
Examples of this kind of linguistic realism (but already concerning native speakers of German) are also found in the works of Weisgerber. Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo North Africa, is one of the most famous people of the Catholic Church. At the same time, people considered it a protector against eye diseases, because the beginning of his name is consonant with the German Auge ‘eye’. And the holy martyr Valentine is considered by Catholics to be the patron saint of not only lovers, but also epileptics. Previously, epilepsy was even called St. Valentine's disease. The point is that Latin name Valentinus turned out to be consonant with the Old High German verb fallan ‘to fall’ (cf. with modern English verb to fall or German fallend hin ‘falling to the ground’; antique Russian name epilepsy epilepsy is also derived from the verb to fall). Because of this consonance, first among the German-speaking peoples, and then among their neighbors, Valentine began to be revered as a healer of epilepsy.
These phenomena can be called etymological magic, which consists in the fact that consonant words come together in the minds of speakers of a particular language, and the resulting connection is reflected in folklore and rituals associated with the objects that these words denote.
Since we are talking about the people's worldview and understanding of the world, reflected and contained in a particular language, it is necessary to dwell separately on the question of how the picture of the world that has developed in any literary language correlates with different modifications of this picture presented in different language dialects . Moreover, many linguists who dealt with this issue attached special importance to dialect data. Thus, in particular, L. Weisgerber called the dialect “linguistic development of native places” and believed that it is the dialect that participates in the process of spiritual creation of the homeland. It is dialects and dialects that often preserve what a standardized literary language loses - both individual linguistic units, special grammatical forms or unexpected syntactic structures, and a special worldview, recorded, for example, in the semantics of words and in general in the presence of individual words that are absent in literary language.
We will show this using specific examples, selected by us mainly from the “Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects” with the assistance of the “Dictionary of Meteorological Vocabulary of Oryol Dialects”, as well as the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” by V.I. Dahl.
Let's first take the word rain and look at the corresponding dictionary entry in V.I. Dahl's dictionary. After defining this concept (according to Dahl, rain is water in drops or streams from clouds), we will find a number of synonyms for the noun rain that existed in the Russian language in the mid-19th century. So, in addition to the neutral rain, in the Russian language there were the nouns liven (which is still available in the literary language to denote the heaviest rain), kosokhlest, podstega (slanting rain in the direction of a strong wind), senochnaya (rain during haymaking), lepen (rain with snow), sitnik, sitnichek (the smallest rain), drizzle, bus (the smallest rain, like wet dust), as well as rubbish, hizha, chicher, busikha, busenets, sitovnik, sityaga, morokh, morok, lezhitsa, sitiven, situkha. Unfortunately, V.I. Dahl’s dictionary does not always indicate in which dialect or dialect a particular word is found, and not all words have their meanings indicated. Therefore, in our case, it is quite difficult to assess where (in a general literary language or in a dialect; if in a dialect, then specifically in which one) and how rain was represented as a natural phenomenon: what special shades of meaning (in comparison with the neutral noun rain) were carried by others the name of this concept, how many there were, etc.
Let's now look at the synonyms for rain that we have selected according to the data of the modern above-mentioned dictionaries of Russian dialects. Below are two different pictures that are found in the Oryol and Arkhangelsk dialects. In fact, these are two unique classifications of rain, given in the meanings of individual words.
In the Oryol interpretation, rain looks like this:
heavy rain - waterfall, rainfall;
light drizzle – rush grass;
light rain with a strong headwind - cutting;
persistent rain - obkladen;
intermittent rain - scary;
slanting rain - slanting;
rain with thunder - thunderstorm;
mushroom rain - poultice;
rain at the end of June - borage;
rain during haymaking - haymaking.
Arkhangelsk dialects represent this same atmospheric phenomenon somewhat differently:
heavy rain - flood;
light drizzle - beady rain;
persistent rain - rainfall, cover, cover;
warm rain - parun;
warm mushroom rain - husk;
light, continuous rain during haymaking - humus.
As can be seen, ideas about different types The rains here do not coincide, and the names for the coinciding varieties of rain are different in each case. There is nothing like this in the picture that modern literary Russian shows us. Of course, you can indicate one or another type of rain by adding appropriate adjectives (large, small, heavy, torrential, tropical, frequent, mushroom, etc.), verbs (rain can fall, drizzle, drip, pour, sow, let it flow, etc.) or even using established phraseological combinations (it’s pouring like a bucket; it’s pouring like the sky has broken through, etc.). But it is important that in the literary language there are no separate nouns that name those concepts that are represented in dialects.
This statement is also true for huge number other concepts and words that name them. So, the wind in Oryol dialects happens:
very strong - sail, wind blow;
heavy with rain and hail - boulder;
counter – opponent;
tailwind - wind;
warm summer - letnik;
cold autumn - autumn;
northern - north;
eastern - Astrakhan.
Arkhangelsk dialects give a slightly more diverse picture for describing the types of wind:
very strong – windy;
strong autumn - leaf blower;
counter - opponent;
cold – fresh;
wind from the sea - sailor;
wind from the shore - coastal wind;
northern – zasiverka, siverko;
northeastern - night owl, hellebore;
southern – lunch table;
Western - Westerner.
As you can see, these classifications of wind, given in the meanings of the words of the above-mentioned dialects, are not always consistent and logical (for example, why in the first case there are names for the north and east winds, but not for the west and south), carried out on different grounds (taking into account the fact the direction of the wind, its strength, the time of year in which it is observed, etc.), are distinguished different number types of wind, and in some cases there are synonyms. If we try to give a summary picture of the most diverse dialects of the Russian language, it will turn out to be even more motley and diverse. In addition to the previously mentioned types of wind, other Russian dialects (in addition to them) distinguish:
strong wind - windy (Donsk.), carminative (Krasnodar), windy (Onezhsk.), whirlwind (Sverdl.);
light wind - wind (Smolensk), wind (Olonets), windward (Pskov, Tver);
cold piercing wind - Siberian (Astrakhan), cold (Vladimir);
cold winter wind - zimar (Novgorod);
whirlwind - whirl (Vladimir);
side wind - kolyshen (Siberian);
wind from the lake - ozerik (Belomorsk);
wind that carries ice from the seashore - drift (Caspian);
wind from the upper reaches of the river - verkhovik (Irkutsk, Siberian);
wind from the lower reaches of the river - nizovik (Krasnoyarsk), nizovets (Komi dialects), nizovka (Irkutsk, Siberian, Donsk);
wind blowing parallel to the shore - kosynya (Vladimir, Volzhsk);
morning wind - dawn (Yeniseisk);
the wind that brings rain clouds is wet (Novgorod, Pskov).
There is no doubt that the semantic structure of a word contains information about the system of values ​​of the people - native speakers, stores the cultural and historical experience of the people, and conveys their special “reading” of the world around them. As you can see from the examples given, all this is represented differently in the language in different periods its history and, moreover, is presented differently in different dialects and in the national language. It should also be clearly understood that the word is not only a carrier of knowledge, but also its source, and therefore plays such an important role in the knowledge and description of non-linguistic reality. Without its participation, cognitive activity itself is impossible, the process of thinking cannot take place, and it is in this sense that language really is a mediator between the inner world of a person and objectively existing reality.
Currently, many studies place special emphasis on reconstructing the entire picture of the world of the Russian language. To do this, of course, it is first necessary to reconstruct its individual fragments based on data from both lexical and grammatical categories, units and their meanings. What are the techniques with which you can reconstruct the picture of the world (both the whole and its individual fragments) of a language?
One of the most popular methods of such reconstruction in our time is based on the analysis of the metaphorical compatibility of words with abstract meaning, because A linguistic metaphor is one of the possibilities for expressing a unique worldview contained in a particular language: a picture of the world cannot be a transcript of knowledge about the world or its mirror image, it is always a look at it through some kind of prism. Metaphors often play the role of this prism, because they allow us to consider something cognizable now through what has already been cognized earlier, while coloring reality in a specific way.
Let us show with a concrete example how this method is practically implemented when describing the semantics of words in the Russian language. If we look at the meanings of the Russian words grief and despair, reflections and memories, we will see that all the concepts called the above words are associated with the image of a reservoir: grief and despair can be deep, and a person can plunge into thoughts and memories. Apparently, the above internal states make contact with the outside world inaccessible for a person - as if he were at the bottom of some reservoir. Reflections and memories can also surge like a wave, but the water element that appears here represents other properties of these human states: now the idea of ​​the suddenness of their onset and the idea of ​​a person’s complete absorption in them are emphasized.
The study of linguistic metaphors makes it possible to find out to what extent metaphors in a particular language are an expression of the cultural preferences of a given society and, accordingly, reflect a certain linguistic picture of the world, and to what extent they embody the universal psychosomatic qualities of a person.
Another, no less popular and successful, method of reconstructing the picture of the world is associated with the study and description of the so-called linguistic-specific words, i.e. words that cannot be translated into other languages ​​or have fairly conditional or approximate analogues in other languages. When studying such words, they reveal language-specific concepts or concepts that, in most cases, are key to understanding a particular picture of the world. They often contain various kinds of stereotypes of linguistic, national and cultural consciousness.
Many researchers working in this direction prefer to use the technique of comparison, since it is in comparison with other languages ​​that the specificity of the “semantic Universe” (Anna Wierzbicka’s expression) of the language of interest to us is most clearly visible. A. Vezhbitskaya rightly believes that there are concepts that are fundamental to the model of one language world and at the same time completely absent in another, and therefore there are thoughts that can be “thought” in this particular language, and there are even feelings that can be experienced only within the framework of this linguistic consciousness, and they cannot be characteristic of any other consciousness and mentality. Thus, if we take the Russian concept of soul, we can discover its dissimilarity to the corresponding concept presented in the English-speaking world. For Russians, the soul is the repository of the main, if not all, events of emotional life and, in general, the entire inner world of a person: feelings, emotions, thoughts, desires, knowledge, thinking and speech abilities - all this (and in fact this is what usually happens hidden from human eyes) is concentrated in the Russian soul. The soul is our personality. And if our soul usually comes into opposition with the body in our consciousness, then in the Anglo-Saxon world the body usually contrasts with the mind (mind), and not with the soul. This worldview is also manifested when translating a number of Russian words into English: in particular, the Russian mentally ill is translated as mentally ill.
So, the word mind in English is, according to Wierzbicka, as key for Anglo-Saxon linguistic consciousness as soul is for Russian, and it is this word, including the sphere of the intellectual, that is in opposition to the body. As for the role of intelligence in the Russian linguistic picture of the world, it is very significant that in it this concept - the concept of intellect, consciousness, reason - in its significance is in principle not comparable to the soul: this is manifested, for example, in the richness of metaphors and idioms, associated with the concept of the soul. In general, the soul and body in Russian (and in general in Christian) culture are opposed to each other as high and low.
The study of linguistic-specific words in their interrelation makes it possible today to restore quite significant fragments of the Russian picture of the world, which are formed by a system of key concepts and invariant key ideas connecting them. So, A.A. Zaliznyak, I.B. Levontina and A.D. Shmelev identify the following key ideas, or cross-cutting motifs, of the Russian linguistic picture of the world (of course, this list is not exhaustive, but suggests the possibility of its addition and expansion):
1) the idea of ​​the unpredictability of the world (it is contained in a number of Russian words and expressions, for example: what if, just in case, if something happens, maybe; I’m going to, I’ll try; I managed; to get there; happiness);
2) the idea that the main thing is to get together, i.e. in order to implement something, you must first mobilize your internal resources, and this is often difficult and difficult to do (get together, at the same time);
3) the idea that a person can feel good inside if he has a large space outside; moreover, if this space is uninhabited, it rather creates internal discomfort (prowess, will, expanse, scope, breadth, breadth of soul, toil, restless, get there);
4) attention to the nuances of human relationships (communication, relationships, reproach, resentment, family, separation, boredom);
5) the idea of ​​justice (fairness, truth, resentment);
6) opposition “high - low” (life - being, truth - truth, duty - obligation, good - good, joy - pleasure);
7) the idea that it is good when other people know how a person feels (sincere, laugh, open heart);
8) the idea that it is bad when a person acts for reasons of practical benefit (prudent, petty, daring, scope).
As noted above, a special worldview is contained not only in the meanings of lexical units, but also embodied in the grammatical structure of the language. Let us now look from this point of view at some grammatical categories: how they are presented in different languages, what types of meanings they express, and how uniquely non-linguistic reality is reflected in them.
In a number of languages ​​of the Caucasus, Southeast Asia, Africa, North America, Australia, nouns have such a category as a nominal class. All nouns in these languages ​​are divided into groups, or categories, depending on a variety of factors:
the logical correlation of the concept they denote (classes of people, animals, plants, things, etc. can be distinguished);
the size of the objects they call (there are diminutive and augmentative classes);
quantities (there are classes of single objects, paired objects, classes of collective names, etc.);
shapes or configurations (there may be classes of words naming oblong, flat, round objects), etc.
The number of such nominal classes can vary from two to several dozen, depending on the language in which they are presented. Thus, in some Nakh-Dagestan languages ​​the following picture is observed. Three grammatical classes of names are distinguished according to a fairly simple and quite logical principle: people who differ in gender, and everything else (it does not matter whether they are living beings, objects or some abstract concepts). So, for example, in the Kubachi dialect of the Dargin language, this division of nouns into three classes is manifested in the coordination of names occupying the position of subject in a sentence with predicate verbs using special prefixes - indicators of nominal classes: if the subject name belongs to the class that names masculine people gender, the predicate verb acquires the prefix indicator v-; if the subject denotes a female person, the verb is marked with the prefix й-; if the subject names something other than a person, the verb acquires the prefix b-.
In the Chinese language, the division into nominal classes is manifested in another kind of grammatical constructions - in combinations of nouns with numerals. Speaking Chinese, you cannot directly connect these two words in speech: there must be a special counting word, or numeral, between them. Moreover, the choice of one or another counting word is determined by the belonging of the noun to one or another class, i.e. in Chinese it is impossible to say two people, three cows, five books, but you need to pronounce (conventionally) two person personas, three cow heads, five book spines. From a European point of view, it is often completely incomprehensible why words denoting, for example, pens, cigarettes, pencils, poles, verses of songs, detachments of soldiers, columns of people (all of them are combined with one counting word zhī) are included in the same class branch"), another class combines the names of family members, pigs, vessels, bells and knives (they require the counting word kǒu "mouth"), etc. Sometimes there is a completely rational explanation for this (for example, the word shuāng “pair” refers to paired objects, and the word zhāng “leaf” refers to objects with a flat surface: tables, walls, letters, sheets of paper, faces or parts thereof), sometimes it is Even native speakers cannot explain (for example, why both residential premises and typos or errors in the text are considered the same word chǔ; or why both Buddha statues and cannons are considered the word zūn). But there is nothing surprising in this state of affairs, since we also cannot explain why in Russian knife, table, house are masculine, and fork, desk, hut are feminine. It’s just that in our picture of the world they are seen this way and not otherwise.
Can such a linguistic vision mean anything to speakers of a given language? Absolutely yes. In some cases, it can determine the behavior and worldview of speakers of this language and, in a certain way, even correct the direction of their thinking. Thus, several decades ago, American psychologists conducted a fairly simple but convincing experiment with young children who spoke Navajo (one of the many North American Indian languages) and with English-speaking children of the same age. Children were presented with objects of different colors, different sizes and different shapes (for example, red, yellow, blue, green sticks, ropes, balls, sheets of paper, etc.) so that they distribute these objects into different groups. English-speaking children mainly took into account the factor of color, and children of the Navajo tribe (where there is a grammatical category of noun class), when distributing objects into different groups, primarily paid attention to their size and shape. Thus, a certain worldview, embedded in the grammatical structure of the Navajo language and English, controlled the behavior and thinking of children who spoke one language or another.
If you look at the category of number, you can also see a number of unique ways of perceiving the world inherent in it. The point here is not only that there are languages ​​where a different number of grammes will be opposed to each other. As you know, in most languages ​​of the world there are two grammemes - singular and plural; in a number of ancient languages ​​(Sanskrit, ancient Greek, Old Church Slavonic) and in some modern languages(classical Arabic, Koryak, Sami, Samoyed, etc.) there were or are three grammes - singular, dual and plural; in a very small number of languages ​​of the world, in addition to the previous three, the triple number is also found (for example, in some Papuan languages); and in one of the Austronesian languages ​​(Sursurunga) personal pronouns even have a quadruple number. That is, someone perceives as “many” that which is more than one, someone – as that which is more than two or three or even four. Already in this numerical opposition a different worldview is manifested. But there are more interesting things. Thus, in some Polynesian, Dagestan, and Indian languages ​​there is a so-called paucal number (from the Latin paucus “few”), denoting a certain small number of objects (maximum - up to seven), opposed to singular, plural, and sometimes dual (for example, in the language North American Indians Hopi) numbers. That is, Hopi speakers count something like this: one, two, several (but not much), many.
Sometimes there are very unexpected uses of different forms of grammatical number. Thus, in the Hungarian language, paired (by nature) objects can be used in the singular form: szem ‘pair of eyes’ (singular), but fel szem ‘eye’ literally means ‘half an eye’. Those. here the unit of counting is a pair. In Breton, the dual exponent daou- can be combined with the exponent plural– où: lagad ‘(one) eye’ - daoulagad ‘pair of eyes’ - daoulagadoù ‘several pairs of eyes’. Apparently, in the Breton language there are two grammatical categories - pairing and plurality. That’s why they can be combined within the same word without being mutually exclusive. In some languages ​​(for example, Budukh, widespread in Azerbaijan), there are two variants of the plural - compact (or dotted) and distant (or distributive). The first number, in contrast to the second, indicates that a certain set of objects is concentrated in one place or functions as a single whole. Thus, in the Budukh language the fingers of one hand and the fingers of different hands or of different people will be used with different plural endings; wheels of one car or wheels of different cars, etc.
As can be seen from the above examples, even the same grammatical categories of different languages ​​show their speakers the world from different points of view, allow them to see or not see some features of individual objects or phenomena of non-linguistic reality, identify them or, conversely, distinguish them. This (among other things) reveals a special worldview inherent in each specific linguistic picture of the world.
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.
A.D. Shmelev. Spirit, soul and body in the light of Russian language data // A.A. Zaliznyak, I.B. Levontina, A.D. Shmelev. Key ideas of the Russian linguistic picture of the world. M., 2005, pp. 148-149.
This special worldview was first discovered by American anthropologists in the 50s. XX century. See: M. Bates, D. Abbott. Ifaluk Island. M., 1967.
See: V.A. Plungyan. To the description of the African “naive picture of the world” (localization of sensations and understanding in the Dogon language) // Logical analysis of natural language. Cultural concepts. M., 1991, pp. 155-160.

E. Sapir. Status of linguistics as a science // E. Sapir. Selected works on linguistics and cultural studies. M., 1993, p. 261.
B.Whorf. Science and linguistics // Foreign linguistics. I. M., 1999, pp. 97-98.
Quote by: O.A. Radchenko. Language as a world-creation. Linguistic and philosophical concept of neo-Humboldtianism. M., 2006, p. 235.
This example is given from the above-mentioned book by O.A. Radchenko, p. 213.
A.A.Potebnya. Thought and language // A.A. Potebnya. Word and myth. M., 1989, p. 156.
A.A.Potebnya. From notes on the theory of literature // A.A. Potebnya. Word and myth. M., 1989, p. 238.
A.A.Potebnya. About some symbols in Slavic folk poetry // A.A. Potebnya. Word and myth. M., 1989, p. 285.
Dictionary of Russian folk dialects. M.-L., 1965-1997, vol. 1-31;
Dictionary of meteorological vocabulary of Oryol dialects. Orel, 1996;
V.I. Dal. Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language. M., 1989, vol. 1-4.
V.I. Dal. Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language. M., 1989. Volume 1, pp. 452-453.
The example is taken from Anna Zaliznyak’s article “Linguistic Picture of the World,” which is presented in the Krugosvet electronic encyclopedia: http://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/gumanitarnye_nauki/lingvistika.
There are a number of works by A. Vezhbitskaya, translated into Russian, devoted to this issue:
A. Vezhbitskaya. Language. Culture. Cognition. M., 1996;
A. Vezhbitskaya. Semantic universals and description of languages. M., 1999;
A. Vezhbitskaya. Understanding cultures through keywords. M., 2001;
A. Vezhbitskaya. Comparing cultures through vocabulary and pragmatics. M., 2001.
A.A. Zaliznyak, I.B. Levontina and A.D. Shmelev. Key ideas of the Russian linguistic picture of the world. M., 2005, p. 11.
Here and below, typically Russian concepts are indicated in italics, illustrating, in the authors’ opinion, one or another cross-cutting motif of the Russian picture of the world.
This is written in more detail in the book: D. Slobin, J. Green. Psycholinguistics. M., 1976, pp. 212-214.
It is very interesting that, according to developmental psychology, children of this age normally first begin to operate with the concept of color rather than shape.

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When considering the picture of the world, one cannot fail to mention the linguistic aspect, which goes back to the ideas of the German philosopher, educator, public and statesman, diplomat Friedrich Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) and his neo-Humboldtian followers, among whom special mention should be made of the German linguist, specialist in the field of linguistics Johann Leo Weisgerber (1899–1985). At the same time, however, it should be said that the ideas about the linguistic picture of the world are based on the ideas of American ethnolinguists, in particular the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity (for more details, see below).

The concept of a linguistic picture of the world

W. Humboldt (Fig. 2.1) believed that language creates an intermediate world between the human community and reality through the system of its concepts.

“Each language,” he wrote, “forms a kind of sphere around a people, which must be left in order to come to the sphere of another people. Therefore, learning a foreign language should always be the acquisition of a new point of view of the world.”

Rice. 2.1.Friedrich Wilhelm von Humboldt, German philosopher, public figure

Rice. 2.2. Johann Leo Weisgerber, German linguist, specialist in the field of linguistics

A follower of W. Humboldt, Leo Weisgerber (Fig. 2.2), noted the stimulating role of language in relation to the formation of a single picture of the world in a person. He believed that “language allows a person to combine all experience into a single picture of the world and makes him forget how he previously perceived the world around him before he learned language.” It was L. Weisgerber who introduced the concept of a linguistic picture of the world into anthropology and semiotics, and the term itself was first used in one of the works of the Austrian scientist and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), which was called "Logical-Philosophical Treatise" (1921).

According to L. Weisgerber, “the vocabulary of a particular language includes, as a whole, along with the totality of linguistic signs, also the totality of conceptual mental means that the linguistic community has at its disposal; and as each native speaker studies this vocabulary, all members of the linguistic community master these mental means; in this sense, we can say that the possibility of a native language lies in the fact that it contains in its concepts a certain picture of the world and transmits it to all members of the linguistic community."

The relationship between culture, language and human consciousness attracts the attention of many scientists. Over the past 20 years, studies have been carried out on the linguistic picture of the world among native speakers of a certain language, and the peculiarities of the perception of reality within a particular culture have been actively studied. Among the scientists who addressed these problems in their works are outstanding Soviet and Russian philosophers, cultural scientists, linguists M. S. Kagan, L. V. Shcherba and many others.

According to the famous philosopher and cultural scientist Moisei Samoilovich Kagan (1921–2006), “culture needs many languages ​​precisely because its information content is multifacetedly rich and each specific information process needs adequate means of implementation.”

Academician, Soviet and Russian linguist Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba (1880–1944) expressed the idea that “the world that is given to us in our immediate experience, while remaining the same everywhere, is comprehended in different ways in different languages, even in those spoken by peoples who represent a certain unity with cultural point of view."

Soviet linguist and psychologist Nikolai Ivanovich Zhinkin (1893–1979), like many other researchers, notes the relationship between language and the picture of the world. He writes: "Language is component culture and its instrument are the reality of our spirit, the face of culture; it expresses in naked form the specific features of the national mentality. Language is a mechanism that has opened up the realm of consciousness to man."

Under linguistic picture of the world understand the body of knowledge about the world that is reflected in language, as well as ways of obtaining and interpreting new knowledge.

Modern ideas about the linguistic picture of the world are set out in the works Yuri Derenikovich Apresyan (b. 1930). According to his scientific views, “each natural language reflects a certain way of perceiving and organizing the world. The meanings expressed in it add up to a certain unified system of views, a kind of collective philosophy, which is imposed as mandatory on all speakers of the language<...>On the other hand, the linguistic picture of the world is “naive” in the sense that in many significant respects it differs from the “scientific” picture. Moreover, the naive ideas reflected in the language are by no means primitive: in many cases they are no less complex and interesting than Scientific such, for example, are 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."

Thus, the relationship between language and the picture of the world that develops in the mind of the individual becomes obvious. That is why many modern linguists distinguish between the concepts of “picture of the world” and “linguistic picture of the world”.

Comparing the picture of the world and the linguistic picture of the world, E. S. Kubryakova noted: “The picture of the world – the way a person pictures the world in his imagination – is a more complex phenomenon than the linguistic picture of the world, i.e. that part of a person’s conceptual world, which has a “link” to language and is refracted through linguistic forms."

A similar idea was expressed in the works of V. A. Maslova, who believes that “the term “linguistic picture of the world” is nothing more than a metaphor, because in reality, the specific features of the national language, in which the unique socio-historical experience of a certain national community of people is recorded, create for speakers of this language not some other, unique picture of the world, different from the objectively existing one, but only a specific “coloring” of this world, determined by the national significance of objects, phenomena, processes, a selective attitude towards them, which is born of the specifics of activity and lifestyle and the national culture of a given people."

The linguistic picture of the world is an image of consciousness—reality—reflected through the means of language. The linguistic picture of the world is usually distinguished from conceptual or cognitive models of the world, which are the basis of linguistic embodiment, verbal conceptualization of the totality of human knowledge about the world.

Thus, it becomes clear that the picture of the world of any individual, like the picture of the world of an entire community, is in close connection with language. Language is the most important way of forming and existing human knowledge about the world. Reflecting the objective world in the process of activity, a person records the results of cognition in language.

What is the difference between the cultural, conceptual, value and linguistic pictures of the world? If the cultural (conceptual) picture of the world is a reflection of the real world through the prism of concepts formed in the process of human cognition of the world on the basis of both collective and individual experience, then the linguistic picture of the world reflects reality through the cultural picture of the world, and language subordinates and organizes perception peace by its bearers. At the same time, the cultural and linguistic pictures of the world have much in common. The cultural picture of the world is specific to each culture, which arises in certain natural and social conditions that distinguish it from other cultures. The linguistic picture of the world is closely connected with culture, is in continuous interaction with it, and goes back to the real world surrounding man.

If we compare the linguistic and conceptual pictures of the world, then the conceptual picture of the world is a system of ideas, human knowledge about the world around us, a mental reflection of the cultural experience of a nation, while the linguistic picture of the world is its verbal embodiment.

If we compare the value and linguistic pictures of the world, then the first equally contains universal and specific components. In language, it is represented by value judgments adopted in accordance with national codes and well-known precedent statements and texts.

Researchers have different approaches to considering the national and cultural specifics of certain aspects or fragments of the picture of the world. Some take language as the initial concept, analyze the similarities or divergences in the perception of the world through the prism of linguistic systematicity, and in this case we are talking about the linguistic picture of the world. For other scientists, the starting point is culture, the linguistic consciousness of members of a certain linguocultural community, and the image of the world is in the spotlight, which brings to the fore the concept of “cultural picture of the world.” In general, both linguistic and cultural pictures of the world answer the most important ideological question about the essence of man and his place in the world. It is on the solution of this issue that our value orientations, goals, and direction of our development depend.

Recently, the concept of “linguistic picture of the world” has become quite widely used in various humanities, such as cultural studies, history, philosophy, and, of course, linguistics and linguistics. However, the lack of an unambiguous definition of this linguistic phenomenon significantly complicates the process of understanding and interaction between representatives of various disciplines, preventing the achievement of consistency in the description of the linguistic picture of the world through the use of scientific means. For scientists working in scientific fields directly related to language, i.e. - linguistics and linguistics, - the definition of this concept seems especially important. This fact is explained by the fact that the above sciences use the concept of a linguistic picture of the world in their research activities to a significantly greater extent than other humanities disciplines.

The very concept of a linguistic picture of the world was first noted in the presentation of Wilhelm von Humboldt, a famous German philologist and linguist, one of the founders of linguistics as a science. The immediate merit of this scientist is the development of a new doctrine of language as a continuous creative process. To support this theory, he introduced a number of new scientific concepts, including the concept of the so-called “internal form of language” as an expression of the individual worldview of a separate people, forming their own linguistic picture of the world [Humboldt, 1816: 20].

The introduction of the concept of a linguistic picture of the world into linguistic scientific terminology occurred somewhat later, after the study of this issue by neo-Humboldtians and, in particular, by Leo Weisgerber, a German linguist, a specialist in the German language, one of the most prominent representatives of the neo-Humboldtian movement in linguistics.

According to his theory, the basic principle of the “neo-Humboldtian view” of the essence of language is the theory of the originality and uniqueness of conceptual systems that form the foundation of specific languages. The essence of this principle comes down to several main theses, which will be discussed in more detail in the next paragraph of this work [Weisgerber, 1938: 214].

Another leading scientist in this field, organizer of several typological projects to describe the semantics of various languages ​​of the world,

E.V. Rakhilina notes that the reality around us is reflected in natural language, thereby projecting onto its semantics [Rakhilina, 1993: 29]. Based on this statement, it can be noted that the linguistic picture of the world differs from the world that exists in reality. Therefore, in modern linguistics it is customary to distinguish between the concepts of “general picture of the world” and “linguistic picture of the world.” Thus, the term “picture of the world” can be described as a set of knowledge and opinions of a subject regarding objective real or conceivable reality [Pimenova, 2011: 5], and a “linguistic picture of the world” - as a set of knowledge about the world that is reflected in language, as well as ways obtaining and interpreting new knowledge [Pimenova, 2011: 28].

The general picture of the world created by the cultural diversity of peoples is materialized, first of all, in various sign systems, the most universal of which is language. Like the alphabet, every language is a set of specific symbols, therefore it is a structurally organized classification of human experience [Language nomination: 1977, p. 19; Katsnelson: 1972; Arutyunova: 1979; Makovsky: 1980; Serebrennikov: 1983; Sklyarevskaya: 1993].

In addition, the concept of a general picture of the world implies a certain fundamental formation that forms the basis of the worldview of an individual. Making possible the process of combining knowledge and unifying behavior, the picture of the world plays one of the leading roles in fundamentalizing the interaction of a particular person with the reality around him. The picture of the world has a direct impact on the formation of a subjective, individual attitude towards the world around a person, towards himself and other people, as members of one single socio-cultural apparatus.

Researchers from different countries of the world note the fact of agreement between the worldview of the people of each individual nation and the picture of the world that was formed in a given society under the influence of culture, historical and political events over many centuries. Thus, thanks to a special picture of the world, each individual with early childhood a certain stable system of behavior is developed in this particular society and the world as a whole [Makovsky, 1980: 82].

Returning to the concept of a “linguistic picture of the world,” it should be noted that this phenomenon is considered as an extensive layer of data about the external and internal world, which is recorded through functioning, spoken languages ​​[Serebrennikov, 1988: 78], since the language of each people is an inseparable and one of fundamental parts of any national culture.

As subtotal We note that, despite some similarities in the interpretation of these two concepts, there are fundamental differences between them, which we attempted to consider below.

First of all, this difference can be explained by the presence of specific characteristics of the human body. An example of this phenomenon is the human perception of light and the color spectrum - and, at the same time, the lack of such ability when X-rays directly appear nearby. These facts are reflected accordingly in the linguistic picture of the world - the presence of definitions of light and color, and the absence of such in relation to electromagnetic waves.

Secondly, the difference between the concepts of the linguistic picture of the world and the world of reality is manifested in the existence of the specificity of specific cultures that underlie any language. Language acts as a kind of mirror, reflecting the understanding of the people who use it about the structure of the world.

Thus, the linguistic picture of the world of each individual nation is reflected, first of all, in the dictionary. For example, one of the main subject foundations for it is created by nature (soil, climate, geographical conditions, flora and fauna, etc.). Thus, the Swiss-German dialect - Schwyzerdütsch - reveals a striking variety of nominations to denote specific aspects of mountains, mostly without corresponding analogues in the system of literary German.

Note that we are not talking about the synonymous richness of the language, but about a peculiar, exclusive, specific understanding of certain parts of the geographical mountain landscape, which proves that a dialect can be designated as a special linguistic form that serves as a way of communication for a separate territorial group of people in a given in the case of the southern regions of Germany and Switzerland. An attempt to compare the classical literary form of a language and a dialect determines one of key tasks of our scientific research.

As already noted, the concept of a picture of the world is associated with a double reflection: by mastering the surrounding reality, a person forms an idea of ​​objects, which constitutes the CM, key concepts which are indicated using language.

Thus, one of the ways of transmitting CM is through language; in its depths a linguistic picture of the world (LPW), one of the deepest layers of a person’s picture of the world, is formed. This statement is based on the discoveries of I.P. Pavlova about the levels of perception of surrounding reality. He established that the real world exists for a person in the form of reality itself, in the form of its sensory perception (the first signaling system) and in the form of a verbal reflection of reality (the second signaling system) [Pavlov 1960]. The idea of ​​the surrounding reality exists in consciousness in the form of: 1) an existential or scientific general model of the world; 2) subjective idea of ​​the world; 3) a picture of the world objectified with the help of language.

In domestic science, the problem of YCM began to be actively developed by philosophers (G.A. Brutyan, R.I. Pavilenis) within the framework of the program “Man - Language - Picture of the World”, by linguists in connection with the compilation of ideographic dictionaries (Yu.N. Karaulov) in 70 - 20th century

YCM is based on the fact that language in general and vocabulary in particular represent the main form of objectification of the linguistic consciousness of many generations of people - native speakers of one or another (specific) language. Language is the main and main element capable of expressing the characteristics of the people's mentality [Kolesov 2004: 15].

The existence of a linguistic picture of the world is determined by the ideas of the general picture of the world, therefore philosophers and linguists distinguish between two models of the world: the conceptual picture of the world - KKM - and YKM, and the boundaries between the conceptual model of the world and the linguistic model of the world, according to Yu.N. Karaulova, seem unsteady and uncertain. KKM is created on the basis of concepts, YKM - on the basis of values. When the NCM is superimposed on the CCM, their content coincides, and this part of the information is considered invariant and corresponds to linguistic universals. The same part of the information that is outside the CCM varies in different languages ​​[Brutyan 1973]. This property of YCM has also been noticed by linguists: “The way of conceptualizing reality (view of the world) inherent in a language is partly universal, partly nationally specific, so that speakers of different languages ​​can see the world a little differently, through the prism of their languages” [Apresyan 1995: 39]. However, language, which carries the conscious (the meaning of a word), also stores the unconscious, which over time has become part of the subconscious. Understanding the sign nature of a word helps to imagine the formation of the meaning of a word and its difference from the concept, which is necessary to specify the content of CCM and JCM.

Reconstruction of the JCM is one of the important tasks of modern linguistic semantics. The concept of YCM, based on the ideas of W. von Humboldt, L. Weisgerber and supporters of American ethnolinguistics E. Sapir and B. Whorf, is being developed in modern Russian studies in several directions. So, Yu.D. Apresyan, N.D. Arutyunova, E.V. Rakhilina, A.D. Shmelev, E.S. Yakovleva et al. are engaged in the reconstruction of Russian YCM based on a comprehensive analysis of linguistic concepts of the Russian language in an intercultural perspective. An example of research in the universalist direction in cognitively oriented ethnolinguistics is the work of A. Vezhbitskaya, devoted to the search for “semantic primitives” - universal elementary concepts for which each language has its own word, reflecting the specifics of a particular culture.

V.V. Kolesov and his followers operate with the concept of mentality, defined as “a worldview in the categories and forms of the native language, in the process of cognition connecting the intellectual, spiritual and volitional qualities of the national character in its typical manifestations” [Kolesov 2004: 15]. According to V.V. Kolesov, reason, feeling and will, taken together, create the “national temperament”. Peoples Western Europe understand mentality as reason and thought in line with ratio and in their languages ​​have consolidated the original meaning of the ancient concept, which has not yet been enriched with Christian connotations. Among the peoples Eastern Europe The more important values ​​are not sober reason, but conscience and spirituality. V.V. Kolesov identifies three main approaches to understanding Russian spirituality (mentality): structural-informational, which is implemented in its interpretations and assessments; informational and energetic, based on the recognition of the “energy” of the life of the spirit, which in the terminology of different researchers is called differently: noosphere (V.I. Vernadsky), passionarity (L.N. Gumilyov), pneumosphere (P.A. Florensky), conceptosphere (D.S. Likhachev), etc.; objective-idealistic, which presupposes the energy of divine grace illuminating all things (the idea of ​​the Tabor light in N. Lossky and S. Frank). “The duality of the spiritual essence of mentality and the rational essence of spirituality can be called mentality”... Thus, in the volume of the three-dimensional world in which we live, we are looking for traces of the fourth dimension, a measure hidden from our feelings and concepts: the concepts of national mentality” [Kolesov 2004: 13].

The semantic content of the term “concept”, due to its diversity, is different in the works of different authors, and the understanding of its relationship with the terms word, sign, meaning, concept is also ambiguous. According to B.A. Serebrennikov, in order to connect language with reality, a person creates signs and connects language with reality through the attribution of signs to it [Serebrennikov 1988: 76]. The word is also a sign. V.V. Kolesov proposes to distinguish between two “generic terms”: the word of language and the sign of semiotics. “A word can have meaning, forming part of a sign, but a word is a sign with meaning” [Kolesov 2002: 18; highlighted by V.K.]. L.G. Voronin proposes to distinguish between the semantic meaning of a word and a concept: “The semantic meaning of a word is its expression in which the word expresses the totality of any characteristics of an object or phenomenon. A concept is a reflection of a certain set of general and material characteristics of an object” [Voronin 1958: 14].

There are two points of view regarding the interpretation of the meaning of a word: 1) meaning is a relationship; 2) meaning is a reflection (ideal image of an object). The first point of view belongs to F. de Saussure, in whose view the meaning of a word is the concept that it expresses [Saussure 1977: 148], and significance is the relationship of the word with other words of the language, its difference from them [Saussure 1977: 149]. F. de Saussure’s statement that “in language, as in any semiological system, what distinguishes one sign from others is everything that makes it up” [Saussure 1977: 154] and that “... in language there is nothing , except for differences” [Saussure 1977: 152; emphasized by F. de S.], is also supported in other linguistic works: “At present, none of the linguists doubts that each unit of language receives its own linguistic meaning due to the correlation with some other units” [Shmelev 1965: 290]; “Each linguistic sign, and therefore the signifier and the signified, does not exist on its own, but solely by virtue of its opposition to other units of the same order. There is nothing in language but oppositions” [Apresyan 1966: 30–31]. The latter judgments are objected to by Yu.V. Fomenko: “Not a single sound complex has received meaning due to its introduction into one or another lexical macro- or microsystem. This did not happen and this cannot happen. A sound complex acquires meaning due to its correlation with a particular object known by a person. After all, a word is a sign of an object. The subject is primary, the word (name) is secondary. If we accept the criticized point of view, then we will have to admit that the subject is secondary and arises as a consequence of the appearance of the name. It is clear that this conclusion is unacceptable. Therefore, the premise is also unacceptable. “Pure” knowledge about the place of a word in the system of words cannot give any idea of ​​the meaning of the word” [Fomenko 2004: 8].

Probably, this contradiction was born out of desire, as V.V. noted. Kolesov, “reduce meaning to one hypostasis,” and this “deadens the meaning of “meaning.” “Meaning as 1) a set of meaningful features, 2) as a relationship to an object, concept or other meaning, 3) as a function in linguistic use – together there is a dialectical unity of all designated features of a word” [Kolesov 2002: 21].

Answer regarding criticism of D.N.’s position Shmeleva and Yu.D. Apresyan can be found in their own works, for example: “The lexical meaning of a word is understood as the semantics of a language (a naive concept) and that part of its pragmatics that is included in the modal frame of interpretation. The lexical meaning of a word is revealed in its interpretation, which is a translation of the word into a special semantic language” [Apresyan 1962: 69]. That is, the oppositions in the language that we are talking about, as we see it, relate to the way of interpreting the lexical meaning and the location of the word in the language system, as well as in semantic classifications.

The second point of view is the thesis about the reflective nature of the meaning of a word, from which we can conclude that the lexical meaning is determined by the objective world, and not by the language system: “... both meanings and concepts have a reflective nature. If we now agree that meaning is not equal to concept, then we will have to conclude that in human consciousness two series of relations between objects of the external world coexist - meaning and concept. But is it possible for an object to be reflected twice in one mirror?” [Fomenko 2004: 12]. In this statement, the denotation and the object are identified, that is, the presence of the concept of an object in the human mind is either excluded from the system of cognition, or an equal sign is placed between the lexical meaning and the concept. At B.A. Serebrennikova has a different opinion on this matter: “The reflection of objects and phenomena in a person’s head is not mirror-like. The brain turns information coming from outside into an “image”, and this is already an abstraction. In fact, this is a representation” [Serebrennikov 1988: 71]. Clarification of terms can be found in V.V. Kolesova: “In Latin the corresponding terms are vague in meaning, but differ from each other in meaning, which is what we will use. De-notatus, de-notatio ‘designation (of something)’ – de-signatio ‘definition (of something)’ (from signum ‘sign’) – the term referent, new in origin, correlates with Lat. re-fero ‘connection, relation: naming, returning and reproducing (thing)’. Thus, designatum, denotation, referent turn out to be (not reducible to a common object) relations existing between the different sides of the semantic triangle, namely: denotation D is the relation of the concept to the object, the designation of the objective meaning, or the scope of the concept - its extension; designatum S is the relation of a sign to a concept, the definition of the meaning of a word or the content of a concept - its intension; referent R – the relation of the sign to the object, i.e. that connection that shapes the reflective abilities of a sign is called, constantly returning thought to the reproduction of the thing itself in consciousness and in speech” [Kolesov 2002: 39]. And further: “Reflecting on the word..., we saw that in relation to the speaker, a verbal sign appears as an image, and in relation to the listener it turns into a concept (or vice versa)” [Ibid]. It is no coincidence that the semantic triangle itself was called the “nominalistic model of the sign” [Petrenko 1988: 15], which is understandable only if one comes from the “thing” (it is “from the thing” that the components of the semantic triangle were historically consistently realized)” [Kolesov 2002: 42] .

Quite often, discrepancies arise due to the incorrect use of terms taken from various systems and constructions. “The term “denotation”, borrowed from logicians, is simplified in linguistic works; in a logical interpretation, this term meant both ‘thing (object)’ and ‘thought (concept) about a thing’. In linguistics, the term “denotation” in most works received the meaning of an object, “a phenomenon of objective reality,” which seems to us erroneous, because linguistic names are correlated in the human mind with a certain cognitive image, reflecting the object in its integrity” [Ufimtseva 1988: 112]. It is also impossible not to admit that the conceivable image and concept of an object are only part of the meaning. Recognizing in reality three entities: being, consciousness and language, philosophers and linguists distinguish between two models of the world, conceptual and linguistic.

Regarding vocabulary, the difference between the picture of the world and the picture of language can be considered as the well-known opposition “concept - meaning”.

The discrepancy between points of view in modern linguistic terminology is associated, firstly, with an orientation towards the meaning of the term in the source language (Latin), and secondly, with the fact that to establish the connection between the concept and meaning in logical semantics, different authors used different terms: meaning and meaning (G. Frege), extension and intension (R. Carnap), reference and meaning (W. Quine), denotation and signification (A. Church).

In lexicon, they usually operate with the term ‘lexical meaning’. There are many definitions of lexical meaning: “A concept associated with a sign” [Nikitin 1974: 6]; “Having previously defined meaning as the content of consciousness materialized in a sign, we can say that the sign with its meaning is the word” [Kolesov 2002: 20; highlighted by V.K.]; “This duality of the word—its ability to denote both a specific reality and a generalized concept—is the basis of its entire semantic structure and its entire historical development as a linguistic unit” [Osipov 2003: 147], etc.

The terminological content of these concepts, for example, in Yu.S. Stepanova: a word in its understanding is a unity of three elements: “The external element of a verbal sign (a sequence of sounds or graphic signs) - a signifier, is associated, firstly, with the designated object of reality - a denotation (as well as a referent), and secondly, with the reflection of this object in the human mind – the signified. The signified is the result of social cognition of reality and is usually identical to the concept, sometimes to the representation. The triple connection “signifier – denotation – signified” constitutes the category of meaning, the basic cell of semantics” [Stepanov 1977: 295]. In the structure of the signified, integral features, differential features (designatum) that make up the lexical meaning of the word, or significatum, are distinguished. When words are grouped according to any criterion, the integral features of the word form the individual in the signified of the given word and are not directly opposed to the corresponding features of other words. The list of differential characteristics is always limited by the general structure of a given group; it can be more or less long depending on the breadth and structure of the group. In terms of cognition of the objective world, it is important to note that the list of integral features is in principle not limited; it can be limited by the level of knowledge of the object or practical considerations of description. In the understanding of Yu.S. Stepanova: “a significat, in general, is the same as a concept. The first belongs to linguistics, the second to logic. In the same meaning as concept, the terms meaning and concept are sometimes used (my italics - S.V.). A concept is the same as a concept, as it is understood in systems such as A. Church’s system; meaning is the same as the concept, as it is understood in systems such as G. Frege’s system, etc. Designatum in de Saussure's system is abstract significance. In field theories, the designatum will correspond to that in the meaning of a word that is determined by the opposition of this word to all other words of the field. The concept of designatum is also very important for the theory of nomination in the narrow sense of the word - as a theory of linguistic designation, naming. Apparently, it is the designatum that is the minimum of distinctive features that is necessary for correct, i.e. in accordance with the norms of a given language, the name of an objective object of reality with a given word (so that by the word rooster we call a rooster, and not a cat)” [Stepanov 1977: 295].

What is the relationship between concept and concept?

A concept is “a phenomenon of the same order as a concept” [Stepanov 2001: 43], but further Yu.S. Stepanov clarifies the content of the concept in modern logic and linguistics: “The term concept becomes synonymous with the term meaning, while the term meaning becomes synonymous with the term scope of the concept. Simply put, the meaning of a word is the object or objects to which this word is correctly, in accordance with the norms of a given language, applicable, and the concept is the meaning of the word.” The concept in culture has a special meaning - it is “the main cell of culture in the mental world of a person” [Stepanov 2001: 43–44]. E.S. Kubryakova defines cultural concepts as “non-verbal representations that have a linguistic designation” [Kubryakova 1988: 146]. Claiming the concept to be the basic unit of mentality, V.V. Kolesov defines the word based on its multifaceted nature and from different positions. From ontological positions: in a communicative act, a word is a sign that serves to convey thoughts and reflects reality; “verbal sign” is heterogeneous; it has an external (sound), internal (original figurative meaning) and meaningful form. In semiotic terms, a word as a sign is a semiotic relationship between a thing, the idea of ​​a thing and a sign in their dynamic connections, which are constantly changing due to changes in the quality of their components.

Historically, there has been an alienation of the verbal sign from reality towards the abstract: representation > image > concept; name > banner > sign; thing > subject > object. “In his language, a person moves away from reality towards a conditional reality created by himself, which is called culture” [Kolesov 2004: 17].

From an epistemological point of view, a word is a means of cognition, i.e. this is a sign plus its meaning and meaning. From the “idea” side, speaking epistemologically, a word can be represented as the movement of its meanings in its meaningful forms of image - concept - symbol. “Movement of the meanings of words” by V.V. Kolesov finds in the ideas of Russian philosophers: “The word is a means of forming concepts (Potebnya), but the absolute is not given in concepts (Vysheslavtsev). Consequently, the Absolute reveals itself in sequence: where an exact concept is lacking, an image appears (Potebnya), because only images have transformative power (Vysheslavtsev), and beauty is associated with images, and not with the concept (Berdyaev). But in order to extract meaning, it is necessary to translate images into concepts, but construction in concepts alone is useless in its widow-like sterility - it is a ballet of bloodless categories and nothing more (Gustav Shpet). Where the competence of the concept ends, the symbol comes into its own (Berdyaev)” [Kolesov 2002: 18]. This “movement of meanings” ends with a concept; on this path everything is missing—the referent, the designatum, and the denotation. All the complexity and simplicity of the relationship between word and concept, concept and concept was comprehended by Russian philosophers of the 19th–20th centuries. In our time, a linguist must become a philosopher in order to learn to understand himself through language.

Theory of the concept in the 21st century. – this is not only a search for an unambiguous definition, but a dilution of the concepts “cognitive concept”, “psycholinguistic concept”, “linguocultural concept” [Karasik, Slyshkin 2003: 50]. Traditional linguistics considers “linguistic structures” as an object, and the interpretive model in this system is meaning. The object of study of psycholinguistics is “structure and functions speech activity“, the “image of consciousness and concept” act as the interpretive model here. The object of cognitive linguistics becomes “linguistic thinking (linguistic ability),” where the concept is used as an interpretive model [Pishchalnikova 2003: 7]. In practice, the fields of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics often overlap; domestic linguists are increasingly including the functioning of the human mentality in the object domain. In modern Russian linguistics, the practice of studying the concept as an integrative model for studying speech activity is emerging. This approach is due to “the traditions of domestic linguistics, psychology, physiology and other sciences, which have formulated a number of theories of high explanatory power” [Pishchalnikova 2003: 8]. These include the theory of the internal form of the word A.A. Potebnya, theory of physiological dominance by A.A. Ukhtomsky, the theory of functional systems by P.K. Anokhin, theory of mental and speech activity by L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontyeva, A.A. Leontyeva et al. The idea of ​​a concept as the totality of all knowledge and opinions associated with a particular reality allows us to consider as an object of study the linguistic ability, which includes the concept of speech activity as a system of intellectual, mental and speech-creative efforts.

The concept as an integrative model presented by V.A. Pishchalnikova, contains the following interrelated and interdependent branches of knowledge integrated in it: system-centric linguistics, cogitology, psychology, psycholinguistics [Pishchalnikova 2003: 10].

Yu.A. Sorokin proposed the term cogiocept as a component of the concept. Cogiocept (from cogitatio, onis - thinking, thinking, reasoning) is an interpretive model that “reflects naturally related stable components of knowledge and stable forms of their representation” (cognitive linguistics). But modern scientific reality is such that cognitive linguistics strives to “study all the different processes, mechanisms, ways of human cognition of reality, including mechanisms occurring in language and fixed by language” [Pishchalnikova 2003: 8; italics V.P.] And this is already a sphere represented by a concept (from the Latin cognitio, onis - cognition, recognition, familiarization).

To summarize, it should be noted that followers of conceptualist theories of knowledge in the form of a picture of the world and in the form of mentality operate with the term concept as a unit of description. The concept is interpreted as a concept [Arutyunova 1999: 239; Gak 1990: 384]; as a synonym for the term meaning [Stepanov 2001:44]; as “a unit of thinking that represents a holistic, undivided reflection of a fact of reality” [Chesnokov 1967: 37]; as a “key word” [Verzhbitskaya 2001]; conceptum – ‘embryo, grain of primary meaning’ [Kolesov 2002: 51], etc.

One cannot but agree that supporters of the ontological theory of meaning (A.F. Losev, P.A. Florensky, S.N. Bulgakov; H.G. Gadamer, W. Dilthey, F. Schleiermacher) criticize the conceptualist theory for epistemology, they themselves can be criticized for “deifying” the essence, substance, Name, i.e. for ontologism [Pimenova 2003: 44–45]. The most adequate and objective of the presented versions seems to us to be the voluminous hermeneutical model of V.V. Kolesov, based on a change in the meaningful forms of the concept, expressed in the conceptual square “image” – “concept” – “symbol” – “image + symbol = concept”. Then the concept as a unit of mentality is recognized as “an entity, the phenomenon of which is the concept,” formed on the basis of the image and symbol in its trinitarian essence under the sign of Logos and Sophia in the harmony of beingness and knowledge. And if, as was described, the sequence image - concept - symbol is cyclic, then, according to V.V. Kolesov, “a concept inevitably strives to renew the conceptual energy of its meaningful forms” [Kolesov 2002: 430].