Cultural concept in cognitive dimension

Abstract

This article reviews the methodological principles of studying cultural concepts in the context of cognitive approach, possibilities for conducting reconstruction of certain fragments of linguistic worldview based on the material of digital text corpora. Leaning on the cognitive approach towards concept as a unit of structured and unstructured knowledge that forms cognition of a separate individual and culture as a whole, results of conceptual research of the texts of philosophers who view culture as symbolic creativity of a person associated with freedom (concepts of I. Kant, E. Cassirer, N. A. Berdyaev), the authors conducted reconstruction of certain fragments of the linguistic worldview and ordinary consciousness, correlated with the concept of “culture” in digital text corpora in the Russian and Anglo-Saxon cultures. Examination of the contexts of usage of verbal representations of the concept of “culture” in the digital text corpora of Russian language and different varieties of English language demonstrates that the crucial ideological values of Anglo-Saxon linguistic worldview are the following representations: culture is of instrumental nature; civilization is considered as the path development of humanity; freedom is viewed as an intrinsic right to freedom that should be protected, i.e. initial and inherent to a human. In the Russian-language texts, culture implies the value-based attitude towards world, mostly associated with the national culture; civilization is viewed in the context of a value-based attitude towards world, but as the path of development of humanity as a whole; freedom has value-based individual, personalistic connotation, supposed to be full, absolute, which is often understood as the liberty of action and choice. It is underlines that utilization of corpus methods allows reconstructing the techniques of formation of worldview, choice of value priorities, mechanisms of perception of surrounding reality in a specific culture from contexts of practical usage of the verbal manifestations of cultural concepts.