Cultural Memory of Russia and China in Mental Landscape of Mass Media

Abstract

The article presents a linguoculturological analysis of key concepts of national vision in the Russian and Chinese mass media. It offers substantiation of a conceptual view of the world objectified in a media discourse. The concepts, as cognitive-linguistic structures, are supported by the background knowledge of the addressee and the addresser, involve the meanings of the proto-text, stimulate an adequate interpretation of the media text and ensure the effectiveness of its impact on the cognitive, emotional and behavioral levels of consumer’s perception. The space of such a media text forms a mental landscape, which is a set of values that reflect the spectrum of people’s life on a certain territory and that are broadcast over time in the paradigm of «past – present – future». Based on research in the field of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics, journalism, social philosophy, it is argued that the new media technologies, textual and formatted ones are controlled by a collective cultural memory. The empirical base of the study was more than 500 texts of Russian and Chinese mass media. The cultural landscape of the media discourse is represented by texts in which the nuclear concepts of the national view of the world in Russia and China are embedded: collectivism (collegiality), patriotism. The article describes the features of these concepts’ representation in conjunction with the process of objectification of the dominant cultural values of China and Russia. An intensive representation of the concepts in mass media provides necessary national identification in Russian and Chinese societies, allows to implement the cultural hereditary function of the media and to protect the primordial traditions of the society, to transmit the ideals and cultural heritage of the previous generations.