Linguocultural Studies and the Linguocultural Dictionary

Abstract

Russian like any language is intimately bound up with the history of its speakers, bearing the imprint of what is specific to their national life and culture. An adequate command of Russian therefore presupposes a knowledge of the dynamic interplay of language with the everyday life, arts, social progress, and ideals of its speakers. In iSerba's words, Each language reflects the culture of the people who speak A true mastery of a language is unthinkable without some mastery of the national culture which generated it. We do not deny the possibility of learning another culture through the medium of one's own language (except for what can be expressed only in that culture's language: a deep understanding of Russian poetry is hardly possible on the basis of translations); and our concern here is not with the study of the USSR apart from the study of the Russian language, i.e., area studies (stranovedenie, Ger. Landeskunde), which can be quite useful for the parallel study of the Russian language. We are concerned with the introduction of culture into language study itself. The methodology which requires that language learning be reshaped in such a way that the facts of culture become thoroughly integrated into languagelearning exercises we propose to call LINGUOCULTURAL STUDIES (lingvostranovedenie). Linguocultural studies can be defined as culture considered as subject matter for the methodology of teaching the language which serves it, as a subject simultaneously studied with that language. Its bases lie in the sciences of linguistics and sociology, and its specific task is the selection and compact presentation of those aspects of culture which have become crystallized in language and the determination of effective ways to present, assimilate, and activize them. Linguocultural studies thus constitute a narrower field than area studies, because they limit themselves to what is uniquely reflected in the language and cannot adequately be expressed in some other language. For this reason they lack the fullness and scientific, systematic character of the relevant social sciences. Another difference is in their pedagogical orientation. Facts of culture are presented in such a way as to lead to a deeper understanding of the facts of language. The