N. Kondratiev’s Long Waves and Cultural and Linguistic Changes

Abstract

The article examines the correlations between economic matters and cultural ones. It describes a variety of scientific views aimed at understanding the synergetic relations of economic issues to social phenomena, including cultural and linguistic identity. Besides, it gives an analysis of outstanding scientists works who exercise a multi-sided approach to correlations between economic patterns and different social phenomena, from demography to history, when the theory of economic cycles is used as a research approach and instrumental tool. Special attention is paid to linguistic factors which reflect economic changes and store them in the vocabulary. The emphasis is made on how different linguistic mechanisms reflect socio-economic changes within the theory of long cycles. The research contains a case-study analysis of English identity, evolving together with Britain’s technological growth and technology. The author suggests some linguistic mechanisms that imply economic development or stagnation (borrowings, conversion, affixation, composition, terminology, shortening). A conclusion is made about the effectiveness of economic - linguistic correlations as the latter reflect the history of economic changes as well as contain some forecasts about the nearest future of the national community.