THE CONCEPTOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF LINGUAGE AND CULTURE STUDIES

Abstract

Laid down in the present paper is a reanalysis of the principles of the language and culture approach to the study of idioms. While studying phraseology of different languages along these lines the most urgent problem is considered to be a “decoding” of cultural information on the basis of a conceptual analysis. The theoretical framework involves a study and a description of the interaction between language and culture, language and ethnos, language and national mentality and presupposes an insight into of the structure and specific features of concepts as mental entities. Also of benefit to the approach seems its prospective application in cross-language studies. Phraseological units are considered in close connection with cognitive and mental structures of thinking and symbolic stereotypes as well as mythological, ethical, religious and ritual concepts. Certain scholars regard a concept as a basic unit of mentality emphasizing that it is a pure sense, a primary sense, a primary image, a constant, an archetype. Other researchers consider a concept to be a unit of collective consciousness which has a linguistic expression and ethnocultural marking. In linguistics there exists a narrow and broad understanding of this concept. The former characterizes the concept as the most significant cultural and meaningful category of a person’s inner world, while the latter focuses on the layer of axiological connotations in the meaning of the word, i.e. any verbalized sense which is denoted by an ethnic specificity. In most schools of linguistics the single out essential features of the concept overlap: a) unrealism (a concept is a structure of consciousness); b) heterogeneity of concepts (the world, the knowledge of which is structured in this mental formation, is exceedingly diverse); c) ability of being transmitted into different fields (arts, religion, law, language, science); d) specificity that is conditioned by the belonging of a concept-carrier to several social groups; e) heterogeneous structure with the discreteness of several layers, distinctions, aspects, etc. in the structure of a concept. These characteristics of a concept determine its interdisciplinary status. Keywords: conceptual analysis, culture and language studies, decoding of cultural information.