The Opposition “Man – Machine” in the Language Picture of the World of the 21 Century

Abstract

The reflection of the idea of the transformation of humanism in modern speech practice is considered by the example of rethinking the fundamental opposition of the culture “Man – Machine”. In the digital era, the boundary within this opposition is blurred: “humanization” of programs and algorithms takes place in parallel with the opposite process – “dehumanization” of live persons, and both processes are quite consistently reflected in the language. The novelty of the research is determined by the fact that for the first time it reveals implicit ways of expressing the transformation of the relationship between man and machine, namely through anthropomorphic and anthropocentric metaphors in the artistic and journalistic discourse. The purpose of the study is to present some stable models of transformation of the declared opposition in modern speech practice, indicating profound changes in the understanding of humanism in the digital age. The research material is modern prose and journalistic texts. The linguistic text analysis, semantic analysis of the key lexemes, and the method of establishing cognitive conditionality of language processes are used as the main research methods. As a result, the types of metaphors conveying the idea of likening a person to a technical device and algorithms, on the one hand (anthropomorphic metaphor), and likening an algorithm to a person, on the other hand (anthropocentric metaphor),which are consistently reproduced in artistic and journalistic speech, are established. Cognitive models defining the use of metaphorics for rethinking the opposition “Man – Machine” realize the transfer “from the human world to the world of technology and IT”, as well as the transfer “from the world of technology to the world of man”. In the latter case, the actualization of the metaphor of “code” is noted, revealing one of the main dangers of the dominance of modern technologies (robotization, artificial intelligence, etc.) in traditional spheres of human activity – the loss of personal freedom, manipulation of consciousness, devaluation of human individuality. The author sees the prospects of the research in the further study of the impact of the ideology of “code” on the formation of ideas of transhumanism.