THEORETICAL FOUNDATION TO LINGUACULTUROLOGY

1. Anthropological linguistics

2. Cognitive semantics

3. Cultural anthropology

4. Psycho-linguistics

5. Lingua-country study

6. Ethno-linguistics

Questions for self-examination:

1. What areas of Linguistics are closely connected with LC?

2. What culturological trends in Linguistics and Psychology deal with human nature?

3. What is the future perspective of LC in FLT?

The modern science of language develop such areas of Linguistics as Cognitive semantics, Cultural anthropology, Social psycho-linguistics, Ethno Psycho-linguistics, Linguo-countrystudy, Ethnosemiotic, Ethnopsychology and Linguaculturology. All these areas have successfully developed and united by a common methodological basis of Anthropological linguistics. Language can be studied from several angles. The focus on the relation between language, thought and culture is known as Anthropological linguistics. Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language. This strongly overlaps the field of linguistic anthropology, which is the branch of anthropology that studies humans through the languages that they use. It is an interdisciplinary field which studies language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice.

Cognitive semantics is part of the Сognitive linguistics movement. Cognitive semantics is typically used as a tool for lexical studies such as those put forth by L.Talmy, G.Lakoff, D.Geeraerts and B.W.Hawkins, R.Langaker.

As part of the field of Сognitive linguistics, the cognitive semantics approach rejects the formal traditions modularization of Linguistics into phonology, syntax, pragmatics, etc. Instead it divides semantics (meaning) into meaning-construction and knowledge representation. Therefore, Cognitive semantics studies much of the area traditionally devoted to pragmatics as well as semantics.

Cognitive semantic theories are typically built on the argument that lexical meaning is conceptual. That is, the meaning of a lexeme is not reference to the entity or relation in the "real world" that the lexeme refers to, but to a concept in the mind based on experiences with that entity or relation. An implication of this is that semantics is not objective and also that semantic knowledge is not isolatable from encyclopedic knowledge.

Moreover, Cognitive semantics theories are also typically built upon the idea that semantics is amenable to the same mental processes as encyclopedic knowledge. They thus involve many theories from Cognitive psychology and Cognitive anthropology such as prototypicality, which Cognitive semanticists argue is the basic cause of polysemy.

Another trait of cognitive semantics is the recognition that lexical meaning is not fixed but a matter of construal and conventionalization. The processes of linguistic construal, it is argued, are the same psychological processes involved in the processing of encyclopedic knowledge and in perception.

Many cognitive semantic frameworks, such as that developed by L.Talmy take into account syntactic structures as well, while others focus mainly on lexical entities.

The 4 tenets of Cognitive semantics are:

1. Semantic structure is conceptual structure

2. Conceptual structure is embodied

3. Meaning representation is encyclopedic

4. Meaning-construction is conceptualization

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation, interviews and surveys. Their research is often called fieldwork because it involves the anthropologist spending an extended period of time at the research location.

This branch of Anthropology dealing with the origins, history, and development of human culture, and including in its scope the fields of Archaeology, Ethnology, and Ethnography is also called Social anthropology. The discipline uses the methods, concepts, and data of Archaeology, Ethnography, folklore, Linguistics, and related fields in its descriptions and analyses of the diverse peoples of the world. This field of research was until the mid-20th century largely restricted to the small-scale (or "primitive"), non-Western societies that first began to be identified during the age of discovery. Today the field extends to all forms of human association, from village communities to corporate cultures to urban gangs. Two key perspectives used are those of holism (understanding society as a complex, interactive whole) and cultural relativism (the appreciation of cultural phenomena within their own context). Areas of study traditionally include social structure, law, politics, religion, magic, art, and technology.

By the beginning of the 20th century, many cultural anthropologists had already begun to turn toward what might be called a more pluralistic viewpoint. To account for the variety of societies and cultures and the broadening of the differences that separated them, they suggested taking the total circumstances of each human group into account by considering the whole of its history, the contacts that it had had with other groups, and the favourable or unfavourable circumstances that had weighed on its development. Such a view was distinguished by a marked relativism: each culture represented an original development, conditioned as much by its social as by its geographical environment and by the manner in which it used and enriched the cultural materials that came to it from neighbors or others (through “diffusion”) or from its own creativity (through “invention” and “adaptation”).

Psycho-linguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. Initial forays into Psycho-linguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of sub-disciplines; for example, as non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain become more and more widespread, "Neuro-Linguistics" has become a field in its own right.

Psycho-linguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental Psycho-linguistics studies children's ability to learn language.

Psycho-linguistics is interdisciplinary in nature and is studied by people in a variety of fields, such as psychology, cognitive science, and Linguistics. There are several subdivisions within Psycho-linguistics that are based on the components that make up human language.

Linguistic-related areas:

* Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech sounds. Within Psycho-linguistics, research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds.

* Morphology is the study of word structures, especially the relationships between related words (such as "dog" and "dogs") and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).

* Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined together to form sentences.

* Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.

* Pragmatics is concerned with the role of in the interpretation of meaning.

Psychology-related areas:

* The study of word recognition and reading examines the processes involved in the extraction of orthographic, morphological, phonological, and semantic information from patterns in printed text.

* Developmental Psycho-linguistics studies infants' and children's ability to learn language, usually with experimental or at least quantitative methods (as opposed to naturalistic observations such as those made by Jean Piaget in his research on the development of children).

The research in Lingua-country study (E.M.Vereshchagin; V.G.Kostomarov; G.D. Tomakhin; V.V.Oshchepkova, etc.) has an applied character and it isconsidered as a valuable source of information, which reflects the interrelation of language and culture. There are two approaches in teaching culture in the process of teaching foreign languages: social and philosophical. The first approach is based on discipline, traditionally related to the study of any foreign language. A country study is understood as a complex educational discipline which comprises various information about the country of target language. Unlike fundamental sciences which it is based on, Country study includes information of fragmentary character and determined as a discipline is in the system of geographical sciences, engaged in the complex study of materials, countries, large districts.

The theories of Lingua-culturological studies underline that it is a direction which combines a teaching of language with certain information about the country of target language. The main LC task is a study of language units which clearly reflect national cultural features. Realities (specific subject definitions), connotative notions (words having the same meaning but different cultural associations), basic notions (those having the analogues in comparative countries but different in use or exploitation) are among them.

We can definitely state that this combination of two aspects is very important for future teachers because it broadens their mind, develop their communicative skills, their freedom of speaking. It seems obvious that learning language in the strong connection with the study of country’s culture, history and traditions is much more effective. The students perceive such knowledge with great interest.

Besides, the results of teaching practice demonstrate that students’ motivation of studying increases greatly on condition that language learning is combined with the studying of the cultural background of the native speakers.

Thus we can conclude that nowadays there is a strong need for the integration of knowledge about the structure of the language which is being learned and the knowledge about the culture of the countries where this language is used as a means of communication and education. Students, teachers and schools all participate in cultural communities that represent systems of values, beliefs, and ways of knowing that guide daily life. Culture affects how people learn, remember, reason, solve problems, and language is in need to communicate; thus, country study is part and parcel future teachers’ intellectual and social development.

Ethno-linguistics (A.S.Gerd, A.M.Kopylenko, N.I.Tolstoy etc.) is a branch of Linguistics, which studies the language in its connection with ethnicity and is closely linked with Socio-linguistics. N. I. Tolstoy emphasizes that for Ethno-Linguistics it is important to discuss not only and not so much the reflections of folk culture, psychology, and mythological perceptions in language, but also the constructive role of language, its influence on the formation of folk culture, folk psychology, and folk creative art. He suggests two definitions of Ethno-linguistics:

1) a branch of Linguistics , which studies language in its relation to folk culture; investigates the reflection in language of cultural, psychological, and mythological notions and experiences;

2) a complex discipline, which studies the content of culture, folk psychology and mythology, irrespective of the means and ways of their formal implementation (word, object, ritual, visual image, etc.). N. I. Tolstoy believes that such study "can be carried out predominantly or exclusively by linguistic methods".

The listed above culturological trends in Linguistics and Psychology, in one way or another connected with the study of the "human factor", the human person in the language, culture and social life.

LECTURE 3