Lecture 6. Phraseology as a language of culture: its role in the representation of a collective mentality

Lecture 6.

Phraseology as a Language of Culture: Its role in the Representation of a Collective Mentality.

6.1 The lexicon as the storehouse of cultural data.

6.2 Cultural data: words, lexical collocations and idioms.

Objectives: to show significant role of phraseology in culture and as an indicator of mentality.

6.1 The lexicon as the storehouse of cultural data.

The anthropocentric approach in linguistics is directed towards the elucidation of the everyday language world-picture. It is

assumed that every language, especially with regard to its figurative meanings, is concerned with the reflection and

extension of what Humboldt and Weisgerber called the Weltansicht, or 'world-view' (Weisgerber 1929). The world-view

shared by all members of a linguo-cultural community makes possible the generation and comprehension, in a

subconscious process of insight, of metaphorical linguistic meanings.

Edward Sapir ( 1964) was the first to postulate explicitly that language represents and conceptualizes reality in a culturally

specific manner, so that individual native languages stand in a relation of complementarity to each other. This idea of

linguistic relativity was further developed by Whorf ( 1956). However, for a long time linguistic relativity was viewed as a

linguistic-philosophical concept rather than a purely linguistic one. The latest developments in cognitive linguistics seem to

be offering fresh scope for practical linguistic application.

In the anthropocentric paradigm, the notion of linguistic relativity can be reformulated as linguistic-cultural relativity:

language is the means of representing and reproducing culture. In other words, culture is assumed to be implemented,

one way or another, on the content plane of linguistic expressions, reproduced in an act of denomination and transmitted

from generation to generation through linguistic and cultural norms of usage. Thus, language can be looked upon as a

crucial mechanism contributing to the formation of a collective cultural identity. Culture being thus implemented through language, cultural norms are not only reproduced in language but are made mandatory for speakers of that language

through the linguistic structures they use.The above postulates require that three points be clarified:

• what we understand by culture;

• what we understand by implementation through language structures;

• how we can be sure that cultural norms are made mandatory by language.

By culture, we understand the ability of members of a speech community to orientate themselves with respect to social,

moral, political, and so on values in their empirical and mental experience. Cultural categories (such as Time and Space,

Good and Evil, etc.) are conceptualized in the subconscious knowledge of standards, stereotypes, mythologies, rituals,

general habits, and other cultural patterns. (For further details, see Bartminski 1993 and Teliya 1993.) A set of patterns

can be looked upon as an alphabet of culture. When these patterns enter the lexicon, they may act as 'direct' cultural signs

(e.g. as proverbs and sayings, with their immediate descriptive and prescriptive functions, and invariable epithets and

comparisons, such as Eng. as happy as a lark, as cunning as a fox, etc.). On the other hand, when linguistic symbols

interpret cultural patterns and categories, then these symbols serve as bodies for those cultural patterns. In that case,

language units acquire the status of quasi-standards, quasi-stereotypes, and so on. For example, the idiom nesti krest, lit.

'to carry one's cross', interprets the biblical story of the Crucifixion and in its everyday, non-biblical, usage becomes the

quasi-stereotype of torment and self-sacrifice. In a similar fashion, Russ. u cherta na kulichkakh, lit. 'in the devil's mires',

or 'very far away', acts as a quasi-standard of remoteness through its allusion to the Other Space, a dwelling-place of evil

spirits. Similarly, in chernaya zavis″, lit. 'black envy', the collocator bears an allusion to the idea of evil (in general,

symbolically represented by the colour black) and through this becomes a quasisymbol of this evil feeling.

Such instances seem to confirm our suggestion that native speakers' capacity for linguistic introspection and cultural

reflection derives from their knowledge of cultural-linguistic codes -- that is, from their linguo-cultural competence. Linguocultural

competence is assumed to be acquired (together with, and in close connection with, knowledge of one's mother

tongue) in the process of internalizing collective cultural experience.