THE LINGUISTIC PICTURE OF THE WORLD: REFLEXIVE EXPERIENCE

Abstract

This article analyzes the interpretations of the linguistic picture of the world by the scientists – linguists and and culturologists – in the general context of the spiritual culture of the mankind.

The researchers of the language picture of the world are unanimous in the saying that every natural and ethnocultural depth of the language in the context of the original picture of the world of the culture is a socio-cultural code, which discloses ethnicity of its carriers, forming a specific, but their inherent picture of the world.

The world picture as a form of the worldview display of the objective reality in the public consciousness provides the forming of the generalized image of the social and cultural environment in the process of the continuous spiritual and practical activity. This is about the invariant image of the world, in which the sight, sound, touch and other sensations in the combination with the system of the values inherent the concrete historical culture, are fixed. The picture displays a broad panorama of the world of the reality that goes beyond the personal world of the individual, his/her own experience, immediate impressions and sensations.

The socio-historical practice shows that the functionality of the language in the forming of the image of the world is not confined only to its lexical content, a significant role is also plays the archetypes of the culture and mindset inherent in each individual ethnic group. According to K. Jung, archetypes are the primary natural images based on the original ideas, feelings, instincts, developed in the course of formation of the psychic structures of the collective unconscious. We are talking primarily about the archetype of the self – the human desire for his integrity and unity of the actions that provides balance and stability. The archetypes of the collective unconscious are inaccessible to direct observation, but symbolically appear in the myths, dreams, creativity products and, consequently, in the first articulate sounds and signs. Conditioned by the specific circumstances of the life of the particular people, the archetypes form the inner meaning and shaped frame of its system of the natural language. Basing on the colourful palette of the ethno-cultural-linguistic patterns, a set of the values and universal image of the world is formed.

The interpretation of the language as a picture of the world is an inconsistency in the plane of the differentiation of the thought and word. The philosophers often ignore the obvious fact that any philosophizing, noted the thinker, first is expressed in the language, and not in the sphere of the pure thought. It is absurd to look for something outside the language, leaving it out of the consideration. Therefore, we do not analyze the phenomenon (thinking), but the concept, which is concomitant the using of the word, the inner speech, which is accessible by the specified external rules.

Exploring the language as a way to way to learn the world, the modern linguists appeal to the phraseology of the language, seeing in it the conceptualized knowledge about the language picture of the world and its concrete segments. The interest in the thematic phraseology in the semantic, pragmatic and cultural aspects is animated. The problem of the relationship of the language and culture phenomena has become, in particular, the subject of a special study of B. Whorf, the famous American linguist and ethnographer. The scientist addressed to the importance of the language issues which were temporarily were missing in the scientific fields of his contemporaries. Not being a professional linguist, B. Whorf wrote a sufficient number of the fundamental works to the scientific world community recognized him as a linguist.

The presence of the numerous disagreements in the poliethni cultural world suggests that the selection of the lexical expression is determined not only by the objective properties of the extralinguistic environment, but also by the situation where the lexical expressions of the language are difficult to interpret by the others.

Each traditional ethnic culture has a long and unique history. Distributed from the second half of the XIXth century the notions of the savagery, barbarism and civilization reflect ethnocentrism of the peoples who believe their way of the life more formal than the others. The American anthropologist F. Boas says the availability of the commonality in the language and the calculus of the ancestral kinship can be explained by a common origin of idioms, or the mutual linguistic influences. The reason for the differences in the people and their inherent cultural values often are seen in the differences in the motives of the activity, which are explained with the diametrically opposed value ideas of the peoples regards one and the same act. Therefore, according to F. Boas, the scientific study of a particular ethnic culture is possible only on the basis of the culture and cultural values of the certain people.