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Perspectives of cultural conceptual linguistics (a study of the belarusian concept narod)
 
PIIS294939000028977-3-1
DOI10.18254/S294939000028977-3
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Valentina Maslova 
Affiliation: Educational Institute “Vitebsk State University named after P.M. Masherov”
Address: Vitebsk, Belarus
Tatsiana Nikitsenka
Affiliation: Belarusian State University
Address: Minsk, Belarus
Journal nameLinguistica Fundamentalis
EditionIssue 2 (2)
Abstract

Since the end of the 20th century, intense studies have been conducted in the realms of cognitive linguistics and cultural linguistics. One of the features peculiar to the development of these realms in the East Slavic countries is their integration. As a result, a new field of study emerged – cultural conceptual linguistics. This field has gained the greatest popularity in the region since then. This popularity didn’t come out of thin air. Firstly, cognitive linguistics and cultural linguistics began to progress almost simultaneously in the post-Soviet era. Secondly, much of the credit goes to the local well-established research schools which contributed a lot to language semantics. The article analyses the focus and novel approaches of cultural conceptual research. Different definitions to “concept” are provided. The concept is a mental unit that can be represented by a word, phrase, sentence, or even a whole text. The cultural linguistic concept differs from other mental units due to its evaluative component. The core of a concept always contains values.

In most Belarusian research at the turn of the 20th – beginning 21st cc. key linguistic issues revolved around more traditional topics – in the paradigm of structural and functional linguistics. However, some ideas proposed by cultural and cognitive linguists in recent decades were known long before that, as Belarusian linguistics has always recognized the fact that language and cognitive processes are closely related.

The article addresses one of the focal concepts of Belarusian cultural conceptualizations that is the concept narod ‘folk; people; nation’ by employing the prototypical approach which is an effective way to determine the concept structure and its specific character.

Keywordscognitive linguistics; cultural linguistics; cultural conceptual linguistics; concept; worldview; folk / nation
Received08.12.2023
Publication date08.12.2023
Number of characters31079
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Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. The development of cultural linguistics and cognitive linguistics: a brief overview
3. The development of cultural conceptual linguistics. The definition of “concept”
4. The concept narod as one of the focal concepts in the Belarusian cultural dimension
5. Conclusion
1

1. Introduction
2 In the second half of the 20th century the synthesis of various research branches within the field of humanities led to analyzing a language through a prism of culture, history, literature, psychology, philosophy, religion, sociology, etc. Thus, it gave rise to novel disciplines, such as cultural linguistics (other terms found as linguoculture, linguaculture, languaculture), cognitive linguistics, political linguistics, legal linguistics, theological linguistics, computational linguistics and many others. These disciplines, apart from being interdisciplinary projects, have one more feature to share – a usage-based view of language with the focus on the speaker. From the 1990s through the 2010s, the linguistics of the East Slavic area witnessed an increasing and widespread interest in cognitive and linguacultural research which resulted in numerous publications, including monographs, textbooks, articles, PhD theses, various conferences devoted to cognitive and linguacultural topics. It is not possible to list all the publications and events that happened within this period.
3 In most Belarusian research, key linguistic issues have always revolved around more traditional topics that are mainly studied in the paradigm of structural and functional linguistics. The research in Belarus which has been carried out from a cognitive or linguacultural perspective (to name but a few works [Maslova, 1997; Maslova, 2001; Maslova, 2004; Scherbin, 2009; Ljashchynskaja, 2015]) is still relatively scarce if compared with a number of works accomplished by scholars from Russia. It should be mentioned, though, that some ideas proposed by cultural and cognitive linguists in recent decades were known in the East Slavic countries, including Belarus, long before that (e.g. Belarusian linguistics has always recognized the fact that language and cognitive processes are closely related).
4

2. The development of cultural linguistics and cognitive linguistics: a brief overview
5 Cultural linguistics as a research programme in the East Slavic countries emerged in the 1990s and at first it was best-known for the scholar Veronika N. Teliia [Teliia, 1996] and her associates and successors (e.g. [Kovshova, 2016]). For some scholars, though, the linguacultural approach to language is still debatable (see [Földes, 2019; Pavlova, 2013]).
6 This approach focuses not only on the relationship between language and culture but it takes into account what is known about the speakers and their comprehension, how they perceive the world, what kind of community they live in. In other words, cultural linguistics views language, conceptualization and culture as closely connected.
7 Cultural linguistics is multifaceted and synthetic. It can integrate the achievements of a number of interdisciplinary studies, with the main objective being both the speaker and culture in its various manifestations.
8 Cultural linguistics is an integrative discipline, which is obvious from the method it employs: knowledge gained in other fields (psychology, psycholinguistics, ethnography, etc.), is not ignored, on the contrary, it is widely used in discussing actual linguistic issues. Furthermore, the integrative nature finds its evidence in the extension of the research perspective which is determined by the versatility of the central phenomena (language and culture) and the multidimensionality of their ties.
9 Cognitive linguistics focuses on the relationship between language, speech process and world awareness, that signifies the necessity to study linguistic issues considering speech processes and the speaker’s general cognitive abilities. In other words, the focal topics of cognitive linguistics are the way the speaker acquires knowledge as well as the issues regarding “types of knowledge and its forms , the way this knowledge is represented in a person’s mind, the way a speaker comes to knowledge and how they use it” [The concise dictionary of cognitive terms, 1996: 58].
10 Cognitive approach to language reveals the mechanisms through which speakers interpret the world and identify the place they occupy in this world.
11 Cognitive linguistics is fundamentally integrative, the essential task of which “is the description and explanation of language ability and / or language knowledge as an internal cognitive structure as well as a speaker-listener interaction dynamic process that basically means processing information and consists of a finite number of independent modules” [The concise dictionary of cognitive terms, 1996: 53].
12 When studying a linguistic object from the cognitive perspective, Valeriǐ Z. Dem’iankov draws attentions to the following points: 1) not only actions but the speaker’s mental abilities, symbols, strategies and other hidden processes and human abilities that motivate actions should be studied; 2) the specific content of actions and processes affects the realisation of invisible processes; 3) culture shapes the speaker because they are under the inherent influence of culture [Dem’iankov, 1994: 19].

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