Картина мира и нарратив как единство философского и психологического дискурсов

In linguistics and philosophy until the 20th century, scientists showed interest in language mostly as a sign system, paying little attention to mental and psychological processes, the results of which are human speech. The concept of discourse quite clearly characterizes this phenomenon of the relationship of cultural, mental and psychological characteristics of a certain sphere of social consciousness or historical era. At the end of the 20th century, the situation is changing in favor of an anthropocentric approach to language, the purpose of which is to study speech and thought activity. Due to this, many different directions in science appear, such as: psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, ethnopsycholinguistics, cultural linguistics, intercultural communication and others. These directions set themselves the task of revealing the connection between the psychological state of the individual, his worldview, way of thinking – worldview, semantic structures of consciousness and understanding, and human speech.

After the linguistic turn in philosophical and psychological studies, there is a tendency to consider even facts as "representations" of discursive mechanisms

The connection between culture and language is of great interest to a large number of linguists. This issue is rather topical, as many scientists interpret the very concept of culture and language practices in different ways. Besides, here the concepts of philosophic discourse – narrative, scientific and linguistic picture of the world – may become clearer.

А. Vezhbitskaya says: "language and cultural systems differ from each other to a great extent, but there are semantic and lexical universals, which indicate the common conceptual basis, on which the human language, mentality and culture are based"

The "social-constructionist" approach defines the human consciousness as a sort of personal self-positing, organized by rules of a literary text. For example, J. Bruner singles out two moduses of consciousness: "the narrative modus of self-awareness reflects the life context and the unique individual experience; and the paradigmatic, or logical-scientific, modus is common to all mankind – it is a form of narrative, developed in the course of cultural development of humanity and adapted to interpersonal communication"

Here we can use a concept from postmodernism philosophy – a "narrative". Narrativeness, as it is known, is personally discursive. A person creates with their own personal history their narrative as a history of psychological experience, and – in the destructive aspect – of complexes and traumas. At the same time, this narrativeness circulates in the inner aspect of the personality, forming not symptomatology, as in the Freud’s theory, or not the basic regulations of behavior and activity – as in the Jung’s theory, but rather a behavioral model of a person’s integration into the reality. Unlike discourses, which are a mental-preverbal model of integration into sociocultural reality, personal narratives predetermine the basic models of perception and behavior.

The issue of interaction between linguistic and non-linguistic meaning and the relation of linguistic meaning to the verbal meaning of a word continues to be relevant. "There is a word meaning and knowledge about the world. The knowledge about the world includes scientific, common, encyclopedic knowledge. The linguistic knowledge about the world is opposed to the non-linguistic knowledge, i.e. the knowledge, which exists in the consciousness in its non-linguistic form. The linguistic knowledge is represented in meanings of words in the form of separate semantic components, and the non-linguistic – doesn’t form any components in words’ meanings. Non-linguistic knowledge is stored in the human consciousness in sensual-visual form"

Studying psycholinguistic problems, including the issue of speech production, N. Chomsky created a model, which he called "transformational generative grammar". According to this theory, every utterance has a surface structure and deep structure. Chomsky believes that any text can be transformed, that is, reduced to this deep structure. This theory quite logically combines ideas about the psychological aspect of thinking and the grammatical categories of the language. Note that an obligatory element in this scheme is a link that characterizes the subject or relationship, that is, the phenomenon of consciousness.

A functional-semantic field is a grouping of lexical and grammatical units, based on a certain semantic category, as well as of various combined language features, interacting on the basis of their semantic functions. At studying functional-semantic fields in grammar, the systematicity principle of linguistic analysis is taken as a basis. A field is considered as a special-type system, its structure is identified, its content plane is interpreted, the interrelations (intersections) of functional-semantic fields are studied, and the system organization of its semantic functions is determined. The modern grammar pays sufficient attention to comparing the structures of a functional-semantic field and a functional-semantic category. In sentences (utterances) the main modal meaning "is enriched, specified, differentiated with various additional modal meanings or nuances, which predetermines the existence of overlapping inter-field meanings"

These are the factors, which contribute to the formation of narrative as a certain context of all the phenomena of consciousness and culture. So we can speak about cultural narratives.

Summing up the above-mentioned, it should be noted that language is the most important method of the formation and accumulation of a person’s knowledge about the world. While a person fixes the results of cognition in the language, the objective world is reflected in the result of this activity. The linguistic world view (naïve or scientific) is the result of processing information about a person’s position in the world. Yu.N. Karaulov rightly points out that "semantically all the components, their set and explanation of their meanings should not be beyond understanding of an ordinary language speaker, lest the purpose of such description would be inaccessible, as it should be oriented, first of all, to a person, who is a speaker and a user of the language"

If we consider in detail the differences between the picture of the world in general and the linguistic picture of the world in particular, it turns out that the world is an act of interaction between a person and his environment. How the world is reflected in the consciousness, which internal representations of the world are formed in an individual’s mind, which information about the human and environment, – all this is expressed by world view. These data, processed and fixed in the language, are a subject of linguistic world view functioning. Narrative in this context appears as a special epistemological form – the surrounding world can be explored by a person only through narration, through stories.

Creating a world view is a primary task for a person’s perception of the surrounding world. According to V.V. Morkovkin, resources for its implementation can be the following:

а) indigenous knowledge – at the level of knowledge, acquired at birth, not unlike that of animals;

b) knowledge, acquired by a person in the process of his or her practical activity – the experience of integration into the natural environment and society;

c) knowledge, obtained from text sources, which a person perceives throughout his or her life;

d) knowledge, formed as a result of mental activity;

e) knowledge, transmitted by means of native language – "cognitive heritage, the start-up capital, provided by the ethnos"

This instantly provokes allusions to the collective unconscious theory by C. Jung and to postmodern textual world and the activity concept of consciousness.

Based on the above-listed sources, we can make a conclusion that a world view of either of a certain individual, or of the society, is built on the basis of information about the world, obtained from various sources and by various means. Narrative in this context appears as a special epistemological form – the surrounding world can be explored by a person only through narration, through stories.

Though the thinking process is impossible out of language, as it is one of the essences of the mental-lingual complex along with consciousness and language, the world view can still be considered a mental formation. The basic elements of world view are informemas, which compose a certain information integrity. The world view finds its expression in language, gestures and facial gestures, in fine arts and music, in religious rituals and household items, in etiquette and behavior, as well as in sociocultural stereotypes, modes of dress, methods of housekeeping, technologies development and so on.

In recent linguistic studies, the concept "human factor" in the language is inseparable from the concept "linguistic picture of the world". "A crucial point in linguoculturology in present-day realities is, as it was previously noted many times, studying the linguistic world view of a certain nation, which makes it possible to learn and study not only a nation’s language, but also its historical, cultural and daily-life strata. Here the language functions not only as a means of communication, but is positioned as the cultural code of a nation"

Basing on the core idea – of considering the language from the point of view of linguoculturological and philosophical-psychological aspects’ unity – it should be noted again, that picture of the world is one of the main categories in linguoculturology. As it was said earlier, within the framework of analyzing the conceptual world view, linguoculturology is closely related to ethnolinguistics and sociolinguistics, which act as its theoretical background, as they appeared earlier.

The natural conditions of a human life predetermine perception of the world, which is reflected in linguistic culture. As a result, the formation of temperament and establishment of the specific lifestyle of an individual take place under the influence of nature and surroundings. So, the most vivid and precise forms of expressing some or other natural phenomena are seen by a person in pictures or heard in musical compositions of those authors, who lived in these conditions, and were able to observe, for example, sea, mountains or the nature, typical for a certain location, etc. It appears from this, that the linguistic factors of differences in linguistic picture of the world are followed by the primary factor – culture.

As it was said earlier, the culture of every nation is the result of its multifaceted social, material and spiritual activity, flowing through its history, and propagated from generation to generation, which finds its reflection in everyday life, or in numerous peculiarities of cults, rituals and myths. As a result, it transmits the ideas of the members of a certain culture about the picture of the world.

In the process of comprehending the concepts "my/our own" – "someone else’s" we should pay attention to the fact that the latter is unconsciously formed because every nationality possesses not always reasonable or objectified dedication to "their own", which is also called cultural authenticity. Different ethnoses have their own characteristic means of expressing concepts, notions and ideas, which differentiate cultural worlds

All in all, analyzing a human’s view of the surrounding world, we should be conscious of the fact that it is not perfect or ideal, as it is formed by means of subjective cognition, and the language only interprets this cognition, while a person, in his or her turn, reproduces this cognition to the reality. Language is not a simple mirror of the world, and it records not only what was perceived, but also what was comprehended, understood, or interpreted by a person. In other words, in every natural ethnical language a certain unique world view is reflected, which expresses its characteristic way of organizing and perceiving the reality. A language speaker, being a linguistic personality, forms the content of an utterance in accordance with a linguistic picture of the world, which is a special method of world perception, fixed in the language stratum.

Linguistics in its current state provides a cumulative approach to the study of its main tasks due to achievements in related sciences, such as psycholinguistics, psychology, philosophy, cultural studies and others. Considering the conceptual system, expressed in the form of a linguistic picture of the world from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, it can be argued that it is closely related to human experience and has a historical and national conditionality.

At the same time, it can be said that philosophical, i.e. the most universal ideas of the world, society and person are intrinsically intertwined with the linguistic patterns and general cultural background. Semiosphere is, however, presented with certain structural predispositions of the social consciousness and culture, preconditioned in the language as semiotical, – semantic structures

Summarizing the above, we can arrive at the conclusion, that in every language there are certain ethnocultural ways of reflecting the reality, as a result of which the speakers of different languages perceive reality in their unique ways, through the lens of their language, and, at the same time, through a universal basis for such perception.

Language is by no means a simple mirror of the world, and therefore captures not only what is perceived, but also meaningful, conscious, interpreted by a person. In other words, each natural ethnic language reflects a special picture of the world, expressing a characteristic way of organizing and perceiving reality. The speaker, being a linguistic personality, forms the content of the statement in accordance with the linguistic picture of the world, which is a special method of understanding the world, fixed in the linguistic layer.