Символният език на народната култура
Symbolic Language of Folk Culture

Summary/Abstract: The article brings to light the content of the notion (and the terminology) of “the language of culture” through the analogy between verbal language and the culture. Identity of the functions (cognitive, communicative, social ones, etc.) and the isomorphism of the structure of these two semiotic systems (like standard language – elite culture, language dialects – cultural dialects, colloquial speech – “the third culture” and so on) allow to use some of the linguistic concepts (text, grammar, semantics, synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, etc.) for describing culture. There are though drastic differences between language and culture, which the scholars have to take into account. Semantics of the cultural signs compared to that of the linguistic signs (words) has exclusively symbolic nature. In the article linguistic and cultural semantics of several units, which have the same denotat, are compared. The word well and the cultural sign well, the word tree and the cultural sign tree, the word red and the cultural sign red, the word to walk and the cultural sign to walk. Relevant differences between the language and the cultural semantics are explicated; the mechanisms of choosing of the major dominating cultural manifestations and creating of the symbolic cultural meanings are revealed. Since one object can generate various symbols, which are resulted from different qualities or functions of the object, the signs of the cultural language can be polyfunctional (compare spindle as a guarding instrument, as an object of medical magical ritual, as a female symbol, etc.). Alongside polyfunctionism (polysemy) of the cultural sign there exists isofunctionalism (synonymy) of different cultural signs (compare many warding away actions or symbols which denote multiplicity). Text as a notion used for cultural analysis has broadened its content by including the conceptual tools of linguistic pragmatics, communicative linguistics and linguistic theory of the text.

• Details
• Contents