Concept "Feast" In The Minds Of Russian Native Speakers And Korean Languages

Abstract

This article is part of a general study on the concept of "feast", reflected in two cultures – Russian and Korean. The authors plan to determine whether the concept of "feast" exists in Korean, or with what concept it will be replaced. The study made it possible to clarify the interpretation of the term “feast” in the languages under study. The choice of this concept is due to the fact that the concept of "feast" is a specific indicator for Russian and Korean culture. In addition, the authors attempted to identify common and unique attributes that can carefully characterize the studied languages. Particular attention should be paid to the unique attributes that will allow to more deeply describe the views of the world of two languages. The article presents the results of a directed psycholinguistic experiment. The experiment conducted in the form of a questionnaire reflects the perception of the concept of "feast" by the speakers of the Korean and Russian languages. The results of the experiment allow us to more accurately present the Russian and Korean linguistic cultures through the lens of research. According to the results of the experiment, the authors attempted to isolate the core and periphery of the concept “feast” in both languages, as well as thematic groups, the study of which makes it possible to clarify the understanding of the concept “feast” in both linguistic cultures. The analysis of the experiment allows concluding regarding the relationship of material and intangible attributes of the studied concept.

Keywords: Conceptfeastworldviewlinguistic view of the world

Introduction

Essential to the Russian and Korean cultures is the concept of "feast" - a complex multi-faceted formation. The concept reveals distinctive national and common features that reproduce the cultural, historical, religious and mythological causation of the formation of linguistic views of the world of the Russian and Korean peoples, a fragment of which is the concept of "feast." The concept expresses stereotypes identical to a feast, symbols, views, images, reflecting the peculiarity of the national perception of the world and mentality, the construction of cultural and social relations and customs and traditions inherent in Russian and Korean culture.

First of all, it is necessary to dwell on the definition of “concept”, since its content is interpreted by linguists differently.

According to the dictionary of cognitive terms, a concept is “a unit of the mental and psychic resources of the human consciousness and that information structure that reflects a person’s knowledge and experience; operational content unit of memory, mental lexicon, conceptual system and language of the brain, the whole view of the world, reflected in the human psyche" (Kubriakova, 1996, p. 77). It is noteworthy that the concept, in this case, is defined from different positions: as a unit of consciousness, language, and, finally, "a unit of language of the brain." According to Karaulov (1987), “a unit of the language of the brain” is a “no-man's zone” (p. 31) between language and thinking.

Likhachev (1993) used the term “concept” to mean “a generalized thinking unit interpreting the phenomena of reality depending on the education, personal, professional and social experience of a native speaker”. Encyclopedic dictionary (2004), edited by F.A. Brockhaus, I.A. Efrona interprets this concept as follows: “concept - general presentation, plan, essay, composition” (p. 53).

In general, the definitions of the concept do not contradict each other, since they indicate, firstly, the belonging of this phenomenon to the mental sphere, secondly, the influence of society on the content of the concept, thirdly, reflection in the language (at least for the overwhelming most concepts).

On the basis of the concept it is possible to build a fragment of the linguistic view of the world. In philosophical and linguistic literature, the term “world view” is referred to as a person’s view of the world as a result of human interaction with this world. Popova and Sternin (2007) mean under the world view "an ordered set of knowledge about reality, formed in the public, group and individual consciousness" (p. 83).

In linguistics, as in philosophy, it is customary to distinguish between conceptual and linguistic views of the world.

Kubriakova (1996) believes that by the conceptual view of the world is meant the world imagined by man. Under the linguistic view of the world is meant that part of the world that can be “tied” to the language and “refracted through the linguistic form” (p. 57).

To this day, the question of what place in the view of the world is the linguistic view of the world remains relevant. According to Maslova (2011), the linguistic view of the world has a "specific color view of the world", due to the national characteristics of objects, phenomena generated by the national culture of the people, its way of life and the specifics of activities.

According to Popova and Sternin (2007), the linguistic view of the world is a fixed idea of a person about the world at a certain life stage, reflected in the meaning of linguistic signs – “linguistic articulation of the world, linguistic ordering of objects and phenomena, embedded in the system meanings of words information about the world” (p. 25).

When they talk about the linguistic view of the world, as a rule, they have in mind the naive view of the world, which is divided into the usual and the individual. Under the naive linguistic view of the world means the system of representations contained in the language of the speakers of a given culture. It reflects the material and spiritual experience of a certain people. By definition, Apresian (1995), the naive view of the world "represents the ways of perceiving the world reflected in natural language" (p. 39).

Along with the naive view of the world, it is customary to single out the scientific view of the world. At the linguistic level, this is a scientific linguistic view of the world, which is a peculiar form of knowledge systematization (New philosophical encyclopedia, 2001).

Problem Statement

According to the dictionary of the Russian language by Ozhegov (1988), “Feast is a festive table, treats, as well as sitting at the festive table” (Ozhegov, 1988). According to Dal's (1978) dictionary, “feast” is “a place at the dinner table”. An analysis of the Korean language dictionaries showed that in Korean there is no term “feast” as such, but it is replaced by “banquet”. In the Korean Dictionary, under the banquet is designated "festive table, treats, fun, songs." The second meaning of this term is all those gathered at the festive table, having fun together (The etymology of our language, 1993). Thus, the specificity of the linguistic-cultural field “feast” in the Russian and Korean languages is determined by the interaction of the material (eating, drinking alcohol, gifts) and intangible (noise, joy, holidays).

However, the results of the study of this concept with the help of Korean explanatory dictionaries allowed us to equate "feast" and "banquet" due to the fact that in both Russian and Korean both terms mean meal, feast, triumph. The feast is a specific category of human existence, so the concept of "feast" requires in-depth research. The conceptual component of the concept under study depends on the ethnic characteristics of the carriers studied by the linguocultures. Therefore, it is of interest to the linguoculturological study of this concept on the material of two languages ​​that are typologically not similar to each other.

Research Questions

The article on the material of the concept of "feast" explores fragments of linguistic view of the world – Russian and Korean. The work considers the festive Russian and Korean feast as one of the historical and cultural dominants of the life of society, a person, a state. The work allowed to show the reflection of the feast in the mentality of a person and his view of the world, to reveal his embodiment in various forms, to analyze the feast as a complex ritual with a rigid structure.

Purpose of the Study

Since the word is a conditional universal specific stimulus that causes various reactions, we decided to highlight the content and value national cultural characteristics of the concept of “feast” in the linguistic consciousness of speakers of the Russian and Korean languages.

Research Methods

The authors conducted a directed associative experiment in the form of a questionnaire, the purpose of which was to identify the representations of the speakers of the two languages about the concept of "feast". On the Russian side, 100 recipients took part, whose age varied from 25 to 50 years, having an education not lower than the average. From the Korean side, there were 50 recipients, mostly students of humanities. Half the number of respondents from the Korean side due to technical reasons. The informants were asked to indicate the phenomena they associate with the notion of “feast”. The instruction was given in the native language for the recipients orally, which corresponds to the rules of the experiment. In an open associative experiment, recipients were asked, without hesitation, to write the first word that comes to mind next to the stimulus. Russian-speaking informants were offered the following instructions: "Write the first association that you have on the word feast "and a similar instruction to Korean recipients in Korean:"잔치에관련된먼저생긴단어를써주세요". The experiment involved recipients who do not speak the foreign languages used in the experiment. The experiment was conducted in isolated classrooms.

In addition to the open associative experiment for a deeper study and more complete identification of associations related to the concept of feast in the Russian and Korean linguistic cultures, we conducted a delayed associative experiment. The subjects were asked to write associations related to the phenomenon of "feast". The subjects were not limited in time. Instructions were given in writing, which meets the rules of the deferred experiment. The instruction was given in native languages and looked as follows: "Write associations which will arise at you on the phenomenon "feast" and in Korean"잔치에관련된단어를써주세요". Below, we will consider the reactions, identify and analyze their occurrence in Russian and Korean subjects, try to determine the correspondence and differences in the perception of the view of the world by Russian and Korean recipients on the material of the concept of "feast".

Findings

As a result of the experiment, a different number of reactions was obtained in the subjects. Analyzing associations, we considered it possible to combine some reactions, since they either do not differ in principle, or are close in meaning. To simplify the perception of the experiment materials, we present them in tabular form (Table 01 ).

According to the results of the research, the following general attributes characteristic of the Korean and Russian feasts were highlighted in the responses of the recipients: alcohol, food, noise and types of holidays: in Korean (Table 02 ), “Pegilchanchkhi (one hundred days from the birth of a child)” and “Tolchapchi (one year from childbirth) "; in Russian such a holiday is “New Year”. The attributes characteristic of the Korean feast were songs, flowers, toilet paper, a gift, a restaurant, a party, housewarming. The attributes of the Russian feast include fun, company, guests, jokes, joy, dancing, cucumbers, table, talk, people and hangover.

All the attributes of the feast indicated by the recipients were divided into thematic groups. Groups that could be distinguished in both Korean and Russian cultures were

- booze, "alcohol" was included;

-meal in which the common element “food” has entered in Korean and Russian cultures; “cucumber” was also added to Russian culture;

- the group “holiday”, which included in the Korean culture the national holidays “Pegilchanchkhi” and “Tolchapchi”, and in the Russian culture “holiday” and “New Year”.

The next general group, which could be distinguished from the results of the experiment, was “noise,” which included “party”, “noise”, “song” in Korean culture, and “noise” and “dance” in the other.

Specific groups in Russian culture are as follows:

- emotions: “fun”, “joy”; physical condition: "hangover";

- people: "company", "people", "guests";

- subject: "table";

- talk: "jokes", "conversations".

Korean culture was represented by the following groups:

- gift, which includes "toilet paper", "gift", "flowers"

- place: "restaurant".

After analyzing the results of the experiment without taking into account the ranking on the sequence of reactions, we have isolated the core and periphery for the concept under study in two languages.

In the Korean culture in the core were: “alcohol”, “food”, national Korean holidays “Pegilchanchkhi” (백일), “Tolchapchi” (돌). The periphery of the Korean linguistic view of the world was: a restaurant (식당), flowers (꽃), housewarming (집들), noise (퐁퐁).

In Russian culture, the following phenomena appeared as cores: “food”, “alcohol”, “fun”, “holiday”, “New Year”. The periphery consists of "company", "guests", "jokes", "joy", "dancing", "cucumbers", "table", "noise", "conversations", "people", "hangover".

It is noteworthy that the associations obtained during the open association experiment coincide with the associations obtained as a result of the delayed associative experiment.

Conclusion

The concept of "feast" is of great importance for each culture. The rituals associated with the feast, which for many centuries attached great importance, speak of the long-standing culture of the feast. Cutlery, seating guests, eating and drinking – all this had and has a special meaning.

The attributes of the "feast" include various menus, drinks, toasts and much more. Various occasions and anniversaries, as well as weekends, can serve as occasions for a feast.

Feast traditions are a very significant and important part of Korean culture. Feast - a necessary element of full-fledged relationships of people. Korea has long been under the strong influence of Confucianism, so Korean food culture has a number of distinctive features, including table etiquette.

Based on the results of the experiment, it can be noted that the fragments of the linguistic view of the world formed through the concept of "feast" are sufficiently close. The discrepancy in a number of nominations characterizing the concept of "feast" in the Russian and Korean languages is caused by the different significance of certain attributes of the feast, which are inevitably present in both cultures, but have different value characteristics. Almost to absolutely unique phenomenon for Russian carriers can be attributed toilet paper, which is brought into the house as a gift. In turn, the hangover seems alien to the Koreans, which representatives of this ethnic group never suffer.

References

1. Apresian, Iu. D. (1995). The image of man according language: an attempt of system descriptions. The issues of linguistic, 1, 37–65.
2. Dal, V. (1978). Explanatory dictionary. Moscow: Russkii iazyk.
3. Encyclopedic dictionary. (2004). Saint Petersburg: Semenovskaia Tipolitografiia.
4. Karaulov, U. N. (1987). The Russian language and the language personality. Moscow: Prosveshchenie.
5. Kubriakova, E. S. (1996). Brief dictionary of cognitive terms. Moscow: The publishing house of MSU.
6. Likhachev, D. I. (1993). Conceptosphere of the Russian language. Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk. Seriya literatury i yazyka, 1(52), 3–9.
7. Maslova, V. A. (2011). Introduction to cognitive linguistics. Moscow: Flinta.
8. New philosophical encyclopedia. (2001). In 4 volumes. Moscow: Mysl'. 
9. Ozhegov, S. I. (1988). Dictionary of Russian language. Moscow: Russkii iazyk.
10. Popova, Z. D., & Sternin, I. A. (2007). The cognitive linguistics. Moscow, AST: Vostok-Zapad.
11. The etymology of our language (1993). Seoul: Kugokjugwayenguhwe.