The Philology Of Neo-Positivism: Trends, Socio-Cultural Transformations, Global Context

Abstract

The article deals with the ways of development of philology as a linguistics science in the conditions of the present time, characterized by philosophy with the help of the phenomenological concept of "neopostpositivism", the essence of which is to consider and study complex self-developed systems taking into account a wide historical and socio-cultural context; the study, which has a holistic (comprehensive, holistic) nature with all the multicomponent, mosaic and kaleidoscopic data coming to the researcher about these systems; in linguoculturology and psycholinguistics: processes of forming the code of culture using language and speech; in psycholinguistics and ethnopsycholinguistics: identification and description of behavioural patterns that facilitate the individual and ethnicity to implement a cluster of world knowledge in the appropriate communication situation (psycholinguistics, ethno-psycholinguistics); in discourseology: Description of the submersion of concepts and their supporting signs into communication in order to ensure the processes of discourse formation and discourse development. It is stated that different kinds and types of discourse are explored within the framework of discourseology: everyday communication discourses; institutional discourses; public discourses; political discourses; media discourses; art discourses (literary, musical, model, fine arts discourses); business communication discourses; marketing discourses (advertising, sales, consumer service discourses); academic discourses (scientific communities, scientific disciplines); cultural and attitudinal discourses (cultural epochs, various philosophical and religious currents).

Keywords: Discoursesigncommunicationcognitivelinguosemioticsneo-positivism

Introduction

Modern humanities science does not stand still: just as Moore's law defines the fantastic pace of development of the computing industry to the nearest creation of a quantum computer that works trillions of times faster and more productive than its current counterparts, so also in humanitarian knowledge paradigms, such as modern philology, there are instantly developed and discovered areas of knowledge. Since recent times, when language sciences have undergone a dramatic shift from research on "language in itself" describing language phenomena in terms of its internal structure (an immanent learning paradigm) to research on "the human being in language and language in the human being", Focusing on language as an instrument of description of man and the world through the eyes of man (anthropocentric paradigm), philology has entered a new stage of development of scientific thought, today, thanks to Victoria Vladimirovna Krasnykh, an outstanding Russian linguist, professor of the Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. Victoria Vladimirovna Krasnykh, an outstanding Russian linguist and professor of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, who received philosophical reflection as neo-positivism (the term V.V. Krasnykh) – new scientific reality in which the object of study are complex self-developed systems, considered against the background or taking into account a broad historical and socio-cultural context, with their research, as Krasnykh (2016) writes:

...must have a holistic character, i.e. they must be integral and systemic in themselves, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they must consider their object as one and integral (both from the point of view of each individual research subject and from the point of view of the totality of such subjects), but at the same time multi-component, mosaic and kaleidoscopic, although internally connected (i.e. again, one and the same and integral) (p. 228).

The era of neo-postpositivism made philology expand both in the sense of multiplication of methods of studying new linguistic reality and in the sense of multiplication of its new sections – "philological sciences", i.e. scientific disciplines, which allow more focused study of language and speech fluctuations in the conditions of modern socio-cultural transformations taking place against the background of global cultural-historical context. The article suggests to the scientific community to describe the trends in the dynamics of the rapid development of such a process.

Problem Statement

The main issue facing today's philology of the epoch of neo-postpositivism is the achievement of efficiency and depth of research of language phenomena in the context of constant fluctuations / transformation of socio-cultural context in the context of globalization of communication, as well as on the background of deepening processes of linguistic polluciogeny (term E.O. Klimenko – Klimenko, 2006) as an anglization / americanization of the world's languages and the threatening depletion of lexical, grammatical and stylistic means of language in the function of the basic tools of communication by substituting reading and speaking with audiovisual forms of communication.

Research Questions

This article in a concentrated form gives an idea of modern sections of philology as a linguistic science, today rapidly developed into independent scientific disciplines with their own methods and terminological apparatus.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the article is to describe the key problems that solve the new philological disciplines; to give an idea of the methods they use to solve the problems faced by researchers; to summarize the achievements presented in the works of scientists working in line with a particular direction of the philological discipline of the era of neo-positivism.

Research Methods

The authors of the article used: a) general scientific methods of retrospection and introspection, analysis and synthesis for descriptive description of the methodology dynamics and verification of data on a particular language phenomenon at different stages of its development; b) method of typologizing subjects and objects of study of a particular branch of philology as a linguistic science.

Findings

The abrupt turn of linguistic research towards the human being, the study of his place in language and communication, and, consequently, the role of these phenomena in human life and activity, has led scientists to address the following problems through new or rethought old scientific disciplines, which have shifted from the immanent paradigm of "human language" research to the anthropocentric paradigm of "human language" and "language in the human being" research:

(a) Definition of mechanisms of human mental activity to master the information obtained in the course of cognition of the world around it; determination of ways to categorize the human experience with its subsequent reflection in language and speech forms; determination of algorithms of the processes of perception, classification, structuring and comprehension of knowledge about the world, which result in accumulation and conceptualization of this knowledge, which is linguistic and further participates in speech production (cognitive linguistics);

b) identification and typologization of the conceptual spheres that determine the existence of Homosapiens, followed by the determination / typologization of clusters of linguistic and non-linguistic characters that allow the conceptual, figurative and value content of concepts to obtain a language expression and immerse themselves in speech processes (conceptual science, linguosemiotics);

c) identification and description of the links between language, speech and culture with the establishment of the participation of language and speech phenomena in the formation of the cultural code (linguoculturology, psycholinguoculturology);

d) the establishment of behavioural patterns that enable a person to implement a cluster of world knowledge in the appropriate communication situation in order to maximize benefits for themselves or for the community of their fellow human beings (psycholinguistics, ethnopsycholinguistics);

e) describing the immersion of the concepts and the signs that support them into communication, thus ensuring the processes of discourse formation and discursorization (discourse science).

The tasks of modern cognitive linguistics include, firstly, the study of the processes of production and understanding of natural language; secondly, the study of the principles of linguistic categorization, typologizing conceptual structures together with their linguistic conformities; thirdly, the determination of the meaning and content of cognitive and semantic super-categories, such as spatial relations and conceptual reflexion of types of movement in language; fourthly, the study of the so-called "bodily basis" of human consciousness and language reduced to conformities; thirdly, the study of the meaning and content of cognitive and semantic super-categories, such as spatial relations and conceptual reflexion of types of movement in language.

One of the specific contemporary tasks of modern cognitive linguistics is to investigate the problem of the structure of the mentality of a secondary linguistic personality in its bilingual hypostasis. This direction is effectively developed today by scientific schools of Prof. A.N. Abregov and M.P. Akhidzhakova at Adygeya State University (Akhidzhakova & Abregov, 2015; Akhidzhakova et al., 2017).

Maslova (2001) summarizes the basic terminological apparatus of modern cognitive linguistics: "Key terms of cognitive linguistics: mind, knowledge, conceptualization, conceptual system, cognitive, linguistic vision of the world, cognitive base, mental representations, cognitive model, categorization, verbalization, mentality, cultural constants, concept, picture of the world, the conceptosphere, national cultural space, etc." (p. 107). The researcher, who refers human cognitive activity to the process of mental processing of information assimilation, rightly believes that it results in the formation of special structures of consciousness – concepts (Maslova, 2018).

A new philological / linguistic discipline – Conceptology – emerged from cognitive linguistics, the tasks of which include the creation of scientific description of concepts that "represent the essence of the national subconscious, expressed verbally, in words and grammatical forms of the native language" (Kolesov & Pimenova, 2012, p. 201). As noted by Pimenova (2017), "Conceptual science is called upon to recreate conceptual structures, exploring the ways of development of cognitive traits in the history of the word" (p. 15).

The researcher will present the algorithm of such research, which consists of 12 stages: 1) selection of a keyword – representative of the concept; 2) collection of language material consisting of examples of the use of this keyword; 3) analysis of the etymology of a keyword as representative of the concept through identification of motivating features; 4) identification of figurative cognitive features of inanimate and inanimate nature (vegetative, vitality, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic) in the collected language material; 5) determination of conceptual features through the analysis of vocabulary definitions; 6) determination of categorical features (dimensional, qualification, quantitative, colorative, spatial, temporal, value and evaluation); 7) description of symbolic attributes according to symbolic dictionaries, explanatory mythological dictionaries, ethnographic data, and analysis of language material; 8) determination of ironic attributes as a marker of the loss of the value component in the structure of the concept, originally present in the conceptual picture of the world; 9) study of scenarios present in the structures of a number of concepts; 10) description of stereotypes inherent in the corresponding linguistic culture; 11) carrying out of psycholinguistic experiment in the conditions of intercultural interaction; 12) description of scenarios in the structure of the concept, along with a description of the characteristics of the concept).

Updating of the conceptual, figurative and value content of the concepts/conceptosphere (Karasik, 1996, 2017, 2019) is impossible without semiotic support provided by various clusters of linguistic and non-linguistic characters. Their analysis and typologization is carried out thanks to another philological discipline – linguosemiotics exploring signs: institutionality (Astafurova & Olyanich, 2008); vital needs (Astafurova & Olyanich, 2012); needle culture; ethnocultures (Yanushkevich, 2009). I.F. Januszkiewicz clearly demonstrates the role of Lingua-Semiotics in the study of the phenomenon of culture in general and ethno-culture in particular:

Lingua-Semiotics of culture conveys the sign of the function of modeling the image of the world, which is presented to the subjects of culture in their daily reality. Everyday life is conceptualized and appears as a function of the relationship between reality and information about it, knowledge and language, language and reality. Knowledge formulates the meaning of the sections of reality, language provides signs to the senses and unites the objects of reality in the conceptual sphere. Conceptualization of consciousness, unfolding in diachronias, gradually gets the form of information flow, in which the evolution of views, world views takes place: concepts are multiplied, their frames are expanded, capturing new knowledge, reflected in new characters. This evolutionary process is accompanied by linguistic support: events, actions, states, processes are verbalized, nominated, i.e. linguisticized, semantically acquired (Yanushkevich, 2009, p. 257)

Today, language signs are regarded as "the bodies of cultural language signs" (Telia, 1991, 2006); thus, one of the most important trends in philological science in the age of neo-positivism is the fusion of linguosemiotics and linguoculturology; moreover, in a multicultural world, these scientific disciplines are gradually transforming into ethnolinguistic disciplines (cf. Essays on ethnolinguistics of consumer communication, 2019) and ethnolinguoculture (Ethnolinguoculturology, 2014) as scientific disciplines that investigate "...living communication processes and the relationship of the language expressions used in them to the synchronous mentality of the people" (Telia, 2006, p. 776)

Cognitive linguoculturology, another scientific discipline within the framework of philology as a scientific discipline of the Neopostoppositivism era, explores language as a system of signs denoting cultural and ethnocultural phenomena characterized by linguistic creativity; for example, it studies cognitive mechanisms of forming figurative meanings of phraseologists (Zykova, 2016).

Among the philological disciplines there is another newest discipline – psycho-linguoculturology, the subject and purpose of which is V.V.V. The Reds are defined as follows:

The subject of PLC is the dictionary and grammar of linguoculture. The purpose of PLC is to identify, study, systematize, and describe the vocabulary and grammar of linguoculture, including not only the register of units that express culturally significant meanings and images, not only the taxa (main classes) of these units, their structure, relations, functioning, and sub., but also the main categories (starting from the basic one – the person of the speaker, including the phenomena that cause the multidimensional existence of the speaker, and up to such an important category, as, for example, the code of culture, which can be considered both from the point of view of the vocabulary of linguistic culture – as, for example, a set of names of mentefacts, and from the point of view of grammar as a structural element) (Krasnykh, 2019, p. 25)

In a multicultural world and in the context of globalization, philology, as a linguistic discipline, feels an urgent need to investigate the culturally marked and culturally conditioned characteristics of ethnosciences manifested in language activity and speech (discursive) communication. One more philological discipline of the epoch of neo-positivism – ethnopsycholinguistics – allows to solve these problems: Ufimtseva and Ufimtseva (2017), the founder of this direction in modern philology, believes that its central problem is the study of the ethnocultural specificity of linguistic consciousness, the study of the image of the world and its dynamic fluctuations from one ethnoculture to another.

Finally, in the palette of the philological sciences of the neo-postpositivism epoch there is another one, which concentrates the data received by other scientific disciplines on how different mechanisms of translation and mastering of information – psychological, cognitive, semiotic and other – function in the real communication situation. We are talking about discourseology, which gives an idea of the structure of discourse as a phenomenon of communication, its thematic relativism, the specificity of the signs involved in a particular type of discourse, as well as regular speech (discursive) practices carried out within the framework of a particular type of discourse. Today, discourseology explores various types of discourse: for example, Bolsunovskaya and Didenko (2010) give their approximate (but not complete) classification:

1) discourses of everyday communication (everyday conversations, friendly conversations, rumors, everyday conflicts); 2) institutional discourses (administrative, banking, office, medical, pedagogical, army, church, etc.); 3) public discourses (discourses of civic initiatives and speeches, diplomatic discourses, PR discourses, etc.); 4) political discourses (discourses of political ideologies, institutions, actions, etc.); 5) media discourses (TV discourses, film discourses, advertisements, etc.).); 6) art-discourses (literary, music, model, visual arts discourses); 7) business communications discourses; 8) marketing discourses (advertising, sales, consumer service discourses); 9) academic discourses (scientific communities, scientific disciplines); 10) cultural and worldview discourses (cultural epochs, various philosophical and religious trends) (Bolsunovskaya & Didenko, 2010, p. 39).

Conclusion

To sum up, let's focus on the following.

As it follows from this review, the philology of the XXI century is dynamically developing in the direction of studies focused on the study and analysis of the speaker (Homoloquens) as a linguistic personality, creating language and cognitive mastering the world around him, embodying their discoveries in language and speech, in communication with themselves. The newest scientific disciplines are logically integrated into the new trend of science development as a whole – neo-positivism, which makes it possible to reveal multiple characteristics and signs of being with the help of modern methods and techniques, which in their turn are improving and developing against the background of an ever-expanding socio-cultural context and in the conditions of increasing globalization of various spheres of human activity. The tasks of the new scientific branches of philology include, first of all, expanding the range of knowledge about language and speech as the most important instruments of Homosapiens' creativity.

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