The Verbal Thinking Activity Of The Linguistic Identety In Digitalization Space

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the specificity of the verbal thinking activity of a linguistic personality, the significance of which becomes especially important under the conditions of global digitalization. Based on the works of Russian and foreign scholars, the authors build a methodology of verbal thinking activity, touching upon both theoretical and practical issues, considering language in one case from the position of a reflex and in another case from the position of reflexion, and come to the following conclusion. On the one hand, language is immanent to a self-organizing natural device functioning under the sign of an individual information system. On the other hand, language appears as an activity (verbal thinking activity) of a linguist to organize an individual information system into a conceptual system. If an individual information system is initially given, then a conceptual system is always created by each concrete person, being a unity of the given and created. Referring to the text of Holy Scripture and referring to the visual poetry of I. Rukavishnikov, the authors demonstrate how the process of verbal thinking activity of a linguistic personality is formed as a transition from the individual information system of language to language as an integral part of the conceptual system. Among the basic methods contributing to the actualization of verbal thinking activity, the authors name methods of decoding and coding of verbal and non-verbal elements of the individual information system.

Keywords: Digitalization, information, linguistic identity, thinking activity

Introduction

In a situation where digital contexts are beginning to dominate over traditional contexts, the problem of language and intercultural communication is particularly acute. It is not so much that digitalization inevitably entails the rationalization and consequent one-dimensionality of humanity's future, as that the current state of the linguistic culture of the globalizing community is in perfect keeping with the accompanying digitalization of rationalization and one-dimensionality. Our point of view is based on the fact that today the majority of our fellow citizens operate with language exclusively at the level of an individual information system. It is a communicative device, given to any living organism, that is automatically launched by nature, through which the processing and accumulation of information about the world takes place, conditioning its maximum adaptation to the environment, i.e. survival (Volkova et al., 2020).

Since, from this point of view, language is at the level of reflex, the ability to speak does not provide the individual with an escape from nature in the same way as it does with a talking parrot or a crow. Moreover, by operating with the signs of language without regard to their correlation with reality, the individual acts like a captive bird. While we are aware that its communicative system is realized through singing, it is naive to believe that the bird's trills are a kind of token of gratitude to the man who provided it with living conditions (cage) and food (grain and water) (Isachenko, 2019).

No, we are talking about the realization of the natural breeding attitude, following which the bird is trying to attract a mate in this way. Blindly obeying the natural program, it is not able to realize the immutability of the fact that, being in captivity, it will never "shout" to its own kind. Accordingly, no matter how much the bird sings, unless the owners want to cage it with an individual of the opposite sex, it is doomed to loneliness. There is a situation in which the bird's trills, an analogue of the language reflex, arise spontaneously, without regard to the real state of affairs. In other words, being under the oppression of an impersonal program, which is a self-organizing communicative device, the individual retains the status of a speaking natural being, without having a chance to be established as a linguistic identity. On the contrary, language as created implies the transformation of the linguistic reflex into the experience of reflection. It refers to the verbal thinking activity carried out by the linguistic identity, which is realized in the context of an individual conceptual system. Concept and meaning of the word correlate with mental and cognitive processes reflecting reality in the person’s consciousness (Vorobiyov et al., 2020). The purpose of the latter is the actualization of meaning in the former, initiated by the natural device, meanings. The importance of this goal lies in the fact that meaning is a social project opposed to the natural program. Despite the fact that the activity of discovering meaning, which is always and invariably present in everything, is determined by the efforts of a paticular individual, meaning itself is of unconditional benefit to everyone else (Kadilina & Ryadchikova, 2018). Why?

At first sight, universal (intersubjective) meaning appears to be analogous to a universal (objective) natural program whose action is determined by the communicative apparatus present in every biological organism. However, this is only partially true. If the sense as a message coming from the depths of centuries and transmitted to us from generation to generation carries in itself the awareness of its eternal value (otherwise why would it be transmitted?), then the actions of universal natural law appear automatically, that is, without its awareness from the individual performing this law. It is no coincidence that the word meaning in the Russian language appears as a personal category. Recognizing the reality of both systems, let us note:

1) in contrast to the relevance of the information system, the conceptual system appears as a virtual system;

2) if an information system functions without relation to the conceptual system, then the formation of the conceptual system is possible exclusively in the bosom of the information system).

Problem Statement

What needs to be done to initiate the transformation of the individual information system as a space filled with simulations and simulacra into a conceptual system – a correlate of meaning-making? In our opinion, the necessity to understand the problem is conditioned by the following circumstance. Taking into account the first line of the Gospel's prologue according to John "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...", let us assume that if the language initiated at the level of natural self-organization is an attribute of the Antichrist, which provides an illusion of freedom to the individual under the oppression of the natural program (in parenthesis we recall that the correlate of the Antichrist – the devil, i.e. The correlate of the Antichrist is the devil, i.e., the slanderer who knowingly fabricates false information), then verbal thinking activity carried out through the linguistic personality is an attribute of Christ, i.e. the truth (the words of Christ: "I am the way, the truth and the life") (John 14:6). By marking the authenticity of the linguistic person, who has renounced his or her slave dependence determined by the limits of nature, this activity carries with it a benefit known to all, which puts the linguistic person in the position of co-servant of the Creator himself or herself.

Proceeding from the above, let us outline the problem, the essence of which lies in the following: how to escape from the Word functioning under the sign of falsehood, to the Word as truth? It is justified by the fact that the lexeme "truth" turns out to be in line with the lexeme "sense". Being both a condition and a result of choice, truth is consonant with sense formation – the process of correlation of the word with reality, which is realized through the comparison of the previous information, actualized in meanings, and new information, which is inevitably placed in the ethical context (Muskhelishvili & Antonenko, 2019).

Research Questions

In order to solve the above-mentioned problem it is necessary to answer at least two questions. The first question would be: How does the process of verbal thinking activity take place from the theoretical point of view? As for the second question, it will be of a purely practical nature: How does a thinking process work from a practitioner's point of view?

Purpose of the Study

The aim of the study is to create a methodology that contributes to the possibility of a sustainable equilibrium of the linguistic personality under the conditions of digitalization as a socio-cultural phenomenon. What is crucial for us in this context is the following. The balance we are looking for should be ensured not so much from the outside, but from within the linguistic personality through the thought-verbal activity which opposes the natural automatism.

Research Methods

Among the basic methods providing advancement in the right direction, we shall name a method of decoding of a language sign and a method of its subsequent coding. The accompanying methods will be:

– the method of analysis of dictionary definitions;

– semasiological method;

– emotionality method;

– the method of intertextuality.

Findings

Solving the theoretical problem concerning the specificity of the process of verbal thinking activity and taking into consideration linguistic and psycholinguistic studies of verbal associations (Suleymanova & Sagitova, 2018), we will notice, that, in our opinion, the experience of semantic formation realized in the space of a conceptual system represents the following procedural norms:a) decoding of a linguistic sign as a correlate of reflection, which conditions a return to non-verbalness (irrationality) that served as a point of reference in the formation of an information system – we mean its – system – non–verbal elements;

b) the subsequent coding of the nonverbal experience received as a result of decoding of a language sign that promotes maintenance of harmonious conformity of verbal (rational) and nonverbal (irrational), external and internal, words and the Word.

In turn, the practical experience of realizing the process of verbal thinking activity with the greatest completeness can be presented on the example (Fig. 1) of visual poetry of Rukavishnikov (1919) “Zvezda” [“Star”]. It is significant that the plurality of emotive valence is set already at the level of the lexeme put in the title of the polycoded discourse, which acts as a strong position of the text. A star is a sign on an officer's shoulder strap (in Ancient Greece a star was associated with Ares (Mars), the God of War, who, according to the legend, was born in a lily flower, resembling a five-pointed star; a celestial body in the sky; a geometric figure, which is often used on obelisks as the basis for eternal flames; a creative man, who succeeds in any sphere (pop star, ballet star, etc.). As Elleström (2016) writes:

the purely visual representamens generate cognitive objects, and the resulting interpretant – the sign in the mind -quickly becomes the representamen in another sign, which creates even more cognitive meaning, and so forth. There is no simple and unambiguous iconic link between the poem’s visual appearance and its latent cognitive meaning, but the visual structure is an important starting point. (p. 467)

Focusing on the polycoded discourse, one cannot but admit that the original semantic plurality of the lexeme "star" is narrowed due to the fact that Rukavishnikov's isoverb is a six-pointed star or otherwise – the Star of David (see Figure 1)

See Full Size >

However, this form does not exclude the possibility of interpreting it in terms of military affairs. In particular, the Star of David not only determines the shape of the shields of royal soldiers, but also acts as a kind of amulet, called the "seal of Solomon". It is known that this seal not only enabled Solomon to win battles, but also to emerge unscathed from the most furious battles (Yazynina, 2010). How relevant is the information available to the modern reader? Having coded the visual basis of polycode discourse and thus set a vector for the process of meaning-making, trying to find the answer to the questions posed at the beginning of the article, let us proceed to the semiotic method and method of intertextual analysis of the text, the authorship of which belongs to Bart, a representative of connotative semiology developed in line with the French scientific school (Saenko et al., 2020).

Having conventionally divided the polycode discourse into two parts – upper and lower – we find the lexemes “forbidden”, “silent” and “unrequited” in the first part. From the point of view of the morphological norms of the modern Russian literary language, the listed adjectives have an erroneous form. However, following the pattern of repeated letters at the level of the endings of the designated lexemes, we see an emphasis on the Russian letter “я” associated with the Russian personal pronoun “я” [“I”], which is repeated in almost every line. In our opinion, such an expedient can be interpreted from the point of view of the stylistic motivation of popular speech: the warrior is a representative of the people, whose defender he acts for.

Now let us turn to the semantics of each of the mentioned lexemes. It seems that the lexeme “forbidden” refers to the biblical story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil in paradise, the place "where no one was before". Accordingly, the lexemes “silent” and “unrequited” continue the subtextual theme of original sin, since when the Lord learned that Adam and Eve had broken His covenant, He stopped speaking to them. It was from this point onward that the gates of paradise were closed to humans, and the paradisiacal relationship of love and mutual trust was replaced by a relationship of power and submission.

In this context, the installation of original sin implicitly contains a condemnation of war as a godly deed. The sinful nature of war is best revealed by the line "and bringing down the secrets of the light ", a kind of moment of desacralization of another Christian symbol-light as a correlate of goodness, holiness, God's good pleasure, joy, and a symbol of truth and understanding. In conjunction with the line "the unrequited darkness" the phrase exposes the inversion of light and darkness, top and bottom, life and death, which leads to the loss of the joy of being, and with it truth and reason, to be replaced by lies, fear and madness. Henceforth man can only hope for redemption in accordance with the phrase "will give you hopes».

In the second part of the discourse there is a shift of emphasis from the pronoun "I" to the pronoun "you" due to the deliberate repetitions used by I.S. Rukavishnikov ("and you and you") with the subsequent joining of both pronouns. In this context, such linguistic constructions as "you are bright" and "your star is alive" may indicate a subject free from the fetters of corporeality – the so–called inner, i.e. spiritual man, who appears as "a doppelganger". The line "humbly calling him embarrassed,  pray from afar" is interpreted as an allusion to the text of the Orthodox prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Here it is appropriate to recall that the evil that gained access to our world was not created, but was initiated by the first humans, whose fall into sin brought about an endless chain of evil, beginning with Cain's murder of Abel. Justifying the need for a just war, by means of which only violence can be stopped, Christianity, however, even wars motivated by idealism, are classified as a misfortune, a disaster, a tragedy. In this case the sin of human suffering is laid above all on those who wage war – on ambitious politicians, unsuccessful diplomats, eager proprietors, and not on the warriors who sacrifice their lives on the battlefields for others' mistakes and crimes (Yazynina, 2010).

Based on the fact that “precedent phenomena represent a fragment of any discourse that, in the mind of the linguistic individual functions as a cultural sign according to the speaker's intentions” (Kulikova & Labko, 2019, p. 171), the six-pointed star, the form of which I.S. Rukavishnikov chose for his isoverbat, simultaneously serves as an expression of four feelings, two of which are opposed: rage – peace, cruelty – compassion. What is meant is implacable foe irreconcilability, filled with noble rage and brutality toward the invader and at its core is a sense of peace from a sense of compassion for the vanquished, devoid of fear of death. All this allows us to classify the soldiers and officers leading the wars of liberation as Christ's army of light. It is no coincidence that, along with the other stars, the star makes clear that it belongs to the heavenly host, of which the "Lord Warrior" or otherwise the "Lord of Hosts" embodies truth and love (in parenthesis we note that the six-pointed star also has a connection to Bethlehem, where it shone at the birth of the Savior) (Yazynina, 2010).

Accordingly, the two parts of the poem are contrasted in such a way that the first part, dominated by the pronoun I, allows the warrior to realize that, as a descendant of Adam and Eve, who broke God's covenant and thereby condemned his entire race to mortal life, he is a sinful being. In turn, the second part, in which the original pronoun I and the pronoun you are connected, gives hope for the possibility of spiritual perfection and exit from darkness as an experience of immortality. As a result, the creolized discourse authored by I.S. Rukavishnikov reveals such semantic dominants as holiness, God's goodwill, overcoming sin, the power of the spirit over the body, humility, virtues, patience, nobility of speech and nobility of actions, more broadly, military honor and ability to give life for Christian ideals (Chistyakova, 2017).

Conclusion

It is thought that procedural norms actualized in the process of work, which conditioned transformation of information presented in I.S. Rukavishnikov's isoverbe (given) into personal meanings (created), provided indivisible integrity of information system, within which an individual consumes language as a ready product, being in passivity, and conceptual system, realized through personal activity of a communicator. In fact, there is an overcoming of natural automatism by human activity (verbal thinking activity). In our opinion, this integrity simultaneously demonstrates the unity of the external and internal form of language. Moreover, it is the inexhaustibility of the latter that provides an unlimited number of shades of meaning, providing each time its – the word – new sounding in the space of intercultural communication.

It is important to emphasize that the inherent mobility of the inner form, which affects the dynamics of meaning, is directly related to the situation of which M.K. Mamardashvili writes that no content is communicated as consciousness (as cited in Ryndin, 2019). According to M.K. Mamardashvili, symbol and consciousness can be seen as pure doubling, and that doubling and its further redoubling in sings or structures generate the world. If one starts from the signs and structures, symbol and consciousness is not anything different from them (as cited in Penchev, 2018). Such a state of affairs is quite consistent with the essence characteristic of language proposed by W. von Humboldt: not a static ergon functioning at the level of an individual information system, the unit of communication of which is a given or "indifferent meaning", but a dynamic, marked by a purely individual volitional effort of energeia as an analogue of a conceptual system. The unit of communication of the latter is meaning or "meaning for me" as a unity of the given and the created, i.e. that new in language which is potentially present in it, but is not subject to statement about itself in advance, i.e. in general, and is stated only in its presence, in particular (Ivanov & Fotieva, 2016).

Against the background of all the above, the attitude that "we live by constantly relating to something, and each of these relations, each new angle of view inevitably means a change of meaning" (Matyash, 2012, p. 62) seems very destructive for communicology, as does the position expressed by the authors of the theory of coordinated management of meanings. According to Peirce and Kronen, "mutual understanding as complete agreement is by no means a necessary condition for communication. Partners can satisfactorily communicate and solve arising issues even in the absence of understanding each other on many levels" (as cited in Matyash, 2012, p. 60).

First, personal meaning cannot be subject to total transformation, being marked by the indivisible integrity of the given and created. Secondly, it is the presence of traditional values on the background of all kinds of innovations lays the foundation for the sustainable development of personality, ensuring the connection of generations. Finally, thirdly, the presence in the personal sense of what is new that each particular communicant brings to the given meaning excludes the possibility of "complete agreement" between them, because meaning is found only and exclusively in the process of coordinating the contradictions inevitable for any dialogue. Accordingly, insisting on the possibility of "satisfactory communication... in the absence of understanding each other on many levels", Matyash (2012, p. 60) prefers the act of speaking as an integral component of the individual information system.

To summarize the above: the fact that today communicative experience dominates over the experience of meaning-making testifies to the tendency of the loss of the human in a person. The communicant, degenerating into a function, ends up appearing as a machine called to serve itself, indifferent to all that it identifies as non-self. Thinking activity is called upon to preserve itself in the space of global digitalization, to prevent the formal side of life from absorbing its – life's – semantic content. As a correlate of spiritual wakefulness, such activity provides the actualized speech subject with the authenticity of existence as the indivisible unity of the given and the created, the discrete and the continuous, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal.

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