COMPATIBILITY OF THE TERMS «LINGUISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS» AND «LANGUAGE WORLDVIEW»

Abstract

The paper discusses the terms «language worldview» and «language consciousness» defining the first as a linguistic phenomenon, and the second as a psycholinguistic one. The author claims that such a conceptual distinction is apt to lead to a more consistent study of images fixed in the language system and material (L. Shcherba), on one hand, and the same images regarded and approached anthropocentrically, on the other. The elaborated concept of the language consciousness unit includes five elements: object, personal sense, meaning, emotion, sensuous fabric. Based on a number of largely accepted, classical ideas of linguistics, psychology and philosophy, it is shown that the suggested language consciousness definition is applicable to revealing the consciousness inner structure. The application is illustrated by the associative experiment material. From the methodological point of view, the language consciousness implies, in contrast to the language worldview, the consideration of the methods and ways of its studying as well as the ‘speakers’ attitude to the world as expressed in speech and language. The language consciousness is thus represented in a «non-classical» way, i.e. as a complex of transitions from the interior (reflected in consciousness images) to the exterior (that is through speech actions), and vice versa with the theoretical generalization and interpretation of the transitions products.