The Phenomenon of the Mass Culture Novel Type in Globalization Context: (Lingual) Mentality Transformation

The paper addresses a new type of the mass information culture as a new reality within the globalizing world. The paper reveals the origin and specificity of mass culture per se throughout the entire linguistic history, highlighting at the same time its impact on shaping of mass consciousness in the society. The papers considers the current mechanisms of being involved into mass culture, resulting into emergence of so-called “massificated personality”. This article determines some prerequisites of the information culture advent, disclosing its peculiarities, with focus on the factors of merging with mass culture. The objective of the research is to reveal dual nature of this novel synthetized culture type through a linguistic aspect of globalization with regard to mentality transformation. The valuation and research of a stated phenomenon would be impossible without involving conceptions of globalization with reference to language and culture. Presently one can distinguish objective and subjective (i.e. ideological) globalization related to the hybridization and homogenization of linguistic and cultural elements correspondingly. Determining of the objective needs doing research on the basis of conceptual, historic and linguistic methods, for in the end they prove to be the most perspective research trends. The article also addresses a unique role of the tongue with its correlation to reasoning and culture, manifesting the role of the English language as a global lingua franca in shaping a national or individual “global world view” (W. Humboldt). In fact global world view in our paper stands for ‘global vocabulary' that includes the concepts mirroring intercultural differenced and semantic bonds. It is shown, that such appearance, being influenced by hi-tech and an omnipotent global English as lingua franca seems to get a cognitive nature. The current lingua franca is positioned as a tongue -code or a unified tool to interpret information in a simplifying way to meet demands of our present epoch. The article also interprets the notion of “lingual mentality transformation” as seen under the factors of language unification in consequence of conceptual modification of culture content. In the projection of objective and subjective globalization aspects a significant distinction between the variants of the English language, i.e. a national (Am. / Br.) tongue versus a global lingua franca is marked . At issue as well is the related distinction between the functions each variant performs, .i.e. ethnocultural function versus cognitive and communicative one. It is proved in the issue that the English language per se is able to turn into global one within globalization framework due to penetrating into humdrum structures that is anyway referred to mass culture. The research results are supported with relevant mass media examples including vocabulary items that are functioning in various communication spheres ranging from social- political one up to advertising and entertainment. That testifies, on the one hand, to the wallowing of great amount of anglizisms in our native tongue; on the other hand -to the manifestation of either objective or subjectively engaged character of this novel mass information culture that is just mirroring modern globalization processes.

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