The nature of the relation of Language, Text and Type in the borderline civilizations

The problem of the relation of the three global culture-factors - Language, Text and Type in various types of civilizations. The author identifies and analyzes the major differences between "classical" and "borderline" civilizations as a way of existence and the nature of the relationship of these factors. The most complete embodiment of the "classical" type of civilization author considers four "subecumenes" (G.S. Pomerantz) - Western, Far East (with the center in China), South Asian (with the center in India) and the world of Islam. A defining feature of these "cultural worlds" - the dominant principle of unity: it is present everywhere or that spiritual core of values that permeates, stitched together, the variety of component elements of civilization. "Border" is distinguished civilization, in that case principle of diversity predominates over the principle of unity. Historically, the "borderline" of civilized community concerned, in my opinion, Hellenistic and Byzantine civilizations. Nowadays, this type of civilization is represented by the Russian-Eurasian and Latin American civilizations, the Balkans, and (with considerable reservations) Iberian cultural-historical community. The typical feature of "classical" civilizations is a heavy functional relationship of Language, Text and Type, causing formation of the general field of information, connected by a single spiritual content. In civilizational "frontier" such rigidity is absent, both these factors, and the nature of their relationship look completely different because of the defining structural characteristic of "borderline" civilizations - the dominant diversity. This dominance is manifested by: 1) The fact that in the "border" reality the structure of the linguistic space determines not a dominance of a single language (as in subecumenes), but such forms as language union and/or linguistic variation, in that language process (speech) prevails over the language-system, and the oral form of speech is more important than writing; 2) The fact that the structure of the "ideal body" of civilization does not define a just one Sacred Text, but the dialogue of qualitatively different Texts (conceptions of the world), which is manifested in the open, and in a latent form; 3) The fact that instead of a type with a fixed relationship of language and text, typical of the "classical" civilizations, the civilizational "borderland" arises the diversity of such a connection, much more flexible than in the "classical" case. In view of all these circumstances, there is every reason not to talk about one information field, but a combination of various information and semantic fields.

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