Embodiment features of verbal culture: universal facets of the specific

The issue of cultural universals is analyzed in the aspect of dynamic models. The author sets the goals of the research proceeding from the working definition of the boundaries of the concept “universal” with reference to the relevant interdisciplinary knowledge about human species, proposes the main methodological principle of the dynamic approach to the identification of cultural universals and study of the ways they are embodied in specific contexts. The circulation of word meanings in the semantic field of modern Russian culture is supposed to be studied on the associative verbal network models obtained via psycholinguistic experiments in Asian regions of Russia and adjacent territories. The inconsistency of popular approaches to the selection of units of analysis in the investigation of cognitive processes and semantic universals is discussed. The paper raises the question of searching for units that are suitable for analyzing dynamic processes that are relevant for understanding the current state of the fluctuations in the semantic field of the multicultural Russian civilization. It is assumed that the associative verbal universals of the all-Russian language personality can be attested with the help of a comparative semi-automatic computer analysis of its semantic accentuations, which reflect the most significant shifts in motivational orientations. Such findings, together with other supporting data (if any) from other philological sources, may give valuable information for the assessment of stability and socio-cultural acceptability of thus discovered semantic accentuations in the light of their possible institutionalization.

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