Discourse and Concept: Ragularity and Correlation

Abstract.

DISCOURSE AND CONCEPT: RAGULARITY AND CORRELATION

Zhanna Krasnobayeva-Chorna

Department of Ukrainian Language and Applied Linguistics, Donetsk National University, Donetsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine

Available 3 September 2013.

Abstract

Relevance

Conceptology and discourse are two of the most popular trends in the modern linguistics. Their basic terms – the concept and the discourse – have been widely interpreted by the linguistics and terminological ambiquity. Various versions of discursive practices and techniques of conceptual analysis has been widely used by foreign (J. Humperts and D. Haymz, V. Dem'yankov, V. Karasyk, V. Maslov, Y. Prokhorov, G. Slyshkin, P. Serio, O. Sirotinina, Y. Stepanov, B. Fox, S. Ford, M. Foucault, Y. Shiryaev et al.) and Ukrainian (F. Batsevych, A. Zahnitko, V. Ivaschenko, О. Selivanovа, M. Skab, V. Uzhchenko, etc.) linguistics for a long time. Today the question of regularity and value of discourse and concept, which determines the relevance of the article, could be one of the most pressing issues of discourse and conceptology.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to identify patterns of the scientific paradigm “discourse – concept” and to set the value of the terms “discourse” and “concept”.

Tasks

The tasks of the paper are: 1) to set the systematic characteristics of concepts in linguistics; 2) to make the systematic scheme of concepts in discourse and to describe its main stages.

Conclusion

Thus, the value of the concept of discourse in the scientific literature is defined in three ways: 1) discourse as a concept, 2) discourse as a combination of concepts, and 3) the discourse, based on the key concept. Any discourse is formed around the basic concept (known to all members of a particular institution), which is revealed through the complex of microconcepts in a certain discourse. Accordingly, any type of institutional discourse can be described not only through the specific strategies and tactics, but also through a set of concepts that is characterized by its own classification parameter.

Perspective

The perspective of a future work is to study the different types of discourse with the mandatory identification of basic and specific concepts.

Research highlights

► The paper identifies the basic laws of the scientific paradigm “discourse – concept”. ► Such ratios of the terms “discourse” and “concept”, like discourse as a concept, discourse as a combination of concepts, creation discourse around basic concept, have been highlighted and characterized. ► Classific parameters of concept in the discourse have been processed.

Keywords: discourse, discoursology, concept, conceptology.

References

Askol'dov, S. (1997). Koncept i slovo. Russkaja slovesnost'. Ot teorii slovesnosti k strukture teksta. M.: Academia, 267-279.

Batsevych, F. (2005). Linhvistychna henolohiya: problemy i perspektyvy. L'viv: PAIS.

Vezhbickaja, A. (1999). Semanticheskie universalii i opisanie jazykov. M.: Jazyki russkoj kul'tury.

Voroshilova, M. B. (2007). Kreolizovannyj tekst v politicheskom diskurse. Politicheskaja lingvistika. Ekaterinburg, 3 (23), 73-78.

Hudinh, D. & Lennoks, Dzh. (2006). Lyudyna ta yiyi svitohlyad: u poshukakh istyny i real'nosti. K.: UBT, T. 2.

Zagnitko, A. & Krasnobaeva-Chjornaja, Zh. (2011). Jepistemologicheski-paradigmal'naja tipologija konceptov. Obraz mira v zerkale jazyka: sb. nauchnyh statej. M.: FLINTA, 85-90.

Karasik, V. I. (2000). Jetnokul'turnye tipy institucional'nogo diskursa. Jetnokul'turnaja specifika rechevoj dejatel'nosti: sb. obzorov. M.: INION RAN, 37-64.

Karasik, V. (2004). Jazykovoj krug: Lichnost', koncepty, diskurs. M.: Gnozis.

Karasik, V. I. & Slyshkin, G. G. (2001). Lingvokul'turnyj koncept kak edinica issledovanija. Metodologicheskie problemy kognitivnoj lingvistiki. Voronezh: VGU, 75-80.

Kozhemjakin, E. A. & Pereverzev, E. V. (2008). Podhody k izucheniju mediadiskursa v sovremennoj mezhdisciplinarnoj srede. Zhurnalistika i mediaobrazovanie: sb. tr. T. ІІ, Belgorod: BelGU, 49-54.

Krasnobayeva-Chorna, Zh. (2009). Suchasna kontseptolohiya: kontsept zhyttya v ukrayins'kiy frazemitsi. Donets'k: DonNU.

Krasnobayeva-Chorna, Zh. & Pavlovych, O. & Konenko, I. (2011). Dyskurs-analiz: praktykum. Donets'k: DonNU.

KSKT, (1996). Kratkij slovar' kognitivnyh terminov. M.: Iz-vo MGU.

Li, Zhe (2004). Diskurs, v kotorom my zhivem (k probleme opredelenija "diskursa"). Kul'tura narodov Prichernomor'ja, 54, 2004, 221-223.

Maslova, V. A. (2004). Lingvokul'turologija: uch. posobie. M.: Academia.

Selivanova, E. A. (2004). Osnovy lingvisticheskoj teorii teksta i kommunikacii. K.: Brama.

Slyshkin, G. G. (2000). Diskurs i koncept (o lingvokul'turnom podhode k izucheniju diskursa). Jazykovaja lichnost'.: institucional'nyj i personal'nyj diskurs: sb. nauch. trudov. Volgograd: Peremena, 38-45.

Stepanov, Ju. S. (1995). Al'ternativnyj mir. Diskurs. Fakt i Princip prichinnosti. Jazyk i nauka konca 20 veka. M.: In-t jazykoznanija RAN, 35-71.

Stepanov, Ju. (2001). Konstanty: Slovar' russkoj kul'tury. M.: Shkola "Jazyki russkoj kul'tury".

Susyk, S. Ju. (2008). Realizacija koncepta "terrorizm" v diskurse pechatnyh sredstv massovoj informacii. Avtoref. dis. … kand. filol. Nauk. Cheljabinsk.

Uzhchenko, V. D. (2003). Skhidnoukrayins'ka frazeolohiya: Monohrafiya. Luhans'k: Al'ma-mater.

Correspondence: donkafukr@ukr.net (with the reference “for Zh. Krasnobaeva-Chorna” in the subject).

Vitae

Zhanna V. Krasnobayeva-Chorna is Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor at Department of Ukrainian Language and Applied Linguistics in Donetsk National University. Her areas of research interests include lexicology, cognitive linguistics, discoursology, and conceptology.

Article.

Zhanna Krasnobayeva-Chorna

УДК 811.111

DISCOURSE AND CONCEPT: RAGULARITY AND CORRELATION

The paper identifies the basic laws of the scientific paradigm “discourse – concept”. Such ratios of the terms “discourse” and “concept”, like discourse as a concept, discourse as a combination of concepts, creation discourse around basic concept, have been highlighted and characterized. Classific parameters of concept in the discourse have been processed.

Keywords: discourse, discoursology, concept, conceptology.

The purpose of the paper is to identify patterns of the scientific paradigm “discourse – concept” and to set the value of the terms “discourse” and “concept”.Conceptology and discourse are two of the most popular trends in the modern linguistics. Their basic terms – the concept and the discourse – have been widely interpreted by the linguistics and terminological ambiquity. Various versions of discursive practices and techniques of conceptual analysis has been widely used by foreign (J. Humperts and D. Haymz, V. Dem'yankov, V. Karasyk, V. Maslov, Y. Prokhorov, G. Slyshkin, P. Serio, O. Sirotinina, Y. Stepanoff, B. Fox, S. Ford, M. Foucault, Y. Shiryaev et al.) and Ukrainian (F. Batsevych, A. Zahnitko, V. Ivaschenko, О. Selivanovа, M. Skab, V. Uzhchenko, etc.) linguistics for a long time. Today the question of regularity and value of discourse and concept, which determines the relevance of the article, could be one of the most pressing issues of discourse and conceptology.

The tasks of the paper are: 1) to set the systematic characteristics of concepts in linguistics; 2) to make the systematic scheme of concepts in discourse and to describe its main stages.

Analysis of the scientific literature of middle of XX^th century – beginning of XX^th century can clearly distinguish three types of relationships between discourse and concept:

1) discourse as a concept;

2) discourse as a combination of concepts;

3) discourse created around the basic concept.

According to G. Slyshkin, the concept can occur as a discourse, because “like any other cultural artifact, any unit of language or speech can serve as the basis for the formation of the collective consciousness of the concept. This applies to the discourse… The discourse will be the object, and the concept – the instrument of analysis” [Слышкин 2000: 38-39]. In this way “the discourse may be regarded as the totality of appeals to conceptual and as the concept, which exists in consciousness of native speaker at the same time” [Карасик, Слышкин 2001: 79].

V. Dem'yankov thinks that “discourse is a random piece of a text that consists of more than one sentence or it is independent from sentences. Mainly, but not always, concentration around the reference concept creates a common context, describing actors, objects, circumstances, time, actions...” (quoted in [Степанов 1995: 37]).

By V. Karasуk, the key or the central concepts, which form the basis of public institutions, are endowed with a large generative force that is concentrated around this large semantic region.

O. Selivanova considers the concept as a component of discourse [Селиванова 2004: 251]. The researcher introduces the concept of cognitive maps of discourse, an information model, which leads to its implementation in terms of dialogic interactional modules of the communicative situation and its component – the cognitive maps of text, which are integrated with its concept – as an idea that there is a set of positions that reflects the basic nature of the semantic text array. Conceptual space of the text (cultural (good, evil, truth, love), ideological (patriotism, victory), anthropocentric concepts, concept artifacts (man-made objects which are recorded as an art piece), concept archetypes (world, darkness, regeneration)) can be represented in any type of discourse. Concepts are modeled according to the verbal text and code knowledge of an addressee, his work and so on. The author equates to the concept of mental complex – units of consciousness that are organized in a certain way, including verbal and nonverbal knowledge about the object and its evaluation, correlated with images, feelings, sensations, intuition, transcendence and the collective unconscious. Modeling of conceptual space of a text is based on the identifying the hierarchical relationships of a concept-idea, a genre (scientific article, abstract, official note, for the literary text the genre discourse model is specified by the method, the literary genre, the style, the functional specificity) and interactive (design, intention communicants, interactive strategies, and psychological characteristics of communicants, their background and encyclopedic knowledge) model of discourse, a framed text content. The last ones provide a local telephony deployment of a text continuum within its topic. Thematically integrated frames appear as core mental complexes. Most of the frames are only the cognitive map of the text as a text. You can find them in the generation and in the perception only when they are presented in the database thesaurus of the participants of communication.

Thus, the cognitive map of discourse consists of three parts: 1) a model of discourse genre that correlates with a module of the semiotic universe, and 2) interactive model of discourse, which correlates with modules of being the recipient and sender, and 3) cognitive maps of a text, which presents the result of interaction of all modules of discourse and text, presented in the module.

F. Batsevych notes that discourse is the result of different speech genres formation [Бацевич 2005: 14]. Within linguistic theory of genres S. Plotnikova and after this F. Batsevych distinguish a genre concept (conceptual standard of genre) by which is meant invariant concept that is starting point of any single text of some genre. These linguists note the concept is the idea of a standard structure of one or another genre ingrained in the consciousness of native speakers. The conceptual standard of genre in the minds of speakers confirms the intuitive knowledge of it based on the cognitive unconscious. Getting a large array of similar texts makes a reader to be a “naive literary critic”, which can clearly define the genres. Thus, the conceptual standard of concept appears in the anomalous art world. It is binding, as if “hanging” over the contents of all the works of this type, this is a basis for their stories [Бацевич 2005: 48].

It seems well reasoned opinion about the concept as a component of discourse. According to this fact, two types of concepts operate in discourse: basic concept, which is common to all in any discourse (e.g. basic concept of religious discourse – the concept of faith, political discourse – the concept of the power of scientific discourse – the concept of knowledge, the legal discourse – the concept of law) and concepts or complex concepts of a particular manifestation of discourse. The basic concept can be attributed to the constitutive features of discourse (along with the participants of communication, the goal and objectives of the discourse, strategy and tactics, etc.), since it is the main burden informative discourse.

The study of concepts of the specific discourse occurs at the cognitive level during discourse analysis, allowing more full and more objective describing an explicit and implicit discourse information. This approach provides the flow of communicational processes. During its implementation a huge reservoir of knowledge and experience of people as well as significant achievements of various cultures were used.

To describe the concepts of discourse, we would like to suggest the classification scheme of concepts in discourse, considering their options and attaining taxonomic.

Nowadays, there is no established conceptology and exhaustive classification of concepts. Scientists have isolated a variety of concepts under one criterion [Вежбицкая 1999; Маслова 2004; Степанов 2001; Ужченко 2003, and others]. However, any concept of time is the subject for the classification, according to several parameters, since it is characterized by multidimensionality [Краснобаєва-Чорна 2009]. Thus, S. Askoldov distinguishes two types of concepts – the cognitive and the artistic, and focuses on the mobility of the boundaries between them: cognitive concepts are schematic, with conceptual nature, used in a field of elaborate events by one opinion, art concepts are dialogical, and characterized by a significant number of both views. Concepts of this type are characterized by uncertainty and capabilities and they are the subject for a special kind of pragmatism – the Art associativity, so they are figurative and symbolic. These concepts are the subject for a kind of deformation during the perception.

Y. Stepanoff divides all concepts on frame ones and concepts with strong care at that frame concepts are the concepts which ideal content forms a sui generis framework. It can be imposed on certain events. However, these effects may coincide with the boundaries of the frame, rise to it, and vice versa cannot match it. Thus, we have concepts that are directly related to the process of social evaluation under the summing norm concepts (concepts of intelligence, civilization) with a strong core. These are culturally important concepts in its entirety, in all complex traits, and use one of the signs as a frame concept is possible only as an artificial logical procedure (concepts of love, faith) [Степанов 2001: 76-78].

V. Uzhchenko notes that concepts are classified into general-cultural and ethno-cultural: the general-cultural concepts are concepts that reflect human values and entered in cultural and global context (concepts of life, death, will), ethno-cultural concepts are the verbalized phenomena of ethno-cultural component, inscribed in cultural-national (cultural-areal) context (for Ukrainians, there are concepts of a cartful ‘віз’, a house ‘хата’ , a towel ‘рушник’, for Donetsk area – a mines ‘шахта’, a benches ‘лава’).

A. Vezhbytska introduces the terms of the concept-minimum, the concept-maximum and the encyclopedic appendix: the concept-minimum characterizes a partial possession of word meaning inherent in ordinary native speaker who know the realia, but it is kind of peripheral thing for his practical life; the concept-maximum covers a “full” possession of word sense inherent in an native speaker who knew the realia in full; the encyclopedic appendix extends the concept-maximum with professional knowledge.

In [КСКТ 1996: 90-91] two groups of concepts are singled out the primary and the secondary concepts, simple and complex: primary concepts – the initial concepts, the essence of which cannot be subject of analysis, secondary concepts – the concepts of derivatives, formed from primary ones, that are subject of further refinement and modification, simple concepts – the concepts, represented in a word in the language world, complex concepts – the concepts, presented phrases and sentences.

According to the analysis of existing classifications of concepts in linguistics, the study of concepts is not considered a historic setting of classification, chronological limits of certain time intervals (concepts of Antiquity, the Middle Ages concepts, concepts of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment concepts, concepts of modern times, etc.). It is the undeniable fact that the concept is directly related to the culture. Traditionally, culture is divided into global and national. Therefore, we consider it appropriate to apply the terms “global concepts” and “local concepts”. Global concepts are the concepts that arise as a result of the synthesis of the best achievements of all cultures. National concepts are the concepts that are the synthesis of a culture and its various classes and social groups.

The classification scheme of concept is processed in the discourse analysis and consists of several steps (see Table 1):

Table 1. Classification parameters of the concept of discourse

In the first stage we classify the concept for historical-cultural setting to the global or national concept. Among the national we distinguish concepts, the concepts primitive age, the concepts of an ancient world, ancient concepts of states, the concepts of the ancient Slavs, the medieval concepts, the concepts of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment concepts, newer concepts of time. Each of these concepts can obtain the status of a national or ethno-cultural. However, we must remember that the “concept always has an ethno-cultural component that can occur with varying degrees of severity, be differently explicated, but clearly clarified by comparing with the corresponding concepts of other languages or dialects of the same language” [Ужченко 2003: 238].

In the second stage, we find out a concept belonging to one of three groups according to the valuable-sociologic parameters: 1) material, 2) mental (cognitive, intellectual, moral, philosophical, legal, religious, mythological, ritual concept), and 3) political, environmental or economical concept. Then, we should outline the concept of cognitive parameters: genetic parameters – primary or secondary concept, a structural parameter – simple or complex concept; microconcept or macroconcept; semantic parameter – the concept-minimum, the concept-maximum, an encyclopedic application. There may also be some additional stages of a concept classification for sociolinguistic parameter for ethno-cultural, sociocultural and individually-cultural concept.

The basic concept of discourse is primarily positioned as a world macroconcept, consisting of a complex of microconcepts in a particular discourse. Thus, the basic concept of legal discourse is the concept of law, such as Article 20 of the Constitution of Ukraine revealed through the microconcepts of a flag, an anthem, a coat of arms. The basic concept is the esoteric discourse macroconcepts of the Supreme Being, who in [Гуддінг, Леннокс 2006] are formed a complex microconcepts of the Universe, the Creator, the Supreme Reality, and the Truth.

Thus, the value of the concept of discourse in the scientific literature is defined in three ways: 1) discourse as a concept, 2) discourse as a combination of concepts, and 3) the discourse, based on the key concept. Any discourse is formed around the basic concept (known to all members of a particular institution), which is revealed through the complex of microconcepts in a certain discourse. Accordingly, any type of institutional discourse can be described not only through the specific strategies and tactics, but also through a set of concepts that is characterized by its own classification parameter.

The perspective of a future work is to study the different types of discourse with the mandatory identification ofbasic and specific concepts.

References.

References

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У статті виявлено основні закономірності наукової парадигми «дискурс – концепт», виокремлено та схарактеризовано такі співвідношення термінів дискурс і концепт: дискурс як концепт; дискурс як сукупність концептів; дискурс ґрунтується навколо базового концепту. Опрацьовано класифікаційні параметри концепту у дискурсі.

Ключові слова: дискурс, дискурсологія, концепт, концептивістика (концептологія).

Available 3 September 2013.