Ethnocultural features of a linguistic persona: the specifics of the representation of universal emotional concepts

Abstract

The work is performed within a framework of modern linguistic and cognitive research as well as linguistic and cultural research aimed at studying the significance and value of the ratio of “language-culture-persona” triad components. Their interdependence enables to define ethnocultural features of a linguistic persona and an “ethnocultural” index in its structure.

The main goal of this paper is to study the specifics of an ethnocultural worldview as one of the principles of understanding the world around through the explication of ethnically marked conceptual units represented in the emotional and sensual linguistic model.

The research emphasizes that typical cognitive processes enable to comprehend the phenomena of the world around and determine the similarity of representation and adequate interpretation of certain emotions and feelings of people within a framework of one ethnic community. It proves the assertion that the structure of a linguistic persona under study has an emotional and sensual level as a set of culturally determined universal and nationally marked concepts expressed and represented by linguistic means that enable to conceptualize the semantics of emotions as markers to define the ethnocultural specifics of a linguistic persona.

The paper pays special attention to the ethnocultural content of emotional and lexical units, which indicate the ethnic identity of a linguistic persona and reflect typical, historically developed signs of the ethnic image of the world.

Illustrative and research material of the paper represented by paroemiological and phraseological units, formulas of speaking etiquette, and ethnic concepts of primarily a Kabardian and Balkar culture of the dominant peoples of the Kabardian and Balkar Republic and partially a Russian culture, allows us to prove that the conceptual meaning of universal emotionally rich lexemes enables to identify and to assess the specifics sensual worldview of a particular ethnic group; that every ethnic culture develops its own system of notions and meanings marked by an emotional index, which defines both the psychological portrait of a person and the specific features of his ethnic conceptual worldview; that the emotional world picture of a linguistic persona is based on a binary way to perceive the world and an evaluative and axiological (value) principle of the subjectivation of an objective world; that emotional state of a person and specific expression of a sensual worldview become indicative of his ethnocultural identity.

Keywords: linguistic persona; ethnocultural linguistic persona; emotional and sensual worldview; cognitive activity; cognition; cognitive and evaluative markers