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9International scientific and practical conference "Methodology of teaching foreign languages - innovations, traditions, problems and their
solutions" March 15, 2024
CONCEPT AS THE NOTION OF MODERN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS Mamatova Nasibakhon Kozimbekovna
Doctoral student (PhD) of Andijan State Institute of foreign languages https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10815339
Abstract. The article examines the essence of the concept concept in modern linguistics. Various approaches to the definition of "concept" are described, and some definitions of the term "concept" are given.
Keywords: cognitive linguistics; concept; term; approaches.
The article deals with the essence of the concept in modern linguistics. Various approaches to the notion of concept are described, some definitions of concept are provided. One of the current areas of research in modern cognitive linguistics is the study of the relationship between language, thinking and human consciousness. Language is the main form of storing knowledge about the world, and a native speaker is the bearer of a certain conceptual system. In the process of cognitive activity, a person reconsiders incoming information, which leads to the formation of concepts -meaningful memory units of the people's picture of the world. During thinking, a person combines concepts and creates new ones. The term "concept" is a key concept in cognitive linguistics, but it is widely used in other humanities, such as cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, sociology, political science, etc. It should be noted that in modern scientific literature there is no unambiguous interpretation of this term.
In modern linguistics, three approaches to understanding the concept have been formed: linguistic (A.S. Askoldov-Alekseev, D.S. Likhachev, V.N. Telia, etc.), cognitive (E.S. Kubryakova, Z.D. Popova, I.A. Sternin, V.Z. Demyankov, etc.) and cultural studies (S.G. Vorkachev, G.G. Slyshkin, V.I. Karasik). In Russian science, the concept of "concept" was first mentioned in an article by A.S. Askoldov-Alekseev "Concept and Word" in 1928. The scientist claims that "a concept is a mental formation that replaces in the process of thought an indefinite set of objects of the same kind" [1, 69]. In his work A.S. Askoldov contrasts cognitive and artistic concepts, and defines the "substitution function" as the main feature of the concept. Unlike A.S. Askoldova, D.S. Likhachev believes that the concept exists for each basic (dictionary) meaning of a word separately. Concept, according to D.S. Likhachev, does not arise from the meaning of the word, but is the result of a collision of the dictionary meaning of the word with the personal experience of a person. "The potential of the concept is wider and richer, the wider and richer the human experience" [2, 281]. According to the scientist, the concept is much broader than the meaning of the word. The set of concepts, according to the academician's definition, constitutes the conceptual sphere of a particular people. The richer the culture of the people (its literature, folklore, science, etc.), the richer the conceptual sphere of the national language. Concepts can be interpreted differently depending on context and cultural experience. Consequently, we can conclude that the concept sphere is the cognitive basis of thinking, a mental model of reality, which is reflected in the language of a specific native speaker. By the conceptual sphere of the national language one can judge the culture of a nation. Representatives of cognitive linguistics believe that any language is a system of concepts through which native speakers can interpret and classify the flow of information from the outside world. So, according to E.S. Kubryakova, a concept is a mental unit of consciousness and an information structure that reflects a person's knowledge and experience [3, 90]. The scientist admits that concepts arise as a result of structuring information about objects and their properties in the objective and imaginary world. Researchers Z.D. Popov
International scientific and practical conference "Methodology of teaching foreign languages - innovations, traditions, problems and their
solutions" March 15, 2024
and I.A. Sternin call the concept a discrete unit of human thinking, which has an ordered internal structure and carries encyclopedic information about the subject and the attitude of public consciousness to this subject. They treat concepts as units of thought, not memory. A concept does not necessarily have a linguistic expression, since many concepts are empirical in nature. From the point of view of Z.D. Popova and I.A. Sternin, ethnocultural specificity and value component are not obligatory for the concept and emphasize: "concepts are units of the concept sphere, that is, consciousness" [4, 34-35]. Proponents of the cultural approach recognize that the concept is the key unit of culture. They view all culture as a collection of concepts and relationships between them. So, S.G. Vorkachev defines a concept as an operational unit of thought, a mental essence that reflects the "spirit of the people"; it is a unit of collective knowledge that has linguistic expression and is marked by ethnocultural specificity [5, 51-52]. V.A. Maslova characterizes the concept as "a semantic formation, marked by linguocultural specificity and in one way or another characterizing the bearers of a certain ethnoculture" [6, 47]. The concept is multidimensional, since it can be distinguished between the rational and the emotional, the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the ethnic, the national and the individual. So, in all the listed definitions of a concept there is a similarity: a concept is defined as a unit of thinking or memory. The discrepancies are associated with different understandings of the role of language in the formation of the concept. Summarizing the different points of view of researchers on the term "concept," we can conclude that a concept is an element of consciousness, a mental unit that, in the process of thought, replaces us with an indefinite set of objects of the same kind. The totality of language concepts forms the linguistic picture of the world of the national language.
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