CC BY
5DESACRALIZATION OF LINGUISTIC WORLDVIEW: CASE STUDY OF THE PROVERB: «DO NOT DIG A HOLE FOR SOMEBODY ELSE,
YOU YOURSELF WILL FALL INTO IT»
The purpose of the paper is to describe the process of the axiological significance loss of paremiological units. The results of psycholinguistic (associative) experiments reconstruct the specific character of the actualization of the psychological meaning of a word in the individual's linguistic consciousness. Such an approach is also very promising in the study of associations for fixing the active transformation of individual sectors of the idiomatic fund, in which the linguistic division of the world is correlated with the associative fields typology. The paremiological worldview reflects culturally based image of the world, once fixed in idiomatic meanings, and conventionalized in the cognitive mechanisms of their correlation with the value dominants of Russian linguistic culture. Language, by means of fixed paremiological units, is accumulating and translating the ways of formation and existence of knowledge about reality. A set of the latter in the individual, group consciousness makes up a picture of the world.
Keywords
desacralization, idiom, linguistic consciousness, linguistic worldview, neoparemias,
paremiological view of the world, proverbs
AUTHORS
Elvina A. Salikhova,
Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor at Language and Communication Advanced Technology Department of Institute of Economics and Management Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa 12, Karl Marx St., Ufa, 450008, Russia salelah12@yandex.ru
Anna V. Kushnareva,
Lecturer at Language and Communication Advanced Technology Department of Institute of Economics and Management Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa 12, Karl Marx St., Ufa, 450008, Russia kanna^c@yandex.ru
1. Introduction
In linguistics, the first decade of the twenty-first century was marked by a particular interest in the human factor in speech activity, in its everyday consciousness and in ordinary speech practices, which remains the research dominant today. An interdisciplinary approach to the communication analysis as the main role conducted by the language in society makes it possible to reveal its features and to describe it as a specifically human phenomenon (Salikhova, 2015). The language system, including its paremiological subsystems, is determined by its communicative function and it contributes to the language acting as a means of forming and expressing cognitive and emotional content. One of the most important semantic functions of fixed units (phraseology, paremiology in the wide
interpretation given by N.M. Shansky) is their (ac)cumulative function - fixing, accumulating and transmitting information about the comprehended reality to next generations (Alefirenko, 2018). Particular attention is paid to the pragmatic functions of paremiolog-ical units, since they not only designate and name objects of reality and concepts about them, but also are "a special language tool for expressing a variety of emotional and evaluative attitudes of the speaker to everything that happens in his / her inner world or outside it" (Kushnareva, 2021: 103). The imperative function should be distinctly emphasized, i.e., the influence function (including emotional) on the listener / reader, obviously due to the semantic specificity of the words that are components of an idiom and a proverb. According to many linguists, paremias are the manifestations of everyday consciousness in human speech. For this reason, the study of the language idiomatic fund, the paremiological worldview in particular, seems promising in the aspect of studying the linguistic consciousness of not only an individual, but also of an entire ethnocultural community. The knowledge presented in fixed units is based on the everyday experience of native speakers, on their traditions, beliefs and customs (Salikhova, Mursalimova, 2013; Salikhova, Mursalimova, 2022).
Following N.N. Semenenko and G.S. Krivosheev, the paremiological worldview is considered as "a specific linguo-mental formation" the structure of which is conditioned by culturally determined meanings. Paremias as "tools for modeling a linguistic picture of the world" are characterized in the aspect of a "culturally determined component" (the term used in (Semenenko, Krivosheev, 2019)) of paremic meanings and "cognitive mechanisms for the formation of the most important cultural stereotypes in their correlative connection with certain value dominants of Russian linguoculture (ibid.).
2. Materials and Methods
Modifications of paremiological units are set by the pragmatic goal of the speaker, who introduces new relevant information into the language space, which implies an axio-logical rethinking of statements. The research methodology is based on psycholinguistic, lexicographic, linguopragmatic and linguoculturological methods of analysis, involving the study of linguistic phenomena as a means of organizing social experience in speech communication process. This involves both the identification of language units and structures, and the description of the conditions for their selection and functioning. The subject of the analysis are examples of paremiological transformations characteristic of student discourse: desacralization, the formation of new meanings of idioms, lexical and structural changes in fixed expressions.
Lexicographic, linguo-pragmatic and linguo-culturological analysis of the neoparemia material obtained as a result of a series of psycholinguistic experiments and sociolinguistic surveys (2012-2020) with first-year students of the Ufa State Aviation Technical University (Kushnareva, 2020; 2021), students of Muslim and Orthodox educational institutions of Bashkortostan (Mursalimova 2012 (a), 2012 (b), 2018; Salikhova, Mursalimova, 2015) shows an active process of transformation of the considered language means. We tend to believe that the dominant trend in these semantic and conceptual changes is the desacral-ization of biblical derived fixed expressions.
By linguistic / speech sacralization, we mean "a universal metacategory that defines the value-semantic existence of a person in the ethical, aesthetic, legal, political sense, in which there is faith and trust in God and the world" (Salikhova, Mursalimova, 2021: 196; Shkuran, 2020: 55-56). When completing a task in an associative experiment, the participants had to continue or create neoparemias (their own original proverbs) based on the initial part of a well-known proverb. While associating, the respondents often resorted to use a paremiological variation strategy, the essence of which is to replace the components of fixed expressions and to change their structure by increasing new meanings.
Linguistic desacralization is "the loss of significance and deep sacred content in the semantics of words, phrases and phraseological units in order to secularize concepts and their secular depreciation in the media and in the oral speech of native speakers, stimulating a reorientation to other values and "shrines" and contributing to the destruction of the highest values of the individual" (Salikhova, Mursalimova, 2021: 197). Desacralization (in a wide interpretation - reframing (Selezneva, Severskaya, 2021)) of fixed language units of biblical origin is the result of the digitalization processes activation, as well as a consequence of the democratization of religious views inherent in modern secular society.
3. Results and discussion
In the speech practice of native Russian speakers, there are not only individual units of biblical origin that have lost their initial religious semantic content, but also expressions - proverbs, phrase combinations (idioms). So, an Old Testament proverb Do not dig a hole for somebody else, you yourself will fall into it, warns a person against committing unkind deeds towards other people. V.M. Mokienko gives the following meaning of this proverb: "Do no harm to another person, this evil will return to you. It is an expression used for preventing a bad deed or stating the fact of an accomplished retribution" (Mokienko, 2012: 405). Similar expressions are found in Aesop and Cicero and other writers of antiquity, which indicates the proverb's folklore character with a moralizing attitude. The proverb itself has been known to many nations since ancient times and goes back to the idea of a hunter digging a hole to catch game (Mokienko, 2012: 406).
The German paremiologist W. Mieder states, that this proverb is known in different versions in eighty-four languages around the world, which allows us to conclude that it expresses universal human values. The author, having studied literary sources in German, has traced a long path of development of this proverb from a biblical quotation (1602 -1991), to the status of a proverb (1800 - to the present) and to the status of "an anti-proverb" (1800 - to the present) (Mieder ,2010: 392-394). The transformation of a proverb into an invariant semantic form has been lasting for more than two hundred years. In the explanatory dictionary of the German language "Wahrig" (Wahrig, 2003: 425) there is no indication of the biblical origin of the paremia, according to the dictionary - it is "Sprichwort", i.e. proverb. In modern sources in Russian, there is also no indication of the biblical origin of the proverb. In the "Phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Language", the phraseological unit derived from the proverb is given To dig a hole for someone. This phraseological unit is related to the colloquial style of speech and is noted as expressing a contemptuous attitude towards the interlocutor, which indicates a significant desacralization of meaning (Stepanova, 2012: 605). The proverb Do not dig a hole for somebody else you yourself will fall into it; is used as headlines for mass culture products designed for different age groups: There are series of the film magazine "Yeralash" (No. 126, 1998, directed by B.Yu. Grachevsky) and an episode of the TV show "Spokoynoy nochi, malyshi" ("Good night, kids"). There is an episode of the television series "The Next" (season 1, episode 287, 2008, directed by Yu.V. Kharnas) and a fragment of the humorous program "Kalambur" (directed by Yu.A. Stytskovsky) for adult audience. In these programs and films, situations are presented that reveal the meaning of the proverb, but they do not give any references to its biblical origin. The choice of the heading testifies to the significant educational and pragmatic potential of the proverb, the disclosure of which and the decoding of its propositional part are counted on by its creators.
The paremiological worldview correlates with the linguistic worldview as part of the whole and therefore incorporates the rules of behavior and moral norms accepted in the linguocultural society (Alefirenko, 2018: 310; Salikhova, Mursalimova, 2022). In order to illustrate the desacralization level in the actual meaning of the proverb Don't dig a hole
for another, you yourself will fall into it, let's consider the results of a directed associative experiment conducted in 2020 with students at the Ufa State Aviation Technical University. The experiment participants were asked to come up with their own expressive proverbs (neoparemias) based on the proposed keywords (S).
According to the basic provisions of the theory of linguistic personality introduced by Yu.N. Karaulov, the verbal-semantic level reflects the degree of proficiency in ordinary language practice. From a research standpoint, this level is interesting for the traditional description of the means expressing certain concepts: its units are individual words, and stereotypes are phrases, as well as simple sentences representing an invariant of the language norm. The verbal-semantic level of a linguistic personality is represented primarily by "blitz reactions" (using the word "blitz" in the name of reactions type, we mean the brevity of the actualization process, its exhaustion and completeness). These are reactions of the surface lexicon level, they are associated with the perception of the form and with the understanding of the direct (basic) meaning of stimuli (S). They can be qualified as a reflection of clip thinking in speech. The term "clip thinking" refers to a person's instant reaction to information coming from outside. Habitual actions of the brain in conditions of accelerating information flows do not fit into the standard scheme "attention -perception-thinking-memory-imagination-reproduction". Having adapted to external changes, thinking compresses these complex processes to the action of the "attention -short term memory" algorithm. With such "decoding of what comes from outside, the concept, judgment, reasoning and inference are not formed when receiving images, fragments and short texts" (Salikhova, Mursalimova, 2021: 197). The examples of blitz-reactions are: НЕ РОЙ ДРУГОМУ ЯМУ - забей / это тяжело / бесплатно / не трать силы / время / ты же слишком ленив для этого. (Russian: DO NOT DIG A HOLE FOR SOMEBODY ELSE - forget it / it's hard / for free / don't waste your energy / time / you're too lazy for this). An individual strategy consists in trying to respond as quickly as possible without thinking. To confirm the specifics of "naive" axiology manifestation, as well as the conditions and mechanisms for the selection and functioning of phraseological and paremiological transformations characteristic of student discourse, let us turn to the data comparison of rephraseologisation and desacralization processes and to the new meaning formation of idioms in German.
The associative vectors in the Russian and German languages differ and are primarily related to the peculiarities of the paremia structure: the German version of Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, der fällt selbst hinein (German: He who digs a hole for others will fall into it himself - hereinafter the author's translation) is a complex sentence with an attributive clause. The German "anti-proverbs" are primarily focused on the personality of the "digger" - his profession or personal qualities can be characterized: Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, ist ein Bauarbeiter / Totengräber / Grubengräber / Totengräber seines eigenen Charakters (German: Whoever digs a hole for others, that is a builder / grave-digger / gravedigger of his own character) (Mieder, 2010: 393); the fee for such activity is often played up: Wer andern eine Grube gräbt,wird nach Leistung bezahlt / bekommt Lohn für seine Arbeit / wird nach Tarif bezahlt / wird selber Chef. (German: He who digs a hole for others is paid according to his deserts / receives money for his work / he is paid according to the tariff / will become his own boss) (Mieder, 2010: 396). Another characteristic feature of German neoparemias is their "gloomy" connotation. According to the explanatory dictionary, the main component of "Grube" - "pit" means "grave" (an obsolete, poetic word) (Wahrig, 2003: 425). Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, der geht über Leichen / kann sich begraben lassen / möchte, dass er in der Versenkung verschwindet ("Whoever digs a hole for others, he walks over corpses / can bury himself / would like others to disappear into oblivion") (Mieder, 2010: 397). In Russian, the proverb is a warning implemented with the help of the imperative mood, so the main associative vector is
a reaction (R) to the stimulus verb ( S ) "РОЙ/ КОПАЙ" - ("dig"), which requires a direct object : Рой колодец - пригодится воды напиться / вскопай себе огород / лучше себе проложи тропу / рой себе погреб - продукты на зиму хранить / рой окопы, они лучше для войны / сделай себе бассейн / рой карьер. (Russian: Dig a well, it will give you some water/ dig yourself a vegetable garden / pave a path better yourself / dig a cellar to store food for the winter / dig trenches, they are better for the war / make yourself a pool / dig a quarry). We consider it important to correlate the images of situations presented in the linguistic consciousness of the respondents with a choice from a certain set of assumed meanings exactly what is relevant for understanding the constructed unit. As a result of the imposition of the real situation image and the transformations image produced from the original part of the proverb, the "effect of deceived expectation" arises (term combination from (Semenenko, Krivosheev, 2019)). The given neoparemias from the student discourse correlate with the article from the "Russian Associative Dictionary" on S-КОПАТЬ, in which the most frequent reaction is the pit (60 answers). Fragments of paremiological world view contain similar anti-proverbs in Russian and German: Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, der braucht erst mal einen Spaten (German: Whoever digs a hole for another needs a shovel first). Compare with the Russian version: не рой другому яму, лучше возьми лопату и копай - (Do not dig a hole for somebody else, better take a shovel and dig). Visual-kinetic reactions are identical for Russian and German: Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, der schwitzt (German. Who digs a hole for others sweats); Wer andern eine Grube gräbt ist selbt ein Schwein (German: He who digs a hole for others is a pig himself). Let us compare with the answers proposed by the students of the USATU: не рой другому яму, грязным станешь - мыться придется / перед народом некрасиво. (Russian: Do not dig a hole for somebody else, you will become dirty - you will have to wash / it is ugly in front of the people).
4. Conclusions
As it can be seen from the results of the experimental material analysis, the emerging relationship between the original part of the proverb and its derivative transform reflects the action of cognitive mechanisms that represent a typical situation in speech practice and changes in its conventional image in the associative process under experimental conditions. This logical-syntactic connection is actualized by the theme (Do not dig a hole for somebody else) - by what the listener / reader already knows, and by the rheme - by the new one that is introduced by the producer of the transform in the proposed fragment continuation. An indivisibility is known to be a distinctive feature of a proverb. The indivisibility implies the unity of the theme and rheme when included into another statement. Theme-rhematic relationships within the phrase are also established, since the communicative essence of fixed expressions is set up by culture. Nevertheless, the results of the undertaken research illustrate the idiom potential to take a rhematic position in an utterance. The following examples demonstrate this position: не рой другому яму, пока тебе не заплатили / попроси в начале аванс / найми гастарбайте-ров / найми экскаватор / найми рабочих (Russian: do not dig a hole for somebody else until you have been paid / ask for an advance payment at the beginning / hire guest workers / hire an excavator / hire workers). In their answers, students interpret "the process of creating a hole for their neighbor" as a job, while the communicative meaning is being formed in parallel with the components corresponding to the constructed image, which translate the direct meaning of the physical efforts associated with digging a hole. The original meaning of the idiom is lost. The conventional idiom conveys the meanings that form the new that is communicated in the topic of the utterance - the pit and the physical actions associated with it: the value judgment in the rheme position is reflecting
compensation for the efforts spent. In neoparemias in Russian, the opposition "I and others" clearly emerges, expressing a pragmatic meaning valuable for the researcher. There is also an orientation "on yourself": займись своей жизнью / лучше о себе позаботься / а то поясницу надорвешь / перенапряжешься - сессию не сдашь (Russian: take care of your life / take better care of yourself / otherwise you will break your lower back / if you overstrain - you won't pass the session). A positive attitude towards other people and teamwork is reflected in the following neoparemias: Рой третьему с любовью / рой с другим / вдвоем веселее / ройте вместе (Russian: Dig for the third with love / dig with someone else/ it's more fun when together / dig together). Some neoparemias testify to a negative attitude towards other people: Не рой другому яму, убей морально / кремировать дешевле. (Russian: Do not dig a hole for somebody else, kill morally / cremating is much cheaper).
The described transformations are associated with desacralization and dephraseolo-gisation processes. These processes have recently been arising naturally as a result of response to changes in various fields. The revealed structural-semantic dynamics of the transition from the "old" to the "new" idiom is the essence of the change in ideas about reality (Selezneva, Severskaya, 2021; Shkuran, 2020).
In the cases we have analyzed, the result of desacralization is the formation of a multilevel subject-predicate structure of neoparemias. At the logical-semantic level, two scenarios for structuring neoparemias unfold: (1) the key fragment of the original unit, acting as a stimulus, "absorbs the meanings transmitted by the new reference situation" and acquires thereby a new meaning; (2) the key fragment of the original unit predicates the content of neoparemias, "integrating into its semantic structure in the form of an evaluative component" (Semenenko, Krivosheev, 2019: 107). At the same time, the formed transforms are likened to paroemia components, for which the extensive lin-guocultural context acts as a semantic predicate.
According to paremiologists, idioms (proverbs in particular) "accumulate specific information about typical life and conceivable situations, objects and relationships" (Semenenko, Krivosheev, 2019: 108), and transform into an effective "tool for conceptualizing reality, performing the function of sign substitution not only the object of the figurative nomination, but also the speaker"s evaluative attitude towards it" (Semenenko, Krivosheev, 2019: 109). We would submit that the idioms present not only conceptual schemes, but also, according to M.L. Kovshova, "the naive ethics of the people, their moral principles and ideological and aesthetic views of the world are convex and capaciously revealed as in a magnifying glass" (Kovshova, 2013: 80). It should be noted that one of the main communicative intentions in the restructuring process of the linguistic worldview is a creative possibility of the linguistic personality, which predetermines such strategies for deploying information that teleport the associating subject as a communicant into the world of the discourse formed by him / her. In such a discourse, the laws of representation of a "special" view of the situation restructured by neoparemias operate.
REFERENCES
Alefirenko, N.F. (2018). Phraseology and paremiology: textbook. Moscow.
Kovshova M.L. (2013). Estimation of idioms and naive ethics of proverbs: linguoculturological aspect of research // Philology and Culture. No. 3. Pp. 7-85.
Kushnareva, A.V. (2020). Strategies for creating neoparemia // Theory and practice of language communication: materials of the XII International Scientific and Practical Conference. Pp. 136-141. Ufa.
Kushnareva, A.V. (2021). Associative potential of the key components of the proverb "Money does not buy happiness" // Theory and practice of language communication: materials of the XIII International Scientific and Practical Conference. Pp. 101-107. Ufa.
Mokienko, V.M. (2012). Let's talk right. Proverbs in modern Russian. Moscow.
Mursalimova Yu.R. (2012a). Associative field of the word GOD in the Russian language consciousness // Theoretical and applied sciences and education in the XXI century. Pp. 97-103. Tambov.
Mursalimova Yu.R. (2012b). The concept of FAITH in the language picture of the world // Theory and Practice of Language Communication. Pp. 242-246. Ufa.
Mursalim^ova, Yu.R. (2018). Actualization of the religious component of the meaning of the word: Dis. ... Ph.D. Perm.
Salikhova, E.A. (2015). Modeling the processes of mastering and using the psychological structure of the meaning of a word in bilingualism. Ufa.
Salikhova, E.A., Mursalimova, Yu.R. (2013). Religious knowledge from the point of view of the categories "meaning" and "knowledge" / "knowledge" // Bulletin of VEGU. Ser. Philology. No. 2 (64). Pp. 125130. Ufa.
Salikhova, E.A., Mursalimova, Yu.R. (2021). Associative field of the word "God": transformations of meanings and their semantic distortion // Studies in semantics. Pp. 195-203. Ufa.
Selezneva, L.V., Severskaya, O.I. (2021). Reframing idioms and paremias in coronavirus discourse // Slovo.ru: Baltic accent. T. 12. No. 1. Pp. 96-109.
Semenenko, N.N., Krivosheev, G.S. (2019). Paremic picture of the world as a conductor of an ethnocultural stereotype // Scientific and methodological electronic journal "Concept". No. 4. URL: http://e-kon-cept.ru/2019/195011.htm (accessed 20.05.2022).
Stepanova, M.I. (2012). Phraseological dictionary of the Russian language. St. Petersburg.
Shkuran, O.V. (2020). Desacralization of biblical phraseology Man does not live by bread alone on the material of Internet and media discourse // Uchenye zapiski Petrozavodskogo gosudarstvennogo univer-siteta. T. 42. No. 7. Pp. 54-63.
Mieder, W. (2010). Spruchschlösser (ab)bauen. Wien.
Salikhova, E.A., Mursalimova, Yu.R. (2015). Special aspects of personal linguistic identity // Pedagogical journal of Bashkortostan. No. 1 (56). Pp. 173-179.
Salikhova, E.A., Mursalimova, Yu.R. (2022). Interethnic and Interfaith Relations in of Bashkortostan // Modern European Researches. №1. Pp. 22-30. URL: https://doaj.net/issues/43. (accessed 20.05.2022). Salzburg.
Wahrig, G. (2003). Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. München.
