Russian Culture and Russian Language in the Eurasian Context

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.2-18.033

Vedenina Lioudmila G.,

Full Doctor of Philology (Dr.Habil.), professor,

Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University)

at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia

Laureate of Russian Federation National Award in Education,

Companion of the French Republic Order of Academic Palms

e-mail: lvedenina@mail.ru

The article deals with comparing languages and cultures of three ranges — East (Big and Middle), West (Mediterranean and Northern zones of Europe) and Russia.  The first range is represented by the inhabitants of Korea, China and Japan and also by a number of Arab-Muslim countries. Western cultures are geographically distributed between too zones — Mediterranean (Spain, France and Italy) and Northern (Great Britain and Germany).

The author introduces into his analysis the linguistic data fixed in the languages of evidence, subjecting (denying similarities and differences in the perception of the meridians by the bearers of the cultures in question). The author shares the point of view of the researchers who consider the linguistic analysis of cultural facts to be one of the most objective approaches (documented according to T. Vezhbitskaya) to studying such a heterogeneous phenomenon as culture. The linguistic material for our observations was phraseological units (in the broad interpretation of the term: idiomatic expressions, sentences, aphorisms, proverbs, sayings), texts of myths, legends, biblical and evangelical parables, medieval eastern poetry, ascending to the oldest layers of the peoples’ cultural memory). In the center of observation is a person in his basic hypostases: a man in the universe; physical and mental traits of a person; man and nature (food, animal life); a person in society (family); social behavior of a person (age, gender, contrasting one’s own and stranger’s).

The analysis made it possible to identify a number of similarities and differences between the cultures in question, including those that have gone unnoticed by linguoculturologists. Deserves the same attention the fact about the features of the term similarity in the linguocultological comparative context — it is important to take into account not only the presence or absence of one or another feature, but also the intensity of its use. Similarity should be understood not as a complete coincidence, but as an identical position in the system of features under consideration.  The data obtained make it possible to substantiate the argument that Russia and Russian culture can not belong either to so-called West or East. Russian culture has a number of similarities with the West and the East, but it is a mature authentic identity, which has its own special, consisting in an original set of lingua-cultural characteristics.

Keywords: cross-cultural, similarities, differences, identity.

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