Zavyalova N. A. The Mechanisms of Thesaurus Expansion within the Framework of the Information-theoretic Approach as a Reflection of Socio-Cultural Dynamics
Abstract ♦ The article discusses the role of language and the stable linguistic forms of spiritual culture, such as idioms and phraseological units, in culture genesis. The stable linguistic forms of spiritual culture are considered as artifacts and socio-cultural phenomena.
Socio-cultural dynamics is analyzed within the framework of the thesaurus approach proposed by Valery A. Lukov and Vladimir A. Lukov as well as in the context of the information-theoretic approach formulated by German N. Golitsyn and Vladimir M. Petrov.
The thesaurus expansion of phraseology is analyzed in three basic directions of social and cultural space development: expansion, accuracy improvement and resource economy. The expansion in phraseology is understood as the involvement of new areas and items in the process of coding of the social and cultural environment. The accuracy improvement of conditions is achieved by choosing a particular variant of a phraseological unit from a variety of similar alternatives by the representatives of the society. At this stage, the analysis was carried out with the involvement of national electronic on-line corpuses, where the frequency of units indicates preferences of societies’ representatives. The resource economy is realized by preferences in short statements as well as borrowings from other languages, usually from American English. At this stage of the analysis, the author has also used national electronic on-line corpuses and lexicographical sources.
The analysis revealed a steady trend of mind westernization among young Russian people engaged in the field of advertising, design and electronic communications. This trend is realized in the form of word play and professional jargon.
The research results have been processed into a database registered in Rospatent (Certificate No. 2013620397 dated March 13, 2013).
Keywords: culture, sociology of culture, socio-cultural dynamics, social interaction, culture genesis, thesaurus, thesaurus expansion, phraseological unit, idiom, everyday life.
Zavyalova Natalya Alekseevna, Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, Moscow University for the Humanities, Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Cross-cultural Communication, Ural State University of Railway Transport. Postal address: 66 Kolmogorova St., Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation, 620034. Tel.: +7 (343) 221-24-30. E-mail:
n.zavzav@gmail.com
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