Cultural Component in the Semantics of a pragmatically marked Word: Methods of Identification and Lexicography in an Active Type Dictionary

Bulygina Elena Yur'evna ORCID: 0000-0001-5191-7896 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Modern Russian Language and Teaching Methods; Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University Director of the Institute of Philology and Media Communications; Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University 630102, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Shevchenko str., 15, sq. 95 bulyginalena2010@mail.ru

Tripolskaia Tatiana Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0000-0003-0820-0325 Doctor of Philology Professor; Department of Modern Russian Language and Methods of teaching it; Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University 630105, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Kropotkin str., 118, sq. 352 tatianatripolskaya@gmail.com

This study continues the cycle of publications devoted to the lexicographic project "Database of pragmatically labeled vocabulary of the Russian language" (Novosibirsk, NSPU), and covers a number of key issues related to the definition of the concept of "national cultural / cultural-specific/ cultural/ regional component" in the semantics of the word, understanding the range of relevant lexemes, ways to identify and a lexicographic description of this semantic element, correlated with other elements of the pragmatic macro component in the lexical meaning (hereinafter – LZ) of the word.

As part of the heterogeneous LZ, denotative and pragmatic macro components are distinguished, between which there are complex and not always obvious semantic connections. The pragmatic macro component, in turn, represents a set of micro components (evaluative, ideological, gender, age, social and national cultural information (the list of pragmatically labeled elements is open)) that interact, conditioning each other.

In interpreting the composition, place and role of pragmatic semantics in the meaning of a word or outside it – see ^[1,2] – there is no common understanding in today's semasiology, especially since the principles of describing these elements of content have not been developed.

The methods of lexicography of pragmatic information in the meaning of the word have been actively studied in Russian studies since the early 80s of the twentieth century in relation to emotive and evaluative vocabulary: "a linguist must work on the entire space of lexemes and take into account all types of their behavior not provided for in the dictionary" ^{[3, p. 7]}. The semantics of emotionally evaluative, national-cultural, ideological, gender, social, and other information depends, of course, on the type of dictionary: a traditional explanatory dictionary, an active type dictionary, or, for example, an electronic lexicographic database implementing the principles of a communicatively oriented lexicographic source. Such an active dictionary allows you to demonstrate the lexicographic "history" of a word, as well as dynamic processes in a pragmatically labeled Russian dictionary. "Electronic dictionaries with a navigation system and hypertext properties represent belonging to a certain thematic class, as well as different zones of semantics, pragmatics and functioning in their interaction" ^{[4, p. 15]}.

The electronic lexicographic resource consists of two parts: the first contains materials from classical explanatory dictionaries, and the second is a lexicography of a pragmatically labeled meaning, taking into account its variable potential. Semantics involves the description of all pragmatic micro-components in their interaction. We use traditional lexicographic tools: a litter system and illustrative material, but each pragmatic component is presented in a separate category/zone ^[5]. Based on traditional lexicographic practice, a system of litters reflecting emotive, evaluative, gender, social, and age components has been developed ^{[6, 7]}.

However, our lexicographic project has so far practically not developed a system of semantics of the national-cultural component of the lexical meaning of the word.

In the study and description of the national cultural component (hereinafter referred to as the NCC) in modern semasiology and lexicography, the following problems are seen.

Firstly, there are different approaches to the choice of the term, to the content structure of the NCC, the place and features of interaction with the denotative and pragmatic content of the meaning of the word.

In the context of this project, the most significant is the understanding of the national cultural component as one of the ways of storing and broadcasting culture. From the point of view of A. Vezhbitskaya, the language reflects not only the peculiarities of natural conditions or culture, but also the originality of the national character of its speakers ^[8]. Let's add that the NCC carries information about the peculiarities of seeing the world through the prism of its language, about the logic of understanding and comprehending reality (for example, about the logical and mythological foundations of a metaphor of a particular language), about the axiological vectors of the national picture of the world. Cf.: "Each natural language reflects a certain way of perceiving the world, imposed as mandatory for all native speakers. <...> Each language has its own way of "thinking about the world", in this way "an integral collective philosophy is embodied, its own for each language" ^{[9, p. 57]}. Agreeing with the presented approach to understanding the linguistic interpretation of the surrounding reality, which includes a special view through the prism of one's own language, we note the need to concretize and formalize this semantic component, as well as ways to identify it.

Secondly, the lexicography of this semantics necessarily requires a special preliminary comparative study, since the NCC is comprehended and explicated against the background of another language, another linguistic picture of the world.

One can agree with the opinion of I.A. Sternin, who writes that "The national-cultural component is a certain set of denotative, connotative and empirical features that distinguish a specific meaning from its possible translational equivalents, and as a special structural element in the semantics of a word is not distinguished" ^{[10, p. 7]}. Let us add that national-cultural specificity permeates all the macro components of lexical semantics, however, a well-developed system of methods and techniques for identifying and describing the pragmatic component, including the national-cultural one, has not been created, and in most cases it is necessary to develop a special methodology adequate to the tasks and selected linguistic material.

Thirdly, the range of lexical units containing NCC has not been outlined: it is reduced either to a small number of non-equivalent lexical units such as samovar, matryoshka, borscht, window leaf, cottage, etc., which require detailed vocabulary commentary (and often pictures) in an audience learning Russian as a foreign language. In this case, there are methods of special commentary known in Russian and foreign lexicography, denoting the semantics of "one's own/someone else's/other" Cf.: Boulevard (fr.). In Francia strada larga e alberata. Sin. Viale (Il Sabatini Coletti. Dizionario della Lingua Italiano. Rizzoli Larousse, 2006. Next – SC). Hurricane, hurricane, M. (Spanish huracan on behalf of the storm deity Huragan (among American Indians). 1. The wind of extremely destructive force (especially frequent in tropical countries) (Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language / Edited by D. N. Ushakov: In 4 volumes. M.: OGIZ, 1935-1940. Next – TSU). Over time, the full or partial development of such units takes place (see hurricane in Russian)

The opposite approach is based on the idea that any word is not meaningfully equal to the corresponding foreign equivalent – hence the special attention to the study of equivalent translation methods ^{[11, 12]}. In other words, these approaches in the understanding of the NCC either narrow the scope of lexical units to an equivalent vocabulary, or expand it almost to the entire dictionary, when the concept of national-cultural (national-specific) semantics loses its outlines.

In this project, we identify, as it seems, a nuclear group of pragmatically labeled vocabulary, including NCC, which manifests itself in combination with axiological, ideological, social, gender and age semantics and it is precisely this semantics that is often conditioned. Cf.: in V.I. Dahl's Dictionary, a liberal is a political freethinker, thinking or acting freely; in general, desiring great freedom of the people and self-government: liberalis "free; generous", further from Lat. liber "free, free" (Dal V.I. Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language. St. Petersburg: Diamant, 1996).

Since Soviet times, the words liberal, liberal and liberalism have an ideological negatively oriented semantics associated with the concept of an ideologically alien trend (in the bourgeois world), that is, they realize a special (Soviet) idea of the subject. Cf.: Liberalism (book) 1. A system of political ideas, views, ... peculiar to ideologists of industrial the bourgeoisie, ... defending cowardly and inconsistently political freedoms in the interests of the "freedom" of acquisition and exploitation (the spelling of the compilers of the dictionary is preserved – T.T., B.E.) of the proletariat. <…>. 4. Criminal condescension, connivance (new disapproval). Rotten liberalism (TSU).

The further fate of the lexemes liberal and liberalism is associated with the era of Perestroika. Thus, the dictionary of G.N. Sklyarevskaya, reflecting the removal of ideological bourgeois and Soviet connotations, returns to these lexemes their semantic connection with the original liberté (freedom). Cf.: Liberal, a, M. – a supporter of the policy of liberalizing public relations; a free-thinking person..... Russia today is the dream of early liberals: the state almost does not interfere in the economy anymore. MN, 05/22/94 – 05/29/94 (Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language of the late twentieth century. Language changes / Edited by G. N. Sklyarevskaya. St. Petersburg: Publishing House OR RAS, 1998). In the metaphorical meaning of the verb cackle, the NCC appears in conjunction with evaluative and gender micro-components <…> 1. About the chicken: make characteristic sounds similar to “cluck-cluck-cluck". 2. transfer. To talk stupidly and excitedly (usually about a woman) (colloquial disapproval) (Ozhegov S. I., Shvedova N. Y. Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. 4th ed., add. M.: Azbukovnik, 1999. Next – TSOSH).

Fourth, modern lexicography has practically not comprehended and formalized the way of representing national cultural semantics in a dictionary entry, including dictionaries of the active type. An attempt to formalize the description of lexically units reflecting the national and cultural originality of vocabulary is made in the "Russian-German Dictionary of Lexical Parallels" by V. Dubichinsky and T. Reuter (Moscow: ELPIS Publishing House, 2011), containing 1750 dictionary entries of nominative units of two languages with partial or complete mismatch/coincidence of meanings.

The problem of lexicographic interpretation of the pragmatic semantics of a word, including the NCC, directly depends on the level of theoretical understanding of the communicative model of lexical meaning.

The lexicographic description is preceded by a special comparative study, which includes a comparative analysis of the corresponding lexical meanings in different European languages. In addition, component and corpus methods are used to analyze the semantics of a lexical unit. The comparative aspect makes it possible to identify as a national and cultural phenomenon that in the space of one language does not seem specific and does not attract the attention of the researcher. The contrastive analysis based on the results of the preliminary system-structural description involves the study of the semantics and functioning of not individual lexemes, but integral fragments of the lexical system. The latter allows us to deduce lexical and semantic gaps, complete / partial coincidence or discrepancy of the semantic volume of a linguistic unit, the degree of linguistic detail in the interpretation of a non-linguistic situation, as well as the importance of elements of the lexical paradigm ^[13]. E.V. Rakhilina, analyzing the tasks, methods and results of modern typological research in the field of vocabulary, writes: "For each semantic Lists of words covering this field in a given language were compiled and the contexts of their use were compared. The subsequent semantic analysis allows us to obtain information about the meanings that are cognitively important for native speakers of natural language" ^{[14, p. 10]}.

At the first stage of the development of dictionary entries for the Database of pragmatically labeled vocabulary, we fixed the presence of NCC in the semantics of the lexical unit, presenting in the appropriate field of the dictionary entry a foreign language word bearing other pragmatic meanings than the Russian equivalent.

Cf.: SPIDER (interpretation zone). 2. Transfer. Cunning, insidious, entangling his victim in a web, aggressive, not disdaining anything for the sake of profit and his own benefit; using another to satisfy his own needs; (litter zone): emotional and evaluative component – negative; (illustrative material zone): – Well... "E – E" will be for me, you know... "X" we do in half with one professor, and "B" had to be given to him, because he has even more connections among publishers than mine… But I'll remember it to him, the bespectacled spider. Saxon. The Prince of Wales // "October", 2001] (extremely disapproving); In particular, the implementers of the dictatorship of the proletariat themselves gnawed at each other like spiders in a jar [National Anarchism (forum) (2006)] (despises.- disapproval); Of course, the most delicious and most defenseless victim of these editorial and publishing spiders is the young and novice author [A. Milchin. In the laboratory of the editor L. Chukovskaya // October, 2001] (disapproval-iron.); And I have a wolfish interest in girls, I love this business like a spider [V. Grossman. Life and fate] (ironically) (Here and further all examples are taken from the National Corpus of the Russian language. URL: ruscorpora.ru (date of application: 17.10.2024)).

A comparative study has shown that the spider metaphor implements other anthropomorphic meanings in Italian, French and Spanish. The metaphorical semantics of the word spider, characteristic of other languages ("dodger, weasel", "tall, thin, awkward", "small mobile child"), indicates a special Russian metaphorical filter in mastering the real world based on a donor group of entomonyms. We also recall that in the history of the Russian language (the era of "dispossession", this word had both ideologically oriented and nationally specific semantics "a symbol of cruel and insatiable greed, exploitation. World-eating spiders. – You sucked the blood out of me, you sucked it out... Oh, you... The spider! (M. Gorky)", is not relevant today (TSU).

To date, the metalanguage of the description of the NCC has not been formed, therefore, as a working option, we present a brief record of preliminary comparative studies. It seems possible and advisable to expand this area of interpretation in the Database, correlating the NCC with other elements of the pragmatic macro component. Cf.:

The metaphor of the spider in the meaning of "cunning, insidious, aggressive, not disdaining anything for profit ..." includes a national and cultural component that correlates with the emotional, evaluative and gender (and in the 30s of the 20th century and with the socio-ideological) in the LZ of the word.

Metaphors with different semantics are in Spanish: araña 1) spider; 2) dodger, weasel; in Italian: rango 1) spider; 2) about a tall, thin, awkward man; ragnetto 1) spider; 2) about a small mobile child; in French: araignée 1) spider; des pattes d'araignée – long hooked fingers; il a une araignée au plafond – he is out of his mind.

We are aware that the NCC zone should contain information from not one foreign language, but several, however, even a parallel analysis of metaphors in two languages allows us to speak in advance about the presence of NCC in the semantics of a word.

The situation is more complicated in cases where the lexeme implements both universal and unique features of equivalent units, which significantly changes the ways (volume of information, structure of this area of the dictionary entry) of representing such a semantic model.

Metaphor and the universal elements in its semantics are worth mentioning in particular. In the cognitive research paradigm, metaphor is understood as a kind of cognitive process and a way of understanding the world ^[15], as a component of the semantic system of language and the worldview ^{[16, 17, 18,19]}.

The universal and unique are uniquely intertwined, for example, in metaphors with the meaning of "weak-willed, characterless, weak person"^[20]: it turns out that metaphors with such semantics in three languages (Russian, French and English) realize emotional and evaluative meanings that are formed according to a common metaphorical model, when the producing base is one and the same the same thematic area: 1) soft old fabric (Russian Rag (2))// French chiffe. 1. Chiffon (rag). 2. Homme d un character faible; with hiffe molle – a soft and weak man (Le nouveau petit Robert. Nouvelle edition du Petit Robert de Paul Robert. Dictionnaires le Robert. Paris, 2002. Next – Petit Robert) // English rag (rag). about people. Sr.: I am a woman, a rag, a sour sour and therefore I can't stand acid – I am no better than a woman myself; I am a limp rag, a flabby creature so I hate flabbiness (A. Chekhov. The Wife (1891) / Anton Chekhov. The Wife (Constance Garnett, 1900-1930)); 2) soft, liquid, jelly-like / porridge-like food (mash, turd, jelly, jelly, jelly // French nouille 1. Noodles; 2. Rag, crumble, mumble, mash, nedotepa (French-Russian dictionary of active type / Ed. V.G. Gaka and J. Triumph. Ed. 2. Moscow: Russian language, 1998. Next – GT); moule – II. 1 Mussel, edible shell; mold (French-Russian dictionary / Comp. K. A. Ganshin. 6th ed., ispr. and add. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1971. Next – Ganshina) // mollusk, mussel – razg. Personne molle et niaise – a soft and stupid person (Shcherba L. V., Matusevich M. I., Vorontsova T. P., etc. A large Russian-French dictionary. 200 thousand words and phrases. "Russian language-Media", 2004. Access mode: ABBYY Lingvo. Electronic dictionary. Issue: 14.0.0.390. 2008 ABBYY. Further – BRFS) //English milksop (bread with milk; rag, characterless man, woman, coward) // milk-and-water (tasteless, watery, empty, weak-willed, characterless, faceless) (Muller V. K. English-Russian dictionary. 17th ed. M., 1978. Next – MAR); 3) gender names (baba, girl// French femmelette – (pour un homme) Baba, rag –ne sois pas une femmelette – don't be a woman (Petit Robert) // English woman 2) Rag, clumsy; balda (fool) – about a weak, weak-willed man / boy (MAR); 4) zoonyms (wet chicken //poule mouillé e // slug, worm, jellyfish (Hanshina) // English jellyfish (characterless, soft-bodied man, smudge) (MAR).

Only one thematic area "the name of clothes/hats", characteristic of the Russian language (cap (2) and hat (2) in metaphorical meanings) is not involved in the metaphorical systems of the French and English languages.

So, linguistic national-cultural universals are associated with donor areas for metaphors with the meaning of "weak-willed, characterless person", and the unique components characteristic of these languages can be called private, they relate, for example, to the names of types of food, which are metaphorically reinterpreted into the semantics of the willlessness and characterlessness of a person. So, Russian noodles and French nouille, it would seem, could equally generate similar metaphors (within the framework of the "working" donor group "food"), however, in the process of metaphor formation, the very NCC manifests itself, which indicates a different metaphorical filter through which we see the world.

As a result of such comparative studies, an obvious question arises: how to present such universally unique information in an active type dictionary. Without pretending to develop a special metalanguage, we will try to summarize the information about the NCC in the semantics of the words of this group of lexemes.

The rag metaphor shows universal semantics elements typical of several languages, so the NCC zone in a dictionary entry could look like this.

SHAKE IT UP. 4. Razg. neglect. About a characterless, weak-willed person (Dictionary of the Russian language: In 4 volumes / Edited by A.P. Evgenieva. M., 1981-1984. Next – MAC).

See also: French chiffe. 1. Chiffon (old, second-rate rag). 2. Homme d'un character faible; with hiffe molle – a soft and weak man (Petit Robert); eng. rag/ doormat (rag // 1) a doormat for wiping feet. 2) coll. a weak, characterless man, a 'rag' (MAR).

A different ratio of universal and unique figurative components of metaphor is found in the kissel token. Cf.:

KISS'L. || Razg. neglect. About a sluggish, weak-willed person (MAS).

See also: French nouille 1. Noodles; 2. Rag, crumble, mumble, smudge, nedotep; moule II. 1 Mussel, edible shell; mold; 2. Rag, clumsy; fool (fool) (GT); clam, mussel. 2. Razg. Personne molle et niaise – a soft and stupid person (BFRS); English milk-and-water. 1. Tasteless, watery, empty; 2. Weak-willed, characterless, faceless; milksop. 1. Bread with milk. 2. A rag, a characterless man, a woman, a coward (MAR).

The NCC is associated with the choice of a donor word from the "food" group: Russian jelly and mash (porridge) are contrasted with French noodles and clams (mussels) and English jelly, bread with milk, milk with water.

Thus, the national-cultural (cultural-specific) component represents special information in the semantics of the word, which indicates the perception of the world inherent in a certain linguistic society through the prism of the national language. We are talking about the universal and unique features of the semantics of pragmatically labeled vocabulary.

This semantic element is revealed in the course of comparative studies and requires special understanding in the course of lexicographic description in dictionaries of different types.

We propose to present the NCC in a special area of the dictionary entry in the Database of pragmatically labeled vocabulary of the Russian language, comparing it with the semantic specifics of equivalent units of other languages.

The result of this study is a lexicographic description of words of different thematic groups containing national-cultural (national-specific) information in their meanings.