Cultural data: words, lexical collocations and idioms

That language forms part of culture seems to be beyond question, but whether (and in what way) cultural data are

incorporated in lexical meanings remains uncertain. Such uncertainty is very much due to the fact that lexical units vary as

to how, and how far, they take up cultural data. Besides, individual words, idioms, and collocations often combine in their

semantics more than one type of cultural information. In this chapter we suggest five channels through which language is

penetrated by culture: cultural semes, cultural concepts, cultural connotations, cultural background, and discourse

Cultural semes

Brought together under this heading are words and wordcombinations that denote idioethnic realia. The cultural

component forms a cultural seme -- that is, forms part of the lexical meaning. The cultural seme reflects general

knowledge about the realia. Such entries are normally found in encyclopaedic dictionaries with appropriate etymological

and cultural commentaries (e.g. Vereshchagin and Kostomarov 1983). Examples include:

1. Material realia: lapti, 'footwear made of hast traditionally worn by Russian peasants', rozhon, 'a double-edged

blade mounted on a Y-shaped spear traditionally used in bear hunting in old Russia'; chernaya izba, lit. 'a black

cottage', i.e. a traditional peasant timber cottage heated by a stove with no chimney.

2. Social and historical realia: gorodovoy, 'a policeman in Tsarist Russia', kolkhoz, 'a Soviet collective farm';

krasnokorichnevuie, lit. 'the red-browns', i.e. followers of the Russian chauvinist/communist political movement in

post- perestroika Russia.

Cultural concepts

These are abstract notions that map and construct the world-picture in a culturally specific way (Arutyunova 1991).

Significantly, their specificity is implemented at the cognitive, not the semantic level. In this group, we differentiate

between concepts proper (holistic Gestalten of meaning), on the one hand, and subconcepts on the other.

1. Concepts proper largely coincide in all European languages but, for some aspects of meaning, corresponding words

and phraseologisms show a high degree of cultural specificity, as in the case of Russ. pravda and sovest '. Thus,

pravda denotes truth as an ethical phenomenon with no direct counterpart in English. This is a case of

linguistic/cultural lacuna. Similarly, sorest″, 'conscience', is a case of partial overlap: the Russian word implies 'the

presence of God in one's soul' and only partially coincides with the English meaning of conscience as 'knowledge of

good and evil'. It would be only natural to expect different cultural implications from different conceptualizations

verbalized in different languages.

2. Subconcepts are fragments of concepts proper, when abstract notions are verbalized in concrete nouns. Thus, baba,

'a human (lower-class) female' (colloq. or derog.), is a concrete noun, originally the name for a peasant woman.

Later, the word came to designate a complex of properties assumed to pertain to women in general. Thus, baba is a

subconcept of the the concept of 'femininity' which has no translation equivalent in English. (The notion will be

described in greater detail below.)

Cultural connotations

By cultural connotation, we mean the interpretative relation between linguistic signs and symbols of any other cultural

non-verbal code (stereotypes, prototypes, myths, and other entities termed cultural patterns above). According to Teliya (

1993), cultural connotation arises from an associative relation between the image contained in the inner form of a

language sign (Potebnya 1905) and the content of a cultural pattern. Cultural connotations are especially vivid in idioms

and restricted lexical collocations. In restricted collocations, for instance, the activation of cultural connotation is

connected with the type of cultural information contained in the keyword (the base of the collocation) and the nature of the

semantic specialization in the meaning of the collocator. 1 In general, cultural connotations can accompany any culturally

marked words when they combine

Lexical collocations are defined as word-combinations in which one member -- the base according to Hausmann (

1985) -- is used in its non-figurative meaning (the denotation of the whole), while the semantically specialized

collocator is bound to the nominal base (Teliya 1981) and denotes its features and conceptual parameters. Idioms are

defined as completely opaque combinations of two or more lexical (or lexical plus grammatical) words (cf. Benson

1985; Cowie 1994).

in phraseologisms. Cultural connotations are manifested in wordcombinations which activate culturally relevant parameters

of the base.

1. Some collocations derive their connotative meaning from allusion to cultural realia (cf. Sect. 3.1, paras. 1 and 2).

Consider: treskuchiy (moroz), lit. 'snapping (frost)', i.e. very hard frost when trees give out a snapping sound; korob

(novostey), lit. 'a basketful (of news)', i.e. as much news as if there were a whole korob -- a huge basket made of bast

and without handles; zhandarm Evropui, lit. 'the gendarme of Europe', used with reference to Russia's reactionary foreign

policy in the 1840s (the connotation coming from the historical persona of zhandarm -- an agent of the repressive secret

police in Tsarist Russia). Though gendarme is an international word, in Russian it is associated with political power that is

cruel, aggressive, and stupid. The same word in English -- also borrowed from Frenchmerely signifies 'a French policeman'

(according to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English)and evokes no negative connotations. Compare also

lexical collocations denoting the political leaders of perestroika: arkhitektorui/kapitanui perestroyki, lit. 'architects/captains

of perestroika'. Here, cultural connotation derives from the metaphorical interpretation of political reforms as constructing

or seafaring.

In a similar way, cultural connotations invoked by cultural semes can also be found in idioms, as, for example, lezt na

rozhon, lit. 'to thrust oneself against the Y-shaped spear', i.e. to provoke a dangerous situation; or zavarivat kashu, lit. 'to

cook porridge', i.e. to stir up trouble. (Kasha is a ritual food traditionally cooked by in-laws for a wedding party.) Consider

also mamaevo poboishche, lit. 'Mamai's slaughter', i.e. a bloody fight between many people -- an allusion to a medieval

battle between Russians and Tartars.

2. Cultural connotations can also arise from cultural concepts. Sovest zazrila (obs.), lit. 'one's conscience began to see' or

'woke up'; bol naya sovest, lit. 'a sore conscience', i.e. an uneasy conscience. Cultural connotations are generated by metaphor, when moral constraints (conscience) are conceptualized as if they are a living being that can see and feel pain.

Such metaphorical conceptualization can easily be traced to the religious notion of the living soul. The interaction between

the denomination and the background religious belief is what provides the content of cultural connotation.

Cultural connotations can also derive from the interpretation of subconcepts (cf. Sect. 3.2, para. 2). For instance,

muzhskaya (druzhba), lit. 'men's (male) friendship', connotes that males are ideal bearers of genuine friendship, while in

bazarnaya (baba), lit. 'a

market-place (lower-class) woman', the collocator creates the connotation 'ill-bred and loud-mouthed'. These

connotations originate from stereotypical assumptions about men being paragons of human virtues, and women being the

embodiment of evil. Similarly, cultural connotation in bazarnaya baba is related to the behaviour of a lowerclass woman in

the market place, and bazar ('market place') is a stereotype of noisy, impudent conduct. A quite different stereotype is

that of mother as caregiver: materinskaya nezhnost',lyubot',zabota, laska, lit. 'maternal tenderness, love, care, caress'.

Idioms also manifest cultural connotations associated with subconcepts. Consider the subconcept of 'loose woman' in the

following idioms: trepat' yubki, lit. 'to swing one's skirts', i.e. (of women) to be promiscuous; khodit' po rukam, lit. 'to

pass from hand to hand', i.e. (of women) to change sexual partners; shlyukha podzabornaya, lit. 'a stroller from under a

fence' or 'a loose woman' (derived from shlyat'sya pod zaborom, lit. 'to stroll under the fence' -- to be loose). Cultural

connotations in such cases may only be revealed if considerable ideographic fields are studied, including idioms, restricted

collocations, proverbs, sayings, and so on. Their cultural specificity only shows through the common kernel metaphor

(Lakoff and Johnson 1980), which acts as a hyperonym with respect to the images conveyed by such idioms (i. e.

'strolling' = 'promiscuity'). In the above examples, the image derives from one and the same prototype 'to move about

aimlessly' and is closely associated with the epithet gulyashchaya baba, lit. 'a strolling woman', i.e. a loose woman.

According to folk tradition, also reflected in proverbs, a decent woman cannot walk about by herself; she should stay at

home: Muzhik da sobaka vsegda na dvore, a baba da koshka vsegda v izbe, lit. 'The man and the dog are always outside,

the wife and the cat are always inside'. The same norm, incidentally, was explicitly prescribed in the Russian sixteenthcentury

private law code Domostroy. Thus, such idioms acquire a culturally marked connotation from interaction with

three cultural codes: (i) the subconcept of gulyashchaya; (ii) a cultural norm that insists that women should stay at home;

(iii) norms as reflected in proverbs.

Cultural background

Cultural background refers to information that is most difficult to formalize, as it is connected with semantics in a very

indirect and still unexplored way. We say that a word or a word-combination has 'cultural background' when it possesses a

clearly discernible ideological aura associated with a historical situation, a political movement, a

fashionable trend, and so on. Such entities could be compared to visual symbols and emblems. Thus, russkaya berezka,

lit. 'a Russian birch tree' is unmistakably identified by native speakers as a symbol of the motherland. Such

conceptualization could easily be developed into coherent ideological discourse; in fact, cultural background appears to be

a reduction of such discourse. Similarly, cultural background can be discerned in such lexical collocations as serp i molot,

lit. 'hammer and sickle', britanskiy lev, lit. 'the British lion', and others.

The development of culture involves the repetition, reinterpretation, and multiplication of texts, as well as the creation of

new ones. These texts, pertaining to different discourse types (which are described below, with respect to the process of

generation of restricted collocation), exert a powerful influence over culture, while cultural change causes the reproduction

and reinterpretation of discourse stereotypes in speech practices. Such mutual exchange cannot but affect language. The

lexicon, the repository of forms, 'freezes' and organizes certain expressions which regularly occur in different discourse

types. Among the forms stored in the lexicon are lexical collocations that could be interpreted as 'open'

word-combinations, if certain cultural stereotypes did not exist which restricted their use.

Thus, in a number of cases, cultural data contained in a language unit can be elicited from knowledge of a text, or of a

corpus of texts, in which the concept was first described. For instance, the notion of pervaya lyubov', lit. 'first love', is

clearly associated in the minds of native speakers of Russian with the story by Ivan Turgenev. The expression pervaya

Iyubov' connotes pure, delicate, refined, and hopeless passion between a sexually inexperienced girl and youth, a love that

cannot be consummated, an extremely lyrical combination of desire and innocence. Indeed, pervaya lyubov' is a restricted

lexical collocation because it is a cultural reflection of the (textual) situation within a specific historical and social context

(compare, for instance, the English expression calf love and its entirely different connotations). Interestingly, no such

discourse stereotype can be found for the combination poslednyaya lyubov', lit. 'last love', though one can easily imagine a

story about such a relationship. In fact, poslednyaya lyubov' seems to be a free rather than a restricted collocation.

Another example, sal'ericheskaya zavist', lit. 'Salieri's envy', can be described as a collocation whose meaning is

associated by native speakers of Russian with Aleksandr Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri: the mediocre Salieri envies Mozart

his talent and murders him out of

jealousy. In contemporary Russian, the expression denotes destructive feelings of jealousy towards a gifted person.

To a certain extent, restricted collocations such as evreyskiy vopros, lit. 'the Jewish problem', zhenskiy vopros, lit. 'the

women's problem', russkaya dusha, lit. 'the Russian soul', can also be looked upon as discourse stereotypes, though they were not originally borrowed from the writing of a specific author but rather allude to a whole collection of anonymous

texts of the same genre and with a common ideological basis. Such borrowings are described in greater detail below.

As has already been stated, one of the aims of this chapter is to answer the question whether cultural Weltansicht is

imposed by language, or, in other words, whether native speakers' cultural patterns really are locked up in language. In

our view, the analysis of phraseology in terms of cultural components of meaning provides the basis for a positive answer.

We provide below, as one set of examples, some Russian phraseologisms describing women. They illustrate the general

idea of how the cultural concept of gender is encoded in Russian.

In the Russian mentality, glupaya baba, lit. 'a silly common female', serves as a stereotype of the low intellectual capacity

of women (compare also sayings like U babui volos dolog, um korotok, lit. 'Women have long hair and short intellect').

Phraseologisms such as devich'ya pamyat', lit. 'a maiden's memory', i.e. a short memory, zhenskaya logika, lit. 'feminine

logic', i.e. illogical logic, also refer to the same stereotype. Restricted lexical collocations play the part of signs for such

stereotypes and thus become cultural symbols. Compare also a derogatory collocation often used in political debate today,

bab'ya politika, lit. 'women's politics', i.e. unreasonable, contradictory, and absurd politics, the slang musical term babiy

ritm, lit. 'women's beat', i.e. no beat at all, and many other collocations with the word baba whose connotation is

'incompetence'. In fact, the cultural norm that allows speakers to represent the idea of incapacity, incompetence, and so

on through the image of women means the perpetuation of a patriarchal cultural attitude towards women as inferior

human beings. Similar explanations could be given for idiomatic expressions referring to the stereotype of gulyashchaya,

lit. 'strolling' or 'loose'. Also, a cultural norm that views woman as an object is reflected in such collocations as

appetitnaya, lit. 'appetizing', puishnaya, lit. 'plump', and sdobnaya, lit. 'shortening', baba. The woman is literally an object

of consumption for males (an item of food). At the same time, female sexuality is defined in other restricted collocations in

an utterly repressive way. Devich'ya/zhenskaya gordost', lit. 'maidenly/female pride', and devichiy/zhenskiy stuid/grekh,

lit. 'maidenly/female shame/sin', imply a very severe moral standard for women to conform to in sexual

relations. Patriarchal gender as represented in these (and many other) expressions still preserves its power -- in spite of

the fact that presentday native speakers of Russian were brought up in the Soviet state, which claimed to have

emancipated women.To conclude, we would suggest that a number of research procedures could be used in the

identification and description of the cultural component of meaning:

• deciphering the metaphor (or other kind of figurative meaning);

• establishing its prototypic relation to other tropes that derive from the same kernel metaphor;

• connecting the perception thus elicited from its associative image-based motivation with a cultural category through

specific standards, prototypes, stereotypes, myths, archetypes, etc.;

• representing a phraseologism as a cultural sign expressing speakers' collective mentality.

The point of departure in this chain of cultural reflection would be the image (or any other isomorphic entity) which serves

as a source of semantic transposition of a free lexeme into a collocator, or of a collocation into an idiom. The central point

would be cultural interpretation (in the sense of insight) that forms the basis of a culturally marked connotation. Clearly,

the role of metaphor is crucial, and it will be outlined in the next section.