CULTURAL CONCEPTS: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Abstract

Although the term ‘concept’ has been studied in modern linguistics for a long time, there is still no precise definition of it. Concepts-images in the mind behind linguistic signs represented by linguistic signs have recently become the subject of close attention of linguists. Originating in cognitive science, the concept of concept has become an essential tool for the study of language and has formed the basis of cognitive linguistics. Cultural concepts as a unity of the linguistic picture of the world have a national character and express the specificity of a particular language and cultural community. Concepts are important elements of worldview and culture and reflect the way members of society understand and portray reality. Through concepts, cultural knowledge and values are transmitted from generation to generation, showing the differences between different languages and cultures. Therefore, by studying the concepts of any language and reconstructing them, a deeper understanding of the linguistic picture of the world becomes possible. Within the anthropocentric approach, it is important to investigate the interaction between language and culture. Of particular interest for cultural linguistics is the attempt to identify the ethno-cultural component of a cultural concept. There is even a view that universal, universal concepts in different languages are expressed in a particular way (depending on linguistic, pragmatic and cultural factors) in oral form, where the emphasis is on the fact that cultural concepts are organised into ethnically defined associative and semantic networks.