СПЕЦИФИКА СТРОЕНИЯ ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ЯЗЫКОВОГО СОЗНАНИЯ

Introduction

All theoretical considerations about linguistic consciousness are based on the necessity of sorting out such concepts as “mind”, “mentality” and “consciousness”. These concepts are used to describe the processes of perception and understanding of the real world by a man. Alongside, these concepts reflect the interaction of a person with his surrounding reality, including his professional sphere. There is one common thing that unites the three above concepts, specifically; it is the fact that they characterize the effect of the cognitive-reception mechanism. But it is also obvious that each of those concepts has a unique content, and they can not be considered as synonyms. Semantic fields and lexical-semantic fields can be regarded as the indicators of the specifics of the linguistic consciousness structure. The research of these fields makes available some important information regarding the peculiarities of the organization of linguistic mentality. On top of that, the study of the organization of a semantic field can provide undeniable evidence about the activity nature and the professional determinism of linguistic consciousness.

Methodology

It is important to clarify the distinctions between such concepts as “mind”, “mentality” and “consciousness”. All of them denote a general capacity for mental activity. “Mind” and “mentality” describe any awareness of thinking processes or any meaningful activity of living creatures [8] whereas the term “mentality” is more applicable in the situations where it is essential to emphasize the national-cultural specifics of the perceptual mechanism. The concept “mentality” designates the mechanisms of perception «…attributed not only to an abstract reflexive subject, but also to a representative of a particular ethnic or social group» [4, P. 5]. The term “mentality” is most commonly used in such areas as: national psychology, intercultural communication, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Certain communities are characterized by similar stereotypes of consciousness that predetermine the specificity of the process of their perception of reality and this mental unity is called mentality.

Human consciousness is conditioned through accepting cultural, ethnic, axiological and socio-economic features of the environment. Linguistic consciousness, as an integral part of human consciousness since it is connected with speech activity, and speech activity is culturally, axiologically and ethnically marked: «There can be hardly any objections against the statement about the national and cultural determinism of linguistic consciousness» [11, P. 59]. Also, it has been proved that «…different psychological attitudes and sets predetermine the perception of environment» [6, P. 11]. This postulate is based on the theory of the socio-cultural determination of personality, which has been developed by L.S. Vygotsky [1] and J. Piaget [10] and their disciples [9]. The connection of linguistic consciousness with reality, social being and professional activity of an individual is obvious and it has been proved by many studies in the field of psychology and psycholinguistic.

In the development of an individual’s consciousness, a crucial role belongs to objective activity, which has been convincingly described in the works of A.N. Leontiev and A.A. Leontiev. In his monograph “Activity. Consciousness. Personality”, A.N. Leontyev examines the relationship between such key concepts as “consciousness and activity” (Chapter 4) and “personality and activity” (Chapter 5) [3].

Objective activity plays a crucial role in the process of the evolution of consciousness of an individual. As well, the role of objective activity in the development of a human’s personality is of vital importance. A.N. Leontyev argues that objective activity is the main “generator” of an individual. There is another assumption that has to be taken into consideration at this point – objective activity is the basis for the formation of any individual. A.N. Leontyev has provided a sound explanation of the relationship between professional activity and the mentality of an individual. He affirms that in the course of a human mentality studies, the category of objective human activity is believed to be the basis of internal structure. This category helps to judge about human’s personality mediations and the forms of mental reflections. Besides, the examination of a human mentality helps answering the question about the constituents of a permanent psychological basis of a personality. The set of these constituents predetermine the characteristic of a person precisely as a person. Finally, A.N. Leontyev draws the conclusion that the real basis of a human’s personality is the totality of his public attitudes towards the world. These attitudes are realized through a human’s activity or the combination of his diverse activities [3, P. 89].

As seen, the activity aspect of the personality is directly connected with the reflexive mechanism operation. Only living beings possess an ability to reflect actively on the surrounding reality, which is described as operation of a reflex mechanism. There is another conclusion that can be drawn so far – awareness of reality is an activity by itself. A human’s activity is impossible without the mechanism of perception, which mediates the majority of mental processes and reactions.  

Thus, the link between human’s mentality and linguistic consciousness on the one hand and human’s activity on the other hand has been demonstrated in the theoretical works and practical studies of the Russian psycholinguists and psychologists. Specifically, the crucial importance of objective activity in the genesis of consciousness has been analyzed. According to Russian psycholinguists and psychologists, both external and internal activities are mediated and regulated by the psychical reflection of the reality. In the objective world, there exist motives, goals and conditions that predestinate human’s activity. At first, the information that is received as the result of reflection, must be perceived and understood. Then, this information is retained in a human’s memory in one way or another; and finally, it is presented and reproduced in different forms. This mechanism functions along with a human’s activity mechanism and it can be applied towards a human state and his features. What is really important for us is the fact that motives, goals and conditions of an individual’s activity predetermine the processes of perception and representation. They predetermine the specificity of the conditions of perception and the essence of perceived information. As well, motives, goals and conditions of an individual’s activity mediate the professional activity characteristics. Thus, any act of speech perception and speech production can be regarded as professionally determined activity.

Discussion

All images of consciousness can be divided into those that are created as a result of sensory perception and those that are created as a result of information perception. However, all types of images acquire an individualized character as a result of the acquisition of knowledge generated by particular socio-cultural and professional groups. Correlation and comparison of information is an obligatory stage in the appearance of images of consciousness. As for sensory images, they are the result of processing sensory data. The process of perception starts when a person derives from his memory a certain image, the content of which comprises the knowledge of the culture of a particular society. This mechanism embeds sensual images in the system of cultural knowledge.

E.F. Tarasov argues that consciousness exists as an objective reality, and every member of a society has an opportunity to internalize through interpersonal communication. Consciousness of an individual is a social product, because in its design, one can figure out an individual’s belonging to a certain social group. Moreover, consciousness of an individual has an impact of an individual’s belonging to a certain professional group [7]. If one applies a well-known theory of socio-cultural development by L.S. Vygotsky, then, it is appropriate to make the following comparison. Just as a child participates in the cultural events of a particular society, an adult, at the beginning of his professional activity, is attached to the culture of a certain professional community. In this way, one can speak about the internalization of knowledge that occurs in social interaction in a certain professional environment and that affects the formation of the professional linguistic consciousness of an individual.

Linguistic consciousness is associated with language, and with various spheres of human activity. Consciousness, as a conscious process, has its own arsenal of linguistic means that verbally represent the professional sphere of an individual. For example, all kinds of professional discourse practices, professional terms and terminology reveal the representatives of a certain professional knowledge. Thus, we can talk about the existence of a segment of language consciousness, determined by the professional activity of a native speaker. In order to create the ground for the statement about the professional marking of linguistic consciousness, it is important to mention the fact of interconnection of the linguistic consciousness of the members of a society with the whole sum of knowledge accumulated by this society.

Conclusion

To sum up, taking into consideration everything what has been said above, we can draw three important conclusions. First, the professional community is a micro-society. When an individual becomes a member of this society he becomes inevitably attached to a certain system of knowledge, which ultimately affects the formation of the images of his consciousness. Secondly, the part of a culture of a certain society is a professional culture, and while acquiring it, an individual comprehends all verbal representations of this culture. Finally, special communicative spaces are formed in all social-professional spheres; there exist culturally marked professional genres and culturally marked strategies of communication [5, P. 55]. It has been proved that all social-professional spheres have objective structure and the system of genres. If professional diversification happens on the level of language and discourse, then, linguistic consciousness of the representatives of various professional languages should be different as well [2; P. 128].