ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ РЕЧЕВОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ В ТЕРМИНАХ ХОЛИЗМА

Introduction

Changing environmental conditions force a person to adapt to them through a holistic (unifying all aspects of his/her being) approach to his/her own existence. This method gives indisputable advantages in the studying and understanding of man, society, and the world in their inseparable connection and interaction (for details, see [2, P. 44]). Holism, as it is stated in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought [11], is the notion that all the elements in a system, whether physical, biological, social, or political, are interconnected and therefore should be appreciated as a whole.

The term itself appeared in the terminological scientific, or rather philosophical, domain thanks to the book Holism and Evolution [12] by the South African statesman, military leader, and bright supporter of organismic theory, Jan Smuts. In his opinion, this concept was presented as eliminating contradictions in the views of various scientists on the origin and development of various (material, psychic, mental, spiritual) entities.

The concept of holism is based on the understanding of the Universe represented by hierarchically organized holistic entities, from the elementary, inorganic principles to the complex ones that represent the elementary principles’ progressive development and stratification.

It should be noted that the ideas outlined in the book by J. Smuts are not new. Actually, the founder of Russian cosmism, Nikolai Fedorov, in his book Filosofiya Obshchego Dela / The Common Cause Philosophy [5], also appeals to the holistic concept of integrity using another word, vseyedinstvo / universal unity. He claims the necessity to overcome separation in all areas of human life. The world is complete, according to the researcher’s point of view, and the separation of man and nature is accidental and caused by human incomprehension.

Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, arguing about the knowledge of the truth, says that the material of the whole knowledge is given by experience. Usually, experience can be divided into external and internal, but as a matter of fact, an external experience is contradictio in adjecto. According to the definition, the experience is the entity a person tests or experiences. Obviously, he/she can experience only that which is located, in one way or another, in him/her or exists for him/her. Indeed, Soloviev says that everything that is called an external experience, everything that relates to so-called external objects, is reduced in its material content to our sensations, that is, to the facts of our inner consciousness and to the data of our mental life. Any statement of external existence is already our own conclusion from these data, although the conclusion is not discursive or abstract but intuitive and completely immediate [4].

Obviously, an individual in this case is self-sufficient and holistic. He/she, as put forth by Umberto Maturana, is a living system, an autonomous entity, or an autopoietic system, which exists in the continuous interaction with the natural surroundings. The higher the system’s adaptive ability, the more effective the interaction is [9, P. 6]. According to the biological theory of knowledge, an increase in the efficiency of the interplay between an organism and the habitat is due to the adaptive activity to the language as a natural biological phenomenon.

Method

The study of human speech conducted through the prism of a holistic approach involves a generalizing study of the biological, psychological, and social attributes of the individual in the process of his/her cooperation with the people who are alike and the surrounding reality.

The unity of man and the environment inevitably leads to changes in the understanding of human nature, revealing invisible equality between them, explaining the deep foundation of the phenomenon of holism, and understanding this vital consensus.

Study methods include system analysis and discourse analysis, as well as comparative and statistical methods.

Problem Statement

The outlined trend towards the convergence of hetero-gender standards of speech behaviour, leveling the difference between sex (biological) and gender (social), is due to the adaptation of individuals to the changing conditions of their existence. “The biologically determined, innate value systems are still present, but are less determinative of meaning than when they operate alone. Furthermore, they appear to be evolutionarily adapted for rewarding forms of social interaction such as imitation which support the development of conventions” [17, P. 261]. The situation where the strongest one (the individual who is more adjusted to the natural surroundings) survives dictates a certain model of a verbal way of acting – the categorical one.

Masculine speech conduct is traditionally considered to be more categorical, since it is characterized by high egocentricity and the presence of tactics of direct influence on the communicative partner. Feminine speech conduct, unlike masculine, is considered less categorical in potential conflict and direct conflict situations, since women generally tend to maintain cooperative relations with the communicative partner. However, according to gender researchers from different countries, in the feminine speech demeanor of representatives of various cultures, the tendency toward its coarsening has been outlined, which shows the phenomenon of communicative androgyny.

Trying on a model of an instrumental leader, a woman imitates a masculine modus operandi, representing herself through the categorical verbal way of acting. Due to the fact that intrinsic value is associated with emotions and feelings, where an individual experiences a negative value as negative emotions and a positive value as positive emotions, a feeling of self-reliance as a positive value determines the change in feminine speech demeanor in the direction of increasing its categorical quality [14, P. 119].

Speaking about feelings and emotions, it is important to mention that the feelings of pleasure (a positive emotion) and pain (a negative emotion) serve as not only important sources of information for people about their environment but also motivate seeking and avoidance conduct.  To human beings, pleasure, as it is stated in [10], represents things in the habitat that are good (i.e., to be sought), and pain represents things that are bad (i.e., to be avoided).

Opportunities that make it possible to remove social and gender differences reveal the biological characteristics of an individual – dominance for the sake of survival.

Discussion

From the point of view of the concept of the biological theory of knowledge, human language activity is considered as certain behavioural structures in the cognitive field of interactions that have orienting character and serve the biological function of the organism’s adaptation to the natural surroundings with the subsequent transition to its management (for details, see [3, P. 190]).

If the development of a person as a species is due to his/her ability to somehow influence his/her environment, then a change in feminine speech demeanor, in turn, should lead to a change in masculine speech conduct, showing the orienting effect of one organism on another one in order to modify its behavioural reaction to optimize the interaction of the first organism with the habitat for its survival. Consequently, a change in female speech behaviour towards its masculinization contributes to the feminization of male speech conduct.

This change, as discussed by neuro-psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein [8], is due to the stimulating or over-stimulating impacts of the habitat on the organism in which its organic balance is disturbed. As a result, an organism, having become out of balance, searches for the necessary conditions in its surroundings for leveling internal stress. According to the researcher, this continuous alignment process means that the invasion of the environment into the organism, which cannot change the organism’s demeanor against its will (except for the anomalous conditions), is alien to its nature. Moreover, the organism chooses the object of its reaction (property environment). When the control over the habitat is lost, the organism switches on an adaptation mechanism.

At the moment of the imbalance of the individual with the natural surroundings [1], an emotional reaction arises in the form of a short-term response to a specific stimulus, which destroys emotional stability. Having a regulatory-behavioural nature, this emotional reaction (fear or anger) is reflected in a verbal and non-verbal way of acting by an individual regardless of his/her gender [13, P. 27].

An unsuccessful attempt to control the emotion of anger or fear is the cause of hysterics as a particular case of hysteria, one of the manifestations of a disturbed (unstable emotional) state.

The statement that the phenomenon of hysteria is inherent only in “the weaker sex” due to its physiological characteristics (the meaning of the lexeme hysteria from hystera [womb] [6, P. 502]) confirms the gender stereotype about the natural predominance of emotions over the mind in women, which causes their unstable emotional state in general and, in particular, the state of hysteria (for details, see [7], [16]). However, an analysis of the empirical data of Modern English shows the gender universality of this phenomenon caused by the emotion of fear.

Despite the fact that the purely feminine physiological conditionality of the nature of the phenomenon in question was leveled back in the early twentieth century by Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger, who said that “I do not deny that there are also hysterical men, although these are relatively rare, since one of the infinite number of possibilities in the psyche of Man is to become a woman, and consequently to be hysterical if the occasion arises” [16, P. 240], the social essence of its existence as a female phenomenon is still evident.

The “conversion” to a woman is caused by a change in the man’s speech demeanor in the process of cooperation with his surroundings. Since a person as a living organism is an integral part of the habitat (society, world), his/her adaptive interaction with it is a circular process. By cooperating with similar creatures, a person influences their behaviour, thereby changing the structure of the world and the causal connections that form this structure.

Conclusion

In modern society, which is far from holism, each individual striving for gender dominance is of greater value than the society itself. The social way of acting, caused by the prescriptions based on individualism, shows a potentially conflicting confrontation.

In a situation of open confrontation, a female discourse is characterized by a high degree of categorical quality, such as the use of invective vocabulary, which indicates a violation of the gender communicative norm. This indicates that the taboo vocabulary loses the status of a non-equivalent gender attribute characteristic of the representatives of the masculine gender group. The convergence of standards of masculine and feminine speech demeanor represents the phenomenon of communicative androgyny.

The androgynous model of a man's speech conduct deprives him of external formal masculinity, exposing his true content essence, which is free from gender stereotypes imposed by society. Consequently, a man (male) who openly manifests his emotional instability increases his adaptive potential in the process of leveling internal tension through increasing emotional flexibility, or in other words, adaptability. In the epoch of tolerance, this tendency appears to be a natural phenomenon that represents a tolerant attitude towards the non-fulfillment of the requirements attributed by society to masculine and feminine types of behaviour.

Communicative androgyny is not just a combination of male and female socio-psychological qualities in one individual with the existence of a psychosomatic individuality. It is also a characteristic of the speech conduct itself that does not have clear gender parameters.

The androgynous speech behaviour of an individual in a state of disturbed organic equilibrium reflects the merging of opposing phenomena and the feelings of confidence (certainty) and uncertainty. This is represented through categorical and non-categorical speech demeanor.

The sociocultural environment of individuals’ interaction ultimately determines not only the types of men and women’s activities but also the psychological attributes of their behaviour model based largely on their sex.

A holistic approach to the study of a person implies a generalized consideration of his/her biological, psychological, and social attributes in the process of cooperation with the environment and represents the unity of the individual with the surrounding reality, revealing invisible equality between them.