Culture: Towards its explanatory charge in discourse linguistics

Abstract

The article reviews various culture theories and analyses the ways these can be operationalized in discourse linguistics. Culture is seen as a complex and multifaceted category that includes material, social, and mental culture, i.e. 'things', 'behaviour', and 'values', 'knowledge', 'mentality' and so forth. The understanding of culture is intertwined with that of language. Therefore we show that the notion of 'culture' is the object of investigation of cultural linguistics (kulturwissenschaftliche Linguistik) and discourse linguistics. Linguistic studies investigating the relationship between the language(s) and culture(s) can distinguish two methodological approaches. One of the approaches is associated with the name of Wilhelm von Humboldt. This approach presents the language primarily as an ethnic or national language while understanding culture as one whole ethnic and national phenomenon. They are supposed to be in direct linguistic and mental interrelationship. Humboldt trend in the Russian linguistics is also called linguoculturology studies. In contrast, the discourse-linguistic approach is associated with discourse-mediated culturological linguistics. It describes ethnic/national languages in terms of discourses. We take the position of discourse oriented cultural linguistics that presumes that the discourses overlay ethnic/national languages, i.e. they have rules that are not ethnic or national. We consider the explanatory charge and theoretical implications of discourse oriented cultural linguistics. In the framework of the ideological contextualization of 'culture' we discuss the notions of ideology and identity. The performance of cultural identity is not a matter of articulating one identity/one culture, but of the operationalization of a repertoire of culture specific features in discourse practice.