Culturally relevant memory properties in English phraseology

Abstract

The paper focuses on culturally relevant properties of personal memory and the potential of natural languages in codifying them. The study is based on one of the key postulates of anthropological linguistics stating that dynamic changes in human mentality, cultural developments and newly accumulated knowledge find their reflection in the lexical subsystem of the language. Relying on the concept of phraseology as a fragment of linguistic reality bearing an information-intensive map of the national world view and the type of linguistic identity, the paper examines phraseological units verbalizing fundamental memory processes of encoding, storing, remembering and forgetting and offers a linguacultural perspective on the specifics of representing individual memory processes in English phraseology. A combination of automatic processing methods applied to analyzing authentic lexicographic sources along with conventional data-collecting procedures yielded an empirical base of the research composed of phraseological units representing key stages of mnemonic processing. To analyze the obtained data, component, lexicographic, and content-analysis methods were employed. Findings allowed compiling an inventory of mnemonic phraseological units in English, developing their typology on the basis of structural, semantic and functional criteria, identifying the proportion of each structural, semantic and stylistic type in the data sample. A multi-parameter cognitive interpretation procedure yielded a stage-based typology of mnemonic phraseological units reflecting phases of mnemonic processing, its content and nature. The results suggest a possible correlation between cultural specifics of Anglo-Saxon world view and verbal representation of individual memory on the phraseological level.

Keywords

• memory
• mnemonic process
• mnemonic phraseological unity
• national world view
• anglo-saxon linguaculture