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Contemporary Issues of Linguistics and Translation
UDC 81.23
Peshkova Natalia Petrovna Baskir State University
LANGUAGE CONSCIOUSNESS INVESTIGATION BASED ON MODELLING COMPREHENSION OF DIFFERENT TEXT-TYPES
Abstract
The paper considers some advantages of the experimental "counter-text" or "internal text" method based on the "text psycholinguistics" principles. Text comprehension models discussed in the article have been developed by the author in collaboration with the team of young researchers from the Bashkir State University using the approach founded by Professor A.I. Novikov (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences). Science texts and popular scientific literature, fiction and the Bible are used as an object of comprehension in the experimental work. The local models constructed on the basis of different text-types form integral parts of the interactive text comprehension model which is an open system to be further developed and improved.
The experimental data obtained at different stages of the research based on the "internal text" method present interest from the viewpoint of both sociolinguistics and culture studies providing us with the information concerning language consciousness peculiarities of the Russian youth belonging to a poly-ethnic region, and, in particular, the cultural values of Bashkortostan student society.
Keywords: text psycholinguistics, 'counter-text'/'internal text' method, text comprehension strategies, language consciousness, cultural values
Introduction
The present research was stimulated by a series of articles of a sociological nature devoted to the socio-cultural characteristics of the young Russian generation living in mono-ethnic regions of the central part of the Russian Federation [1], [18].
The problem was that there could be observed an evident disagreement between the conclusions based on sociological polling published in Russian journals of sociology and the psycholinguistic experimental data obtained by the author of the present paper in collaboration with the team of young researchers from the Bashkir State University.
The purpose of the research presented in this article is to analyze the experimental psycho-linguistic data we have obtained by means of the 'counter-text' method from the viewpoint of sociolinguistics and cultural studies to contribute to solving the problem of revealing some characteristics of the language consciousness of the young generation belonging to a poly-ethnic region.
Theoretical principles and practical advantages of the 'counter-text' method
We should emphasize the fact that sociological opinion polling in the form of direct questions registers answers (in verbal form) which reflect actively changing instrumental values (close to the material necessities of life) lying on the surface of our consciousness. As for the opinion of psychologists on the problem, they usually note that direct verbal questionnaires may result in quite inadequate presentation of values held by a person because of some verbal taboos and other barriers [8].
The 'barriers' mentioned may be associated with the young people's claims to look 'cool', to be in line with the values of the Internet community, popular films, etc. Such feelings dictate direct answers, which do not reflect real personal values but are often closely connected to reflexive value ideas and notions, even declarative and pretentious statements. Psycholinguistic instruments of penetration into individual language consciousness, such as associative experiments and the 'counter-text' ('internal text') method, make it possible to investigate not only the surface structures but some deep layers of a person's consciousness.
It should be mentioned that our first challenge was to investigate the process of text comprehension with the purpose of building an interactive model of comprehension based on the ideas developed by Professor A. Novikov (the former Head of the Applied Linguistics Department of the Moscow Institute of Linguistics, the Russian Academy of Sciences) and his followers within the paradigm called by its founder as 'text psycholinguistics'. According to this theory information perception and text comprehension is an on-line process of generating internal text or 'counter-text' in a recipient's mind as a response to an original text that plays the role of stimulus [10], [12].
Suggested by N. Zhinkin and developed by A. Novikov, the 'counter-text' or 'internal text' hypothesis is based on the idea of the active recipient. In the process of text comprehension a recipient's consciousness is not just a screen for content projection. An addressee is an active constructor generating some individual internal "counter-text" [11, p. 177]. Recipients generate their associations, express personal attitudes and opinions, evaluate the information emotionally and logically. The approach known in the Russian linguistics as "text psycholinguistics" is associated with 'the Novikov school' [17] to which a team of young researchers working in collaboration with the author of this paper belong. So it is worth dwelling on Professor Novikov's 'text and sense' theory and his ideas of written text comprehension. According to Novikov, in the process of comprehension the verbal form of the text is being decoded, it is acquiring its content and sense while interacting with the recipient's consciousness, and as a result of this interaction the text sense being formed is an is an intellectual (not verbal) phenomenon [10, p. 31].
In the process of text comprehension an essential role is played by the factor known as anticipation; some possible situation based on the recipient's previous experience and knowledge is anticipated and forecasted [12, p.187]. Text recipients are directed by so-called encyclopaedic knowledge, the individual scheme of knowledge concerning the world, personal practical experience and besides by their psychological and physiological peculiarities, by their age, sex, etc. All these factors affect perception mechanisms, which could be considered, alternately, as comprehension strategies.
While perceiving text information a recipient is actually carrying on an internal dialogue with the text, more exactly with its author, and simultaneously he (she) is dialoguing with himself (herself) as well. In this process recipients turn to their previous knowledge and experience, to their individual memory and at the same time to the information just taken from the text, to personal associations and associations typical of the social group they belong. All these factors, accompanied by feelings, emotions and evaluations, form the grounds for the internal text, the essence of which is made up by the emotion and sense dominant. A. Novikov compared the latter with the physiological dominant introduced by A. Ukhtomsky [op.cit.].
We should emphasize the fact that the advantage of the 'internal text' method based on the principles suggested by Novikov and developed later by his followers is in making a comprehension process that is unobservable directly to some extent explicit due to the specific procedure technique used by the researcher. While perceiving a written text our recipients register their personal reactions themselves in written form, thereby revealing to a certain extent the mechanisms and strategies of text comprehension. An experimenter gets an opportunity of studying deep mental processes generated in the recipient's mind by analyzing a set of verbal reactions. These reactions demonstrate how a recipient is reconstructing an initial hypothetical situation perceived by him after reading the first sentence into the final situation related to the text meaning and sense.
In short, the procedure technique of the 'counter-text' method is as follows. The participants of our experiments are usually given the task of reading a source-text sentence by sentence without running ahead and of writing 'everything that crosses their minds' in connection with this particular sentence. Thus, they should register in a written form all the associations, emotions, evaluations, visual images, ideas, conclusions, recollections, etc., that are caused either by a sentence or a part of it (a phrase, a word, etc.). To put it another way, a sentence plays the role of a stimulus to which a recipient gives a response without any restrictions.
We should also mention that twenty-five reaction types have been discovered and described by now. Professor A. Novikov revealed fifteen reactions studying literature and scientific technical texts as an object of comprehension [op.cit.]. Other types of recipients' responses were revealed by us while investigating comprehension strategies of popular-science texts [13], biblical texts [2] and fashion journals [9], special texts of social and cultural content [15].
The so-called 'relative reactions' associated mostly with the sense of the text (opposite to its content) are of special interest to the present investigation as they demonstrate a recipient's attitude to the information interpreted and are expressed verbally in such forms as evaluations, opinions, judgment, etc. The total number of such reaction-types amounts to 40%-60 % depending on the text-types perceived by recipients.
We should emphasize the fact that the experimental data obtained at different stages of our research by means of the 'counter-text' method are of interest from the viewpoint of both sociolin-guistics and cultural studies. The experimental data provide us with some facts concerning regional characteristics of the language consciousness of young Russians and, in particular, the basic cultural values of Bashkortostan students.
On the one hand, our experimental data demonstrate that verbal reactions forming the 'internal text'
registered by recipients themselves participating in our experiments, first of all, reveal text-comprehension mechanisms underlying more general laws of understanding and comprehension strategies. Much attention was given to text-comprehension modeling and text-comprehension strategies in a number of well-known studies. Special interest to us present the researches conducted by T.A. van Dijk, W. Kintsch and J. Keenan, W. Kintsch and P. Mangalath etc. [3], [4],[5],[6] [7].
On the other hand, the data obtained by our experiments give us some information concerning "authors" of the 'counter-texts', and, in particular, their social position, social-group membership, national and cultural characteristics. Even the verbal form of the reactions can by itself be quite revealing. For example, some of the responses are marked by slang used either by young people and students or by some professional groups, which also signals information about the recipients' social groups and positions.
Theoretical and experimental results obtained by the 'internal-text' method
While modeling language consciousness with the help of the 'internal text' method, we should be aware of the fact that the text-type chosen to research is one of the most significant factors that could provoke the demonstration of the specific national and cultural character of recipients' language consciousness, as in the case of responding to biblical texts; or, on the contrary, it could neutralize similar demonstrations, as scientific texts do [14].
The reaction-type is another important factor to investigate in this respect. Some of the reactions are, so to say, quite evident information carriers. These reaction-types are direct manifestations of recipients' basic values, ideals and cultural priorities - among them 'opinion', 'evaluation', 'association' (of any kind) and 'inter-text' (that is citation of well-known literature, proverbs and sayings or reference to some popular films, etc.). In these reactions the participants in our experiments often address the Bible, the Koran, popular and classic literature, and Russian and Bashkir fairy tales. As for the reactions of 'generalization', 'interpretation', 'visualization', they can also contain some relevant information but usually implicitly compared with the reactions mentioned above [15].
Some examples of similar reactions from our experimental data revealing characteristics of language consciousness and reflecting basic cultural values will be given below translated into the English language. A sentence from a source text used as an object of comprehension is given first followed then by a recipient's response. ("R."= recipient). The examples are taken from the experiments described and analyzed in [2], [14], [15].
In the researches mentioned above the participants read and interpreted passages from the Bible: about Adam and Eve [2], and the Fall [14]. The texts were taken from the 'Bible for family and school' edited by archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy (1987), as one of the most popular editions adapted to the younger generation.
One hundred and forty students, from the age group 18 to 20 years old, studying at the physical, mathematical and chemical departments of the Bashkir State University, took part in the experiments. In respect of the parameter 'a language bearer', the audience can be described as mixed. Besides, half of the participants are characterized as bilingual. They can speak both languages of our region fluently, Russian and Bashkir; in some cases it is Russian and Tatar. For Bashkir and
Tatar young people, as they usually admit, Russian is their second native language [16, p. 347]. As for Russian students, it should be mentioned that they are typically mono-lingual.
We followed the original 'counter-text' method procedure, which means that all the sentences of the source-texts are enumerated; the recipients register their reactions themselves in written form; a recipient's response number corresponds to the number of the sentence from the source-text. As a result of all the stages of the experiments the investigators have collected and analyzed 23,660 reactions.
We can state that every 'internal text' generated by the recipients of the biblical text contains reactions which express directly or indirectly their opinions, evaluations, judgments concerning Good and Evil, Love, Family values, etc. We should also note that while some sentences from the source-text actually provoke such reactions because they mention the names of Adam and Eve or include such words as 'man', 'husband', 'woman', others cause similar reactions implicitly.
Bellow we consider some responses which reflect the recipients' attitude to family, bonds of love, etc.
"The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh'".
R. 1. The first people, the LORD God created them, a man and a woman: she was made of his rib, not of his leg, lest she should be humiliated (humbled), not of his head, lest she should be superior, but of his rib, to be side by side with him, to be protected by him, and of left rib, I think, close to his heart, to be loved by him.
R. 2. Good people, they lived as a good family, without troubles and problems, without poverty. But our proverb says 'When you are with your darling a poor hut seems to be the Eden to you!'
R. 3. It is love between a man and a woman that makes you heavenly happy. But you can always find somebody who will envy your happiness.
As we can see most of the reactions demonstrate directly the value of love and family for the participants of the experiments.
We cannot but admit the fact that in evaluating family relations most of our respondents demonstrate an inclination towards patriarchal views, revealing a tendency towards traditional gender notions about a strong and clever man and a weak woman. We can give some examples to support the above statement concerning the patriarchal mood of this part of our experimental audience.
"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."
R. 1. And what about her husband?! And our old wisdom - a wife follows her husband like a thread follows a needle!
R. 2. And he was keeping silence? He should have objected!
R. 3. He should be wiser and more reserved, he is her defender! He must prevent her from getting into trouble and making wrong decisions. He should tell her 'No!'
R. 4. It means that all the time Eve was with her husband?! I wonder what he was looking at all the time?!!
R. 5. A weak and silly woman she is.
R. 6. So, a silly girl believed the serpent.
R. 7. A good husband makes a good wife - as the proverb says. (Word-for-word translation of this Russian saying is as follows. 'A husband is the same devil as his wife is'.)
It should be said that these opinions and evaluations reflect some eternal traditional gender relations of the three ethnic groups - Bashkir, Tatar and Russian - to which most of our experiment participants belong.
There is one important factor of influence we'd like to emphasize in connection with our recipients' language consciousness characteristics. The joint and cooperative life of the above three ethnic groups within one and the same territory over a long period of time makes for the process of interference and interpenetration of a number of national and cultural characteristics of language consciousness from one group into another. Under the conditions of sharing life space for several centuries the interference process contributes to forming some characteristics common to the verbal consciousness of the young representatives of these three ethnic groups despite all the national and cultural differences.
Here we can refer to the regional investigation carried out by E. Salikhova, where the researcher gives some typical examples of bilingual self-identification. Most of her Bashkir respondents say that Bashkir is their first native language, but Russian is an integral part of their social life and their second native language too [16, p. 347].
As for native speakers of the Russian language, most of them speak neither Bashkir nor Tatar because of the absence of any practical necessity. Yet, as our experiments show, their verbal consciousness is actually influenced by some basic cultural values of the neighboring ethnic groups, especially under the conditions of mixed marriage, quite typical of our region. In any case, the conditions of life in a poly-ethnic region make them more tolerant and sympathetic to those with whom they are sharing their life space.
Some examples given below illustrate the respondents' attitudes towards Good and Evil, their tolerance and sympathy to those at fault or even to breakers of the Law. At the same time we can observe responses demonstrating obedience to the Law and the wish to observe God's Commandments.
"And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken".
R. 1. So, sin is disobedience, it is evil. They have broken the LORD God's Law.
R. 2. People disobeyed the LORD God, they made the first sin.
R. 3. All people are sinners. There's no ideal human.
R. 4. There is no such a tree and there are no its fruit in our life. But there are some moral principles. There are the Bible Commandments - we cannot kill, steal, tell a lie and commit adultery.
R. 5. Poor people! I think they didn't mean any harm.
R. 6. They disobeyed like silly babies. I'm sorry for them!
R. 7. I think, a sin is something bad. To sin means to steal, to kill, to betray. The Koran also condemns it.
We should also note here that for Moslems obedience is positively associated with respect for the elder generation and it is reflected much more in modern Bashkir and Tatar cultural traditions compared with the Russian ones.
In the recipients' responses we can see some references to the Koran, though in the latter, as we know, there is no idea of sin as it is formulated in the Christian culture. Some of our respondents try to compare the moral principles of modern life with the Bible's commandments and the Koran's content, associating them with Good and opposing them to Evil.
Finally, we would like to give some responses evaluating Eve's action.
"Then the LORD God said to the woman, 'What is this you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate'".
R. 1. Eve is not to blame. She is just curious, it is so typical to a woman!
R. 2. Poor dear Eve! Perhaps she wished she made it better! She didn't mean any harm.
R. 3. I'm so sorry for Eve! There's such a burden over her!
R. 4. It was not only Eve who couldn't resist the temptation. I don't condemn her.
R. 5. It is so easy to judge now! But what would you do if you were in her place?!
As we can observe, some of our respondents try to imagine themselves being in Eve's place to realize the dramatic atmosphere of the situation, practically, nobody condemn her action. There are also no commentaries of religious content, though about 20% of the experiment participants positioned themselves as Orthodox Christians. Most of the recipients' evaluations and opinions demonstrate sympathy for Eve's weakness and tolerance to her fault.
Conclusions
Thus, summing up we come to the following conclusions. First, the 'counter-text' or 'internal text' method has proved to be a good instrument to reveal the peculiarities and characteristics of language consciousness from the viewpoints of both psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. The method has provided us with information obtained implicitly, which could be considered as more
reliable because data in the form of answers to direct questions would result in some deviations in reflecting personal values due to definite verbal taboos and cultural barriers.
Second, the verbal responses forming the 'counter-text' generated by the young recipients of the biblical texts, students of the Bashkir State University, residents of a typical poly-ethnic region of Russia, have shown that in the process of reading and interpreting the information our young respondents are turning both to their own personal experience and to the traditional cultural values of the ethnic group to which they belong as reflected in literature and different forms of national proverbs and sayings. Thereby they demonstrate some stability in the general values that form the basis of the archetypal values of the national mentality.
Third, we should like to argue that, as far as we can judge by our research compared to a number of sociological investigations carried out in our country [1]; [18], the young generation of a poly-ethnic region can be characterized as less aggressive, more tolerant and political correct with regard to the 'different' and to the 'alien', compared to the young people in mono-ethnic regions. The experimental data obtained enable us to state that most of the representatives of the young generation belonging to the poly-ethnic region of Bashkortostan share such values as family, love, tolerance and sympathy for the weak. We think that our investigation contributes to the so-called language consciousness 'collective portrait' of a young person born and living all his life in a poly-ethnic environment.
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Information about the author
Natalia P. Peshkova, Bashkir State University, Russia, Ufa
Head of Foreign Languages Department for Natural Science Faculties
Professor, Doctor of Philology
Personal Phones: +7 917 46 69 652; + 7 (347) 273-30-91
Personal e-mail address: peshkovanp a ramhler.ru
University Phones:
+ 7 (347) 272-63-70; +7 (347) 229-96-16;
+ 7 (347) 229-96-69 (Foreign Languages Department)
University e-mail address: rector@ bsu.bashedu.ru
