LINGUISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS AS A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PHENOMENON

We present an effort to study the linguistic consciousness issue which currently constitutes one of significant problems in psycholinguistics due to its direct relationship to the issue of ethnic mentality. We give considerations of main provisions concerning the language and consciousness interrelations and analysis of the consciousness structure and properties. Considered as a unitary whole the consciousness represents a complicated multilayer formation which includes ontological, reflexive, chronotopical, spiritual and value-based layers to reflect interaction between personal and impersonal factors. We propose to enter into the consciousness structure another layer, that is, ethnic one which forms perception of environment and the world-view conditioned by national peculiarity. When reflected in the ethnic layer, the objective world is transformed into subjective reality which takes on the “ethnic overtone” and leaves traces on other layers of consciousness. We pay special attention to various approaches to understanding of the linguistic consciousness, since the scientists define and interpret this concept in different ways. This study considers the linguistic consciousness in ethnic aspect and defines it as a part of national consciousness and the way of the world image’s verbal perception and reflection by applying psychical processes of the speech generation and perception, the form of the ethnos life activity intermediated by a language and mechanism of adaptation to the outside world.

consciousness, thought, linguistic consciousness, national consciousness, language, speech, mentality, image of the world