Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica Childhoods

Research on pre-Columbian childhood refers to all those studies that consider the different evidence and expressions of children in Mesoamerica, prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Archaeology, understandably by its very focus, has been one of the most prolific disciplines that has approached this subject of study. Currently, archaeological research focuses on highlighting the different social experiences of the past (or multi-vocality) of social identities, such as gender and childhood, and its relationship with material culture. In addition, archaeologists recognize a modern stereotype that considers children as passive or dependent beings and therefore biases childhood research in the past. Consequently, it is necessary to critically evaluate the cultural specificity of past childhood since each culture has its own way of considering that stage of the life cycle. Another problem, in the archaeological study of childhood, is to consider that children are not socially important individuals. It has been said that their activities are not significant for the economy or the social realm of communities and societies of the past. From archaeology, there exists a general perception that children are virtually unrecognizable from the archaeological record because their behavior leaves few material traces, apart from child burials. It has been since feminist critiques within the discipline that the study of childhood became of vital importance in archaeology to understand the process of gender acquisition through enculturation. This process refers to the way children learn about their gender identity through the material world that surrounds them and the various rituals that prepare them to become persons. Thus, the intent of recent studies on childhood has been to call upon archaeologists to consider children as social actors capable of making meaningful decisions on their own behalf and that they make substantial contributions to their families and their communities. In this sense, studies on pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures have focused at the most basic sense on identifying the presence of children in the archaeological record or ethnohistoric sources. Its aim has been to document the different social ages that make up childhood, the ritual importance of Mesoamerican children, funerary practices, and health conditions marked in children’s bones as well as the different material and identity expressions of childhood through art and its associated material culture.

The Concept of Happiness and Its Language-Cultural Properties and Translation Problems in English and Uzbek Languages

The article discusses the means of verbalizing the concept 'happiness / baxt both as a universal and nationally specific mental structure in the English and Uzbek languages. Keywords: cognitive and comparative linguistics, concept, lexico-phraseological units, evaluativeness, national-cultural specificity.

Catch-Up Development VS. Forward-Looking Development: from Theoretical Models to Developmental State Practices

The presented article was carried out within the framework of scientific project dedicated to Russia's participation in the export and import of institutions. The solid question arose that the conditions and specificity of Russia's place in these processes are related to its position in the global world economy. These problems are considered within the framework of competing concepts of catch-up and forward-looking development in the economic literature. Comparative characteristics of methodological foundations, provisions and normative recommendations of these concepts are highlighted in the article. The analysis shows that there is no ground to justify the absolutization of their differences. Representatives of competing approaches came to the conclusion that it was necessary to search for the optimal configuration of imported and genuine institutions at the level of specific problems of development of countries that were largely on the periphery of the modern global economy. This configuration provides productive orientation of economic actors and creation of favorable conditions for the development of Schumpeterian type innovations. The solution of these tasks is linked with the formation and activities of developmental state. The functions of such a state are fundamentally different from compensating market failures that is characteristic of developed market economy. Such a state acts as a subject that forms the basic institutions of the economic system. Fundamental importance is its ability to ensure the combination of selective imports of institutions with the modification of genuine institutions that have historical and cultural specificity. Characteristics of the reasons and conditions for the successful solution of these tasks by countries such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, are highlighted in the article. The success stories are compared to the experience of partial failure of developmental state in Brazil. The fulfilled study is of interest not only for positive analysis, but also for the elaboration of normative recommendations for the formation of optimal configuration of imported and genuine institutions in contemporary Russia.

The National Specificity of the Proverbial Fund: Basic Concepts and Procedure for Determining

The article presents an attempt to define the basic concepts and proposes a methodology for identifying the national specificity of the proverbial fund of a given language in the synchronic plan. In modern linguistics, more and more attention is paid to the study of interlingual specificity / generality of proverbs, both in the theoretical (typological, language and cultural), and in the applied (linguodidactic, lexicographic) terms. However, in linguistics there is no special methodological apparatus for establishing and describing the national specificity of proverbs. The aim of the research is to develop and test the basic concepts and methodology for identifying the national specificity of the proverbial fund of the language in the synchronic plan. Research methods - interlingual comparison, structural and semantic modeling, ethnolinguistic analysis, language and cultural description. The research material was over 1,500 of the most actively used Belarusian proverbs (from its paremiological minimum, the main paremiological fund, the corpus of literary texts), as well as proverbs of the Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Romanic, Finno-Ugrian languages (more than 220,000 proverbs from the most authoritative paremiographic sources in 34 modern European languages). As a result of the study, it was found that for the differentiation of common with other languages and specific units of the proverbial fund of the language, the synchronic analysis based on the structural and semantic modeling of proverbs is the most objective. The linguistic content of the concepts national specificity of a proverbial fund, unique, international, universal proverb, national specificity of a proverb, national and language specificity, national and cultural marking of a proverb has been determined and verified. The methodology for describing the national specificity of a proverbial fund has been developed and tested. It includes the principles and methods of selecting the most representative units for analysis, the determination of the interlingual specificity / generality of proverbs, the ascertainment of their national and language, national and cultural specificity, the identification of the degree and nature of the national marking of the exact language proverbs. It is proved that the national specificity of the proverbial fund is qualitatively and quantitatively determined not by proverbs that are unique against the background of other languages, but by the national and language and / or national and cultural marking common (international and universal) proverbs of other languages.

Kinship terms as indicators of identity and social reality: A case study of Syrian Arabic and Hindi

By displaying a certain fragment of reality in the linguistic consciousness of a person, socio-cognitive categories convey important information about the social structure of society, the lingua-cultural identity of its representatives and the values they share. This study focuses on kinship terms in the Syrian Arabic and Hindi languages. It is aimed at identifying similarity and the cultural specificity of kinship terms in two linguistic cultures and explaining the identified features through types of cultures and cultural values. The research is based on kinship terms that name consanguineal (blood) and affinal (non-blood) relatives in Arabic and Hindi. The material was collected through analysis of terms in dictionaries as well as anonymous questionnaires and observation. The collected material was systematized and analyzed using comparative, definitional, semantic and lingua-cultural methods. The results showed that both languages have a rich system of kinship terms, in which the line of kinship (paternal or maternal), the type of kinship (relatives by blood or through marriage), and age are recorded. They testify to the We-identity of the representatives of the cultures under consideration for whom family relations are of great value, and to the importance of determining the place of each member in society in the social system. The revealed features showed that age differences are more important in Indian society than in Syrian, although respect for elders is one of the most important values of both cultures. The results obtained once again confirm the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of language, which in turn provides new data for other areas of humanities.

Verbalization of the Concept of “Kysh” (Winter) in the Karachay-Balkar Language Picture of the World

This article discusses the concept of kysh (winter), which is one of the main elements of the concept sphere of the Karachay-Balkar language picture of the world. The national and cultural specificity of the concept under study is revealed on the basis of various works of art, phraseological units, proverbs and sayings, as well as dictionary definitions. The paper presents the semantics of the lexical units that make up this concept, reveals its conceptual features based on various associations of native speakers, analyzes the linguistic representation and cognitive characteristics of this concept in the Karachay-Balkar language picture of the world, and therefore considers paremiological units that represent the ethno-cultural specifics of the Karachay-Balkar language, features of the ethnic worldview and world perception. The main distinguishing features of winter, attributes, and accompanying factors are considered.

Cross-cultural Analysis of Main Economic Partners of the Republic of Moldova

The paper represents a comparative study of national culture features of the main commercial partners of the Republic of Moldova and the countries preferred by Moldovan citizens to emigrate: Romania, Russia, Italy and Germany. The research focused on two cultural bipolar models: Hofstede, which comprises six cultural dimensions: individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity, long-term vs. short-term orientation, indulgence vs. restraint, and Trompenaars-Hampden-Turner, which contains seven dimensions: universalism vs. particularism, individualism vs. communitarianism, neutral vs. emotional, specific vs. diffuse, achievement vs. ascription, sequential time vs. synchronous time, internal vs. external control. The established similarities and differences, knowledge of cultural specificity in international interactions, both social and economic, is an added value for individuals to successfully integrate and fit into a society, other than their native, and for businesses to be successfully managed on international level.

Napravleniya issledovaniy natsional'no-kul'turnogo svoyeobraziya belorusskikh poslovits (konets KHІKH –nachalo KHKHІ veka): metodologiya, problemy, perspektivy (chast' 1)

Directions of research into the national-cultural specificity of Belarusian proverbs (late 19th – early 21st centuries): methodology, problems, perspectives (Part 1). The main research directions of studying the national and cultural specificity of proverbs in the Belarusian language in the period from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century are discussed. Linguocultural studies of Belarusian proverbs are few and often not separated from the study of the national picture of the world in Belarusian phraseologisms. The linguistic and cultural description of the national-cultural originality of Belarusian proverbs is based on the results of etymological, ethnolinguistic and cultural linguistics studies, therefore it automatically adopts all their imperfections and limitations. All the studies mentioned are carried out on proverbial material of different volume and qualitative properties, have a different degree of representativeness, and are characterized by different effectiveness. Nevertheless, the content of the various existing studies of Belarusian proverbs makes it possible to develop a methodology for determining the national and cultural specificity of the Belarusian proverbial resources. The latest attempts at, and prospects for, describing the linguocultural specificity of Belarusian proverbs are considered. Keywords: Belarusian language, paremiology, proverb, national specificity, etymology, ethnolinguistics, cultural linguistics, language and cultural studies

Ethno-Linguo-Cultural Specificity of Russian Official Concept “Court” in Europeanization Era

The article considers the nominative field of the concept "court" in the history of the Russian official language on the material of legislative documents of the 18 th century. The subject of the study is the relationship between the official segment of the concept "court" and the ordinary segment in the context of ethnic mentality. The hypothesis of ethno-cultural neutrality of the official segment has been tested. Special attention is paid to the evaluation nominations of the concept, their syncretsemia is revealed. The activity of non-terminological, morally and religiously marked nominations in relation to terms is found. Functional-semantic insufficiency of legal categories, their stable connection with moral and ethical categories in legal language consciousness is shown. Domination of semantic and conceptual constituents "truthful", "righteous / decent", "fair" over "legal" is established. The functional weakness of the conceptual sphere "law" is noted. The traditional ethno-specific perception of legal language consciousness is stated as predominance of moral and ethical concepts "truth", "righteousness", "fairness", "good", "conscience", "soul" over the "law". A high degree of ethno-cultural marking of the official segment of the concept "court" with a dominant meliorative valuation was noted. The analysis of the ordinary segment of the concept "court" in Russian paremiology revealed the above mentioned ethno-cultural concepts with a prevailing pejorative estimate. The coincidence of the justice pattern in the official and ordinary legal consciousness is noted.