Zaraza nadchodzi i odchodzi – myślenie o chorobach epidemicznych utrwalone w języku

In this article, I present selected aspects of the linguistic image of the plague (I am especially interested in names and their etymology, the causes of the disease, images of the plague, and remedies). I mainly rely on materials related to Polish folk culture, but I also mention some contemporary contexts to show a certain durability of beliefs related to the plague. I use the notion of a linguistic and cultural image of the world understood as a colloquial interpretation of reality that can be explicated not only using verbal data, but also with non-verbal data preserved in petrified texts of culture. In my considerations, I refer to the so-called cognitive definition. The material basis of the analysis presented (in line with Jerzy Bartmiński’s assumptions) consists of lexical and textual data: names (confirming the “perspective of reality”), information transmitted on an onomasiological basis, revealed in the etymological and word-formation analysis, meanings given in the definitions in Polish and dialectal dictionaries, word-formation derivatives, metaphorical extensions, phraseologisms, collocations (phrases), metaphors, proverbs, healing formulas, etc. In Polish folk culture, the plague was imagined as a living creature (woman) who could roam the land (come and go), come to the village, talk to people, put them to death, or save the ones she chose to live. These images of the plague made peasants try to secure their space and to create a safe zone for themselves and their community by means of various magical procedures.

Elderhood, Agency and Existential Vulnerability

Popular conceptualizations of elderhood often use a spiritually inspired language of personal growth and wisdom. These conceptualizations are rightly critical of the language of activity and productivity that abounds in dominant successful aging discourses. Instead, the emphasis is placed on embracing our diminishing strength and increasing dependence with an attitude of resignation and gracious acceptance. Problematically, however, this can reinforce the ageist cultural assumption that old age lacks agency. If the emerging discourse about elderhood is truly to serve as a more inspiring cultural image of late life, it requires a reconceptualization of agency in the face of existential vulnerabilities. This paper aims to present a possible philosophical outlook for such a reconceptualization. It will draw on sources from feminist philosophy to argue how confrontations with vulnerability need not be an obstacle, but rather inspire alternative conceptualizations of agency that are a welcome addition to gerontological thinking.

INFORMAL ARISTOCRATIC COMMUNITIES IN 17th AND 18th CENTURY FRANCE AS A TRIGGER FOR THE FORMATION OF THE CIVILIZATION IMAGE

Статья посвящена характеристике некоторых черт варварства и цивилизации в контексте их общественного развития и оппозиции. Акцент сделан на одной из форм социального общения, связанной с интеллектуальной сферой, а именно, на неформальных сообществах Франции. Такими сообществами, среди прочих, были салоны, которые появились как форма проведения досуга французской аристократии в XVII в., но особенно востребованными они стали в эпоху Просвещения, в условиях трансформации социальных структур и духовно-культурных основ общества. Ряд просветительских положений, ставших фундаментом теорий современности (в частности, идеи превосходства цивилизованных народов над варварскими и необходимости их «цивилизовать»), разрабатывались как раз в салонах аристократии, которые, таким образом, стали триггером актуальных идейных концепций. Авторы полагают, что в XVIII в. во Франции в рамках салонных собраний выработалась своеобразная коммуникативная практика в интеллектуальной сфере, которая сформировала культурный образ цивилизации, одна из основных черт которого — интеллектуальное общение, сложившееся в систему правил. The article focuses on one of the forms of social discourse in the intellectual sphere, French informal communities, in particular. Such communities, among others, included salons, which appeared as a form of leisure for the French aristocracy in the 17th century, yet demand for them surged in the Age of Enlightenment, that came with transformations of social structures, spiritual canons, and cultural foundations. A number of educational policies, which served as the base for the theories of our time (particularly the idea of civilized people superiority over barbarians and the need to “civilize” them), were developed in such salons for the aristocracy, hence making them a trigger for the spread of new societal and philosophical ideas. The authors believe that the intellectual sphere of the 18th century France has developed a kind of communicative practice within the framework of salon meetings that formed the cultural image of civilization, with intellectual discourse, forming a system of rules, as one of its main features.

IMAGE-CREATING POTENTIAL OF DISCIPLINES OF SOCIAL AND HUMANITARIAN CYCLE

Characteristic of image-creating potential of disciplines of the social and humanitarian cycle of higher technical education for the following resources: information-content, communicative-interactive, organizational-functional and cultural-image is made on the basis of the concept of “potential” and “image-creating potential”. Possibilities of the discipline of the social and humanitarian cycle for the formation of the professional image of the future IT specialists are: the focus of the content of discipline on the values of professional activity; diversity of choice of the practice of image-forming activity; multilevel image interaction and communication between subjects; means of methodological support for teaching the discipline are also disclosed in the article.Analysis of curriculum and programs for the future IT professionals' training have identified significant characteristics of potential content of disciplines of the social and humanitarian cycle of IT professionals' training for the image competence formation: enrichment of the range of image knowledge; possibility of image-forming activities; activation of productive ways of image-creative interaction.It is established that social and humanitarian disciplines allow forming a person capable of discovering and realizing one's own potential in society. These disciplines require the following teaching principles: general science, fundamentalism, systematic unity of historical and logical, national and universal, social and personal, theory and practice of teaching and education.For the realization of the image-creating potential of disciplines of the social and humanitarian cycle, a set of classes and tasks for the formation of an IT specialist's professional image were developed. These include discussion questions, discussion of popular public opinion on the internal and external image, the generalization of image management methods, identification of features of the public figures kinetic image, exercises for formation an attractive image of a professional subject, reflective exercises, role situations, designing your own image. These exercises become the basis for the creation of such an IT specialist's image, which will assist the prototype subject in achieving success, socially significant goals, creating a positive image.

Comprehensive Evaluation Method of Ethnic Costume Color Based on K-Means Clustering Method

Color is the external manifestation of ethnic minority culture, and the costume of each ethnic group has its objective color matching rules. In the color design of minority costumes, there is often a lack of scientific evaluation methods. Aiming at this problem, this article proposed a comprehensive evaluation method, based on the K-Means clustering method, for evaluating color matching schemes of minority costumes. We used the K-Means clustering method to analyze the objective laws of minority costume colors, and based on the objective laws found, we extracted the objective evaluation indicators. With the AHP (analytic hierarchy process) method, the judgment matrix was established to obtain the relative weights of each cultural image and objective evaluation indicator. Based on the trapezoidal fuzzy number, the user’s evaluation value of the cultural image index was clarified. The GRA-TOPSIS evaluation method was introduced to rank the color matching schemes of minority costumes. Taking the evaluation of the color matching scheme of Yi costumes as an example, this article confirmed that the proposed comprehensive evaluation method can effectively screen out the color matching schemes with the characteristics of minority costumes and can rank the color schemes to be evaluated according to their relative similarity degree to the color characteristics of minority costumes. The method integrated subjective and objective evaluations, overcame the problem of contradictory results of subjective and objective evaluations, and achieved a certain degree of symmetry between the objectivity of the color laws of minority costumes and the subjectivity of the cultural image of minority costumes. In addition, we also found the possibility of using K-Means clustering to extract the main color features of minority costumes to improve the design of color schemes.

Socio-Cultural Portrait of Modern Gagaus Woman

Based on the materials of ethno-sociological and ethno demographic studies from the Soviet and post-Soviet times, carried out by Russian and Moldavian scientists, the article presents a dynamic, socio-cultural image of a Gagauz woman. Different aspects of a modern woman’s life are considered: her life values, attitude to labour, education, wealth, marriage and family. The article also raises questions about religion, ethnic identity, language skills, labour migration of Gagauz women, the transformation of gender stereotypes in Gagauz society. Powerful globalization processes, socio-economic and spiritual crisis, a high level of impoverishment among the population, as well as the pandemic, have greatly affected the worldview system of people. In the Gagauz society, which is now at the stage of transitioning from a traditional to a modern type of society, the most important moral values and spiritual and moral orientations of women have embodied traditional as well as innovative features. The dynamics of the Gagauz women’s spiritual world is strongly influenced by social transformations related to international labour migration that has to a great extent changed the habitual gender roles in the Gagauz family, the existing models and stereotypes of men’s and women’s behavior, their statuses and relationships.

I dropped a big stone on the water snake… Poetic and the Folk Image of a SNAKE

The aim of the article is to reconstruct the linguistic and cultural image of the snake in Polish language and Polish folk culture, functioning within three different but complementary genre-based models: (a) mythological, which echoes are present in belief stories, records of beliefs, and descriptions of practices; (b) biblical (religious), Judeo-Christian, settled in aytiological legends, wedding speeches, religious and historical songs (c) colloquial (common sense), confirmed mainly in colloquial phraseology. In the first model, the snake appears as the guardian of the house and the enclosure, a living creature, friendly to people and animals, whose presence ensures happiness and prosperity; in the second – the serpent is a symbol of evil, sin and Satan; in the third, the most stabilized features of the snake are: wisdom, prudence, but the most of all cunning and sly. The features that emerge especially from the mythological and religious model are the basis for the interpretation of the poetic creation of a snake from Czesław Miłosz’s poem Rue Descartes, in which the lyrical subject combines all evil that has happened to him in his life with in breaking of the ban and just punishment for killing a water snake coiled in the grass.

Analysis of Linguo-cultural Picture of LIE in Systemic Data

The article presents Lithuanian linguistic cultural image of LIE (MELAS) reconstructed from lexicographic data. The analysis of the lexicographic definitions of this lexeme in Lithuanian dictionaries (The Dictionary of Lithuanian Language, The Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian, the dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms and Lithuanian etymological sources) provides two views of the concept: synchronic and diachronic. The diachronic view shows the semantic development of the word, the specification of its meaning (the loss of the primary and the acquisition of new meanings). The synchronic view shows the basic meaning of the concept and its profiles in contemporary language. The research revealed that the basic meaning is LIE as a subject’s purposeful distortion of reality with the purpose of deception. The dominating aspects are: a subject’s purposeful activity and an object that a subject wants to deceive. Lexicographic data distinguished several profiles of LIE: (1) LIE as entertainment (when lie is used for joking, visual storytelling and has no negative purpose), (2) LIE as unethical issue (when lying is seen as negative, sinister activity) and (3) LIE as psychologically necessary element of life (when lie is seen as useful, helping to get out of difficult situations). The analysis is concluded with the cognitive definition of lie, providing its linguo-cultural view in Lithuanian.