3. Concept and Language Knowledge: the phenomenon of Concept; the phenomenon of Language Knowledge; relations of Concept and Language Knowledge.

Knowledge:

• the information, understanding and skills that you gain through education or experience; the state of knowing about a particular fact or situation [OxfDict,p. 658];

• tested with practice result of cognizing reality, correct reflection of reality in thinking and consciousness of Man [SovietEnciclop, p. 471]

• a cluster concept that points out relevant features but that is not adequately captured by any definition (Wikipedia, Philosophy of the Information Society).

Language is a specific code of meanings which are made related to definite words and are kept in them; a word is a certain substituter of a phenomenon which is named with the word; a word accumulates and carries the meaning(-s) of a correspondent phenomenon.

So, meaning of a word is certain knowledge of a correspondent phenomenon. Tested in personal experience it stimulates individual cognitive-emotional associations and gains a specific sense for an individual. Integration of meanings during an individual experience results in categorization of knowledge and personal attitude to that, which, in its turn, results in forming system of concepts as units of collective knowledge.

Concept – a certain idea about a fragment of the world; a certain ‘clot’ of a culture in a human consciousness; a metaphor which integrates lots of commonly used meaningful and individual associative units in itself; an operative unit of thinking, a unit of collective knowledge; perceptive-cognitive-affective formation characterized with its dynamic function, which makes it different from notions and meanings as the products of scientific description.

Language Knowledge is a cluster concept (or system of concepts) that points out relevant features of folk’s perceiving reality and that is quite adequately captured in the system of words with their meanings (lexical, grammatical, etc.). That system reflects the most vivid and typical proprieties peculiar of a folk who uses the system as a means of communication and exchanging knowledge.

Concept is a certain carrier of knowledge; it can be realized/materialized/revealed with means of language; being formed in the surrounding of a definite language and being realized with the means of a definite language it reveals peculiar semantic signs relevant to individual and linguistic-cultural specifics of a definite linguistic culture. Thus, a concept is a quantum of linguistic-cultural knowledge, and being materialized in communication reflects the peculiarity of a culture.

4. Correlation of the categories ‘Meaning’, ‘Notion’ and ‘Concept’ in the light of cognitive linguistic research: the essence of each of the three phenomena; peculiarities of their relations.

Human in their activity interact with surrounding reality, internal (psychological reality of a personality) and external (reality that surrounds a person or a society). In this interactivity we get some experience, process it (categorize and conceptualize), work out knowledge and materialize it in a language form. The most valuable things become conceptual and serve the ground to the World Picture foundation, which stipulates our behaviour.

Displays of reality, objects / things / phenomena of the world around us and inside us reflected by human cognition are called references. When get in contact with references our cognition react to them – reflect them; we learn / cognize references: distinguish, value, analyze, categorize, conceptualize and keep in memory as certain new cognitive constructs – ‘bricks of knowledge’.

To present certain knowledge for other people, to communicate we denote corresponded references, give them linguistic names. Thus, Language Signs appear – certain substitutes of references; they substitute references in our cognition and also, materially, in the process of communication, they mean some things / references for men. Meaning is the idea that a Language Sign represents. We imply some meanings whilst using words in the process of communication.

Summarizing and integrating knowledge about essential signs of a reference results in appearing a notion. Notion is the total sum of cognized essential signs of a reference; it includes necessary, essential signs.

Getting in contact with reality a man feels different emotions; thus, meanings of references get also different connotative meanings. Connotation is a certain additional emotional meaning – an idea, emotional coloring suggested by a Language Sign in addition to its meaning (-s). It varies in accordance to the World Picture of a person, group, society or culture.

Integration of different meanings (lexical, connotative, grammatical, notional) of a reference or integration of different knowledge about it (a reference) results in appearing a conceptual idea about the reference – a concept. Concept implies an idea appeared in the result of collision of a man’s personal mental experience and a word’s different meanings fixed in a particular language of a particular culture.

For example, speak about the components of concepts ‘Life’, ‘Lie’, ‘Truth‘, which were studied during practical works. You can also remember concepts ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’, which were studied last year on ‘Linguistics of Gender’ classes.