Culture from semiotics' perspective

What is culture? According to the theory of culture, which appeared back in the distant Soviet period in one thousand nine hundred and sixties, culture is a set of signs and sign systems with the help of which a whole people maintains its cohesion. Nations protect their values and what distinguishes them from other peoples. The cultural code of each nation is peculiar and unique. The cultural code is very closely interconnected with the national identity of individuals, representatives of a particular community, people, nationality. The language of culture is a modeling system that includes different models of behavior that are accepted in this society. This also includes national costumes, manners, rituals, as well as what is commonly called mentality - the peculiarities of thinking due to the historical conditions of the people's life.

There have been many wars in history, because of which the centuries-old foundations of the life of individual peoples were violated. There were many reasons for colonization: expansion of territories, resources of conquered lands, cheap labor. In addition, the colonialists needed to introduce their own culture to make it easier to manage.

Such cultural and historical events should not be judged one-sidedly, from the “bad / good” position. The consequences of colonial policy are very different: from the infliction of cultural trauma on an entire people and the loss of independence to an increase in the level of education in colonized countries.

I will cite postcolonial Kazakhstan as an example. Kazakhstan gained its independence as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. And today, thirty years later, researchers have the opportunity to study the implications. We will consider the influence of the USSR on culture.

First of all, it should be noted that the main legacy of the USSR is the language. According to statistics, for the year two thousand and nine, about 85% of Kazakhstanis are fluent in Russian. Secondly, cultivation. In this context, cultivation is the exchange of cultural characteristics and the mutual influence of different cultures on each other. At the same time, in Soviet times, Russian culture was dominant and had a great influence in Kazakhstan.

Today, a reassessment of values is taking place in Kazakhstan. And Kazakh culture is becoming dominant again. This can be seen from how the percentage of the Kazakh-speaking population in cities increases from year to year. Thirdly, gender equality in relation to the traditional foundations of the Kazakh people. At the moment, in Kazakhstan, the overwhelming majority of women have a job. Fourth, the literacy rate of the population is over 99%.

The semiosphere is a space that is a condition and result of the development of culture. The semiosphere is equated with the biosphere, as it is necessary to maintain life (culture). Transmission of signs and symbols. The semiosphere is heterogeneous and some symbols and signs in it are untranslatable and unique. Signs play an essential role in the formation and development of human consciousness. “Human civilization is impossible without signs and sign systems, the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs, and perhaps, in general, intelligence should be identified precisely with the functioning of signs,” one of the founders of modern semiotics, Charles Morris, rightly pointed out. Signs can be called a fundamental component of human culture. Culture, understood as "second nature" or "man-made nature", largely consists of signs, they are also the most important link between the "first" and "second nature". Any natural object can take a place in the picture of the world that exists in the mind of a person, only having received a name2, but at the same time such an object still acquires special features associated with both its place and role in this picture, and the linguistic characteristics of its name, and far from these features are always inherent in him really as a physical object (for example, an inanimate object can acquire a masculine or feminine gender, a property or attitude can turn into an object, etc.). (Grinenko G. V. Semiosphere and semiotics of cuture. 34).

To explain with an example how the same phenomenon is interpreted differently in different cultures, I will talk about death. Death is an integral part of life. People, and indeed all living things on Earth, have encountered it throughout history. Despite the fact that, as in the distant Middle Ages, a person tried to create an elixir of eternal youth, now scientists are looking for various ways to prolong life (and it must be admitted that they were not unsuccessful) or to perpetuate the memory of a person. Various areas are involved in this: from AI, the purpose of which is to digitize consciousness, to cryonics, the purpose of which is to freeze a person in the hope of reviving and curing in the future, when technology allows.

 As you know, representatives of different cultures from time immemorial believe in the afterlife after death, and everyone has a different understanding. For example, in Spanish, the verb 'celebrar' is used for death, which means 'to celebrate'. On the day of the funeral, they seem to celebrate, focusing on the life that the person has lived. And not on the fact that a person will not live in the future. You can also cite as an example ancient Egypt, where, together with the pharaohs, they also buried gold, clothes, believing that this would be necessary for a person in the other world. The Egyptians believed that life after death is a continuation of earthly life. That is why they built tombs and mummified bodies so that the deceased would feel comfortable after death. While it is customary to bury the bodies of the deceased in some cultures, in others, for example in Indian, it is customary to burn them. This is closely related to the belief in reincarnation. In India, they believe that in this way they liberate the soul so that the soul can move into another body and be reborn anew.

From these examples, we clearly see how the same event, the appearance (death) is perceived in different ways. And the rituals associated with this are very different.

List of references 

1. Lotman Yuri.. 2000. Semiosphere. Saint Petersburg press.

2. Grinenko, Galina Valentinovna. n.d. Semiosphere and semiotics of culture. PhD diss.

3. Fedyukin, Igor. n.d. The harm and benefits of colonialism.

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