The national world order existing in the collective consciousness of any ethnic group, the national semantic universe is inconceivable without an extensive system of evaluation, without value orientations reflected in the language. Language information about the system of values indicates a special perception and vision of the people.
What is value in general? This is an idea of what is holy for a person, group, society as a whole. Values themselves were born in the history of mankind as some kind of spiritual support, helping a person to resist in the face of fate, difficult life tests. Values streamline reality, introduce evaluative moments into its comprehension, and give meaning to human life [1].
Values are social, socio-psychological ideas and views shared by the people and inherited by each new generation. This is what is evaluated by the ethnic collective as something that is “good” and “right” [2: 108]. A person evaluates in one way or another everything that he perceives, and, naming, also evaluates. Language is a kind of evaluation phenomenon. Each language has a rating system on the scale of relations chosen by the person.
The language most fully represents the inner world of man – in any case, his cognitive sphere. Reflected by consciousness, the relationship between the phenomena of reality and the evaluation of these phenomena are quite widely fixed in the language. We can assume that the language performs a kind of function of values’ integration.
Human life in a particular cultural space is the formation, development, improvement of a single world of intentions and value-semantic relations. Only in this value-semantic context, human life becomes a cultural subject. Assessment, classified as evaluation category, implies an explicit or implicit attitude of the speaker to an object expressed by linguistic means. The evaluation category is a social category; it is determined by standards generally accepted in the human collective in the field of social, intellectual or moral phenomena, socially established norms of the notion of “good” or “bad”. The evaluation procedure is a rational operation, although emotion is also at the heart of the evaluation. However, the assessment itself does not express emotion, but the operation of “scaling” the norms of being. The language reflects the interaction of reality and man in a variety of aspects, including an evaluative one.
Evaluation is undoubtedly a universal category inherent in any language community. On the one hand, the assessment is due to those qualities that are inherent in the realities of extralinguistic reality, reflected in the human mind and presented in phraseological meaning. From this point of view, the assessment is objective. On the other hand, a person as a bearer of the values of his era, environment and ideology, is the direct creator of evaluation. This shows its subjective nature.
From a cognitive point of view, value judgment contains the knowledge about the object from which a person comes from when forming the estimate. In assessment, subjective and objective factors constantly interact. The person expresses an assessment based on his own emotions, and taking into account social stereotypes. Truth does not apply to the objective world, but to the conceptual world of participants in the act of communication. The assessment does not seek to indicate the exact place of the object with its features in the “picture of the world”, but only places it in a certain area of the rating scale. Human assessment is built on the basis of the scale available in his “world view” and the corresponding stereotypes. Evaluation can be expressed from the “general opinion”, i.e. the totality of persons forming a certain society with common stereotypes.
When perceiving the objective world, a person determines for himself value orientations. Everything that happens around is evaluated on the basis of the principle of good-bad, good-evil, beautifully ugly, that is, the object of reality is considered from the point of view of its compliance with the norm.
Giving a figurative idea of the realities of objective surrounding world through phraseologism, the man expresses his attitude to it, evaluates it. The choice of the basis of the assessment may be the same for different peoples, which is due to ontological factors, and may vary among different peoples, reflecting the lifestyle, national psychology, traditions of a certain ethnocultural community. In other words, the actualization of certain concepts in the process of cognitive-evaluative activity of a person and their consolidation in the language can be both universal and nationally specific.
Each ethnic group has a special system of assessments peculiar only to it, due to its history, culture, mentality, and way of life. The conditions for the existence of a particular ethnic group develop special criteria for evaluating and perceiving the world around it. Different national cultures, national languages with their stereotypes are formed in various ethnic communities [3].
Representations of fate belong to the most fundamental categories of culture; they form the deepest foundation of an implicit value system that defines the ethos of human collectives, the core of the life behavior of their individuals. The concept of fate is present not only in all mythological, religious, philosophical and ethical systems. It forms the core of national and individual consciousness. This concept is one of the active principles of life, mysterious and inevitable.
One of the Islamic studies stereotypes that are widespread in the West and East is the concept of primordial and omnipresent fatalism, as a characteristic feature of the dogma of Islam. Like any stereotype, it has a certain basis. It can be found in many statements of the Koran, where it is stated that God intended and created all the actions of people in general and each person in particular. It can be seen in everyday Islam, one of the formulas of which is the phrase: “I relied on Allah” [4: 92]. Allah replaces the fate. He controls people infinitely. However, his order, first of all, is the restoration of justice and the establishment of truth.
Representations of fate in the Indo-European languages are reflected in the form of numerous names. However, in all the meanings of the words denoting fate, there is undoubtedly a certain community, which ultimately allows us to talk about the concept of fate. This community is manifested not only at the level of the abstract meaning of “fate”, but also at the level of the meanings surrounding it, entering into certain relations with the meaning of “fate”. The unfolding of the semantic potential of lexemes denoting fate is brightly found in phraseology. In the composition of phraseological combinations, a key component of fate is not reinterpreted, but enters with its content.
A person who believes in fate in the USA, i.e. fatalist, runs the risk of being considered uninitiated. Americans do not believe in fate, try to be optimistic, not lose heart in the face of failure. In their actions they are guided by the principle – “There are more ways than one to kill a cat”. It means that there are many ways to get things done. They cannot be forced to focus on bad news. As many linguists believe, the American attitude towards fate is the antithesis of the spirit of fatalism in Russia.
Along with other factors, the concept of “fate” played a pivotal role in creating the Russian semantic space. This word reflects the original faith of the people in the irrationality and unpredictability of human life, the inevitability of what is written on the family. Since it is pointless to resist fate, the personality’s life position and its reaction to a variety of events become rather passive, which is understandable. The need to act, initiative, the desire for personal success and freedom of entrepreneurship – all these features of Western civilization run counter to the belief that a person’s life does not depend on his will.
The concept of ‘fortune’ is individualized among the Englishmen; it is often accompanied by luck. An English proverb says: Better be born lucky than rich. However, the “luck” that manifests itself in a person’s behavior and actions does not constitute a fatum or a passively received gift: it needs the individual to constantly reinforce it with his affairs. The outcome of his actions depends on the degree of his “luck”; however, only with the utmost stress of all his moral and physical strength he can achieve the discovery of his luck. For example:
Fortune smiles upon smb.; Fortune favours the brave ; Fortune knocks once at least at every man’s door; A child of fortune.
The concept of “fate” combines the idea of the unpredictability of the future in the Russian language representation of world with the inability of a person to control his life and environment [5]. This is reflected in the language. They say: “in the hands of fate”, “by the will of fate”, “fate sends”, “to cast to the mercy of fate.” Fate as a power, on the one hand, and a person subordinate to this power, on the other – such is the stereotypical situation that characterizes the phenomenon of fate in Russian folk culture.
Unlike Russians, Americans firmly believe that only the person himself can be responsible for their actions, for their consequences, which, in turn, is reflected in phraseological units. For example: as sure as a fate.
A man is born, and fate has already been assigned to him. Birth is its first manifestation, the beginning of the implementation of a plan. According to the model of the world, this plan can be represented as birth – “life itself” – death. This is the plan according to which each person lives; in this respect, the plan is universal. But any person is at the same time unique and individual n his kind. This is reflected in his fate: each person follows the obligatory path in his own way. The general is the beginning and the end, birth and death. Life is directly connected with death, forming a contradictory unity with it. According to ancient ideas, life draws its strength from death and is purified by death.
Assessment of life, as well as death, is almost the central worldview theme for both scientific and ordinary consciousness. The popular “philosophy” in this matter is widely known: life is eternal, it circulates in nature, passing from one form to another, death is inevitable, obligatory, but it is nothing more than a departure to another world, to life without time and worries; both of these lives are connected by invisible threads [6].
The steady embodiment of life is light, hence the characteristics of birth – “see the light, come into the light”. Born at night – stupid, as noted in the Russian expression “dark as twelve o’clock in the night”; in German, dumm wie die Nacht, “stupid like night”.
The category of life is one of the fundamental categories for understanding the mentality of nations. It gives a complete description of national consciousness in a specific period of time. Life is characterized by longevity, versatility, the general assessment of which, as a rule, is fixed in a complex of stable expressions. Foe example: “There is a crook in the life of everyone”; “Life is not all clear sailing in calm waters”. Phraseological units with the life component demonstrate their attitude to life as something eternal, enduring, unchanging: large as life, life’s like that, larger than life, life is stronger than fiction.
In the old days, in the era of great historical changes in England, life was valued on its own. It was considered to be the duty of every worthy member of society to give his life in the name of a noble goal: Better a glorious death than a shameful life.
Fate and death are interconnected categories. They can merge before being identified, or they can diverge, forming opposite poles in the life of consciousness. Their positions in relation to each other, as well as the role they play in the process of distribution of the subject in their own spiritual space, depend, ultimately, on the level of efforts exerted by people to go beyond the boundaries of actual existence [7].
Both categories under consideration coexist, primarily in the cultural field. With regard to culture, death is such a reality that is transcendent to it, has a dynamic effect on culture, building its body itself towards death. In the culture itself, the transcendence of death is perceived as its enduring mystery, as an elusive super-mind.
Remaining, however, “inside” the culture, Death can be identified with fate. Death can be considered an extreme degree of expression of the human being’s certainty. In death, the limit of its automatism is personified, for in a sense, death is the most inevitable that is only possible for man. Death accumulates Destiny, which makes it possible to define it in the space of culture as fate.
Being to death can be understood as a path to destiny. Fate and death in this context are again drawing closer together. For example: to go to one’s fate, to seal smb’s fate, to meet one’s fate.
Some synonymous phraseological comparisons testify to some identity of these categories: as sure as death, as sure as a fate. One of the symbols of consciousness is fate, which plays the role of a guide in the spiritual fulfillment of human reality. Fate is not what happens, but what always exists. In this capacity, it has a statistical character, requiring a certain dynamic moment. This moment is death, which, along with other transcendental realities, is conceived as the possibility of something other than this finite human existence [7].
The word ‘fate’ with its meaning clearly hints at the fact that one can rather expect the onset of something bad than good, sometimes comparing with death: a fate worse than death. Although, on the whole, human life is more unpredictable than meaningless (‘as fickle as a fortune’) or tragic in a certain way, invariably leading to death.
The causes of many connotations of the lexeme ‘death’ should be sought in religion and ancient philosophy. From the point of view of S.N. Bulgakov, death is a kind of bridge connecting the human bridge, isolated and closed on itself, and the divine world, embodying the universality and fullness of being. N.F. Fedorov interprets death as an unconditional evil, which is an absolute obstacle to humanity and requires not only metaphysical, but also its practical overcoming [8].
In some eastern cultures, where death is seen as a continuation of life in other dimensions, the attitude of people towards natural death is different: it does not cause such fear as that of Europeans. Chinese fate is the predestination of man. In mortal danger, the Chinese instead of “Help!” shouts “Save fate!” The doctrine of karma reminds a person: he must not forget that his development continues after this existence has ended, and that he will have to answer for everything, and not one of his actions will go unnoticed. The substrate of consciousness, or the soul, continues to live even after it is freed from the body, ancient origin.
In Judeo-Christian civilization, death is connotated negatively. Stable figurative “formulas of death” are extremely diverse. They clearly demonstrate social and moral-ethical assessments of the essence and meaning of life, the death of which is the opposite pole [6]. Compare: to look like a death’s head; as still as death; to cling (hang on) like grim death; as still as; as pale as death (ashes); like death warmed over; as ugly as sin; more dead than; as worse as death ; better a glorious death than a shameful life.
A significant group of phraseological units comprise the units with the meaning ‘dead’. As a rule, these phraseological units describe a similar state through comparison with images – creatures, objects, people who once existed on Earth. Compare: as dead as a dodo – (dodo – extinct bird that once inhabited the islands of the Indian Ocean); as dead as doornail; as dead as Julius Caesar.
As we can judge by examples, the motives of “deadly” phraseology in the English language are saturated with negative connotations. Death sometimes appears as a creature in contact with the higher forces of evil and living in another world, afterlife.
The conditions for the existence of an ethnic group develop a certain way of assessing the world around it, clear criteria that allow you to mark and detect any traits that are hidden from the attention of representatives of other ethnic groups. Based on these criteria, a national culture is formed in the ethnic community. After all, each culture is so peculiar because it most clearly expresses the ethnic characteristics of the psyche. In cultures, there are different value orientations, different ways of comprehending the world, different pictures of things.
Thus, the picture of the world existing in the structure of national consciousness is based on an extensive system of ratings reflected in the language in the form of value orientations. The study of the ethnos’ value system makes it possible to identify the uniqueness of its worldview, worldview and world perception.