3           Conclusion

 

In this paper I wanted to show that if a scholar intends to construct a corporeal database that reflects a naïve semiotic picture of the human body, he must take into account how the body is represented not only in the verbal but also in the nonverbal semiotic body code as well. He should clearly point out the somatic objects he is going to examine and work out the methodology and the metalanguage of their description. The method of description that we employ is the “DBS approach”, the essential part of which is the representation of the set of body features and the set of their values. A brief outline of the body features and their values was given and the basic stages with some important details of their description were presented.

 

Bibliography

 

Arkadyev, A., Kreydlin, G. & Letuchiy, A. 2008. Semioticheskaja konceptualizacija tela i ego chastej. I. Priznak “forma” [‘The semiotic conceptualization of body and its parts. I. The feature of form’]. In: Voprosy jazykoznanija, №6. pp. 78-97.

Enfield, N.J., Majid, Asifa, & van Staden, Miriam 2006. Cross-linguistic categorisation of the body: Introduction. In: Language Sciences, 28 (2/3). pp. 137-147.

Kreydlin, G., & Letuchiy, A. 2006. Chasti tela v russkom jazyke i neverbal’nykh semioticheskikh kodakh [‘Body parts in the Russian language and the nonverbal semiotic codes’]. In: Russkij jazyk v nauchnom osveshenii, 12 (2). pp. 80-115.

Kreydlin, G., & Pereverzeva, S. 2007. Chasti tela v russkom jazyke i russkoj culture: project Instituta lingvistiki RGGU [‘Body parts in the Russian Language and the Russian culture: the project of the Institute of Linguistics of Russian State University for the Humanities’]. Retrieved April 3, 2009, from Russian State University for the Humanities, Institute of Linguistics Web site, from http://il.rsuh.ru/docsllsh/Kreyd_Perev2007.pdf

Kreydlin, G.., & Pereverzeva, S. 2008. Orijentacija tela i jego chastej: kommunikativnyje situacii i strategii povedenija [‘Orientation of body and body parts: communicative situations and strategies of behaviour’]. In: A. V. Arkhipov, L. M. Zakharov, A. A. Kibrik, A. E. Kibrik et al. (Eds.), Fonetika i nefonetika. K 70-letiju Sandro V. Kodzasova. Moskva: Jazyki slavjanskikh kultur. pp. 589-602.

Kreydlin, G., & Pereverzeva, S. 2009. Priznak “orijentacija chasti tela” v semioticheskoj kartine mira [‘The feature “orientation of body parts” in the semiotic picture of the world’]. In: A. M. Moldovan (Ed.), “Slovo – cistoje vesel’je”. Sbornik statej v chest’ A. B. Pen’kovskogo. Moskva: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. pp. 337-349.

Kreydlin, G., & Pereverzeva, S. 2009. Telo i jego chasti kak objekty semioticheskoj konceptualizacii [‘Body and its parts as a subject of the semiotic conceptualization’]. In: Tilman Berger, Markus Giger, Sibylle Kurt, Imke Mendoza (Hg.), Von grammatischen Kategorien und sprachlichen Weltbildern. Festschrift für Daniel Weiss zum 60. Geburtstag. München – Wien: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. pp. 369 – 384.

Letuchiy, A. 2008. Chast’ tela/forma “kulak”: funkcii, konceptualizacija, mesto v sisteme chastej tela [The body part/form “fist”: its function, conceptualization and place in the system of body parts]. In: Vestnik RGGU, 6 (10). pp. 91-108


 

[1] This work has been made possible through support of the Russian Foundation for the Humanities (grant № 07-04-00203а, 2007).

[2] The author thanks her academic supervisor, Prof. Grigory E. Kreydlin, for careful reading and correction of the preliminary version of this paper, as well as for inspiring support and most helpful remarks on the work.

[3]  Cf. (Enfield et al. 2006) in the special issue of the journal “Language Science” devoted to the problems of body part names.

[4] For more details of semiotic conceptualization of body see the articles (Kreydlin & Pereverzeva 2007) and (Kreydlin & Pereverzeva, in press).

[5] The corpus that we basically used for the investigation is the National Corpus of the Russian language, which can be found in the Internet at www.ruscorpora.ru [access date: April, 2009].

[6] Notes on the meanings of the Russian word telo ‘body’ were made in (Kreydlin & Pereverzeva, in press).

[7] The complete description of the Russian word kulak ‘fist’ is given in (Letuchiy 2008).

[8] The feature of the form of body parts is thoroughly described in (Arkadyev et al. 2008).

[9] The detailed description of how shoulders are represented in the Russian language and the Russian body language is given in the article (Kreydlin & Letuchiy 2006).

[10] More details of the socially significant situations in which the feature of orientation is the theme of conversation are given in the article (Kreydlin & Pereverzeva 2008).