AUTOPOIESIS OF THE SYSTEM OF ETHICAL CATEGORIES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: LINGUOSYNERGETIC APPROACH

Abstract

The paper represents the results of ethical categories study on the material of the English language from the linguosynergetic approach. The aim of the paper is to address the issue of self-organization of the system of English-language ethical categories in diachronical perspective. It also highlights the principles of autopoiesis of language systems, inventorizes the lexical verbalization means of the target ethical categories, reveals the etymological images that underpin ethical categories verbalizers, explains the cognitive connections among the categories in the process of self-organization. The employed methods include semantic analysis, which reveals the meaning of the analyzed words; etymological analysis, which unravels the inner form of the lexicalization units; cognitive reinterpretation, which explains the mental associative connections between the meanings; synergetic analysis, which explains the process of self-organization of the system of ethical categories. The paper draws a borderline between ethical categories and values and argues that ethical categories appeared as a result of generalizations when, for example, a good deed of recurring character was conceived as something good in general, or an obligation in a particular situation was generalized to an all-embracing duty etc. The synergetic properties of language systems are revealed and they include complex hierarchical organization, being open and dynamic, instability and non-linearity. The paper reveals the etymological images that underly the analyzed categories. The process of self-organization of the corpus of ethical categories consists in the fact that the most primordial moral category being reinterpreted gave birth to all other ones. The most primary cognitive trait is “whole” which underlies the category GOOD, while the antagonistic category EVIL is based on the cognitive feature “split”, which proves the polar perception of these categories on the cognitive level in diachrony but not only on the level of current lexico-semantic variants. The autopoiesis of the system of linguoethical categories in the English language has a complex non-linear character, since the connections between the images, which underlie them are multifaced.