On February 18 Doctor of Sciences (Philology), Professor, leading research fellow of Potebnya Institute of Linguistics of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Vitaliy ZHAYVORONOK visited ZNU. He gave a lecture to the students of the Faculty of Journalism.
The subject of his lecture lies at the intersection of two sciences – psychology and philology: “Ukrainian psychotype in linguistic expression”.
The first part of the lecture (“Ethnological context of word”) was devoted to the essence of relations between such notions as “ethnos”, “mentality” and “language”. Famous ethno-linguist stressed that language is the starting point for the world that is built in one’s mind. That’s why it is possible to say that Ukrainian-speaking perception of the Universe is characteristic of us. This belief was illustrated by Hegel’s quotation: “Self-consciousness of a people is the bearer of development level of general spirit in its existent being and of the objective reality he puts his will into. On this point, this or that people rules the world.”
Our guest also gave the definition of “psychotype” – it is the particular self-conscious in ethnos that can be distinguished by some psychological criteria: temperament, behavioral characteristics, emotional and sensual features, etc.
The second part of the lecture was devoted to Ukrainian psychotype. Vitaliy Zhayvoronok gave its characteristic features:
- contemplative aims, that cause Ukrainian’s inclination to infinite absolute;
- peculiar slow reactions to environment;
- “congener labour”, declared by Grygoriy Skovoroda, as a means of nation’s existence. Breadmaking is the essence of ethnos;
- some preference of emotional-sensual-spiritual component over logical and intellectual one (so called “light sorrow” turned out to be one of Ukrainian psychotype’s peculiar features);
- craving for knowledge, as an indication of Cossacks’ mentality (such an elements as “Cossack-freedom-fate” are the three dominants in this context).
When the lecture was over, students could ask Vitaliy Zhayvoronok some questions:
- What dictionaries does
- Big explanatory academic dictionary is the most important one for any language. As everybody knows, Ukrainian language has such a dictionary. But is seems to be a bit outdated, because it was compiled in 80s of the previous century. Work on it has renewed now. Whereas it was 11-volume dictionary before, now it will be 20-volume edition. Dictionary for jargon words and occasionalisms, that are constantly emerging on pages of mass-media editions, could be useful for journalists. Students could write bachelor and master theses in this direction.
- What other fields of knowledge could you recommend young scientists for their future researches?
- The history of Ukrainian press remains to be prospective enough for journalists. There are a lot of unexplored moments, especially in the period between the end of XIX and beginning of XX century, when Russian Empire somewhat weakened its russification policy and a variety of Ukrainian-language editions appeared. The life of literary and folk work in mass-media language of those times is also scantily investigated. Interaction of different variants of one word in Western and Eastearn
- We live in Russian-speaking region. What advice could you give to Zaporizhzhya people to save mental and spiritual language treasure of
- I think they should turn to those people who, living in the same region, were able to save their native tongue and even enrich it.
