Linguocultural Anatomical Code: Concept of Sacredness

Abstract

The article examines the Kazakh people’s linguocultural anatomical code, which has developed due to nomadic culture over the centuries and reflected their beliefs, rituals, rites, and traditions. The linguocultural code is viewed as a secondary modeling semiotic system, or as a connotative semiotics. Certain anatomical concepts, i.e. body parts, bones, and internal organs serve as the cultural code’s elements. Culturally conditioned sacral significance, tracing to pagan magic, myths, and legends, is revealed in their lexical and phraseological representations in the connotative meaning. Thus, the article analyzes such concepts as 12 (on eki) múshe, jauyryn, ókpe. 12 (on eki) múshe serves as the basic concept of the Kazakh anatomical code, defining views on human and animals’ anatomy, the role and functions of certain anatomical concepts in spiritual, religious, and ritual-rite culture. A high degree of sacredness of the named concepts, depending on the level of linguistic unit total number and cultural sacred meaning units, was identified as well. Thus, the purpose of our article is to identify the specifics of the Kazakh anatomical linguocultural code by analyzing certain sacred concepts, verbalized in the names of skeleton, bones, some inner organs, as well as to define the degree of their sacredness, preserved in the modern Kazakh language. We have developed the methodology for studying these concepts, based on the secondary semiotic sign analysis, i.e. lexical and phraseological verbal units and their semantics: denotative and connotative, and defined certain concepts’ sacredness degree.