Semiotic Structure and Ecological Meanings of the Hezhe Ethnoculture

The article examines the semiotic organization of the Hezhe ethnoculture and its ecological meanings. The study aims to identify the mechanisms of symbolic regulation of human-nature interaction. It is noted that it is based on the ability of private ethnoculture to transform the experience of interaction of ethnic representatives with nature into symbolic meanings that determine the socio-cultural features of their lives. The result is the formation of cultural ecology as an integrated education that includes key practices of human-nature commu-nication, the preservation of the axiological outline of life, conditioned by the need to take into account the natu-ral environment, the creation of a collective memory that ensures the transfer of cultural and ecological knowledge from generation to generation. The semiotic analysis of cultural structures of a particular ethnic group serves as a methodological basis. It is shown that their iconic, indexical and symbolic forms create a sta-ble system of ecological consciousness: the environment is represented in the collective consciousness of an ethnic group as a carrier of a cultural and semiotic resource. The results obtained expand the understanding of cultural ecology as a form of semantic regulation of environmental practices.