Common metalanguage as a cultural phenomenon (based on the material of reflexives with evaluation semantics)

The present article is devoted to the study of the ontological and epistemological characteristics of the everyday metalanguage, which is a systematic realization of the potential of natural language for self-reference. The everyday metalanguage in the work is interpreted as a cultural phenomenon. This interpretation is explained by the metalanguage’s ability to objectify and translate cultural meanings. Metalanguage statements of an evaluative nature have a pronounced cultural marking. The subject of the study is the elements of culture recorded in meta-assessments. The material for the study was reflexives (metalanguage comments on words) with evaluation semantics, extracted by the method of directed sampling from the main subcorpus of the National Corpus of the Russian language. The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the cultural stereotypes that determine the results of the meta-assessment. In the course of the study, it was found that a meta-assessment can both reflect on individual qualities and characteristics of a sign (reflexives with private evaluative semantics) and convey a holistic axiological perception of a linguistic unit (reflexives with general evaluative semantics). Most reflexives with private evaluative semantics correspond to the following semantic groups: 1) reflexive aesthetic evaluation (prototypical meanings are “beautiful / ugly”); 2) reflexive intellectual evaluation (prototypical meanings are “smart / stupid”; “simple / complex”); 3) reflexive emotional evaluation (prototypical meanings are “scary / joyful”). In reflexives with general evaluative semantics, a generalized interpretation of the sign is verbalized, fitting into the scale of assessments conveyed using adjectives good/bad or their contextual equivalents. The result of the study was the identification of a set of ideas based on national and cultural stereotypes that motivate the content of meta-assessments. The totality of these representations forms a significant fragment of the “cultural projection” of the picture of an ordinary metalanguage.