REALIA AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

ABSTRACT

Language serves as a mirror of national culture, while cultural development is governed by objective social laws that operate at general, particular, and specific levels. Culture plays a significant role in shaping language and represents a fundamental human characteristic linked to an individual’s capacity to consciously transform the surrounding world. This study draws on Dan Sperber’s scholarly work, which examines the dynamic and evolving relationship between language and culture. Sperber’s interpretation of culture is particularly noteworthy, as his Philosophy of Culture project seeks to integrate cognitive psychology with the epidemiology of representations, thereby framing cultural dynamics within a cognitive research perspective.

The spiritual heritage and historical experience of a people are embodied in all dimensions of their national language. Although generations succeed one another, the accumulated wisdom and life experience of each generation are transmitted to subsequent ones through language. In this sense, language preserves the spiritual values of a nation and functions as a vital link connecting its past, present, and future. Through language, cultural continuity is maintained, enabling the preservation, accumulation, and internalization of experiences inherited from previous generations. Moreover, language contributes to the formation of individual identity by influencing behavior, lifestyle, worldview, mentality, and national character.

No culture exists in isolation from ethnic, national, and universal human dimensions; consequently, intercultural dialogue is essential both among different peoples and within individual cultures. Given the existence of multiple forms of communication, this research focuses on the role of realia in intercultural communication. Realia emerge and take shape within the native language and continue to develop through processes of intercultural interaction.

АННОТАЦИЯ

Язык служит зеркалом национальной культуры, тогда как развитие культуры подчиняется объективным социальным законам, действующим на общем, частном и конкретном уровнях. Культура играет важную роль в формировании языка и представляет собой фундаментальную характеристику человека, связанную со способностью личности сознательно преобразовывать окружающий мир. В данном исследовании опираются на научные труды Дэна Спербера, в которых рассматривается динамичная и постоянно развивающаяся взаимосвязь языка и культуры. Особого внимания заслуживает интерпретация культуры у Спербера, поскольку его проект «Философия культуры» направлен на интеграцию когнитивной психологии с эпидемиологией репрезентаций, что позволяет рассматривать культурную динамику в рамках когнитивного исследовательского подхода.

Духовное наследие и исторический опыт народа находят отражение во всех измерениях его национального языка. Несмотря на смену поколений, накопленная мудрость и жизненный опыт каждого поколения передаются последующим именно через язык. В этом смысле язык сохраняет духовные ценности нации и выступает важнейшим связующим звеном между её прошлым, настоящим и будущим. Посредством языка обеспечивается культурная преемственность, позволяющая сохранять, накапливать и усваивать опыт, унаследованный от предыдущих поколений. Кроме того, язык способствует формированию личности, влияя на поведение, образ жизни, мировоззрение, менталитет и национальный характер.

Ни одна культура не существует в отрыве от этнических, национальных и общечеловеческих измерений; следовательно, межкультурный диалог необходим как между различными народами, так и внутри отдельных культур. Учитывая существование множества форм коммуникации, данное исследование сосредоточено на роли реалий в межкультурной коммуникации. Реалии возникают и формируются в рамках родного языка и продолжают развиваться в процессе межкультурного взаимодействия.

Keywords: culture, realia, language, cultural diversity, intercourse, intercultural communication.

Ключевые слова: культура, реалии, язык, культурное разнообразие, общение, межкультурная коммуникация.

INTRODUCTION

The spiritual life and history of a people are reflected in all spheres of language. Generations change and succeed one another, yet each generation’s life lessons are passed down to the next through language. All traces of a nation’s spiritual life are preserved in its native tongue. Language is a tool that vividly connects a people’s past, present, and future. Through language, a nation’s confidence in the future is strengthened.

S.D. Katsnelson believes that “It is through language that the continuity of human culture takes place, that the experience developed by previous generations is accumulated and assimilated. Language shapes the individual, determining their behavior, lifestyle, worldview, mentality, national character, and ideology” [8, p.15].

Language is a mirror of culture, and for this reason, the concept of “intercultural communication” is currently of great importance. Culture is a broad concept. It encompasses the material, spiritual, intellectual, ideological, artistic-aesthetic, and other values created and progressively refined by humanity since its inception. In other words, elements such as memory, worldview, science, behavior, communication, art, and everyday life—which define human existence—are components of culture. As S.K. Mammadova rightly states, “The national identity of peoples is their culture” [3, p.3].

The development of culture is based on the objective laws of society. From this perspective, culture evolves based on specific, particular, and general laws. Specific laws exist only in cultures belonging to a certain stage of societal development; particular laws function in culturally similar types, and general laws operate throughout the development of human culture. These laws are interconnected and unified in their development. Such a unity of laws also leads to connections between different types of cultures. As a result, the relationship between the particular and the general emerges in cultural development. Every national culture differs from others in its unique and specific characteristics. However, despite these differences, there is a common, law-governed connection among national cultures. This connection manifests in different ways at different times [3, pp.103–104].

It is true that culture influences language. Culture is a significant human characteristic linked to the ability to purposefully change the surrounding world. During this process, a synthetic world of objects and symbols is created, and relationships and connections among people are formed. Everything created by or associated with humans is part of culture.

During the course of research into the close and ever-evolving relationship between “language” and “culture,” we encountered the work of Dan Sperber. His views on the concept of “culture” are of particular interest. A brief introduction: Dan Sperber is a contemporary French philosopher who lives in Paris and is the head of the International Institute for the Study of Culture. He began his academic career as an anthropologist, having studied at the Sorbonne and Oxford, but later focused on the philosophical aspects of culture. Since the 1970s, he has written and published works in English on cultural philosophy. In 1996, he published his monograph Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach.

By studying culture as something that behaves like nature, Dan Sperber develops a naturalistic approach to culture. Sperber argues that culture primarily consists of contagious ideas. In his view, cultural processes resemble epidemics and, accordingly, epidemiology should study such processes. Sperber calls this epidemiology of representations and presents it as a naturalistic research program within the social sciences. He believes that the key science upon which the epidemiology of representations must be based is cognitive psychology.

The philosopher distinguishes between two types of representations: mental and public. Beliefs, intentions, and preferences are mental representations. Signs, statements, texts, and images are public representations. A representation may exist within an individual, in which case it is a mental representation. In this instance, the producer and user of the representation are the same person. A representation may also exist in the environment of its user—for example, in the form of a text or a report—making it a public representation. Public representations typically serve as means of communication between a producer and a user who are different individuals. Mental representations always have a single user, while public representations may have multiple users.

Thus, the essence of the epidemiological approach to culture is to explain why any given trait (idea, skill) is distributed and transmitted among a population in a particular way, and to uncover the nature of cultural transmission and cultural dynamics.

Sperber emphasizes that the epidemiology of representations draws on various explanatory models from different disciplines, but all of these models share one common feature: they explain macro-phenomena as the cumulative effect of micro-processes. This is one of Sperber's core ideas, which he repeatedly returns to. He opposes any form of reductionism and, in some ways continuing the line of Leslie White, defends the autonomy of culture and the idea that cultural phenomena must be explained on their own terms.

The epidemiological metaphor has its limitations. Sperber notes that, first, the metaphor evokes a kind of pathology; and second, unlike viruses and bacteria—which mutate only occasionally during reproduction—representations are almost always transformed during transmission. Cultural representations, in particular, consist of many versions, both mental and public. These versions form chains: each mental version is the result of interpreting a public representation, which in turn is the expression of another mental representation. Sperber thus introduces two more key concepts: interpretation and causal chains. What he refers to as “chains” are in fact highly complex structures resembling networks or lattices. Despite their complexity, these structures consist of just two types of transitions: from mental to public, and from public to mental.

By developing a materialist conception of culture, Sperber distances himself from biologists who attempt to explain cultural dynamics. In particular, he diverges from Richard Dawkins, who emphasizes the replication of memes. One of Sperber’s most important claims is that exact replication is extremely rare in the process of cultural transmission.

Sperber also distances himself from Charles Lumsden and Edward Wilson and their ideas on gene-culture transmission and co-evolution. The inaccuracies and changes that occur during cultural translation depend on various factors and are closely tied to interpretation. Interpretation is the representation of a representation, made possible by content similarity. A public representation is an interpretation of a mental representation with sufficiently similar content. Thus, the communication process can be divided into two interpretation stages: from mental to public, and from public to mental [4, p.34].

Sperber highlights two important points:

1. Replications are typically not exact but are transformed during transmission;
2. These transformations occur as a result of constructive cognitive processes.

He notes that the idea of an epidemiological approach to culture is not new and traces back to the works of Gabriel Tarde [9, pp.298–302, 313].

In his project on the philosophy of culture, Sperber attempts to link cognitive psychology with the epidemiology of representations. As a result, his next line of thought is concerned with how cultural dynamics can be described through cognitive research. Thus, there are two types of cognition that achieve rationality in different ways. Sperber goes further to assert that different types of cognitive views are spread through culture via different mechanisms. Intuitive knowledge is relatively homogeneous and tends to spread in a relatively uniform manner. In contrast, reflective knowledge is more diverse and is transmitted through various means.

All normal individuals (those without cognitive impairment) possess a strong innate tendency to develop intuitive knowledge systems. Knowledge about the movement of physical objects, one's own bodily behavior, interactions between the body and the environment, and even the behavior of other living beings and people—such knowledge is acquired effortlessly and without formal training. While general intuitive knowledge certainly varies between cultures, these differences are not drastic. Sperber points out that recent research in ethno-science shows that cross-cultural differences in fields such as zoological, botanical, or color classification are relatively superficial and that each of these domains is underpinned by universal structures

Dan Sperber emphasizes the role of both perception and communication in the formation of intuitive knowledge:

“Even when an intuitive belief is based on one's own perception, the combination of conceptual resources and background knowledge with sensory input shows that actual knowledge is partly acquired through communication. Communication either serves as a direct source or at least as a source of concepts and background knowledge” [4, p. 93].

Sperber sets out to combine a modular view of conceptual thought with a naturalistic (materialist) perspective on human culture, developed under the label epidemiology of representations. He demonstrates that individuals with modular minds are capable of generating genuine cultural diversity.

At the end of his book, Sperber uses the well-known mirror metaphor, popular since modern times:

“We look for our reflection in the social sciences, as we do in a mirror. We are disturbed when we do not recognize ourselves in it. Neither cognitive psychology nor the epidemiology of representations immediately reflects our familiar self-image. Worse still, the very thing we consider important and meaningful—our existence as conscious individuals—appears, at best, as the projection of an unreliable social image onto a biological framework. Must we content ourselves with this troubling reflection?... Yet, the more generalized these images become, the less threatening they appear. Modern physics, for example, leaves the image of the material world largely intact, and in doing so, continues to guide our steps. Likewise, no future social science will eliminate our commonsense understanding of ourselves. ...Science can offer a particular kind of intellectual pleasure: the experience of seeing the world in a light that initially confuses us, but eventually makes us reflect, deepens our understanding, and at the same time, relativizes it. I hope the social sciences can provide us with this kind of pleasure as often as possible” [4, p. 155].

Sperber’s philosophy of culture, presented under the concept of the epidemiology of representations, enables us to see processes of cultural transmission and dynamics by considering both the cognitive features of human beings and their ecological environment. He consistently emphasizes the material nature of these processes and their partial alignment with Darwinian models. At the same time, he expands the sphere of rationality to include the mysterious, the semi-understood, and the questionable—bringing him closer to Susanne Langer’s symbolic theory of culture, developed in the mid-20th century.

Sperber does not aim to answer every question. Many aspects of his theory remain open to discussion. However, the conceptual material he provides allows us to take a new epidemiological perspective on cultural processes.

It is well known that realities are born and shaped in the native language, and they develop through communication. The theories of M. McLuhan and A. Mol analyze mass communications and the culture they produce as a new phase in social interaction [5, p. 242]. Social relations arise from specific needs—either through participation in activities (work, education, play) or through various systems of communication.

The foundation of communication lies in the relationships established through intergroup, intragroup, and interpersonal roles. It represents the individual’s connection with social groups, communities, systems, organizations, or society as a whole. Sociologists analyze communication as a socially conditioned form of human activity, while linguists explore it as the actualization of language’s communicative function in various verbal situations. In psychology, the term “communication” refers to the process of establishing and developing interpersonal relationships for the purpose of information exchange during joint activity [5, p. 333].

In her Azerbaijani-English-Russian Explanatory Dictionary of Communication Terms, N.Ch. Valiyeva defines the term “communication” and characterizes its various types. The term communication, derived from Latin, means “message, transmission of information in any form, interaction.” She writes:

“In its broadest sense, communication is understood as a process of mutual cooperation and forms of interaction that facilitate the creation, transmission, and reception of various types of information. Interpersonal communication takes place in the form of interaction. The sociological perspective studies the communicability of informational means in interpersonal, intergroup, and international communication.”

Currently, three main interpretations of the concept of “communication” exist:

1. Communication is viewed as a means of linking material and spiritual objects—as a specific structure.
2. It is seen as the process through which individuals exchange information.
3. Communication refers to the transmission of information and the mass exchange of information for the purpose of influencing society and its constituent components [5, pp. 114–115].

This dictionary explores contemporary topics such as the concept of communication; rational and irrational communication theories; the classical paradigm of communication; unified communication theory; structural-functional directions in communication theories; the critical radical direction in communication theory; the goals and models of communication; components of the communication model; communication systems and their reliability; communication networks; homogeneous, two-level, and sociocultural models of communication; circular forms of communication; subject-object relations in communication; functions and types of communication; participatory and passive/performance-based communication; communication channels and multichannel communication; communication efficiency and intensity; elements and ethnosociology of communication; communication barriers (including physical ones); obstacles in the communication process; communication participants; technical means of communication; new communication strategies, and more.

In total, Valiyeva identifies 48 types of communication in her dictionary, including: instant, audiovisual, international, artistic, restorative, crisis, exclusive, expressive, scientific, protest-related, active, external, public, non-public, production-related, cognitive, compilative, street, mass, global, group, intragroup, intergroup, manipulative, marketing, cultural-spiritual, intercultural, remote, intra-office, mid-level, problematic, public, advertising, semiotic, social, sociological, personal, intrapersonal, interpersonal, educational, accidental, transcultural, mediated, unmediated, verbal, visual, local, and conflicting communication [5, pp. 116–146].

As is well known, English and Azerbaijani belong to different language families in terms of both genesis and typology. English is a member of the Indo-European language family, specifically within the Germanic group (West Germanic subgroup), while Azerbaijani belongs to the Turkic language family, within the Oghuz group (Oghuz-Seljuk subgroup). These fundamental differences result in significant structural and grammatical disparities between the two languages. Consequently, Azerbaijani speakers learning English inevitably encounter challenges stemming from these divergences.

One of the most significant research areas in the Azerbaijani language is its grammatical structure. Research into the grammar of the language is conducted based on specific fields and topics, with generalized conclusions drawn from these studies. Linguistic analysis of indivisible syntactic units reveals that accurate results can be obtained by comparing the paradigmatic series of structural-semantic variants and invariants. The invariant—the syntaxeme, which integrates structural, semantic, and syntactic features—is expressed differently in typologically distinct languages such as Azerbaijani and English.

Over time, various linguists have authored scholarly works on language culture and speech culture, concepts that are broad in both scope and content. The notion of speech culture includes literary language norms, conversational etiquette, and other key factors shaping speech. Among foreign scholars, T.V. Zherebilo defines language culture as follows:

1. Characteristics of exemplary texts recorded in written monuments and the expressive and semantic capabilities of the language system.
2. Equivalent to speech culture.

According to Zherebilo, speech culture can be understood as:

1. The degree of excellence achieved in mastering oral and written speech.
2. A branch of philology that studies the speech life of a society during a given historical period and defines the rules for the use of language as a means of communication and expression.
3. Normativity of speech—its compliance with linguistic standards in terms of pronunciation, stress, word usage, word combinations, and sentence construction within a particular speech community at a specific historical moment [7, p.169].

B.N. Golovin outlines the term speech culture in the following senses:

1. Features that speak to its communicative excellence and systematization.
2. A collection of skills and knowledge that enable effective and appropriate language use for communication.
3. A field of linguistics dealing with the components and communicative qualities of speech culture [6, p.26].

In his book Foundations of Speech Culture, N.A. Abdullayev writes:

“Speech culture is the highest expression of a person’s social and intellectual development, their conscious love for the language, and a top-tier quality. Sociological studies conducted in the UK on women's speech have shown that the more correct a woman’s speech is, the more successful she is in her personal and professional life. Undoubtedly, this conclusion applies to all language users” [1, p.33].

The key features of speech can be summarized as follows: clarity, diction, conciseness, purity, correctness, sincerity, richness, appropriate intonation, simplicity, naturalness, originality, appropriateness, coherence, and expressiveness [1, pp. 34–60].

Often, even the simplest speech situations, which require adherence to specific rules and communicative strategies, can leave native speakers at a loss. In some cases, paradoxes emerge during verbal communication. The speaker may feel unable to establish verbal contact with other participants. One of the elements creating paradoxes and misunderstandings in intercultural communication is realia.

In linguistics, terminology refers to a set of words and expressions used to denote specific concepts and typical objects within a particular field of study. In the context of intercultural communication, understanding the role of realia and their cognitive features requires answering the question: What are realia?

In translation studies, realia are words denoting objects or concepts specific to a particular nation’s daily life, history, or geography, which are often retained in their original form when translated into another language [11].
They can also be defined as:

1. Extralinguistic elements studied by foreign linguistics, including various social, political, ethnographic, psychological, and other factors.
2. Tangible cultural objects that form the basis for the nominative meaning of a word [2, p.446].

 Conclusion 

It should be noted that, when the objects or phenomena denoted by realia become widespread in another culture, these words may become loanwords. Realia that are well-established across multiple cultures often evolve into widely used terms. However, even then, realia are distinguished from terms by their national-historical connotations and their scope of use. Realia are culturally embedded words tied to the worldview of the people who created them, whereas terms are artificially coined to denote objects or phenomena objectively [10, p.51].

Intercultural communication is now recognized as a reliable, modern principle for establishing relationships on a global scale. Intercultural dialogue presupposes the existence of shared universal values. Islam, with its universal values, also serves as a guarantor of cultural integration and communication. In multicultural societies, multiple cultures coexist and function side by side. Importantly, the spread of different cultures—including Azerbaijani culture—to other countries is largely facilitated by mass media.

In the intercultural communication process, speakers of different languages and cultures must be familiar with linguistic terminology, cultural references, and history of the respective speech communities. Within this context, realia play an exceptional role. During language instruction, realia must be taught, memorized, and explained accurately to learners of foreign languages.

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