HUMANITARIAN RESEARCHES

Journal of fundamental and applied researches

CULTURAL CODES OF THE CITY SIGNBOARD

2016. №3, pp. 38-44

Simonenko Marina A - Candidate of Philological Sciences, Astrakhan State Architectural Engineering University, 414056, Russia, Astrakhan, 18 Tatishchev st, MASimonenko@yandex.ru

The paper considers the city signboard text from the position of linguistics and semiotics and defines the notion “city signboard” as a complex integrated multi-code message of a special type (text-primitive) that is characterized by the main text-forming features, namely, cohesion, coherence, informativity and pragmatic effectiveness. The verbal part of the signboard text contains three types of signs, bearing a basic semantic load in the coherent text. The dominant component among these signs is the individual name of a commercial object that we call ergonym; the latter verbalizes cultural experience of the name author. The study of the signboard texts presenting commercial enterprises in Moscow and Astrakhan discovered natural and cultural codes involved in formation of these texts. Natural code appeals to the mental image of an object, formed on the basis of sensual experience. Cultural codes correlate with the system of values accepted in society. The author of the paper distinguishes historical, biblical, antique codes, codes of literature, music, a global code of network culture. It is noted that modern names of commercial objects are characterized by excessive personification, tendency to uniformity and a considerable proportion of unmotivated or slightly motivated names. It is emphasized that the hypertext of the city is open to expansion of new cultural codes.

Key words: городская вывеска, связность, цельность, прагматичность, эргоним, вербальный знак, иконический знак, культурный код, гипертекст города, city signboard, cohesion, coherence, pragmatic effectiveness, ergonym, verbal sign, iconic sign, cultural code, hypertext of a city

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