Ru
EnN. Bragina
The subject "Semiotics of Culture" as high-school elective course
The article raises the issues of the need to revise the methodology of conducting humanitarian disciplines in conditions of an extremely limited number of academic hours, which is very relevant in modern university pedagogy. As an example, the optional course "Semiotics of culture" is considered. The author suggests paying special attention to the choice of research objects in which the most important cultural codes would be focused, allowing extrapolating their understanding to the widest range of cultural problems.
It is proposed to explore such concepts as food, clothing and home, as they are the basic cultural values, archetypes that form all civilizational processes. The general quality of these phenomena is in the awareness of the duality of the world, the isolation of a person from the natural environment. At the same time, they reflect the ontological properties of human nature: the desire for physical pleasure, beauty and self-defense. Food: through eating, a person comes into particularly intimate contact with the outside world, literally absorbing it, placing it inside himself. Clothing is a person's need to decorate his body, to show it to the world. Home is the desire to divide the world into "your" and "someone else's" space.
The article also provides specific examples for analysis. Their choice is based on the principle of comparison. Cuisine of different peoples, peculiarities of national costumes and their modification in modern clothes, different types of houses: a Russian hut and a nomad's yurt, a nave Catholic basilica and a cross-domed Byzantine temple – all this reflects mythological, ethnic, mental representations of different cultural traditions. In conclusion, conclusions are drawn about the ways of development of modern civilization.
Key words
spiritual and material culture, cultural code, archetype, semiotic object.
For citation
Bragina N. Subject "Semiotics of culture" as a high-school elective course. In: South-Russian Anthology. 2024. No. 2. Pp. 27–34.
