Language Personality
Language personality from the standpoint of linguistic study of culture is, first of all, a bearer of national culture. According to V. I. Karasik, language personality is always national and a part of certain linguocultural society with inherent consciousness and national stereotypes which the language personality appropriates in the process of socialization [1]
Yu. N. Karaulov expresses the same thought defining language personality as « being fixed primarily in semantic system basic national and cultural prototype of the bearer of a certain natural language that makes up timeless and invariant part of the structure of language personality» [2, p.42]
In sociolinguistics, language personality is understood as a native speaker, «being capable of realizing a set of linguistic means in speech activity, that characterize a definite part of the language community (social group) within a given interval of time» [3, p.12]. Sociolinguists differentiate various types of language personality based on a social type being characterized by a certain age, sex, profession, social status.
At present, there exist two ways of modeling language personality and his typology based on text characteristics [4, 10]. According to N.D. Golev and А.V. Kuznetsova, in theory and practice of studying language personality there have emerged the following directions of typology: 1) developing typology of language personality based on revealing the peculiarities of author’s using linguistic means in the text, that is the typology in the direction from language/text to the type of language personality, which can be expanded by mental and psychological characteristics-explanations (G. I. Bogin, Yu. N. Karaulov and the others); 2) developing typology of language personality proceeding from his individual features (in terms of gender, professional, psychic features, etc.), and revealing peculiarities of functioning the given language types in speech, that is, typology in the direction from the type of language personality to his manifestation in speech activity and text.
In spite of different approaches to understanding of «language personality», it should be noted that the concept «language personality» directly relates to the concept «personality». «Language personality is a personality, expressed in language (texts) and via language, a personality, reconstructed in his general terms on the basis of language means» [2, p.38].
⠀ 1. Karasik V.I. Language circle: personality, concepts, discourse. Volgograd: Peremena. 2002