The Philosophy of Age in Culture and Language (based on Materials from Russian, Turkish, and Bashkir Paremias)

The article reveals the historical and sociocultural origins of the philosophical understanding of a person’s age in different cultures, in the context of the ideology of society in a particular era, and their reflection in languages as motivating foundations for phraseological units. The aim of the study is to describe the stereotypical patterns of thinking and behavior—both of the older members of society themselves and of the attitudes towards them—that have become ingrained in the proverbial fund of the language. The linguistic, cultural, and value‑semantic features of Russian, Turkish, and Bashkir proverbs that interpret a person’s age (the period of old age) are analysed. In the course of a linguoculturological analysis of proverbs, the ethnocultural specificity of the figurative description of the external, psychophysiological, and mental qualities of an elderly/old person, as well as their assessment in society in the Russian and Turkic (Bashkir and Turkish) languages, has been identified for the first time — in the context of culture, lifestyle, traditional beliefs, and customs of the peoples who speak these languages. It has been proven that ontological, cultural‑historical, and axiological factors form a certain linguocultural space in the linguistic consciousness of native speakers, which is reflected in the motivation of the semantics of set expressions. It has been established that Turkic cultures exhibit a more tolerant attitude towards old age, and their languages lack proverbs and idioms with pejorative connotations, compared to the Russian language, this is due to the natural and climatic conditions of living and the type of economic activity (sedentary versus nomadic lifestyle), which influence the attitude towards older members of society due to their inability to work. In the compared languages, there is a similarity in the characterization of such life parameters as its transience, the finitude of earthly existence, and the contrast between youth and old age. The research prospects lie in applying the algorithm for analyzing paremias using materials from other languages.

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