DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE SCIENTIST AND TEACHER: E.F. TARASOV

Maslova V.A.

Vitebsk State University named after P.M. Masherov
Vitebsk, Republic of Belarus
e-mail: mvavit@tu.by

Evgeny Fedorovich Tarasov has always been a role model for me: a man endowed with positive energy, a zest for life, wisdom, and an ability to discern profound science in everyday phenomena. These qualities were always highly valued by his colleagues and students. Tarasov headed the psycholinguistics section at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences for nearly 40 years. He was a wise advisor to all. Whenever I turned to him for advice, I often heard his innovative perspective on various aspects of science.

I had known him since the mid-1970s, when the still very young E.F. Tarasov, Yu.A. Sorokin, and A.M. Shakhnarovich, led by Aleksey Alekseevich Leontyev, were establishing their scientific stars. A.A. Leontyev was the initiator of the creation of the psycholinguistics sector. In the second half of the 1970s, with A.A. Leontyev's participation, they wrote the book "Theoretical and Applied Problems of Psycholinguistics," which became the fundamental concept of psycholinguistics for the next 50 years and defined the main milestones and directions of the development of this science.

The title of this short article includes only two aspects of E.F. Tarasov’s activities: Scientist and Teacher.

Scientist. E.F. Tarasov is the author of over 300 scientific papers. He either introduced or firmly established a number of concepts and terms in Russian psycholinguistics: "externalization"—a psychological term now actively used in psycholinguistics—the "triangulation method," and others.

Let us dwell in somewhat greater detail on triangulation, which was first discussed in psycholinguistics in 2000 [3]. Triangulation is a concept that, before its use by E.F. Tarasov and his students (V.P. Sinyachkin, A.D. Palkin, and others), was considered too eclectic. It is achieved through the application of different methods, theories, and research approaches to solving the same problem. The fundamental condition of the triangulation approach is the independence of methods, theories, and researchers from one another. This certainly contains a certain eclecticism, but it is a legitimate eclecticism, as the Belarusian psychologist V.A. Yanchuk put it. It seems that triangulation possesses great interdisciplinary and applied potential; it cannot be dismissed, if only on the grounds that eclecticism is characteristic of a person as he accumulates life experience.

The ideas put forward by E.F. Tarasov can be rather subjectively and conditionally generalized as follows: 1) linguistic consciousness; 2) problems of verbal communication; 3) intercultural communication; 4) creolized texts; 5) value consciousness of Russian people; 6) work on the creation of dictionaries - the Associative Dictionary of the Russian Language, etc.

Many of E.F. Tarasov’s scientific ideas are a look into the future.

E.F. Tarasov's works have another unique quality: they provoke the reader's thought, forcing it to follow the author's intended direction. Thus, under his supervision, research on creolized texts was conducted, and these findings were later used at the Vitebsk School of Cultural Linguistics in forensic linguistic examinations in legal linguistics.

His research on how children acquire their native language gave impetus to the development of linguacultural studies, as the importance of cultural knowledge in language learning was proven.

Evgeny Fedorovich's most important scientific work was his theory of speech communication. It is based on the methodology of the activity-based approach and is devoted to the analysis of speech processes during interactions between communicants. The author argued that communication and activity are intimately interconnected and can only be separated theoretically: "Only theoretical analysis in observed social interaction distinguishes between activity without communication and communication outside the structure of activity" [1]. Developing the problems of speech communication, E.F. Tarasov asserted the importance of "internal" communication, because only through self-communication does a person begin to understand their emotional and mental state, thereby learning to manage themselves. This idea became the methodological basis for the development of a theory of personal self-organization. It is no coincidence that the renowned psychologist A.P. Sitnikov now recommends talking to oneself.

One of E.F. Tarasov's key ideas was the existence of linguistic consciousness, which is an image of the world "captured" by language. This consciousness should be studied by psycholinguistics. According to E.F. Tarasov, linguistic consciousness is "the totality of a cultural bearer's perceptual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge about real-world objects" [5]. The results of intellectual activity are verbalized through a wide variety of linguistic means, most often lexical and phraseological in the broad sense of the term, associative fields, while the mental mechanisms responsible for human speech are also at work. Linguistic consciousness is a type of consciousness in general, but it is easiest to study as linguistic consciousness, which is accessible to linguists and psycholinguists.

Later, E.F. Tarasov refined his understanding of linguistic consciousness, understanding it as a set of images arising from the perception of the world, which are externalized, i.e., become accessible to understanding through linguistic means. While examining two essential entities—consciousness and language—he considered consciousness to be the more important component [4].

Evgeny Fedorovich was one of the first to draw attention to the mechanisms of speech, which are based on images of consciousness, and then through internal speech, external speech is generated. He noted that the process of speaking itself is extremely difficult. To be understood by your interlocutor, you must speak the same language. Paradoxically, but essentially true, is E.F. Tarasov's assertion that the very term "linguistic consciousness" is a metaphor, because it is not consciousness itself, but merely its projection onto language.

E.F. Tarasov identified the central problem of psycholinguistics: the formation and perception of speech as a complex mental process. In one of his interviews, he asserted that "speech is necessary so that we can express our consciousness in external form." Every thought must be expressed in words, and words must be understandable to the interlocutor; for this, language must be shared.

According to Evgeny Fedorovich, experimental methods are the best way to identify the distinctive patterns of consciousness of speakers of any linguistic culture. To this end, he used the method of free association experiments, the responses obtained in which are a way of representing linguistic consciousness. The experiment itself allows one to identify a system of nationally specific cultural stereotypes, which sheds light on the distinctive features of a national character.

Another major contribution by E.F. Tarasov was his work compiling dictionaries. These include the Associative Dictionary of the Russian Language and the dictionary "Basic Values of Bearers of Russian Culture" (2019). The associative dictionary presents objective data not only on the deep semantics of the stimulus-response pair, but also evidence of human linguocreative activity. The sum of reactions to a single stimulus word is nothing more than a form of existence of the images of consciousness associated with this word. The associative field (the totality of reactions to a word) is not only a fragment of human memory, but also a fragment of the image of the world of an ethnic group, reflected in the consciousness of the "average" bearer of a linguaculture, its cultural stereotypes. According to E.F. Tarasov, it externalizes the knowledge associated with the stimulus word in a given national culture [3]. Identifying and analyzing word associations reveals that the most common reactions are those that evoke the image of the people's world, while isolated reactions are creative in nature. Any word is linked to the object it names through associations. This is especially important to remember when studying metaphor.

The idea for a dictionary of values originated with E.F. Tarasov, and the dictionary was published under his direction and editorship. It presents 68 fundamental values of the Russian people: security, love, peace, compassion, independence, and others.

All of E.F. Tarasov's scientific works were distinguished by both the breadth and depth of his scholarly thinking. Therefore, what is truly astonishing about his scholarly work is the diversity of his research topics, combined with its depth and effectiveness. The result is a legacy that will endure for centuries – dictionaries that are distinguished by a high level of humanities culture. His most important personal qualities were his constant scientific inquiry and astonishing scientific intuition.

Teacher. The renowned scientist was both a brilliant lecturer and an outstanding educator, mentoring numerous doctors and dozens of candidates of science. Alongside his research, he lectured to students, who were drawn to him by his profound scientific knowledge and his human qualities as a teacher. I, for example, always admired his kindness, cheerfulness, and wonderful sense of humor.

At various times, E.F. Tarasov lectured to students at the Moscow City Pedagogical University; his main ideas on the theory of intercultural communication [2] were born when he worked at a non-state university – Russian New University, where he headed the faculty  Foreign languages and intercultural communication, in recent years Evgeny Fedorovich headed the laboratory at RUDN.

Blessed memory to the great Man, Scientist, Teacher.

Literature

1. Tarasov E.F. Theory of speech communication. Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Moscow, 1993.
2. Tarasov E.F.. Intercultural communication — a new ontology of the analysis of linguistic consciousness / E.F. Tarasov // Ethnocultural specificity of linguistic consciousness: collection of articles / edited by N.V. Ufimtseva. - M., 1996. - Tarasov E.F. 2000 A.
3. Tarasov E.F. Actual problems of the analysis of linguistic consciousness / E.F. Tarasov // Linguistic consciousness and image of the world: collection of articles / edited by N.V. Ufimtseva. - M., 2000 B.
4. Tarasov E.F. Linguistic consciousness // Questions of psycholinguistics. 2004.
5. Tarasov E.F. Linguistic consciousness – research prospects. Moscow, 1996.

References

1. Tarasov EF. Theory of speech communication. Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Moscow, 1993.
2. Tarasov EF. Intercultural communication — a new ontology of the analysis of linguistic consciousness / EF Tarasov // Ethnocultural specifics of linguistic consciousness: collection of works / edited by N.V. Ufimtseva. — M., 1996. — Tarasov EF2000 A.
3. Tarasov EF. Actual problems of the analysis of linguistic consciousness / EFTarasov // Linguistic consciousness and the image of the world: collection of works / edited by N.V. Ufimtseva. - M., 2000 B.
4. Tarasov EF. Linguistic consciousness // Questions of psycholinguistics.2004.
5. Tarasov EF. Linguistic consciousness – research prospects. Moscow, 1996.