The text of readers’ comments on works of literature as a source of studying the national cultural code

Abstract

The search for spiritual guidelines that can unite Russian society at the current stage of its development requires multifaceted research aimed at solving the problem of preserving traditional moral values in a global world. This actualizes the study of the national cultural code as the basis of the value orientations of the individual, the system of meanings common to the whole nation. The issue of the national cultural code is currently being actively studied and included in the interdisciplinary scientific field. The most promising direction can be considered the identification of aspects of the national cultural code that determine the moral and behavioral type of a modern Russian. The key to solving this issue is the definition of approaches to the choice of empirical material, as well as the choice of methods for its processing, systematization and generalization. The article contains the results of the study, the purpose of which was the theoretical and empirical substantiation of: (a) the possibility of using readers’ comments on works of literature as a source for studying the national cultural code; (b) the choice of digital humanities methods as the basis for processing the corpus of experimental material. The research problems were solved on the basis of a theoretical analysis of studies on the relationship between the national language system and the unique cultural code of the individual; a study of a significant body of empirical material (7 000 texts of comments); and based on their realities of the modern communication space, which is characterized by globalization and the use of Internet technologies. As a result, it has been found that textual comments on works of literature posted by users in the network space are representative, since they indicate the reflex or conscious need of the individual to determine their national identity, to express their attitude to national values. The analysis of the empirical material has shown that the study of the national cultural code in the modern scientific space must be carried out using the methods of digital humanities, which allow processing an arbitrarily large corpus of elements, highlighting key nouns that are necessary to characterize certain aspects of the cultural code, evaluate them, and also template phrases that lead to the loss of meanings, but at the same time showing the level of understanding and translation of the cultural code by an individual. The theoretical analysis has shown that the preservation and change of the semantics of the elements of the cultural code occurs in accordance with evolutionary principles, the principles of dialectics: values that allow a nation to maintain its identity under certain conditions remain unchanged, and elements introduced as a result of intercultural communications may be subject to correction in order to preserve the adaptive capabilities of culture and national identity. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.