The Element of Light in Slavic Worldview
Modern linguists find it relevant to focus on how the language encodes, encapsulates and accumulates cultural knowledge about the nature and the world. The aim of the article is to analyze ancient Slavs’ perception of the element of light. Light is an archetypal dichotomies (light/darkness) which predetermine people’s worldview. The investigation enables the researcher to reconstruct and explore a number of cultural and linguistic ideas (light as the world, lights as a person, light as life, light as the sky, light as flame, light as metal) which constitute the concept of light in Slavic linguistic culture. The article maintains that humans are identified with nature through visualizing celestial bodies (the sun, the moon, stars) as the eyes of the sky and through endowing human eyes with the ability to cast light. The analysis of historical and etymological dictionaries uncovers the interconnection between the concept of light and other fundamental concepts of Slavic culture, such as life, death, flame, the good and the evil. The article provides examples of words, idioms and collocations with the word light which constitute folklore picture of the world. The results of the research can be used to teach semantics, etymology, linguoculturology, ethnolinguistics.