Linguistic and cultural identity: epistemological review

The article is intended to analyze and review the current state of "identity" as the category in modern social science. The main objective of the survey is to specify and position the term "identity" within the epistemological space of the concepts of "language", "culture", "personality" in line with the dominant ideas of the social science. The purpose of the article is to outline and analyze the research into the concepts of "identity" and "linguistic identity" in the humanities and, particularly, in linguistics. An attempt is made to comprehend the epistemological foundations of a new linguistic identity. Modern scientific trends are viewed in terms of content oriented linguistics and cognitive science. The interdisciplinary potential of epistemology is considered crucial for modern linguistic and ethnolinguistic studies. Among the approaches to the study of identity are those of Shaposhnikova, Karasik, Kristeva, Charaudeau, Block, Pruvost and Paul-Laurent, Salimi and Abedi, Hentschel, Lagarde. It was found that behavior patterns, modal and nominative ways of reflecting reality are ethnically determined via language as well as the preferences of the communicating individual in accordance with the logic, semantics and pragmatics of discourse. The main idea of the article is that linguistic identity is, first of all, ethnolinguistic identity. In this perspective, linguistic identity is not a purely national category, but rather a mental representation, a way of thinking, a specific weltanschauung. In any case, what we are talking about is the selection of the optimal linguistic continuum within which individuals acts and identify themselves as personalities. The prospects for the application of the methodology of dominant identification tools in any type of language are outlined. Suggestions are made about the possibility of building up a new mainstream trend of study considering identity as an ethnolinguistic entity in terms of cognitive and discourse analyses.