Modern Methods and Techniques of Linguistic Studies

Abstract

The article is devoted to the modern methods and techniques of
linguistic studies. The attention has been paid to the paradigms that were dominant in
the 20th century – human-centrism, semantics-centrism and form-centrism; at the
active development of new branches of linguistics – linguostylistics,
psycholinguistics, ethnolinguistics, linguoculturology, linguofolkloristics, cognitive
linguistics, gender linguistics, interlinguistics, medialinguistics and others. All that caused the necessity to review the approaches to the methods of linguistic researches.
Such key notions as methodology, method, and procedure were specified. A method
is interpreted as a system of rules and principles of approaches to the studies of
certain phenomena of nature, society and thinking, as a way of organizing a
theoretical and practical acquisition of the reality; a methodology is understood as a
totality of interconnected ways and rules of the conducting a certain research, an
action algorithm of a scholar. It has been suggested to point out four levels of
scientific methods: 1) general philosophical methods; 2) general scientific methods;
3) specific scientific methods; and 4) methods of separate branches of certain
sciences. Traditional general philosophical methods, general scientific and specific
scientific methods as well as their topicality for the modern studies have been
considered. A special attention has been paid to modern methods and principles of
language units’ analysis that scholars apply in new branches of linguistics. On the
basis of studies that were conducted in the fields of linguostylistics,
linguofolkloristics, and medialinguistics it has been shown that the topicality and
complexity of the theme of a linguistic study, realization of the set purpose and tasks
of scientific research require the application of relevant methods and search for an
adequate methodology that could lead a scholar to desirable results. It has been found
out that a modern subject and object of an analysis within the frames of new
linguistic studies that appeared at the intersections of several scientific branches can
be thoroughly investigated only with the application of a complex of traditional and
modern methods, as well as original authors’ techniques.