SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF A LINGUISTIC SIGN AS CULTURAL INFORMATION DRIVERS

The article traces the influence of Geoffrey Leech's semantic and pragmatic conceptual theories on modem general and comparative cultural linguistics. The article aims to distinguish drivers of cultural information within the semantic structure and pragmatic potential of a linguistic sign. The material of the analysis is drawn from cultural and linguistic dictionaries as well as from English and Russian texts. The study implements definitive, distributive, contextual, pragmatic and linguocutural analyses. Two major approaches to determining cultural information carriers within the linguistic sign are established. The notion of cultural connotation is interpreted as a linguocultural category and paid special attention to. Two types of cultural connotation, primary and secondary, are singled out. Cultural connotations are classified due to their range of action within cultural space. The cultural connotation is seen as a linguocultural category marked by such features as relational, axiological, associative, cognitive, precedent and stereotypical character.