Abstract:

This presentation aims at covering the urbanonyms as the semiotic signs of language teaching and learning related to the culture and history of a nation. Urbanonyms are mostly informatively motivated names in the public space of cities. The use of signs and symbols enhance the learning capacity of a language learner at cognitive, cultural, and meta-cognitive levels. The research based on Charles S. Peirce’s framework of semiotics, in which a sign can be a word, a picture, a gesture, a memory, a scene from real life, or an idea. A sign represents an object, which can be another word, picture, mental image, real or fictional event, as long as it relates to certain previous feeling, knowledge, or experience.

The nature of language is based on signs, as with signs the language could be taught and learned more effectively. Semiotics and the theory of foreign language teaching are related in the following areas: the methodology of vocabulary teaching nonverbal and visual communication, and cultural semiotics. Semiotic studies in language teaching focus on vocabulary development and words as symbols in the context of nonverbal communication and media.

Urbanonyms as the semiotics signs of foreign language learning and teaching have not only a linguistic but also an intercultural competence, “the ability to understand culturally molded actions and to perform them in such a manner that they are or can be understood and accepted by members of the target culture” (Baur & Grzybek, 1990, 199). The teaching of a language is also the teaching of another culture. According to Morris (1946, 327), “training in the flexible use of signs means gaining the ability to enter into fruitful interaction with persons whose signs differ from one’s own, ‘translating’ their signs into one’s own vocabulary and one’s own signs into their vocabulary, adapting discourse to the unique problems of diverse individuals interacting in unique situations”.

In this presentation, a sign is a new word (an urbanonym) to be learned. A word has been learned when the learner knows how it sounds, how it is pronounced, what it refers to, represents (its object), or what it means. Then the word no longer needs to be learned.
The presentation analyses contemporary urbanonyms of antroponimic origin that were recorded in Kaunas city map during the period of Independence of Lithuania from 1990.

When analysing urbanonyms of anthroponymic origin, encyclopedias, historical sources, scientific works are taken into account.
In the examination of urbanonyms semantically, first of all, the origin of urbanonyms is determined, i. e. a proper word meaning the name of an individual entity: a historical personality, a politician, other famous people (poets, writers, painters, composers, etc). Further on, urbanonyms are classified into smaller semantic groups.

The research has disclosed that the greater part of the group of urbanonyms is comprised of anthroponyms which stand for famous artists and politicians. The research-based fact is that streets are usually named of masculine anthroponyms, and only few urbanonyms have women’s anthroponyms.

Keywords:

Urbanonyms, anthroponyms, semiotics, foreign language learning and teaching.