On semiotic analysis of mythological discourses

The article is an attempt to analyze the semiotic peculiarities of the formation and development of mythological discourses. The author states that the development of religious discourse takes place as a result of the breakup of the most ancient coherent concepts fixing the world-view, in which “heaven” and “deity” are not differentiated but function as personifications of the One, prove the existence of the connection between concepts of “heaven” and “divine” in different religious traditions. Such a representation of the world is interpreted in the article as a variation of magical symbolism. Further on it is proved that genetically the myth originates in the utterance in natural language which later (because of the special pragmatics of the mythological communication) takes a ritualized form springing from a special language. Further on, the article proves that in the mythological narrative the pragmatics of the communicative act is manifested in a context other than everyday communication and the mythological narrative itself does not only play the role of an argument (although it is also possible) used for direct solution of communication task, but it reaches its objective indirectly through the formation of a new or conservation of the old communicative group. The article also treats the problem of the formation of mythological discourse from the elements which existed before the myth; that which exists in reality objectively finds its expression in the language as image names of mythological persons who appear, reveal themselves in the language and assume the character of discourse as text actualized within the act of communication.