The visual representation of the bodily codes of the Russian and Chinese youth

• Мельникова Людмила Алексеевна

  Candidate of Culturology, Associate Proffessor of the Department of Design and Technology
  Vladivostok State University of Economics and Service
  Vladivostok. Russia

Socio-cultural changes which occurred in the late XX – early XXI centuries in most countries, led to the fact that the topics of visuality and the semiotics of corporeality have become a priority for researchers in the field of culture, psychology, sociology, and history. This is due to the mass visualization of information transmitted and preserved through visual images through television, magazines and the Internet and aimed at the younger generation belonging to the Millennium generation (according to the theory of generations N. Howe and V. Strauss, E. Shamis and E. Nikonov) and is distinguished by a number of characteristic behavioral features, including a pronounced need for visualization, through bodily practices of socio-cultural code. One of these cultural symbolic bodily signs is tattoo research is the subject of this article. Theoretical analysis showed that this social code as a tattoo, is an information and communication sign, which broadcast the information contained therein to its environment, as well as demonstrating the modern youth of their values and life-meaningful orientations.

 The purpose of this article is to determine the peculiarities of the influence of tattoos on the social adaptation of young people and to identify similarities and differences in the significance and symbolism of tattoos among Russian and Chinese youth.  To achieve this goal, the article deals with the issues of determining the visual nature of corporeality, socio-cultural code and the use of tattoos in Russian and Chinese cultures.

The study was conducted among Russian and Chinese students of Heilongjiang Institute of foreign languages.

Keywords: visualization, visual signs, socio-cultural code, physicality, semiotics of corporeality, tattoo, young people, the symbolism of the tattoo.