Abstract

Representation of the city in the form of text is an attempt to understand it as a holistic space. Names and symbols are designed to emphasize its orderliness. The urban text includes a huge number of characters, their interpretation sets one or another reading of the urban text through the appropriate narratives. Urban symbolism is intended to streamline urban life, but it itself is devoid of order, it is intertwined with historical, cultural, ideological, political, aesthetic, and just random names. Many of them cause ambiguous associations, contradictory emotional reactions. The name of the city object has a utilitarian meaning: orientation in the urban space. As such, all names in city have a neutral value-emotional tinge. But in city are also symbols when they are given the appropriate cultural, historical, and especially political, ideological meaning. In this case, some narrative is constructed, implying the corresponding metanarrative. Pure referential characters do not exist. It is useful to distinguish between cultural, historical and political ideological symbols. For example, Grecheskaya Street in Odessa will be a typical example of a cultural and historical city symbol. And she, under the name of Karl Liebknecht, will be an example of an ideological symbol. Both those and other symbols have a certain history, but the first are connected with the socio-cultural characteristics of the area, and the second with political considerations. Political and ideological symbols can be an important attribute of urban symbols, since they have a considerable educational, patriotic, and sometimes even cultural significance. The question is what is the metanarrative ideology behind these symbols. But there is another equally important question: how are the ideological symbols connected with the cultural and historical features of the city. If there is no such connection, the ideological symbol loses its cultural meaning and looks alien, non-systemic, illogical, falls out of the semantic integrity, from the urban text.