Abstract:
The article is devoted to the study of language representations of the concept of “woman” in the minds of the Russian and Chinese people based on a comparison of associative experiments of two languages, identifying the dynamics of the concept in the language consciousness of the people, establishing the specificity of the concept in the Russian language picture of the world referring to the Chinese. Due to the specificity of the Russian language, we used the “Russian Associative Dictionary” (RAD) as the analytical material and the free associative experiment we conducted is a survey of modern speakers of Russian and Chinese – university students. The reactions, which characterize women, obtained in the process of the experiment, were examined according to semantic areas in three aspects: social, physical, individual. Experimental data shows that many associations that exist in the minds of native speakers can be influenced by personalities, which predetermines the variability in the content of the concept against the background of stereotypical representations. The materials of the experiment make it possible to reveal both the similarities and differences of the associative fields of the concept woman in the Russian and Chinese language pictures of the world. The linguistic representations of the concept “woman” presented in the experiments make it possible to reveal a specific national vision of the world against a different cultural background. The concept of a woman, reflecting the linguistic consciousness of modern Russian youth, differs from the concept of a woman recorded in the Russian associative dictionary, which was reflected in the 1970s. The differences between them correspond to the potential dynamic nature of the concept.
Machine summary:
The materials of the experiment make it possible to reveal both the similarities and differences of the associative fields of the concept woman in the Russian and Chinese language pictures of the world.
Our task was to find out how the concept woman was presented on the basis of an experiment and trace the concept dynamics in the linguistic consciousness of 94 941 Special Issue ofJoumal of Research in Applied Linguistics, 10, Spring 2019 the people, establish the concept specificity in the Russian language picture of the world against the Chinese background.
Comparison of Russian and Chinese Associative Experiment Data The analysis showed that the most frequent words (the first five reactions) in the associative fields of this concept in two language pictures of the world are: man, beautiful, mother, in white, young (RAD); beautiful, love, mother, sex, children (rus.
Among the high frequent signs of a woman in the Russian associative dictionary were in the social aspect - in white (the sign of the bride entering into marriage) and young (age), in the Chinese psychological aspect - tender and kind (inner qualities), in the Russian experiment - love (feeling between women and men) and sex (sex appeal).
In the Russian language picture of the world, according to the Russian Semantic Dictionary, the position of a woman in society is determined by correlation with a man in the form of evaluative statements of a generalizing character: the best half of humanity, the fair sex (positive) and the weaker sex (negative), the Chinese experiment reveals the reaction with a low evaluation "weaker sex.