The Concept Modern Life in Modern Ukrainian Linguaculture

Abstract

In this article, consideration is given to the investigation of the meaning and peculiarities of the semantic structure of the linguacultural concept MODERN LIFE functioning in modern Ukrainian worldview. Linguacultural concept is treated as a multi-layered mental formation in culture that organizes the knowledge of a certain fragment of reality in the consciousness of a certain language and cultural community. Linguacultural concept accumulates knowledge about a certain fragment of reality in the collective consciousness of a certain national language and cultural community, it is objectified by its linguistic form and marked by language and cultural specifics. The concept MODERN LIFE plays an important role in the life of every civilized man. Its significance for Ukrainian culture is grounded because it serves as one of the most important key phrases with high emotional intensity and broad associative field. Aiming to determine the main lexical means that stand for the investigated concept this research demonstrates the strong connection between language and culture and theirinfluence on each other.The article focuses on the peculiarities of the free association experiment and the receptive experiment. Associative experiment allows to reconstruct the relations of language units in the language consciousness of native speakers and to specify the peculiarities of the occurrence of these units in language consciousness. The advantage of this method is also reflected in the fact that it can reveal more distinctive features of the concept, and through the frequency of reactions to define the relevance of these features in language consciousness. The receptive experiment aims at discovering the specifics of understanding and perception of a concept, its subjective definition. It allows obtaining more information about the understanding of specific units in the process of concept verbalization. Moreover, by application of receptive and associative experiments the article aims at specifying the thematic fields in the semantic representation of the concept. The interpretation of experimental data, allowing to specify the meanings associated with the concept in the minds of Ukrainian native speakers provides the analysis of semantic modifications caused by social and political events in Ukrainian realis, history and society. Receptive and associative experiments were held with 87 Ukrainian speaking students, graduate students (81 females and 6 males) at Foreign Languages Department of Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University, Ukraine. The respondents’ age was from 18 to 22.With the help of the free word association test the connections of the concept MODERN LIFE in the Ukrainian language consciousness and the semantic zones of this stimulus phrase were determined. Psycholinguistic ideas about modern life in Ukraine are manifested in the ambivalence of the components, the semantic clues of which are “technology/gadgets”, “internet/online” and “communication”. Qualitative analysis of the results of the free word association test helped to build the respondents’ images of modern Ukrainian hallmarks (borshch, EuroMaydan / Maidan and war). The linguacultural concept MODERN LIFE functioning in modern Ukrainian worldview bears negative connotation. Next, we subtracted the highest and lowest values displayed above the group of bars andmade comparison between the with the reference to results, the tallest vertical bar for the value The essential components of this concept are “self-confidence” and very close to it is “strong family”. Thus, the benefits of the methods of the experimental study of the concepts in the study of the features of the national worldview are stated in the research.