The Concept “Past” in the Russian Language Picture of the World

Abstract

The article analyzes the concept “past” as a component of the Russian language picture of the world. The authors make a comprehensive conceptual description of the past based on the three-part model of the concept according to V.I. Karasik – “image, concept, value”. Addressing this topic is due to the lack of a linguocultural description of the concept of the past in Russian science, as well as the need to expand the fund of conceptual descriptions of the components of Russian linguistic culture. The aim of the research is a comprehensive description of the concept of the past focused on identifying its value characteristics, which corresponds to the linguistic cultural direction, within which culture can be understood as a set of meanings, values and norms. The research methodology is based on the structure of everyday consciousness described by O.A. Kornilov and includes an analysis of sensoryreceptive, logical-conceptual, emotional-evaluative and value-moral components of the concept. The procedures of conceptual analysis include the analysis of dictionary definitions of the keyword, the construction of a figurative semantic field based on synonyms and compatibility, the analysis of associations, the analysis of phraseological units, the analysis of proverbs and sayings. The main sources of the research are explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language edited by D.N. Ushakov, A.S. Gerd and T.F. Efremova, New Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Synonyms edited by Yu.D. Apresyan, dictionaries of synonyms edited by Z.E. Aleksandrova, Associative Thesaurus of the Modern Russian Language edited by Yu.N. Karaulov, phraseological dictionaries of the Russian language edited by E.N. Teliya and A.I. Fyodorov, dictionaries of proverbs and sayings edited by V.I. Zimin and V.P. Zhukov. The main results of the study are related to the modeling of the field structure of the conceptual field ’’past’’ with the identification of its neutral core, perinuclear and connotatively marked periphery. The final stage of the analysis suggests that the value component of the concept ’’past’’ is a bipolar zone, within which two mutually exclusive groups of behavioral norms coexist, reflecting the two value centers of the concept.