The influence of presentation context on associative meaning of a word (by the example of the word “surgery” in the context of medical terms and out of it)

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to reveal differences in the components of the linguistic meaning of the word-stimulus “surgery” extracted from the language consciousness of adolescents aged 13-14 depending on presentation (in isolation and in the context of medical terms). The paper systematizes the data for the first time on the variation of the components of the associative meaning of the word-stimulus “surgery” in different contexts of presentation, which allows us to speak about the novelty of the undertaken research. The focus group and comparison group of the survey included 102 adolescents 13-14 years old, 51 in each, respectively. The general totality consisted of 148 associates formed according to the data of the psycholinguistic experiment in the focus group with the word-stimulus “surgery” out of context, and 144 reactions – in the comparison group in the context of medical terms. Thus, the results allow us to identify the vector of context influence on the process of perception and comprehension of the word-stimulus: associates of the near and far periphery in this case reflect the personality-oriented aspect of perception of the proposed word-stimulus. In the situation when there is no context, children's narrative is based on socially available and context-specific meanings.