Shows the comprehensiveness of bringing into play a complex of empirical methods that allows to study not only the composition and organization of a concept, its position within the picture of the world, blit also to reveal the newest trends of its development to clarify its socio psychological background, to retrace corresponding stereotypes, systems of norms and valuesyesBelgorod State Universit

Morel Morel, D. A.

DSpace at Belgorod State University

Proceedings ofthe 3rd International Academic Conference«Applied and Fundamental Studies», 2013, pp. 363-368MULTIASPECT APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF A FRAGMENT OF THE PICTURE OF THE WORLDMorel Morel D.A.Belgorod National Research University,Belgorod city. Belgorod region, RussiaThe present paper shows the comprehensiveness of bringing into play a complex of empirical methods that allows to study not only the composition and organization of a concept, its position within the picture of the world, blit also to reveal the newest trends of its development to clarify its socio-psychological background, to retrace corresponding stereotypes, systems of norms and values.Keywords. empirical methods; picture of the world; nominative field; associative field; interpretational field; semantic differential; gender; drinks.The present paper is wrthm the scope o f the re­search the author has been earning out to reveal national peculiarities o f the universal concept “Drinks" that is an obligatory, immanent fragment of any national picture o f the world (q.v. [3]).The concept under study is notable for some features deriving from ontological and anthropo­logical properties o f dnnks as a phenomenon of social life. On the one hand it can be referred to as a supracultural universal due to the vital func­tion o f dnnks satisfying some basic physiological needs o f humans. On the other hand it is an integral part o f national culture and an important element of ethnic and social self-identification because of the involvement o f dnnks into different aspects of social life: ‘‘la boisson est egalement un element fondamental de la vie en societe. Elle definit une culture par sa nature .. comme par son mode de consommation: elle scelle la communaute, primi­tive ou medievale. .. elle souligne -  vin. biere, whis­ky ou Coca-Cola -  un type specifique de relations humames et de comportements quotidiens” [7].Here we are to specialize our subject confining ourselves to the study o f  this concept featuring in the Russian teenagers' picture o f the world.This group picture existing within the national one is somewhat distinguishing due to the speci­ficity o f this age when many stereotypes includ­ing gender ones, that will impact social behavior at a mature age, are forming and consolidating (for details see [4]). The latter circumstance makes for dramatic movements in the teenagers' picture o f the world within this age limits.Studying senior pupils" age group (14-15 years old) has a special social significance because o f  this period’s importance in virtue o f its borderline—and somewhat existential—character. This short period usually indicated by the transition from high school to higher one serves as an edge symbolically sep­arating childhood from adulthood. Therefore it is very important to know the features o f conscious­ness matured by that time.We have elaborated the research program of complex studying the whole system ofverbal means representing the concept “Drinks” in the contem­porary' Russians' linguistic picture ofthe world (see [5]). Such a study involves collection, processing, analyze, clusterization o f materials, interpretation and modeling o f  derived results concerning the following aspects o f the concept in question and363PHILOLOGYMorel Morel D.A.of its representation means: 1) nominative field; 2) associative field; 3) interpretational field [6: 63- 64] (including any kinds o f utterances-proverbs, sayings, aphorisms, precedential phrases, etc.-or even their disc our si ve series-parables, anecdotes, written texts [ibidem: 130]); 4) ways o f catego­rization; 5) prototypes and stereotypes (national, age, and gender specific ones); 6) axiological con­cept constituent (representing personal systems of values, likes and dislikes); 7) regulative concept constituent (representing personal and national behavior regulations and social prescriptions, “un­written law”).Such a diversity of considered aspects o f rep­resentation means impelled us to have recourse to a whole complex o f empirical research methods: open questionnaire survey, free and controlled as­sociative experiment, interview, method o f free classification, and method of semantic differential.100 teenagers (52 girls and 48 boys) were sur­veyed.Next follows the overview of obtained results.1. Nominative field of the concept “Drinks” and categorization of drinksThe problem of drinks categorization was ex­amined by J. Poitou and D. Dubois (University Lyon-2 and CNRS, France) who used the results of P. Scherfer's (University o f Wuppertal, Germany) survey of 105 German teenagers (13-14 years old) [8]. French scholars revealed 6 subcategories in their research: “milk drinks”, “hot drinks” (mostly nonalcoholic), “juices” (fruit and vegetable ones), “sodas”, “water” (still and fizzy), and “alcoholic drinks” .The Russian nominative field o f the concept “Drinks” built on the material o f teenagers’ answers considerably differs from the German one.1) Russian respondents’ answers are very rich in generic names o f drinks o f different hierarchical ranks up to denominations o f “naive” classifica­tion subcategories and such names are commonly o f very high frequency. On the contrary, specificnames-essentially trademarks and collocations- dominate in answers o f German respondents.2) Undertaken semantic analysis and clusteriza­tion o f collected data supported by the results of the free classification experiment allowed to reveal the pattern o f categorizing drinks. There are 10 subcategories of drinks which are relevant for the linguistic consciousness o f both male and female respondents o f both examined age groups: “soda” (sweet fizzy drinks), “juice”, “water” (including soda water), “tea”, “coffee”, “milk drinks” ; “cock­tails” (both alcoholic and nonalcoholic); “spirits”, “wine”, “beer” .For the graphic demonstration o f received ex­perimental data (distribution o f drink names over revealed subcategories in types and in tokens) see Fig. 1.soda25% jtypes, % -  "  tokens, %Fig. 1. Structure of the nominative field of the concept “Drinks”Several gender-specific peculiarities should be noted here: “beer”, “spirits”, and “cocktails” sub­categories are considerably more relevant for male respondents than for female ones; “soda”, “juice”, “water”, and “tea” subcategories are more signifi­cant in the eyes o f  female respondents.Top-10 drinks names are чай, сок, кофе /  молоко, пиво, вода /  вос)ка, лимонад, вино,364Multiaspect approach to the study o f a fragm ent o f the picture o f the worldФанта, Кока-кола, компот /  Пепси (in the order o f  decreasing).2. Associative field o f the concept “D rinks” The analysis o f the concept’s name associative field is an important stage o f the cognitive and soci- olinguistic study giving abundant evidence [2].The major part o f  the built associative field con­sists o f  different drinks names: 42,7% in types and 68,1% in tokens (including all top-frequent asso­ciations: сок, вода, чай, кофе, лим онад, молоко, кокт ейль, пиво).The second, semantically incoherent part o f as­sociations can be referred to as the system o f the frame “Drinks” representation. For the revealed frame structure see Fig. 2.Fig 2. Associative field patterning as the model of the frame “Drinks”The following numerical denominations o f slots are used: 1 -  nonalcoholic drinks; 2 -  alco­holic drinks; 3, 4 -  types and properties o f drinks; 5 -  drinks consumption; 6 -  psychophysiological states; 7 -  thirst, its slaking; 8 -  alcoholic intox­ication; 9 -  sensations; 10 -  drinks ingredients; 11 -  food; 12 -  time; 13 -  leisure; 14 -  entertain­ment attributes; 15 -  entertainments; 16 -  leisure activities; 17 -  places for entertainment; 18 -  places for purchasing drinks; 19 -  interpersonal relations, behavior; 20 -  artifacts; 21 -  artifacts for keeping drinks; 22 -  artifacts for consuming drinks; 23 -  ar­tifacts for serving drinks; 24 -  artifacts for prepar­ing drinks; 25 -  transport; 26 -  natural phenomena; 27 -  nationalities.3. In terpretational field o f the concept “D rinks”We tend to classify representatives o f the inter­pretational field under study into three types apply­ing the criterion o f the degree o f their formalization (see Fig. 3, left):A) “formalized” ones including different prov­erbs and sayings-so-called popular wisdom-com- pletely assimilated by the national linguistic con­sciousness;B) "formalizable” ones consisting o f  preceden­tial utterances which origin and/or authorship are still vivid—  aphorisms, quotations, toasts, truisms, advertising slogans (some o f them being able to en­ter the national proverbial fund with the lapse of time enlarging the first group);C) “informal” ones being transforms of the pre­vious types’ representatives-facetious aphorisms and rhymes, so-called “anti-proverbs” [1] ridicul­ing popular and literary wisdom as mouthpiece of traditionalistic value systems.The representatives o f the interpretational field un­der study can be also divided into three groups accord­ing their correlation with main categories o f drinks:A) ones including direct (“Гиннесс без виски -  деньги на ветер”) or indirect (“после первой не закусывают”) mentions o f alcoholic drinks (see Fig. 3, right);B) ones including direct (“квас не Кола, пей Ни­колу!”) or indirect (“не пей из лужицы, козленоч­ком станешь”) mentions of nonalcoholic drinks;C) others (mentioning water as an element (“огонь да вода всему голова”) or having no obvi­ous relations with the concept under study “ждать у моря погоды”).4. A ttitudes and stereotypes in respect of drinksWhile using the method o f  semantic differential drinks were ranked by respondents on two scales: o f personal relevance degree (from the highest to the lowest) and o f evaluative attitude toward (from strictly positive to deeply negative).365PHILOLOGYMorel Morel D.A.605040302010fe m a le  m ate□  “fo rm a lize d ” □  “form al izab le ,:fe m a le  m a le■  “ in fo rm al”/•/#■ 3. Sharing of the types of the interpretational field representatives: general figures (left); manifesting alcoholic thematics (right)According to the findings alcoholic drinks are considered generally negatively (on both principal categorial scales-“it is good / bad [for me]”, “it is significant / insignificant [for me]”)-by respon­dents o f both sexes, whereas nonalcoholic drinks are assessed mostly positively (see Fig. 4).Thereafter the main amount o f alcoholic drinks names is respectively positioned in the “negative”, 3'4' quarter o f the derived coordinate system, where­as the most relevant nonalcoholic drinks names are found in the “positive”, Is' one.Vodka demonstrates the lowest indices on both sales in answers o f both male and female respon­dents.But at the same time vodka is stereoty pically con­sidered as the “prototypic Russian national drink” re­gardless gender assignment of respondents.Respondents were given two questions: “What drink do you think to be the most typical for Rus­sia?”, and “What drink reflects peculiarities o f our people’s character and culture in the best way?” Vodka was the most frequent reaction in both cases (30-60%; upper level achieved in female respon­dents’ answers).I©О -2 О+QОоооооо/'/£. 4. Ranking of alcoholic (top) and nonalcoholic (bottom) drinks (axis x -  personal relevance, axis у -  evaluative attitude; area of circle is proportional to the frequency of mentioned drink)The undertaken study lets us draw the following conclusions.366Multiaspect approach to the study of a fragment ofthe picture ofthe worldI'ig. 5. Models of the nominative (left) and interpretational (right) fields of the concept “Drinks”1. An adequate full-fledged study o f any fragment o f th e  picture o f th e  world requires a multiaspcct examination o f its different repre­sentation means, thus a full complex o f research methods is necessary. Such an approach allow s to analyze not only the composition and organiza­tion o fthe  studied concept, its position within the picture o f the world, but to reveal its socio-psy- chological and cultural background, to retrace corresponding stereotypes, systems o f social norms and values.2. Multiaspect study o f the concept "Drinks" bringing into play a complex o f empirical meth­ods gives a wider range o f research material for further interpretation than the traditional han­dling o f lexicographical and literary sources: it provides us with the information about the new­est trends in the concept's development that could not be physically fixed promptly in the sources o f the kind.3. The fragment o f the teenagers’ picture o fthe world representing drinks is expectedly somewhat reduced compared to elder age groups, but already contains all relevant constituents. Its main pecu­liarity is its quasi gender balanced, slightly gen­der differentiated character that can be obviouslyshow n by way o f the field models example (see Fig. 5).In the diagrams above light sectors refer to fe­male gender specific verbal reactions, dark sectors refer to male ones, horizontal hatching denotes common, gender undifferentiated reactions, verti­cal hatching marks verbal means related to alcohol­ic drinks.References1. Вальтер X.. Мокиснко B.M. Антипословицы в современной живой русской речи // Антипосло­вицы русского народа. М.: ОЛМА. 2010. С. 3-17.2. Морсль Морсль Д.А. Комплексное исполь­зование данных ассоциативного эксперимента в исследовании фрагмента языковой картины мира // Филологические науки. Вопросы теории и прак­тики. 2012. № 7( 18 ) .  4 .2 .  С. 134-144.3. Морсль Морсль Д А. Наименования напит­ков в национальных картинах мира: сопостави­тельный аспект исследования (на материале рус­ского. французского и английского языков). М.: Изд-воСГУ. 2012. 156 с.4. Морсль Морсль Д.А.. Кузнецова Л.Б. Неко­торые гендерные особенности вербализации кон­цепта «напитки» в старшем подростковом возрас-367PHILOLOGYMorel Morel D.A.те [Электронный ресурс] // Современные иссле­дования социальных проблем. 2011. № 3. — URL; http ://sisp. nkras. m/issues/2011 /3/morel .pdf. (Датаобращения: 21 .12.2011)5. Морель Морель Д.А., Кузнецова Л.Б., Ру- салева Д. В. Напитки в картине мира российских подростков // Современные исследования соци­альных проблем. 2011. № 1.  С. 187— 191.6. Попова З.Д., Стернин И.А. Когнитивная лингвистика. М.: ACT; Восток—Запад. 2007. 314с.7. Les boissons [Электронный ресурс] II Ency­clopedic Hachette Multimedia: edition standard 2007. P.: Hachette Livre. 2006. (CD-ROM).8. Poitou J., Dubois D. Categories semantiques et cognitives. Une etude expeninentale en semantique // Cahiers de lexicologie. 1999. № 74. P. 5—27.МНОГОАСПЕКТНЫЙ ПОДХОД К ИССЛЕДОВАНИЮ ФРАГМЕНТА КАРТИНЫ МИРАМорель Морель Д.А.Белгородский государственный национальный исследовательский университет, г Белгород, Белгородская область, РоссияНастоящая статья показывает всесторонность задействования комплекса эмпирических методов, что позволяет не только изучить состав и структуру концепта, его положение в картине мира, но также вы­явить новейшие тенденции в его развитии, пролить свет на его социально-психологический фон. отсле­дить соответствующие стереотипы, системы норм и ценностей.Ключевые слова: эмпирические методы; картина мира; номинативное поле; ассоциативное поле; ин­терпретационное поле; семантический дифференциал; гендер; напитки.368

Multiaspect approach to the study of a fragment of the picture of the world

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Multiaspect approach to the study of a fragment of the picture of the world

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