THE CONCEPT OF “TOLERANCE” IN LEXICO-SEMANTIC, COGNITIVE-DISCURSIVE, SEMIOTIC AND LINGUOCULTURAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of lexico-semantic, cognitive-discursive, semiotic and linguocultural aspects of the concept  “TOLERANCE”. The aim of the study is to analyze the features of the concept in the above-mentioned aspects in modern political discourse. Analyzing the concept of “TOLERANCE” in lexical and semantic aspects of dictionary definitions, we can determine that there are mainly four ways to understand it: 1) indifference to the existence of different views; 2) the impossibility of mutual understanding; 3) indulgence to the weakness of others in combination with a certain dose of contempt for them; 4) expanding one's own experience and critical dialogue. In our opinion, the first three methods have negative connotations. The concept “TOLERANCE” reveals the cognitive side of language, which expresses the diverse characteristics of human beings, their  qualities, cognitive abilities, humanism in terms of ethnocultural relations. However, the position of the ambiguity and emotional coloring of this phenomenon is unique, often depending on the perception in a particular cultural conceptosphere. The typology of tolerance is based on the main criterion - moral potential, the presence or absence of a moral basis in a particular direction of tolerance. The vector of tolerance allows to attribute the components of the concept of “TOLERANCE” from a semiotic point of view to palliative or constructive. Based on the study, we can conclude that the three components of the concept “TOLERANCE” have a negative connotation and a palliative vector that closes the way to dialogue (tolerance as indifference, tolerance as impossibility of understanding, tolerance as indulgence), and only one component can be characterized as a such that has a constructive orientation, moral potential - tolerance as an extension of one's own experience and critical dialogue. The linguistic and cultural aspect of the concept “TOLERANCE“ is that in different languages ​​this concept  is different and has its own specifics of verbalization. In modern English and Ukrainian, the concept of “TOLERANCE”  retains an ambivalent meaning: it can be replaced by the word “acceptable” (to someone else's way of life, behavior, customs, feelings, thoughts, ideas, beliefs). Tolerance is the willingness to accept and acknowledge the behavior, beliefs, and attitudes of others that are different from one's own, even if the beliefs are not shared but are accepted as having a right to exist.