FEATURES AND LANGUAGE REPRESENTATION OF THE LINGUOCULTURAL TYPE «MODERN AMERICAN WOMAN»

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the linguocultural type "modern American woman" as a new realia in the conceptual sphere of modern Ukrainian society. This type is actively formed in the linguistic world image of all nations with the help of the media; therefore, the study of the characteristics of its creation and the stereotypes underlying this process is an important task for linguists. The authors analyze the phenomenon of "linguocultural type" and look at the approaches to it’s definition, the classification of types and lay emphasis at the modelling of linguocultural types. On the basis of the algorithm of linguocultural type modelling introduced by O. Dmitrieva, the authors analyze the perceptual-imaginative and value characteristics of the type “modern American woman”, which are formed in the perception of Ukrainians. As the mass media is one of the most powerful means of forming our conceptual reality, the research is made with the help of the investigation of modern American media materials as well as the opinion poll of the Ukrainians. The results show that the perceptive-imaginative and value characteristics of the linguistic-cultural concept of "modern American woman" are quite similar in both respondents' answers and media materials, but they also have some slight differences. The results have been proven with the help of the corpus analysis based on the Corpus of American Soap Operas. Summarizing the type of modern American, we can say that she is a very attractive middle-aged woman who wants to succeed in her career and hobbies, and in her personal life. She is an independent strong woman who knows what she wants and is ready to achieve it. Her career and self-realization is often more important than other spheres of her life.