Concept “ENGLAND” and its Subconcepts in the Consciousness of Ukrainian Students

Abstract

The purpose of the research is the empirical study of the peculiarities of the deployment of the concept ENGLAND and its subconcepts in the linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians in terms of logical-semantic organization of the respondents’ thinking and speech activity. Methods. Theoretical methods were categorical and structurally-functional analysis of lexical units, the methods of systematization, modeling, generalization; empirical ones – the analysis of lexical units, the experiment. For the purpose of studying the ways of explication of the concept «ENGLAND» and its subconcepts in the consciousness of Ukrainian students we used the associative experiment; the designations of the kernel and the periphery of the concept ENGLAND were included as stimulus-words. Results. It was shown that the concept ENGLAND was included into the worldview of the Ukrainian ethnic group. It is a cultural script in the individual consciousness, the form of which facilitates the formation of the mentality of Ukrainian students. Due to the influence of the concept ENGLAND, a person immerses himself/herself in British and, thanks to the translation of lexical units from English to his/her native Ukrainian language, in Ukrainian culture, and thus can influence the British multicultural world (even if a Ukrainian does not live in England). Conclusions. We proved, that in the mind of the person a concept is generated on the basis of the results of practical activity, cognition and assessment of the objective world. At the same time, any concept appears in the form of the image that can be amplified by various degrees of abstraction. When the number of its signs increases, that is the level of abstraction also increases, the sensory image gradually turns into a mental image. This principle of formation of the mental representation of knowledge about the world allows us to consider the concept as a complex, amplified paradigmatic structure, which includes various aspects of knowledge and personally significant experience, including scripts of worldview, rational, emotional, multicultural aspects.