Slavic-Turkic Comparisons in the Diachronic Aspect

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comparative study of the concept man in the linguistic consciousness of the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians) and representatives of the Turkic culture (Kazakhs, Kyrgyz) in a diachronic aspect. The globalization processes of the beginning of the 21st century mark the era of “civilizational breakdown” which is characterized by a change in the usual foundations of life and by obvious transformations of society. Thus, it seems relevant and prognostically valuable to reveal the content of the conceptosphere man in the linguistic consciousness of the ethnic groups under consideration in different periods of their life. The aim of the study is to determine the vector of displacement (or stability) of the axiological component in the choice of assessments and worldview ideas about a man among the informants of different generations. As research material, there were used associative dictionaries compiled on the basis of associative experiments conducted in different periods (Soviet and modern). The associative lexicographic material is recognized as one of the most reliable ways to access a person’s linguistic consciousness, the latter being understood by us as knowledge about the world “externalized” by linguistic signs, and its projections in the mental apparatus of a person, i.e., images of consciousness. This associative method of language consciousness research makes it possible to explain the facts of functioning and transformation of consciousness revealed in psycholinguistic experiments through the connection of these facts with ethnocultural peculiarities of ideas about the world of people as members of certain ethnosocial groups, with their general / universal (basic), and ethnospecific (local) cultural values. The comparative analysis undertaken in the research showed that the process of global civilizational shifts brings afore the interest and desire of the ethnocultural community to search for traditional ethnocultural values that (along with basic universal human values) can unite and strengthen the vitality of the ethnos. The work is being carried out with the prospect of further studies of the linguistic consciousness of ethnic groups, of determining the elements of (in)stability, and identifying conflict zones in the linguistic and conceptual picture of the world of Slavic and Turkic ethnic groups.

Keywords

• the concept man, linguistic consciousness, associative dictionaries, slavic and turkic ethnic groups