Corpus explication of semantics of the dichotomous concept “Life - Death” in the Russian linguistic picture of the world

Abstract

The conceptual dyad “Life - Death” in the Russian linguistic picture of the world is analyzed. The relevance of the research is conditioned by the existential significance of the studied phenomenon in the axiological field of the Russian linguistic picture of the world. The aim of the study is to conduct corpus analysis of the conceptual dyad “Life” and “Death”. The research material includes 70 poetic units containing the nuclear lexemes “Life” and “Death” in the Russian National Corpus. The poetic units are semantically complete contexts of poems by Russian poets (M. Tsvetaeva, M. Voloshin, S. Esenin, Z. Gippius, etc.). Descriptive method, conceptual analysis, method of linguistic-cultural commentary, contextual analysis, corpus method were applied. It was concluded that the concepts “Life - Death” reconstruct the dominant features of the Russian linguistic picture of the world, which is characterized not only by qualitative heterogeneity, but also by a certain bipolarity in the subject's behavior (agenticity vs passivity, providentiality vs activity, etc.). Such semantic parameters of the concepts “Life” and “Death” were established as transience and uncontrollability of life; life as an element, where a person is not an active subject, but an object for external forces; transience of life and its unpredictability; belief in life after death; death as a transition to otherness. The explanatory context for adequate commenting of conceptual meanings is formed.

Keywords

• poetic text
• conceptual dyad
• concept
• basic universals
• contextual analysis
• precedent text