The changes in connotative meaning of politically relevant terms in Belgrade highschoolers

Abstract

In this paper, we have tried to ascertain connotative meaning of some relevant political concepts, like: democracy, nation, political left and right, nationalism, etc. and to compare obtained results with a similar research conducted eight years ago (1997.) Those concepts are used in strong emotional contexts, and consequently level of their affective meaning often become stronger by process of emotional conditioning. It is possible to ascertain attitudes toward examined concepts by using this kind of meaning. Therefore, it is possible to ascertain influence of important events and social changes to attitude changes, by such kind of comparation. The sample consisted of 171 subjects, fourth year students of Belgrade's high schools (the same as in 1997.), and adapted Osgood scale of semantic differential was an instrument. Results show that cognitive meaning of some concepts stayed unchanged (socialism, nationalism, political right, present and future), and others had minor (democracy) or more significant changes (nation, leader, peace, left, past). Evaluative changes are negative except in case of leader and left. This could be understand as a kind of disappointment after great expectations after 2000. changes. Results are specified by independent variables, too. They include: type of school, sex, authoritarianism, importance of national belongings, are subjects and their families transitional losers or gainers, etc. It has also pointed out that evaluative dimension of connotative meaning does not express only attitude, but also other emotions and states: anxiety, care, insecure feelings.

Keywords

• connotative
• meaning
• semantic
• differential
• attitude