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QUANTITATIVE AND SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF WORDS "DREAM", "DISAPPOINTMENT" AND THEIR COGNATES IN ENGLISH, RUSSIAN AND GERMAN
Abstract
In this work, we applied sociocultural and statistical approaches to perform analysis of the words "dream", "disappointment" and their cognates in Russian, English and German. The electronic library Google Books and defining dictionaries were used as study material. First, we studied and compared dictionary meanings of words “dream” and “disappointment” and then analysed and interpreted frequency of use of these words and their cognates in different years. As for the English language, frequency of the word “dream” and its derivatives is characterised by overall increase and frequency of the word “disappointment” and the cognate words decreases. In Russian, the curves of the words under study are not uniform and show specific peaks, which can be interpreted as a response to some important events in Russian history. Frequency of the German word “disappointment” and its cognates is relatively stable and fluctuates not significantly but the curve of the words derived from “dream” shows a number of peaks, which can also be due to historical events. Words derived from “dream” are used more frequent than the words of the group “disappointment”. Ratio of frequencies of these words can indirectly indicate the worldview of each nation in terms of the culture they belong to and show their desire to assess the quality of life and perception of reality. All the investigated languages show the same tendency: the word “dream” and its cognates are used more often than the word “disappointment” and its cognates. This factor can indicate that no matter that the people belong to different nations, the way they think and percept the world in the analysed case, their tendency to strive for something imaginary and illusive show similar tendencies. It should also be mentioned that differences of the frequency curves and characteristic peaks are connected with social response to various historical events, such as the Emancipation Reform of 1861 or Revolution of 1917 in Russia, the Second World War.
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