Scholarly record

THE “ENEMY” IMAGE IN THE RUSSIAN AND YAKUT LINGUISTIC CONSCIOUSNESSES

S. Filippova, L. Zamorshchikova

Abstract

Many researches in psycholinguistics concern the study and analysis of the associative meanings of different word-stimuli which allow revealing the forms and the means by which the constituent images of consciousness are stored and maintained. The verbal associative experiment is one of the most suitable methods of studying the psychological, categorical and objective aspects of word meaning. Associative fields embody the nature, structure and the organization of images of consciousness as well as uncover the patterns of traditional behavior of a given ethnic group. The specificity of reflection of the “enemy” in the linguistic consciousnesses of the Yakut and the Russian people, living in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), was analyzed on the material from the free-associative experiment. The experimental subjects, ranging in age from 16 to 21 years, consisted of three groups (approximately 230 people in each group): Russians, then City Yakuts, who considered Russian as their main or the only language of communication, and Village Yakuts, who considered their native language as the main language of communication. The results of associative fields’ analysis demonstrate that the perception of the word-stimulus “enemy” of the subjects from the three experimental groups do indeed overlap (answers "friend", "hate", "war", "bad", "evil", "fascist" etc.). As for the differences, Village Yakuts associate "enemy" with "bandit" and “bad person”, while such answers among Russians and City Yakuts were not found. The reaction “people” as the part of the phrase “enemy of the people” which was used during Stalin repressions (Latin equivalent hostis publicus) was among frequent reactions of the Russians and City Yakuts, but did not find any correlates in the Village Yakuts associative field. The differences and the similarities in the content of the consciousnesses’ images of the bearers of the Russian and the Yakut cultures is explainable not only by linguistic, but by cultural and social factors as well. While the use of Russian by the Yakut people as their main or the only language of communication leads to the convergence of their linguistic consciousness with the linguistic consciousness of the Russian people, the use by the Yakut people of their native language as the main means of communication allows them to preserve the specificity of their linguistic consciousness.

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