CONCEPTS FOR MARKING NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL STATES IN UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN LINGUISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS: PSYCHOSEMANTIC MODELING OF THE CONCEPTUAL FIELD

Abstract

The problem of studying emotions from a linguistic point of view attracts the attention of scientists in various contexts. At the same time, there are insufficiently studied linguistic aspects of the human emotional sphere. In particular, we talk about the study of the conceptual field of concepts for the designation of negative emotional states in the national linguistic consciousness. We believe that an effective means of analyzing such concepts is the study of the results of associative experiments involving the method of psychosemantic modeling of the conceptual field developed by the author. This method is based on the analysis of two levels: the mental level of modeling covers bodily-perceptual, logical-conceptual, emotional-affective and value-semantic components, the semantic level consists in distinguishing the categories of things, properties and relations. Based on the principle of impartiality, we analyzed the material presented in official publications – Ukrainian- and Russian-language associative dictionaries. Since we were primarily interested in the most recent time period, it was decided to focus on associative dictionaries compiled in the 21st century.Three words characterizing negative emotional states – ‘anger’, ‘shame’, ‘despair’ – were analyzed. The conducted research revealed that the conceptual field of concepts for the designation of negative feelings and emotions in the Ukrainian and Russian linguistic consciousness has both common and distinctive features. The common features are that the concepts of ‘Anger’,’Shame’, and ‘Despair’ are interpreted as an undesirable, bad state, and most associations are marked with a negative color. The following features are characteristic of the Ukrainian language consciousness: 1) interpretation of anger in the context of explaining the state from a logical point of view; 2) the presence of details of the characteristics of shame as a socially and personally significant reaction; 3) lack of value-meaning load of despair, its detailing. The following features are typical for the Russian linguistic consciousness: 1) anger is associated with effectiveness, specific orientation; 2) lack of detailing the characteristics of shame, interpreting it through other objects; 3) presence of differentiation, clarification of the degree of despair, its perception as an anti-value.