Gender Concept “Woman” in the Minds of the Russian People (Taking the Chinese as Reference) According to an Associative Experiment

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of language representations of the concept of “woman” in the minds of the Russian and Chinese people based on a comparison of associative experiments of two languages, identifying the dynamics of the concept in the language consciousness of the people, establishing the specificity of the concept in the Russian language picture of the world referring to the Chinese. Due to the specificity of the Russian language, we used the “Russian Associative Dictionary” (RAD) as the analytical material and the free associative experiment we conducted is a survey of modern speakers of Russian and Chinese – university students. The reactions, which characterize women, obtained in the process of the experiment, were examined according to semantic areas in three aspects: social, physical, individual. Experimental data shows that many associations that exist in the minds of native speakers can be influenced by personalities, which predetermines the variability in the content of the concept against the background of stereotypical representations. The materials of the experiment make it possible to reveal both the similarities and differences of the associative fields of the concept woman in the Russian and Chinese language pictures of the world. The linguistic representations of the concept “woman” presented in the experiments make it possible to reveal a specific national vision of the world against a different cultural background. The concept of a woman, reflecting the linguistic consciousness of modern Russian youth, differs from the concept of a woman recorded in the Russian associative dictionary, which was reflected in the 1970s. The differences between them correspond to the potential dynamic nature of the concept.