Inpretation of Associative Data as a Methodogical Issue of Psycholinguistics

Abstract

Associative experiments uncover people’s active attitude to the world represented by language means that determines their relevant strategies of verbal activity and mediates the specifics of their world conceptualization. A word’s associative field modeled on the basis of experimental data is a psychological structure of a word’s content that is relevant for native speakers. Associative meaning distinguished via the analysis of distribution of reactions to a stimulus word proves to be an effective method of discovering emerging trends in the change of word meanings. The author researches the issue of data interpretation in associative experiments. Despite the long history of usage, the notion “associative field” and the correlation of stimulus and reaction are often interpreted in different ways because, firstly, they model the most complex processes of speech activity; secondly, most of suggested typologies of associates do not have a common systematization criterion, which hinders the usage of such classifications in research practice and sometimes leads to an ambiguous interpretation of associative data. Therefore, the author argues that classifications of associates should be developed depending on: (1) characteristics of psycholinguistic/linguistic object researched through an associative experiment; (2) isomorphism of speech and the activity it accompanies; (3) characteristics of mental supports in the cognitive process; (4) the way of representation of these supports. Such criteria of classification require an analysis of the correlation between stimulus and reaction as a unit of association. This correlation is a separate speech act where the stimulus is a motive producing the reaction and the associate expresses the author’s communicative intention. This helps to establish motives of associating and thus acquire a more veracious database for modelling different components of speech activity and its overall production/ comprehension processes. Besides, this approach justifies the principles of worldview modelling. The author presents theoretical and methodological grounds for an effective analysis of associates on the basis of a psycholinguistic object defined by several parameters: strategy of association, dominant psychological function of a language sign that realizes the strategy and the motive of activity explicated in associates.