LOVE AND HATRED IN TWO LANGUAGES: CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Living in a world that has become a 'global village' makes different nations seem very similar - we dress in a very similar way, we listen to the similar music, we sometimes even use the same words. But how similar are we when it comes to understanding another person’s culture and values related to some of the general notions, such as love and hatred? The authors of this paper come from two countries that speak Slavic languages and are in many ways similar: Russia and Croatia. This similarity initiated a cross-cultural research described further in the paper. The authors have compared the meanings of two opposite notions (a value and an anti-value) - love and hatred - with regard to the meaning and importance they have in these two countries and how they are used in their respective languages. The definitions of the value love were collected from various available dictionaries in different areas and then analyzed as semantic components. Then the same procedure was conducted with the anti-value hatred. Since these semantic components are used in sentences/phrases in Russian and Croatian in various ways, their comparison has been made. Furthermore, students of two universities (one Russian and one Croatian) filled in a questionnaire regarding the meaning these notions have for them. The purpose of the questionnaire was to help the authors find out whether there are similarities/differences in how these two notions are perceived in their respective countries and languages and whether their meanings and importance for the culture differ. The obtained results will offer some insight into the Russian and Croatian languages when compared on the linguistic and cultural level with regard to a value and an anti-value.