Names of Russian Charity: idem vs. alium

Abstract

This paper provides a linguistic analysis of abstract nouns belonging to the lexical-semantic field “Gratuitous Assistance to the Needy” and denoting the situation of charitable activities in general — благотворительность, донорство, меценатство, and филантропия. All of them are synonyms; they are defined through each other in dictionary entries and are often used as absolute equivalents. This impedes uncontradictory terminologisation of the language of charity and complicates the justification of the legal framework for this activity. The author aims to distinguish these words by using historical and explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, dictionaries of synonyms of the Russian language, and The National Corpus of the Russian Language. This helps to determine the semantic scope, context compatibility, and conditions of the textual functioning of these words. The author concludes that the core position in the structure of the lexical-semantic field “Gratuitous Assistance to the Needy” is occupied by the originally Russian word благотворительность, which has a high usage frequency, denotes any gratuitous assistance, and has polar connotations, both positive and negative. Other terms occupy the periphery — either because of a narrower meaning (меценатство), or due to a limited scope of use (филантропия, донорство). The frequency of lexemes that refer to charitable activities increases during periods of social and economic stability, the establishment of better international relations, and decreases when society is forced to deal with serious problems. The intensive growth in the use of these words has been observed in the Russian media space since the mid-1980s and is still growing, which occurs due to the international actualisation of charitable activities and social responsibility trend.