Psychosemantic study of the concepts "Health" and "Illness"

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of theoretical and practical aspects the problem of psychology, psycholinguistics and psychosemantics of health. The analysis of the approaches to study the phenomenon of health has been carried out; the psycholinguistic aspects of the problems are identified. It is demonstrated that the current state of development of psycholinguistics makes it possible to speak about the essential role of personality’s speech experience peculiarities in saving its health. The general idea that our research is devoted to is the notion that word formation of our thoughts can be consider as a signal or predictor of disease. Thus, the goal is to determine the features of speech experience, which correlate with the state of human health, the separation of qualitative differences in the speech production of healthy and sick people. The general hypothesis is that there are common narrative signs that unite people with a medical diagnosis. The purpose of this publication is to identify the differences in the construction of the psychosemantic fields of the concepts "health" and "disease" in the minds of healthy people and people with medical diagnosis. In this direction, an empirical study of the psychosemantic fields of the concepts "health" and "disease" is carried out. Comparison the results in the sample groups "Healthy", "Oncohealthy" and "Patients" made it possible to distinguish the features of perception the concepts "health" and "disease". People who are in the process of treatment, "health" is characterized as unfavorable, unhappy, hostile to the person, as well as unreliable, soft, easy to lose. "Illness" in the semantic fields of sick people "exists" as heavy, firm, active and aggressive. The disease is equally negative perceived by both healthy and sick people; however, the experience of those who overcome the disease shows a decrease in the perceptions of the strength and activity of the disease, increasing self-confidence in overcoming the disease. Comparison of the semantic fields of cancer patients and people who have overcome this disease makes it possible to conclude that settings of personality traits in the semantics, in terms of illness, are one of the factors that significantly affect the course and outcomes of treatment.