The concepts of “Motherland” and “State” in Russian language

Abstract

The subject of the study is the concepts “Motherland” and “State”, their synonyms and associative images in Russian songs and Russian language, including Russian phraseological units, proverbs and sayings. The first concept is understood as a small homeland and a large homeland. Each person has his own small homeland, which is associated with place of birth, family, house, street, village, town, etc. The large homeland in a broad sense refers to the native country. The small homeland is part of the big homeland. These concepts play a role in the formation of Russian person’s national consciousness, spiritual values, worldview, character and personality. The purpose of this work is to clarify their meanings and differences in Russian language and in Russian people’s consciousness. Research methods include descriptive, associative, comparative methods, methods of synthesis and generalization, and semantic analysis. When analyzing and comparing the concepts “Motherland” and “State”, this work examines the images reflected in the texts of Russian songs about these concepts and language examples in Russian phraseological dictionaries. The conducted research shows that the term “Motherland”, associated with national history, culture and ethnic identity, has a spiritual psychological flavor. The term “State” with a social meaning is defined as a political, legal, economic form of organization of human society. This concept is associated with the images of “law”, “authority”, “army/armed force”, “citizen”, etc. Clarifying the differences in their semantics in Russian language helps speakers of other linguistic cultures to better understand their significance in Russian people’s history, culture and consciousness, their role and influence on the formation of Russian people’s national psychology and spiritual world. The study of these concepts has prospects for expanding foreign students' vocabulary, deeper understanding of the Russian language, culture, people, its spiritual world and their relationships and enriching their cultural, linguistic and personal experience.