Word-Formative Specificity of the Objectification of the Concept “Udacha” (“Luck”) in Modern Russian Language

Abstract

The article presents an attempt at cognitive linguistic analysis of the Russian cultural concept udacha (“luck”). Its primary goal is to describe derivational properties of the concept’s explication in the language through conceptual analysis of derived lexemes that belong to the family of words based on the verb udat’sya (“to succeed”). This will enable us to more precisely specify the concept’s meaning which was identified at the previous stage of the research. The material for the research was taken from basic Russian explanatory and word-formative dictionaries, and its methodological foundations include theoretical principles of language conceptualization of the world, general tenets of the anthropocentric approach to linguistic description, and ideas of reconstruction of culturally significant information through the data of a language. In her work, the author used the method of conceptual analysis developed by research teams and schools of thought in Volgograd, Voronezh, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Tambov, and the method of linguo-culturological interpretation of word-formative phenomena. The findings include verification and a more precise description of ten cognitive characteristics of the concept udacha (“luck”) revealed at the previous stage of the analysis, such as: “a favorable combination of circumstances,” “a desirable result, the right outcome of a case, success,” “a fortunate turn of events,” “happiness”, “one who can do anything, who succeeds in everything”, “creative accomplishment,” “a great achievement in some activities, success,ˮ “realization of a favorable opportunity,ˮ “something good,ˮ and “imparting or inheriting favorable, positive properties or attributes.ˮ Four new normative-evaluative and modal-evaluative cognitive characteristics have also been detected: “compliance with the necessary requirements, conditions,ˮ “something true, right,ˮ “appreciation of actions, deeds, events as accompanied by success, as leading to the desired result,ˮ and “hope for a favorable occasion without any effort, prior thinking or planningˮ. As a result, at the current stage of the research, the aggregate meaning extension of the concept udacha (“luck”) contains the total of fourteen cognitive characteristics. The author has come to the conclusion that the significant volume and complicated semantic organization of the family of words under analysis can be seen as objective language evidence of substantial cultural development of the concept udacha (“luck”) in the Russian language picture of the world.