Author’s name:
Elena V. Suvorova – National University of Oil and Gas «Gubkin University»
Abstract:
The paper focuses on the study of the linguistic means verbalizing the concept “foreign,” leaning primarily on the material of dictionaries and The British National Corpus. Its main objective is to reveal key cultural meanings included in the concept of “foreign” as one of the poles of the archetypal binary opposition “one’s own” vs. “foreign.” More specifically, the author seeks to understand the cognitive, perceptual, and affective (emotional and evaluative) content of the concept of “foreign” in the linguistic consciousness of British people. In the course of initial analysis, carried out by means of continuous sampling, the author identified key synonymous adjectives comprising the core of the nominative field of the concept of “foreign”. These are: different, strange, unfamiliar, dissimilar, peculiar, separate, alien, bizarre, distinct, exotic, foreign, odd, outlandish, unique, unusual, distinguishable, divergent, diverse, extraordinary, singular, unalike, unlike, and weird. Further analysis and interpretation of the meanings of these core words with the help of explanatory, phraseological, and associative dictionarie as well as The British National Corpus revealed a number of implicit elements in the concept of “foreign” that seem peculiar to British people, even though these elements are not indicated in explanatory dictionaries. In particular, the concept of “foreign” in the linguistic consciousness of British people is closely connected with an idea of something that is extraterrestrial or supernatural, which contradicts a more traditional understanding that the British associate something that is alien or foreign with things that from from abroad.
It also became clear that, though connotations of dictionary meanings of the key adjectives are neutral, when these adjectives are used as stimuli for associations, words that people use as reactions to or associations with these stimuli are reflect negative and sometimes even hostile attitudes. The author concludes that it signifies an implicit (and thus not reflected in dictionaries) negativity of British people to anything “foreign,” i.e. that which goes beyond want they see as their own (familiar, habitual, comprehensible). The results of the study confirm that the British see “foreign” as something “alien” and contribute to the general linguistic and cultural knowledge which is necessary to build a productive intercultural dialogue.
| Section | LANGUAGE AND CULTURE |
| DOI: | 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2025-71-3-92-107 |
| Downloads | 925 |
| Key words | intercultural dialogue; foreign; concept; British linguistic consciousness; binary opposition |