Modeling of the structure of the Sphere of Concepts:

• distinguishing the nucleus of the Sphere (basic cognitive propositional phenomenon and its linguistic representative);

• around nucleus zone (main lexical representatives);

• closest periphery (image associations);

• farthest periphery (subjective modal meanings, senses).

The method allows to comprehend the conceptual message of a literary text, its idea, personality of the author, his world view; distinguish existential cultural, historical, personal, etc. values, motives, principles and perceptions of the world.

Scheme of Conceptual Analysis of a literary text

(concentration)

1. Pre-textual presuppositions:

1. Time and place (peculiarities of the epoch, culture, society, Literary Artistic Method);

2. Personality of the author (peculiarities which influenced creative work; world-view);

3. Peculiarities of the creative work (problems; style, techniques).

2. Semantics of the title:

1. Meanings of the words from the title;

2. Meaning of the title as the whole (direct or figurative).

2. S emantic Radius of the title:

   1. Words from the title in the text;

   2. Their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations. Can be integrated

(3+4)

3. Other key words; their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations.

Offered table-scheme for psycholinguistic analysis (steps 3+4)

4. Concepts identified in the result of interpreting the data of psycholinguistic experiment.

5. M odel: Sphere of concepts:

   1. Leading/basic concept/-s) (nucleus); Their relations

   2. Dependent concepts (periphery:

around nucleus zone, closest periphery, farthest periphery).

6. Conceptual message.

An example of using the table-scheme for psycholinguistic analysis (steps 3+4)

Peculiarities of the key-words relations in the sonnet by Shakespeare “My mistress’ eyes…”

An example of modeling sphere of concepts

Nucleus – True love

Nucleus zone – love a real woman (‘my mistress’): RARE

Periphery – a typical ideal woman of those days to ‘love’ and worship: FALSE, ILLUSION

10. Concept and Picture of the World: the phenomenon of Concept; the phenomenon of Picture of the World; correlation of Language and Conceptual Pictures of the World; role of Concept in forming and developing Picture of the World.

Concept – individual personal (or group, e.g. cultural, professional, age, gender) subjective knowledge of a fragment of reality (external or internal). Integrating concepts form a system (cluster) of concepts – Picture of the World – which reflects, being realized in communication, peculiarities of individual perception and understanding the world.

World Picture is never a mirror reflection of the world; it is a certain vision and construction of the world in accordance with the logics of a definite world comprehending.

Getting some experience a person transfers it into definite concepts. The latter form a conceptual system by means of logical mutual connections and relations. The system is constantly being constructed, modified and specified because in the process of the system developing concepts are being changed in our cognition. They can also be modified and specified.

Characteristics of Concept and System of Concepts:

1. Logicality: each concept is logically formed on the ground of the experience a person gets.

2. Mutability (changeableness): each concept getting in definite relations with other concepts can receive some new signs on its periphery. It can change. Then the system having new shades of concepts will change too.

Concept is a core element in World Picture formation (Dr.1).

Experience Concept System of Concepts Image of the World

Reality Reflection Picture of the World

(Knowledge about the World)

Drawing 1. Steps of forming Picture of the World

Image of the World is a hierarchical structure of cognitive presentations, hypothesis about typical conditions of reality. Being processed in cognition it becomes knowledge about reality.

Picture of the World becomes certain Knowledge about the World, which lays in the basis of an individual and social Cognition.

In the Conceptual Picture of the World there are mutual relations and reciprocal actions of general human, national, ethnic and individual attitude to reality reflected. Its basic element is a concept that can be universal or present a certain concentration of national senses.

In the Language Picture of the World the system of social typical positions, relations and assessments that is formed and realized by the means of National Language is reflected. Its basic element is a national language that directs the process of forming and stipulates some peculiarities of a definite national Language Picture of the World.

As well as Concept is wider than Language unite; Conceptual World Picture is wider than Language one. Though they cannot be opposed as they both form general world understanding caught in World Picture.

Thus, the Picture of the World is understood as a complete, global image of the world that has been the result of the human activity and has resulted in the whole human moral activity. It appears in Human Cognition on the way of His multisided, various contacts with the world.

CONCEPT

LIST OF DEFINITIONS

Dependently on an approach there are peculiarities of defining Concept.

Definitions:

1. Concept is a metaphor which integrates lots of commonly used meaningful and individual associative units in itself (G. Lakoff and M. Johnson);

2. Concept is an abstract scientific notion which is worked out on the ground of a concrete life experience (Solomonic);

3. It is the essence of a notion which is realized in its substantial forms – in image (psychological category), notion (a category of Logics) and symbol (a category of Linguistic) (Kolesov);

4. Concept objectively exists in the human consciousness perceptive-cognitive-affective formation characterized with its dynamic function, which makes it different from notions and meanings as the products of scientific description (A.Zalevskaya);

5. It is an operative unit of thinking, a unit of collective knowledge which has a language expression and is marked with ethnic-cultural specifics; it directs to the highest spiritual essence (S.Vorkachev);

6. Concept is a certain idea about a fragment of the world (or about a part of the fragment) that has a complex structure. The structure is expressed with different groups of signs which are realized by different language means (M.Pimenova);

7. It is a certain ‘clot’ (сгусток) of a culture in a human consciousness; it is something in the form of which a culture enters the mental world of a man. On the other hand, Concept is something with what an average man enters a definite culture by himself and can influence it (U.Stepanov).

8. Concept – individual personal (or group, e.g. cultural, professional, age, gender) subjective cognitive-affective (or cognitive emotional) knowledge of a fragment of reality (external or internal). Integrating concepts forms a system (cluster) of concepts – Picture of the World – which reflects, being realized in communication, peculiarities of individual perception and understanding the world (your D.U.).

Approaches to studying Concept

There are a few approaches to studying Concept distinguished correspondingly to the leading factor, aspect, scientific angle of view, method which grounds the platform for the research.

Approaches:

1. Cultural Approach (Uriy Stepanov) studies concepts as elements of culture and grounds its research on the data of different sciences; Language here is one of the sources of the knowledge about concepts;

2. Linguistic Cultural Approach (Vladimir Karasik, Sergey Vorkachev, etc.) understands concepts as language units and studies them as elements of national linguistic Culture in their correspondence with national values and national peculiarities of a definite culture (the approach from a language to a culture);

3. Logical Approach (Natalia Arutjunova and others) study concepts with methods of Logics without direct dependency from Language;

4. Semantic Cognitive Approach (Helen Kubriakova, Ivan Sternin, etc.) studies lexical and grammatical semantics of Language as a means of understanding the content of concepts and as a means of their modeling from the semantics of a language to a definite Sphere of Concepts.

5. Method (Approach) of Metaphor (Western approach of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson) treats Concept as a peculiar metaphor with a series of transferred meanings kept in it.