Names of the days of the week in the language consciousness of Russian and Chinese undergraduate students

Abstract

The article discusses a comparative analysis of the area of language consciousness of Russian and Chinese students related to the names of the days of the week. Language consciousness is defined as a concept establishing a relationship between word meanings and its individual senses, on the one hand, and external (social) and internal (mental) factors of language functioning, on the other hand. In Vygotskian psychology it is not only meaning, but also an individual sense that make up the sign content. Every sign has two aspects – a social and an individual ones. Every sign is an instrument of both interaction with the world and its emotional experiencing (переживание, perezhivanie). The exper iment conducted involved 104 Russian and 100 Chinese students. The analysis of the material was based on the authors’ method of semantic- and thematic grouping of associations with their subsequent analysis. The study showed an increase in the reactions of the “leisure” group, starting on Friday. At the same time the reactions of the “study / work” group do not disappear, so apparently, every day is not just a weekday or a day off, it is filled with various activities that retain their personal significance. The representation of the day of the week reflects a part of a person’s life with its activities, experiences, relationships, etc. The name of the day of the week in the student’s language consciousness is meaningful and emotionally coloured, not just time related. Russian and Chinese students showed little difference in their language consciousness, cultural specificity being manifested to a small extent only. The names of the days of the week accumulate a student’s emotionally relevant personal experience, i.e. a general idea of the activities usually performed during a particular day of the week. It is important that all the days of the week are different and the corresponding representations cannot be reduced to some common content. There is no such thing as a “day of the week in general” in the student’s language consciousness.

Keywords

language consciousness, Russian students, Chinese students, meaning, individual sense, psycholinguistics