The Image of Mother in the Language Picture of the World of Russians and the Japanese

Abstract

This paper elucidates the image of mother in the worldview of Russians and the Japanese on the basis of association experiments. Associative reactions obtained from Russian and Japanese respondents are listed along four semantic components – logical-notional, axiological-semantic, bodily-perceptive, and emotional-affective. Besides, the index of proximity is calculated for each pair of samplings analyzed. The language world view of Russians is scrutinized over two time periods. They are the early 1990s and the early 21st century. The language world view of the Japanese refers to the early 21st century. The image of mother in both linguocultures is predictably intertwined with the images of father, love, and children. It is noteworthy that the two Russian samplings demonstrate insignificant changes in the ronment as long as they associate mother with warmth that embraces a child and breast-feeding. For Russians, mother is primarily a woman and a parent, that is, her social functions predominate over her physical functions. The archetype of multi-child family used to be topical in the 1990s Russia, although the rate of childbirth was relatively low at the time due to economic problems. The Japanese and the Russians of the early 21st century lost this archetype. A large family was no longer a priority for them. Meanwhile, the image of mother is clearly vital for both linguocultures. This makes it possible to state the universal character of the image of mother. Another important observation is that Russian women of the early 1990s demonstrated unity in their treatment of current events. The experiments conducted have shown that the early 1990s saw an increase in mood swings for many people in Russia. However, Russian women turned out to be less affected by negative developments and more family-minded. One more important conclusion concerns the fact that male speech is ruder than female speech. This has been observed by other authors numerous times and has been confirmed in the association experiment discussed.

Keywords: mother, father, gender, language consciousness, Russians, Japanese, reaction