Wars in Russian Language Consciousness of Students and Military Cadets (psycholinguistic aspect)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the psycholinguistic analysis of changes the image of war has been undergoing in the Russian language consciousness. A comparative analysis of Russian associative bases obtained in different years from the 70s of the last century to the 2010s made it possible to reveal the dynamics of the connections formed by the word war in the Russian language consciousness of three generations. The word war is capable of evoking in the mind of a native speaker a specific event, either occurring in the history of the people or expected to occur in the future. Since the 40s of the last century, the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) has been such an historical landmark event in the Russian culture. The materials of psycholinguistic associative experiments conducted with students in their different years show that this image has not lost its relevance yet. Although there is a slight decrease in its intensity, and the direct reference to the Great Patriotic War is no longer the most frequent reaction to the word war. The reasons for this decrease are supposed to be the general influence of Western mass culture and the increasing time distance from this event. In Western mass culture actively absorbed by the younger generation, the notion of the Second World War is used to refer to the historical events described in the Russian culture as the Great Patriotic War. Using a psycholinguistic associative experiment conducted with cadets of one of the Russian military academies, certain professional features of the connections formed by the word war, which in the military activity frame is characterized as a set of actions aimed at achieving certain goals and implementing certain motives, are revealed. The professional identification of cadets is manifested in the fact that in their linguistic consciousness, in connection with the word war, the expected military events with the participation of a likely enemy are evoked, while references to historical wars are few, and the image of the Great Patriotic War prevails among them.

Keywords: war, associative-verbal network, associative field, military language consciousness, Russian associative databases and dictionaries