THE ROLE OF CONCEPT ANALYSIS IN STUDYING ENGLISH (ON THE BASIS OF AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE)

THE ROLE OF CONCEPT ANALYSIS IN STUDYING ENGLISH (ON THE BASIS OF AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE)

Yulia, Chanturidze

“Every language is a temple in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Language is a means of communication between people. It is inextricably bound to the life and development of people who use it. It is a human being who perceives and understands the world through various senses and creates a worldview on the basis of this experience. Having received the results of such a perception, people pass their knowledge to other people with the help of language. That is why one can argue that language, thinking and culture are so closely interconnected that they exist in the state of unity. Language does not only reflect people’s worldview and culture but among its key functions one can also name preserving culture and passing it on to the next generations. In this respect it goes without saying that it is necessary to turn to language analysis when teaching foreign culture to students. People see the world around them differently: their worldview depends on what has become traditionally important to them. The peculiarities of the vocabulary of a language should be noticed by teachers of language and culture and explained to students. As a result of world perception one can observe the appearance of concepts in culture. Their nature has been defined by such prominent Russian linguists as V.A.Maslova and Y.S.Stepanov. Then their theory has been applied to a great variety of languages (see Levenkova E.R., Ter-Minasova S.G., Vishnyakova O.D. and others). As a result of their research it has become clear that an important peculiarity of a concept, which helps to distinguish it from the lexical meaning, appears to be the fact that a concept is “felt through”, i.e. it carries some special emotions and reflects a person’s attitude to it (positive or negative). Moreover, concepts are connected with the norms of people’s behaviour since they also fix the peculiarities of native speakers’ culture.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3557