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)

Chanturidze, Yulia

Once a person sets a goal of studying the culture of some country or even of teaching it to foreign students in classrooms, he/she cannot manage without taking into account its reflection in the languages. it is the language that fixes all peculiarities of people’s world perception and becomes the storage of knowledge about it. It is in the light of such perception that a human being sees the world. Thus, one can speak about a linguistic world view. The linguistic world view is based on the set of certain concepts. A concept is a great deal broader than the lexical meaning of a word as it also includes an evaluative component. Cultures may share the same concepts or possess their own uniqueness. The latter are often referred to as national-specific concepts. These are the concepts that render the peculiarities of nation's mentality, world view and evaluation of the material world. In order to understand each other people must share the set of concepts and the same background information. This is often referred to as “common knowledge” [1.P.174-175]. At present considerable attention is drawn to discourse, especially its political variety. The analysis of national-specific concepts and the set of linguistic means which express them in political discourse seem to be of special interest in the discussion of typical cultural characteristics as political sphere is one of the constituent parts of any national culture. Thus, political discourse contributes to the understanding of the ways values have been developed. The importance of linguistic analysis of political discourse as part of culture teaching can be illustrated using materials from the African American political discourse, in which such concepts as ‘freedom’, ‘power’, ‘equality’ and ‘African American dream’ come to the fore. Keywords: discourse, culture, teaching, worldview, concept, African American dream

Article
PeerReviewed

International Burch University

2015

2801