Русская культурная семантика: эмоции, ценности, жизненные установки

This book explores the relationship between the Russian language and Russian culture through a detailed semantic analysis of selected expressions relating to emotions, attitudes, and values. The basic idea behind the study is that some words of the lexicon reflect cultural beliefs and attitudes, that is, that the meanings of these words encode ways of thinking and ways of understanding which are shared by speakers of a language. The cultural significance of the expressions under study is demonstrated by their semantic relationship to other Russian cultural key words and cultural ideas. The book shows the linguistic and cultural specificity of the words by comparing them with their English translational equivalents. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used to explicated meanings and to state cultural norms. The work contains a pioneering exploration of the Russian NSM, and includes a focused study of the exponents of semantic primitives in Russian and their syntactic properties. NSM provides a culture-neutral tool of linguistic analysis which allows one to formulate the results in a manner free from ethnocentric bias. The book seeks to contribute to a clearer understanding of Russian culture and of ways of thinking as they are embedded in the Russian language. The results of the book can be applied in language instruction (Russian and English), teaching cross-cultural communication, bilingual studies, cognitive science and cultural psychology. The book is intended for linguists, specialists in cross-cultural communication, anthropological linguistics, students and teachers of Russian and English.