Borrowed vocabulary as a fragment of the Russian language picture of the world: linguoculturological description

The relevance of the study is determined by the need for further study of the modern Russian language picture of the world, including by considering borrowed lexical units that explicate the conceptual meanings in the minds of Russian speakers precepting their own national culture. Of particular scientific interest are the results of the associative experiment, which demonstrate the specifics of Russian-speaking informants’ interpretation of subject-conceptual, connotative, primarily axiological, components of the borrowed units meaning, in our case, Sinicisms. The purpose of the study is to identify and describe the universal and nationally determined components in the semantics of the associates obtained during the experiment, which mark a fragment of the Russian picture of the world associated with understanding Chinese culture. The materials included the works of scientists on the problem of lexical borrowings, data from lexicographic sources, as well as the results of a survey and an associative experiment in a group of Russian-speaking students studying at Tomsk State Pedagogical University. A comprehensive research methodology was used, including methods of theoretical, introspective and experimental analysis. The results of the experiment made it possible to draw a conclusion about the role, place and content of fragments of the worldview of Russian-speaking informants related to the idea of the history, culture and language of China and based on the reception of different thematic borrowed lexical units. The authors proved that, despite the influence of the native linguistic culture on interpreting Sinicisms by Russian language native speakers, they understand the core subject-conceptual components of the meaning of all stimulus words. This fact testifies to the presence of a general idea on the original Chinese culture, imprinted in the national language and in the minds of the informants. We revealed that the degree of success and completeness of interpreting the borrowings depends on a certain thematic category of the unit: the most diverse and numerous reactions were received to words denoting philosophical concepts, the socio-political vocabulary has the least limited range of reactions. In general, the results of the experiment demonstrated the positive value meanings conveying respect and interest to Chinese language and culture in the minds of the representatives of modern Russian linguistic culture. The prospects of the research involve further study of Russian linguistic culture involving borrowed words from different source languages, as well as expanding the audience of recipients depending on their status indicators.