THE CORE ZONE OF THE CONCEPT “ROMANTIC” IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH LINGUOCULTURES

Language in its specificity and social significance in society takes
a very special place. Pointing to this role of language, many
linguists emphasize that language is the focus of the spiritual
culture of a people, the main form of manifestation of national
and personal identity, a means of storing and accumulating
knowledge. Currently, the search for new ways of research has
led to the formation of ideas about the intercultural ontology of
national (ethnic) consciousnesses, when images of consciousness
of one national culture are analyzed in the process of contrasting
comparison with images of consciousness of another culture. In
this regard, the term “concept” is widely used in various fields of
linguistic science. It entered the conceptual apparatus of cognitive
science, semantics and linguoculturology.
Language as a phenomenon of culture captures and reflects in
some indirect way both the system of values, moods, assessments
that currently exist in a given society, and values that are eternal
for a given culture. Thus, the language keeps the culture and
passes it from generation to generation, so it plays a significant
role in the formation of the personality, national character, ethnic
community, people, and nation.
For the first time, the term “romance” began to be used in the
17th century. From then until now, this phenomenon of language
and culture enriched semantically has attracted particular
attention of linguists and is the object of scientific research by
many scientists (V.V. Vanslov, A.M. Gurevich, V.I. Kuleshov,
G.A. Gukovsky, and others).
Up to the XX century, the concept “Romance” was considered in
the literary aspect in the framework of the more extensive
direction of romanticism. However, the linguistic and, in
particular, the linguoculturological description of the meaning of
the concept “Romance” still causes certain difficulties.
Considering the history of the development of the concept
“Romance” in the English and Russian linguistic cultures, we can
say that nowadays under the concept “Romance”, the British
often mean love (the relationship of two people) and the linguistic
objectification of this concept is due to emotional lexical units
(love, excitement, fascination, glamor, etc.), and in the Russian
linguistic and cultural community, the concept “Romance”,
compared to the English equivalent, has much less broad
associative orientation (the dream, the enthusiasm, mystery, fairy
tale, etc.). It follows that the interrelation of culture, emotional
sphere and language is manifested in the basic meanings
(concepts) of each linguistic culture. Being an integral component
of spiritual culture, emotions, for all their universality, manifest
in different languages certain specificities of the verbalization of
the “Romance” / “Romantic” concept, due to the inherent
speaker’s subjectivity in interpreting the surrounding reality.
In this study the following has been done:
1. The core of the semantic field of the concept “Romance”, as
well as the concept “Romantic”, is determined on the basis of the
dictionary data analysis. The internal form and keywords (core)
of this concept are selected based on the criteria of direct
nomination, figurative values; genre–forming stylistic means are
elements of indirect nomination.
2. A range of lexical units is revealed, which are used in one
particular semantic sphere.
The structure of this concept is a complex multifaceted
phenomenon. The concept center is the notion “Romantic”, which
dynamically acquires many new meanings and demonstrates a
model of development from the center to the periphery of certain
lexemes, the main of which are: in English – excitement, love, in
Russian – mechta, skazka, vostorgennost’. However, linguistic
expression of this notion is not the same in the compared
languages.
Keywords: spiritual culture, concept “romantic”,
linguoculturological approach