Associative Field of the Concept Ворог (Enemy) within the Period of the Russian-Ukrainian War
Description
The values the society is guided by are reflected in the lingual picture of the world, which undergoes changes when influenced by the reality of the present time which are in the spotlight of the mass media and social media. The goal of this study is to investigate on the basis of the directed associative experiment the associative field of the concept ворог, which is important for Ukrainians, in the conditions of the current Russian-Ukrainian war. The experimental part was conducted on the basis of Google Forms in the form of a survey of 630 respondents who were the students of the Lviv Polytechnic National University. In the process of the research the collected material was systematized and analysed with the method of componential analysis and the method of summarizing dictionary definitions. On the basis of the comparative and descriptive method the lexicographic description of the lexeme ворог was compared with its semantic and associative meanings, the priority meaning of the concept ворог was determined, that being “military adversary”, “enemy on the battlefield”. The experiment produced 643 reaction words, which determined the structure of the associative field under research: the core makes up 76%, the close periphery – 16%, and the distant one – 8%. Six main thematic groups of the associative field of the stimulus ворог are singled out, which reflect various aspects of the new reality of life: names of persons (79.63%), names of the occupying country (9.33%), names of feelings, sensations, mental state of a person (6.22%), names of objectified actions, states, processes (3.73%), names of substances and materials (0.78%), names of objects (0.31%). It was revealed that the structure of the concept ворог is formed by six interconnected components: cognitive, emotional, political, cultural, social and historical ones. The experiment confirmed that during the modern war there was a shift in the image of enemy from a generalized and abstract one to a clearly specified, real russian enemy-aggressor participating in hostilities against Ukraine.