ASSOCIATIVE FIELD OF THE CONCEPT OF TOLERANCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE WORLDVIEW

Abstract

The article reveals the cultural specificity of the concept of TOLERANCE in the English language worldview. The author states that the concept of TOLERANCE is a culturally depended concept that considers as important part of social interaction – both within one culture and intercultural communication. That’s why tolerance in the English language worldview is considered as the regulative system of values which depends on the norms of society. The aim of the article is to study the dynamics of changes in the associative field of the concept of TOLERANCE on the associative thesaurus data. Concepts are constantly balancing between the preservation of stable features and the dynamics of development, which is due to changes in our attitude and knowledge about the world. The analysis of such changes is relevant for modern cognitive studies, as it will contribute to the understanding of the features of categorization and conceptualization in a particular lingiaculture. To divide all association into thematic groups the method of cognitive interpretation was used. The emotional and axiological characteristics of the concept was identified. The most important for ordinary native speaker features was investigated. The results are as follows: the cognitive characteristics of the concept of TOLERANCE could be found in other cultures, but there are also specific for English linguaculture features. Tolerance circulated into all spheres of public life, particularly in the religious, political and educational spheres. The dynamics of changes showed that the religious related associations melted. In the political sphere, tolerance appears not as an authoritarian, but as an egalitarian system of interaction within society. Associations that pointed to the medical sense of tolerance, almost never met in the data of the ХХ century, but became growing in numbers in the XXI century. The scale of the tolerance in associative thesaurus ranges from polite indifference to full acceptance. And yet, in the English linguаculture the concept of TOLERANCE is associated with reason, rationality, gentle and peaceful coexistence. At the same time, the semantic relations of the concept reveal many evaluative and emotional meanings. An additional means of verification were the stimuli that got responses “tolerance”. That allowed to establish a network of close concepts, which corresponds with the tolerance. In conclusion, the author summarizes the preliminary results and outlines ways to further study of this problem.