Лексемы: «война», «борьба» и их употребление в современном русском языке

Abstract

Lexemes "war", "battle" and their use in the modern russian language

The notion of “war” plays a crucial role in Russian linguistic worldview. On the basis of the material analyzed, one can observe that the concept of “war” represents a complex mental product which is reflected in various types of linguistic units. The purpose of cognitive interpretation of “war” is presenting how the conceptualizer formulates such a fragment of reality.

Semantic fields of the analyzed concept as used in everyday contexts constitute the theme of the paper. Material used was extracted from Russian dictionaries with explainations and confronted with everyday use of given lexis in war literature and periodicals. In recent years, the notion of Chechen War became strongly lexicalized. One can observe certain regularities conntected with describing the concept. The neutral lexeme “war” in specific conditions is subsituted with a softer linguistic sign of “battle”. The latter may have positive connotations if we consider righteous cause and ultimate values.

Key words: war; fight; conceptualization; concept; lexem; lingwistic picture of the world;