Kinship and Affinity’ conceptosphere in Russian and English

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Elena Kosheleva, Ph.D. in History

National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia

Kinship and Affinity’ conceptosphere in Russian and English

There is no doubt that comparative-contrastive analysis of affinity and kinship terms in Russian and English is relevant in today’s scientific landscape. Learning a language intrinsically implies conceptualizing the world. It is only natural for a speaker to take for granted the topography of ideas charted in their native language words’ meanings. Yet, when juxtaposed, the two languages views of the world turn out to be largely different and, what is more important, these differences shed light on the two people’s mentalities.

The thesis focuses on comparative-contrastive analysis of affinity and kinship terms in Russian and English. These spheres are part of the oldest layer of the word bulk, connected with the development of the family and its forms, thus, their study allows us to define the more important notions of the ethnic group, it also visualizes social organization of the English and Russian peoples, and makes a step forward towards comprehensive lexical-semantic description of both languages.

Knowing typical national and linguistic character of idioms, proverbs, sayings and figures of speech and contrasting these concepts’ characteristic features on Russian and English ethnic cultures allows us to model a set of priorities for the Russian and English language communities based on the semantic fields “kinship” and “affinity”.

Kinship terms, although part of the general word bulk, make for a specific linguistic phenomenon and are defined by the language’s inner development laws. In the Russian language, the first component analysis of kinship terminology was done by T.P. Lomtev. The component analysis shows that some of the Russian kinship terms have a significant range of meanings, namely “father”, “mother”, “son”, “daughter”, “brother”, “sister”. A.P Chudinov [1] applies a new approach to the study of the word’s lexical meaning through looking at the semantic components usually missed when analyzing the word’s meaning out of the context – associative and personal semes.

In the realm of Slavic languages sociolinguistic approach to kinship terms analysis was championed by F.I. Buslaev [2] whose works demonstrated the role of Christian culture in kinship and affinity relations development in the Slavic peoples. Research conducted by D.A. Olderogge “On Some Aspects of Kinship Systems Study” [3] and “Kinship Systems Development: Main Features” [4] was a milestone for the study of kinship in social and ethno-cultural respect, summarizing observations for a large number of languages. N.A. Butinov’s article “Community, Family, Clan” [5] also focuses on this field, as well as a number of other works.

The kinship terminology is the object of research for a number of scientists from Samara linguistic school, such as М.А. Terpak, who studies the English conceptosphere “family” from the lingvocultural standpoint [6]; М.V. Dyomina, who analyzes the conceptosphere of gender in British fairytale discourse [7]; А.P. Chudinov [8]; I.V. Palaeva [9]; А.А. Mundigalieva [10]; and other scholars looking at kinship terms from the points of view of cognitive, structural, and comparative-historical linguistics..

Universal, typical and semantic aspects of kinship and affinity terminology in the English and Russian languages comprise the subject of our study.

Study object includes nouns denoting kinship and affinity in English and Russian.

The objective of our work is to conduct linguocultural analysis and make a cognitive description of the kinship and affinity terminology range in Russian and English.

As follows from the objective stated, the goals of the work are:

1. Analyze the fundamentals of cognitive linguistics.

2. Review the characteristic features of kinship and affinity ranges in various languages and the existing approaches to the study of kinship terms.

3. Define the reasons for family and kinship relations evolution in England and Russia in 18-20 centuries.

4. Create a linguocultural model of “kinship” and “affinity” semantic fields structure in Russian and English.

Our research is based on the works on kinship terminology systems in various languages by Russian and foreign scientists in the fields of cognitive linguistics, cross-cultural communication, ethnology (A. Verzhbitskaya, S.G. Vorkachyov, A. Sepir, B. Warf, N.V. Krushevsky, I.A. Sternin).

Comparative-typological approach was used to define the place of Russian and English kinship terms systems among those in other languages. Component analyses method was applied to the study of present-day state of Russian and English kinship word bulk. Both comparative-historical method and receptive experiment were used to define the knowledgeability and the system of notions of the Russian youth in the field of kinship terms.

Study unit is defined as a text excerpt denoting or expressing one or several semes of the “kinship” and “affinity” concepts. The author’s own findings provided additional material for the study, namely, 68 questionnaire forms reflecting Tomsk students’ prowess in the sphere of kinship terms.

The first Chapter covers the fundamentals of cognitive linguistics with particular attention paid to the frame theory, which basics were laid out by C Charles J. Fillmore and M. Minsky. According to Minsky, a frame is data structure employed to represent a stereotype situation.

We make use of the frame structure in order to systematize lexical material and to develop a model of the conceptosphere “kinship and affinity”. The following concept frame model is used based on the principle of diminishing semantic volume:

1. conceptosphere; 2. concept; 3. terminal; 4. slot; 5. subslot.

In this work, we employ M. Terpak’s classification developed for the study of English conceptosphere “family” [6].

The original notional sphere of the “kinship and affinity” concept is therefore divided into terminals according to the family types following the concept’s frame model:

The analysis of “kinship” and “affinity” conceptosphere in Russian and English shows that lexical units denoting family relations are highly metaphorical. The sphere structure is very detailed, all its frames and slots have a large number of associations and belong to the “eternal” human interests.

The comparative-contrastive analysis of kinship/affinity terminology in the two languages allows us to conclude as follows:

Family relations are reflected in a linguocultural concept which has various ways of expression in the language as well as certain structure, the latter being partially identical in the Russian and English languages and language consciousnesses.

Kinship relations concepts include a number of connotations specific solely to English/Russian linguocultural spheres, which is also reflected in the semantic field of the languages combining kinship terms and collective notions of home, family, relations through blood and marriage.

The range of family relations metaphors testifies to a pronounced conservatism and adherence to traditions in the English family lore.

Presently, there are no new kinship terms appearing in the Russian language. In fact, the opposite is true: kinship terminology is being dispersed and eroded, with the younger generation gradually loosing their knowledge of it.

The results of our study allow us to determine specific national, cultural, and linguistic features of the linguocultural concepts “kinship” and “affinity”.

Currently nuclear two-generation family type is the most widespread one (parents with children), therefore the semantic meaning of remote relation terms are withering in common everyday speech.

References:

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2. Буслаев Ф.И. О влиянии христианства на славянский язык: Опыт истории языка по Остромирову Евангелию. М., 1848.; Буслаев Ф.И. Историческая грамматика русского языка. 1858.

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