The "strong family" phenomenon in the Russian linguistic picture of the world: a corpus study

Abstract

The paper examines the phenomenon of "family" in one of its manifestations, namely "a strong family", as a central fragment of the Russian linguistic picture of the world. It acquires special significance in the context of preserving national cultural values. The study traces the relationship between historical events and changes in the level of public interest in the "strong family" phenomenon and examines the semantic range of this concept. The scope of "the strong family" concept fixed in native speakers’ consciousness can be judged by analysing examples with the strong family phrase recorded in the Russian National Corpus. Based on the dual consciousness idea, the conceptual scope of "the strong family" phenomenon can be represented as a hierarchy with several levels of abstraction reflecting the semantics of the social and the individual. The study employed historical and descriptive methods, analysis and synthesis, as well as distributional, componential, and contextual analysis. At the social consciousness level, "a strong family" is the basis of a strong state and the focus of public policy. At the individual consciousness level, "a strong family" is associated with its members’ joint activities, upbringing of children, personality formation, life priorities, and so on. The analysed language material illustrates the diversity of human relationships and the factors influencing them. A strong family can exist for decades, and at the same time it can be very vulnerable, easily and quickly destroyed. The article concludes that "the strong family" fragment of the linguistic world picture is clearly structured. Several levels of abstraction are distinguished in its semantic scope. The first level is represented by the concept of "family" as a group of close relatives living together. At the second level, it is reflected differently in social and individual consciousness, forming thematic groupings with the meanings of ‘foundation of the state’, ‘characteristics of the nation’, ‘family model’, ‘influence on the person’, and others. At the third level of abstraction, contextual meanings in each thematic block are differentiated.