Cognitive mechanisms of language as a tool to form and maintain the system of Russian (of the Russian Federation) traditional values

This article focuses on the conflict between value paradigms in human consciousness and the reflection

of this conflict in language and the linguistic image of the world. The aim of the study is to identify the impact of language mechanisms on the perception and acceptance of cultural value systems. The article examines how cognitive mechanisms operate in the value system sphere in the modern Russian linguistic and cultural context. It is the situation when Russian axiology, on the one hand, seeks to remain traditional and resist the system of liberal values  imposed by the Western cultural paradigm. On the other hand, it cannot help but evolve within the framework of a rapidly changing modern civilisation. The article relied on an empirical investigation of the axiological system of culture and the method of its external transformation in conjunction with a psycholinguistic experiment (270 respondents, 2025). The experiment studies how young native speakers of Russian and bearers of Russian culture perceive the Russian system of traditional values  promoted by the state, and what attitude they have towards this system. The traditional Russian axiological paradigm was found to have been affected by significant external influences in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Nevertheless, the system transformation was incomplete. Thus, it is currently in a stabilisation phase; however, the final state has not been reached yet. The cognitive mechanisms of language contribute to both the preservation and deformation of the traditional value system, depending on the forces influencing these mechanisms and the direction in which they are activated. The cognitive mechanisms of language form ideas (including axiological ones) about the structure of the world, the rules and norms of social interaction, and the existing ways of human development and life in a native speaker’s consciousness. On the one hand, such mechanisms are capable of protecting the axiology existing in the culture from external influences and slowing down the changes occurring in a native speaker’s consciousness. On the other hand, however, the same mechanisms can also form, maintain, or transform the value paradigm of the consciousness internally, not depending on the will of a particular individual and his conscious decision.

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