Student as a personality: Dynamics of associative criteria

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of a student’s linguistic personality from the standpoint of the theory of linguistic-cultural types. The relevance of the study is due to the actively developing anthropological linguistics field of the theory of linguocultural type, within the framework of which generalized recognizable personalities as representatives of a certain linguistic culture are considered. The object under study is the conceptual characteristics and the resulting reactions to the stimulus word “student”. The purpose of this work is to linguistically represent a student as a person, to describe the notional component of the typified personality concept based on associative attributes. The paper proposes to expand the conceptual space of a character type by means of the associations obtained and to consider the character type of “student” as a person who is beyond the bounds of a cliche. The character type of student is a vivid representative of the sociocultural group, embodying the educational values of society. According to our observations, the description of the linguocultural character type of student through the eyes of students themselves gives a more detailed representation of the substantive component of the concept. The study is based on the associative and semantic field “student” which includes linguistic units reflecting the lexical-semantic space of student life; associated with the mental, emotional, physical, material, intellectual condition of a student; denoting character traits representing specific concepts/specific objects of the material world (educational supplies, a kind of instant food, etc.), etc.