Empirical Methods of studying Concept

General information

Theoretical Methods (Approaches to understand the phenomenon of Сoncept) are not to be mixed up with the Empirical Methods of research (techniques to analyze and interpret it).

The problem of understanding Concept concerns with the question of peculiar relations of Meaning (under-individual, general for a group, fixed in dictionaries understanding, definition of a word – linguistic substituter of an object, thing, phenomenon which becomes the linguistic name of a concept) and Sense (individual understanding of a phenomenon). Meanings of words form Objective semantics. Associations to them form Subjective semantics. Peculiarities of correlation of objective and subjective semantics help to understand the phenomenon of a definite concept. Thus, each method, more or less, concerns with studying objective and subjective semantics (for example, through studying contextual peculiarities of textual organization to understanding its implication (Conceptual Analysis, Interpretation of Text) or through comparative studying of linguistic meanings and individual associations to interpreting personal concepts (Associative Experiment)).

Some of the methods used in cognitive linguistic research:

1. The method of Associative experiment (method of psychology, psycholinguistics; introduced on the first steps of empirical psychological research by V.Vundt): the study of semantics which is differentiated as objective semantics (which is fixed in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books) and subjective (associative meanings of people as peculiarities of their perception of the phenomena which have their linguistic names; i.e. responses (associations) to the stimuli (lexical representatives of the phenomena)).

2. The method of Semantic Differential (Ch.Osgood, a psycholinguist): the analysis of the cognitive-emotive perception of a phenomenon on the base of the responders’ assessments of the qualities and characteristics of it.

3. The method of Conceptual analysis (L.V.Babenko, U.V.Kazarin): the method is widely used in the study of the concepts of a literary text; it combines certain analysis of the concept and system of concepts of a literary text as a metaphor (or metaphors), includes psycholinguistic analysis of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of the language elements used in the text and results in building a model of system of concepts of the text and interpreting it.

4. Interpretation of Text.

5. Analysis of the vocabulary meanings of the linguistic name and associative names of a concept.

6. The method of complex psycholinguistic speech analysis, etc.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14