The Book – a Source of Knowledge? (Subjective Semantics of Lexemes Book, Computer, Tablet, Internet)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to model and analyze fragments of the language consciousness of schoolchildren associated with modern and traditional sources of information. The material for the study are the results of associative experiments conducted in several stages in 2015–2018. The author used psycholinguistic method of a free associative experiment with the subsequent construction of the traditional and cognitive structure of the associative field to determine the composition of the resulting components of the incentive semantics. The identification of trends in semantic development was carried out using the method of semantic comparison of the resulting field structures with essays on the themes «If there were no computers and tablets ...», «Read or see?», «If there were no books, then ...». The results of the research are descriptions of cognitive structures of associative fields, identifying a significant number of layers in them, establishing similarities and differences in their semantic composition, creating semantic portraits of stimuli, identifying the leading semantic areas of the texts of the works, which reflect the composition of the actualized components of these fragments. Conclusions: the intersection of the semantic areas of these phenomena with the global categories “knowledge”, “entertainment”, “person”, “information” in schoolchildren’s consciousness, the relevance of meanings ‘development / degradation’, ‘mind / stupidity’; ‘health, benefit / harm’; the stability of the lines of interaction between the semantic areas «Internet», «Computer», «Tablet», «Game», «Information», «Communication», the subjects (who are in friendly and family relations especially); the relevance of the semantic space of the game in the AF «Computer», «Tablet», «Internet», the space of knowledge in the AF «Book»; the age specificity of the composition of the fields, the appearance with different frequency of reactions associated with school, study; depletion of associative fields in recent experiments.