Representing school discourse stimuli

Abstract

Discourse study in contemporary science is characterized by various approaches, whose integrative feature is the fact that this theoretical phenomenon is considered as a communicative activity and is caused by anthropocentric factors of speech generation. The representation of school discourse stimuli allows simulating the speech portrait of participants in educational activities. School discourse is a complex communicative phenomenon created by the subjects of the school educational process. It reflects the totality of accepted values and behavioral stereotypes in a particular socio-cultural space. The work aims to investigate the stimuli of school discourse. This work was conducted employing methods, such as 1) the free associative experiment; 2) quantitative analysis, which allowed identifying the actualization of the incentive perception based on quantitative data; and 3) discursive and conceptual analysis, which involved the identification of concepts, simulating them based on the conceptual totality of the means of their lexical representation in the usage. In the course of conducted study, about 600 native speakers of the Russian language were interviewed, and 9,440 associations were obtained for the school discourse stimuli. In the language consciousness of schoolchildren and teachers, associations for the “Family” stimulus were dominant, and the associative field of this stimulus was represented most broadly. The smallest number of associations was noted with regard to the “Evil” stimulus. The frequency of associations in the stimuli “Good”, “Happiness”, “Love”, “Friendship”, “Joy”, and “Labor” was approximately the same. The representation of school discourse stimuli reflects the value system, worldviews, moods, and assessments of recipients. Such a study was conducted for the first time.