Hesitation ('kolebaniye') and indecisiveness in the Russian language and culture

The article is concerned with hesitation as a significant part of intention, where intention is an active aspiration for performing an action, the transition point from mental activity to the physical one. Intentional activity is a complex volitional, intellectual and emotional activity which takes precedence of either some changes in the world, or its remaining unchanged. Hesitation is an integrated psychomental state which deprives an action of predetermination and automaticity. It denotes the subject's incapability of choosing between the intention and the refusal to the action. Furthermore, hesitation is an unstable process with the lack of a typical result. Hesitation plays an important role in social communication. This human ability makes it possible for other people to influence a person in order to change his/her intentions. Constructional peculiarities of the semantics of the lexical units that express hesitation are closely connected with cross-reference of two subjects: one of mental activity and one of action (mono-subjectivity), future temporal perspective and potentiality of the actional in the event. The ethnical aspect of the language pattern of hesitation (kolebaniye, literally "swinging from side to side") as an intentional process is presented as an image of a pendulum or a scale, where human will swings from one to another intentional poles. Moreover, the compatibility of the word kolebaniye (hesitation) shows absence of control of this process from the subject's side. An essential cultural plot is connected with hesitation. In the Russian everyday ethics decisiveness is highly estimated, while hesitation tendency is considered to be a great weakness. This property of the mentality is represented in the language (words denoting hesitation are commonly used with a negative particle.) Hesitation is quite unusual for the Russian society, that is why the ground for hesitation is often required. Periods of social confrontation are crucial for setting up the negative attitude towards hesitation: when the society splits up, a person has to make a decision in favour of one of the sides. For example, in the Stalin era, hesitation was taken as a vice to such an extent, that it was the basis of criticism, self-criticism, suspicion and comrades' court. Therefore, hesitation connected with the absence of automaticity is perceived as an abnormality and demonstration of indecisiveness in the Russian culture. It is criticized and requires reasoning. Except for the ideological causes, an undeniable influence on such an attitude was the everyday way of thinking which deals with some typical situations, where actions need neither thinking, nor pondering, nor even making a decision.

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