The concept "darkhan / smith" in the Buryat culture (the psycholinguistic meaning)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the associative field "darkhan / smith" in the language consciousness of the Buryat people. Data for the analysis are the results of an associative experiment, one of research methods of language consciousness, which gives a possibility to reveal the systemacity of the content of an image of consciousness behind the word in culture, its ethnocultural specifics. With the leading role of the Russian language as a language for communication in the Republic of Buryatia, it was interesting to find out the common and specific features in the image "darkhan" in the language consciousness of the bilingual Buryat people and of the Buryats with Russian as a native language. The associative reactions classification "semantic Gestalt" by Yu.N. Karaulov is used for the analysis; it reflects the internal semantic organization of the associative field and characterizes the field as a complete unit of knowledge of the world. The article deals with the analysis of the lexicographic meanings of the word "darkhan" [smith]. Data of the Buryat-Russian dictionaries by S.M. Babushkin, L.D. Shagdarov and K.M. Cheremisov are attracted for the analysis; these are the most unabridged editions nowadays. In this work the functioning of the dictionary meanings of the word "darkhan" in the language consciousness of the bilingual Buryat people and the Buryats with native Russian is described. The psycholinguistic and lexicographic meanings of the word "darkhan" are considered in the article. The psycholinguistic word meaning (term of I.A Sternin and A.V. Rudakova) is understood as an ordered unity of all semantic components which staticizes a separate word in the consciousness of native speakers; it is a word meaning actually functioning in the language consciousness of native speakers. The result of the analysis has shown that the psycholinguistic word meaning is not always broader than lexicographic, recorded in explanatory dictionaries, as I.A. Sternin and A.V. Rudakova state. The meaning of the word "darkhan" in the Buryat culture is narrowed. One of the reasons of this process is the weak position of the Buryat language as the daily main language of communication in the Republic of Buryatia. At present, the first dictionary meaning of the word "darkhan", "a smith, a handicraftsman, a craftsman working with metal, weapon and also with gold", functions in the language consciousness of the Buryat. The bilingual Buryat people have the meaning "a carpenter, a joiner, a builder working with stone and wood". But the word meaning "a chiseller, a craftsman working with silver, a woodcarver" is not identified in any of the groups.

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