Axiological parameters of ethnocultural identification: experimental research data

The paper deals with the discourse of national-cultural identity, representatives of the Russian ethnical community who participated in the psycholinguistic experiment being the subjects of the latter. The formation of ethnic and cultural identity in the communicative space of students of the city of Tomsk is described. Ethno-cultural identity is seen as a dynamic category. The subject of research is the communicative and linguistic markers of national identity, which communicants represent in the psycholinguistic experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to trigger a situation, which would be relevant for a conscious approach to the formation of an ethnocultural self-portrait. The participants were given a task to write a description with elements of a composition. The genre was chosen due to the idea of the priority of reflexive reactions when reconstructing the axiological model of ethnocultural self-presentation. The students of the Russian Academy of Justice in Tomsk were the experimental subjects. They were offered stimulus material - an excerpt from Psychology of the Great Russian by V.O. Klyuchevsky. The choice of the text was determined by the idea of axiological complexity, by the ambiguity of the image, the interpretation of which calls for associations within wide axiological boundaries. Experimental results showed that the main cognitive-communicative strategy of the prototype image apprehension is the idealisation of the past, which is associated with the idea of traditional culture. In respondents' perception the image of the past is stereotypically coloured in positive modal meanings. The respondents' responses are characterised by the absence of concretism, reflexive ''emptiness''. The axiological space of interpretation is filled with "cliches of consciousness", within the boundaries of which the idea of the heroic past of the country became a constituent factor of ethnocultural self-presentation. The current study of ethnocultural identity displayed the absence of rationalised values of the present. In the process of ethnocultural self-characterisation the respondents have not revealed a clear understanding of the axiological foundation in the present-day national culture, the concept of which is implied through the comparison of the past with the present as of an axiologically meaningful time, and a secular one. The respondents often actualise the question of the future, when, according to their opinion, it will be possible to make up for the absence of a solid axiological foundation of the present.

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