«Counter-text» as evaluative thinking form in information understanding process (based on the Bible text)

The article analyses the linguistic andpsycholinguistic studies of such a specific property of the human mind as its ability to assess. The object of the experimental research isthe process of understanding different types of texts from the perspective of psycholinguistics. The purpose of the study, as reflected inthis article, is the psycholinguistic features of perception and understanding of the Bible, which did not receive adequate attention frommodern scholars of the text, its typology and understanding. The novelty of our study is to identify and analyse the phenomenon ofevaluative thinking, manifested in the process of understanding and interpreting the texts of the Bible as a special type of speechproducts from the point of view of "psycholinguistics of text." The urgency is due to the opportunities that the biblical text gives us inrelation to its features, the possession of great emotional stress, and the affecting potential. All this provides an opportunity to studymanifestations of different forms of evaluation thinking of the recipients, as well as the mechanisms of influence of information on theminds in the form of this type of texts. In the study, we rely on A.I. Novikov's hypothesis about the active role of the recipient,according to which understanding is thought to be a process that reflects the productive analytical and synthetic activity of humanconsciousness, during which the construction of the so-called "counter-text" is done. In analysing the data obtained in the course of ourexperiment, we first used the A.I. Novikov's technique of "counter-text" on the Bible. The study of evaluative category also requires anintegrative approach, including methods of linguistic analysis of the semantics of linguistic units, as well as methods ofpsycholinguistics. As a result of the pilot study the following conclusions were made. Evaluation is not simply one of the most importantcomponents in the structure of reflective consciousness, but it is its fundamental category. A great role is played by emotionalassessment. Comparison (on four types of text) of the data supports the hypothesis that the evaluative thinking is most clearlymanifested in the perception and understanding of this type of text, the Bible. Particularly this type of texts helps to identify features oflanguage consciousness of the individual, since it provides the necessary emotional stimulus for recipients to express their subjectiveattitude to the reality in the form of evaluation, mainly emotional.

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