THE REFLECTION OF EVALUATION AND VALUES IN RUSSIAN LANGUAGE DICTIONARIES

• Main Author: Ludmila I Bogdanova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2017-12-01
• Series: Russian journal of linguistics: Vestnik RUDN
• Subjects: оценки; ценности; деятельностный подход; толковый словарь русского языка; дефиниция; словарная статья; рецепция ценностей
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/view/17306
• ISSN: 2312-9182; 2312-9212

The article deals with the evaluative characteristics of lexis which denotes concepts which are culturally significant for society, and have been reflected in various ways in Russian dictionaries. Experi-ence of research in this area (Yu.D. Apresyan, N.D. Arutyunova, E. Bartminsky, A. Wierzbicka, E.M. Wolf, T.V. Larina, N.V. Ufimtseva, etc.) demonstrates that one effective direction is a communication-activity ap-proach which allows researchers to explore evaluation characteristics from the perspectives of both recipient and producer of the speech. This article represents the fruit of research into the receptive aspect of the study of values; its aim is to show how evaluation markers are dealt with in dictionaries, and describe the representation of evaluations and values in lexicographical sources. During the research, various methods and operational procedures were used, including the analysis of definitions, component analysis, context transformation, equivalent replacement, modelling, linguistic experiment, etc. While studying the ways of denoting estimations and values in Russian dictionaries, we found explicit and implicit means of express-ing the evaluative characteristics of lexical units, which affect the reception of estimates by users of dic-tionaries. Special attention is paid to research into the problems of cultures in contact situations. The structure of views about the same event cannot correspond across different cultural communities, which confirms the thesis on the existence of fundamental culture codes which manage linguistic and perceptual codes (Fou-cault). It was found that evaluative components are inconsistently reproduced, in explanatory dictionaries, and dictionary definitions frequently fail to clarify the question of evaluation of the content in question, which makes it difficult for users to process the evaluative significance of dictionary entries. The dictionary definition, therefore, often fails to reflect the actual use of the word in speech. The results obtained entail a reflec-tion on the optimisation of dictionary definitions, and argue for the creation of a special dictionary of Russian evaluation.