Abstract
The article is devoted to the analysis of cultural-connotative meanings and senses of words in different languages, considered as cultural information revealed in the course of interpretation. The aim of this article is to identify the cultural meanings contained in the word "blue," to conduct a directed associative experiment (both chain and thematic types), and to describe and classify the types of cultural associations as well as the modes of representation of cultural meanings. The research design reflects the author' s intention to give an overview of the cultural connotations of the concept, to experimentally verify the divergence of cultural associations among speakers of different languages, to perform a multi-layered analysis of the concept “blue” across various cultures, and to relate the cultural understanding of this concept to evaluative categorization. As a result of the analysis (associative experiment, interpretation of cognitive-semantic analysis, evaluative categorization), the features of cultural-connotative meaning were identified: differences in cultural associates elicited by stimulus words in different languages; inadequacy of cultural senses and connotative meanings. Types of cultural associations and their paradigmatic and thematic relations are considered. Ways of representing such meanings in knowledge formats are examined. The novelty of the study lies in establishing the commonality of the cumulative functions of cultural connotations in different ethnic societies, their national-cultural differences, and in identifying inadequate cultural senses of the same lexemes and concepts that are significant in one culture but have no significance in another.