Opozycja swój / obcy w świadomości współczesnych rodzimych użytkowników języka i kultury ukraińskiej
The US/THEM opposition in the consciousness of native speakers of Ukrainian

Summary/Abstract: The author investigates, from the cognitivist perspective, the US/THEM opposition in the consciousness of contemporary native speakers of Ukrainian. The study aims to reveal the archetypal reflexes of an old semiotic system and the changes it has undergone in the conceptual structures of present-day Ukrainians. An associative experiment has been used for the purpose. On the one hand, the data show the importance of the US/THEM opposition for contemporary speakers of Ukrainian, and on the other reveal the processes which take place in correlative conceptual structures: the broadening and changes in the sphere of US (belonging to us) / THEM (belonging to them), numerous oppositions between those spheres and active dependencies between components of these oppositions. Associative reactions allow one to explicate the connections between the US/THEM opposition and those of CLOSE/DISTANT or HOME/FOREST, which points to the existence of interlinked clusters within a holistic system of oppositions. Also discussed are processes which take place in the system of binary oppositions (asymmetry, the broadening of one of the terms at the expense of the other) and genre-related differences in the conceptualization of US and THEM. The very existence of binary oppositions, though with different hierarchies in different cultures, is a result of the functioning of a cognitive mechanism as a universal one. For example, concentric arrangement in the structuring of the space of US and THEM is viewed as a result of the processes of generalization and specialization co-functioning with a cognitive mechanism responsible for the formation of binary oppositions.

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