FEATURES OF ASSOCIATIVE SEMANTIC FIELD OF THE CONCEPT “CORONAVIRUS” WITHIN THE FREE ASSOCIATIVE EXPERIMENT
The article presents data of a free associative experiment conducted at the Irkutsk State University among international students of the preparatory faculty, studying Russian as a foreign language, and Russian students, studying Chinese as a foreign language. During the experiment, the students filled in a questionnaire, which was aimed to identify words-reactions to the concept “coronavirus”. The article substantiates the idea that the words-reactions to this concept are connected with cultural linguistics. Based on the data, associative fields of the concept “coronavirus” and reference models of this concept were developed. The result of the study identify new meanings of words-reactions to the concept through the already existing meanings.