Associative Experiment as a Method of Studying the Living Word Meaning
In the current study, an explanation of the use of the association experiment as a method of studying the living word meaning is given. The living word relates to the two systems of knowledge - social and personal - and is functioning according to the principle of the meaning field, which combines meanings and senses, processes and results of the cognitive-discursive activity of an individual and society. Thus, the study that investigates the functioning a living word meaning and considers the double correlation, questions the problem of the further research of opportunities that association experiments provide to represent knowledge structure and requires the development of special methods and experimental procedures. The author suggests and explores a thesis of cognitive-discursive nature of the association field, obtained in an extended associative experiment, which provides the access to deep knowledge structures and activates processes of natural semiosis, which follow the laws of cognitive-discursive activity according to the rules and norms of the determined culture. The identification of a word in natural semiosis conditions is carried out as a transition of meanings to senses, and senses to meanings, and runs as a multistage process, which warps out on different levels of consciousness. While aiming to define functional bases of the meaning field, the author suggests the two-level methodology of the association field analysis, through the prism of structural and operational parameters. Structural parameters are products of cognition and are defined with analytical structures of knowledge by modeling the stereotypical core of the association field, the cognitive and meaning structures of the word. Operational parameters define cognitive processes bonded with word identification and released through modeling meta-strategies, strategies, schemes and cognitive operations. This allows defining a set of the operational knowledge which determines results of word identification and specifies functioning of the living word meaning.