TERMS MEANINGS AS THE REFLECTIONS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND EVERYDAY WORLDVIEWS IN THE STUDENT’S MIND

Abstract

The paper discusses the results of the comparative experiment with two groups of participants - the first-year and fourth-year language students. The participants were asked to give the definitions to some linguistic terms in order to reveal the influence of the scientific and everyday worldviews on the terms meaning in the students mind. Twelve terms were selected for the experiment, some of which are largely used in everyday language, others were learnt at secondary or high school or discovered only in University course books. The analysis of the experimental data allows us to consider the everyday and scientific worldviews as components of the words’ semantics and to study them from the language consciousness perspective. The conclusion was made that the everyday and scientific worldviews don’t exist in the consciousness separately from each other, they go together and influence each other in different ways in a variety of situations. The analysis of the collected definitions shows that the knowledge behind the terms changes in its quantity and quality, but it doesn’t move instantly from the everyday to the scientific worldview.