THE STUDY OF CONCEPTUAL COMPOSITION OF SOVIET POETRY DEVOTED TO THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Abstract

The article describes the conceptual structure of the body of Soviet poetry, dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, identified by the automatic semantic analysis, cluster analysis and contextual interpretation of semantic core. We specify the central lexis (the semantic weight ≥20), the near peripheral lexis (19-6) and the far peripheral lexis (5-2) and hence the nuclear, auxiliary and peripheral concepts. We also determine the ratio of generalized or abstract concepts and concrete, basic-level concepts; the former somewhat prevail over the latter. The abstract concepts include "intellective" (war, waiting, return, death, memory, hope, glory, grand, terrible, Motherland, victory, come to life, soul, etc.) and "emotive" (grief, sadness, guilt, love, fear, fatigue, courage, duty, power, pain, conscience, etc.). The concrete concepts provide detailed profiling of the ground against which particular figures are represented, here we find the realities of the front (soldiers, trench, track, wet, drag, move, attack, run, boom, etc.), and the realities of the civilian life (yard, childhood, garden, village, hut, etc.); the realities of military and civilian life are closely intertwined. Based on R. Langacker’s tenet that the greater the attention upon the ground, the greater the objectivity of construal, we conclude on the objective representation of the wartime by the Soviet poets.