CONCEPT: IN SEARCH OF AN ALGORITHM OF ANALYSIS

Abstract

The article presents the survey of the complex research methodology to study the nature and structure of the concept as a multifaceted unit. Present-day linguistic studies are characterized by a series of approaches, depending on their methodological basis: linguopoetological, linguacultural, cognitive-discursive, cognitive-semantic etc. This paper aims at describing the methods of conceptual analysis and their role in disclosing the content and structure of the concept. Since language is regarded as one of the cognition and conceptualization tools, the concept can be verbalized with the help of lingual units of different levels. Concept description is achieved by applying special research procedures, including definitional, componential, contextual and etymological analyses. The analysis of lingual means helps to define main cognitive features of the concept and model its structure. All the lingual means used to verbalize the concept constitute its nominative field. Furthermore, it is stated that the conceptual analysis serves as the main method of the logical analysis of language and cognitive linguistics, thus presupposing the conceptual modelling and description of concepts as basic informational mental structures. The final goal of the conceptual analysis is to present the conceptual model of the informational fragment fixed in a lingual sign in the form of propositions, frames, slots, prototypes etc. To sum it up, the choice of the particular method of the conceptual analysis depends on the aim and research tasks. The implementation of such an approach could facilitate the complex analysis of concepts, both in language and in discourse, as well as the study of their verbalization and conceptual modelling.