A Semantic Field of Perfectionism as a Social and Psychological Concept in Academic Discourse

Abstract

The paper considers perfectionism as a large semantic paradigm comprised of several conceptual categories which belong to the three major scientific areas: sociology, psychology, and medicine. The interest to perfectionism has been increasing progressively since mid2000s, probably, due to accelerating global economic growth and heightened competition. Though perfectionism may seem immediately obvious to be a positive, socially relevant personal characteristic, psychological studies claim the opposite. Theoretical value of this research is that perfectionism was analyzed as a cross-disciplinary phenomenon on the material of a large academic database; that gave an opportunity to shed light on important semantic areas which outline a semantic field of the concept under analysis. The results of a componential analysis show that perfectionism as a dogmatic term occurred as a result of accumulated philosophical views based on the concept of perfection and idealistic goals. Contextual collocations in academic discourse, however, give evidence of destructive cognitive patterns and unattainability of personally and socially relevant goals. The heaviest forms of perfectionism are described as clinical disorders related to physical, mental, and social dysfunctions. Despite the fact that the majority of studies are conducted in the field of psychology, results of semantic field analysis show that perfectionism characterizes certain social population categories and has serious social implications.