Concept UNIVERSITY: Comparative Characteristics of Lexicographic and Psycholinguistic Portrait

Research actuality is determined with the necessity of studying some academic values namely the conducted analyses of free associative experiment with the target to make comparative characteristics of lexicographic and psycholinguistic portrait of the concept UNIVERSITY. The aim of the article is to contrast the lexicographic portrait with the psycholinguistic image of the concept UNIVERSITY through the structure of the associative area, that was created in linguistic consciousness of students who study at Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi state pedagogical Hrygorii Skovoroda university. Processing of the linguistic material determined the usage of those methods as: methodology of free associative experiment to define psycholinguistic meaning of the concept; analyses of dictionery definitions as one of systematic methods and generalisation method of dictionery definitions for lexicographic analyses of concepts linguistic representation; elements of methodology of cognitive and semantic description of word meaning, that is used for comparing of lexicographic and psycholinguistic portrait of the studied concept. The results of the conducted analyses of linguistic reactions to the free associative experiment on the stimulus-word «university» and lexicographic definitions of the lexeme «UNIVERSITY» for comparative characteristic of lexicographic and psycholinguistic portrait of the concept UNIVERSITY resulted in understanding that the meaning of the studied concept in students’ imagination as well as in Ukrainian native speakers’ one and in the language fixation is actually the same. At the same time on the basis of brightness indexes ranking according to decreasing principle, the core and the periphery of the associative concept area have been established, as well as the fact that associates give wider and more divers meaning spectra. It was established, that the associative configuration UNIVERSITY is a kind of recurrent sign that is not fixed in the dictionaries and represents the meaning «emotive evaluative characteristic». It is foreseen that traditional methodology of word interpretation with dictionary usage can be substantially added with the results of psycholinguistic experiments.