Triangulation in the study of act names

Author(s):  L.A. Bushuyeva, candidate of Sciences, associate Professor, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia

Issue:  Volume 38, № 1

Rubric:  Linguistics

Annotation:  Triangulation, which is incorporation of several methods in the study of the same phenomenon, is believed to increase validity of research findings and help to verify the gained data. This article describes the methodological triangulation applied to the words which mean human acts, an act of kindness precisely (blagodeianie). A human act is viewed in this work as a significant element of Russian culture, a concept, which reflects a fragment of the linguistic world-image. A name of act is defined as a noun, which means a bit of behavior or conduct, the execution of some agent’s choice or decision. Evaluativity, or participant’s judgment of a situation, is the most important characteristic of the human act. The sources of the material are dictionaries of the Russian language including the dictionary of synonyms, the word derivation dictionary, the dictionary of concepts, the texts of the Russian National Corpus. In the furtherance of the goals the following methods are applied: the analysis of the semantics of the lexemes, which helps to find out the lexemes of different parts of speech able to give the idea of the situation called “an act of kindness” (blagodeianie) in Russian; the analysis of semantic roles, most regularly expressed in the sentences with the analyzed lexeme and its cognate words, the analysis of context meaning of the lexemes; the research of synonymous and derivational links. The combination of these methods contributes to deeper understanding of the semantic peculiarities of the lexemes under study and the situation they name.

Keywords:  triangulation, research levels, research methods, act name, act of kindness

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