International Journal of Philology

Given the peculiarity of modern linguistics, which is based on anthropocentric aspects of the study of linguistic phenomena, this scientific issue is relevant because it allows a new look at the subject of linguistic research, where the priority is to find patterns of obtaining, processing and storing knowledge. experience, and the study of language forms in which the objectification of this knowledge. Thus, the time has come to move from descriptive research to the explanation of the established facts, taking into account the specifics of the processes of categorization of the world in the individual consciousness and their reflection through the prism of the system of norms and evaluations developed in society. In the modern paradigm of scientific knowledge, where the cognitive approach to the study of linguistic facts is one of the most promising, the center of research is the linguistic personality – the subject of knowledge, that posesses features of conceptualization and categorization of knowledge in the general process of knowledge. « To inspect»in the depths of the linguistic consciousness of a person by studying the individual characteristics of each native speaker, with further generalization of the information obtained, allow experimental methods of research, where one of the perspective ones is the method of associative experiment. By conducting an associative experiment it is possible to trace the reconstruction of the semantic connections of words that objectively exist in the psyche of the bearer of the Ukrainian language, which opens the «associative profile» specific to Ukrainian linguistic culture of the images of consciousness that integrate the experience which is characteristic to the Ukrainian ethnos, dominant values and orientations, in particular, ethno-cultural perceptual stereotypes – the repository of knowledge, which summarizes the sensual experience characteristic to the Ukrainian ethnos. The author's scientific research is focused on the study of the mechanisms of stereotypical reactions of speakers to words-images based on the postulate that any nationally marked language unit is a stereotype of the mental-linguistic complex of a certain ethnoculture, which is realized in the process of thinking and communicating local association to the standard situation for this culture. The analysis and systematization of the data obtained as a result of the experiment were carried out by grouping language units by their characteristics and semantic content, which allowed to model associative series of stimulus words that define the standards of verbalizers of coloratural mode of visual perception. The results of the experiment show that the creation and functioning of ethnospecific language units takes place according to clear mechanisms developed in the process of ethnogenesis and embodied in stereotypical images as a kind of mental fragments of the conceptual picture of the world. about the real world in view of ethnopsychological and ethnocultural competences of speakers. The structure of the background knowledge of sensory stereotypes, which exists at the mental-cognitive level, gives grounds to consider the last ones as the important component of the linguistic-cultural space, which serves as the translator of the mental code of Ukrainians

sensory perception; perceptual stereotypes; identity; linguocultural space; mental code; research methods; associative experiment