Научная статья на тему 'DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE SEMIOTIC FIELD OF THE CONCEPT FAMILY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CHINESE AND ENGLISH PARALLEL CORPORA'

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE SEMIOTIC FIELD OF THE CONCEPT FAMILY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CHINESE AND ENGLISH PARALLEL CORPORA Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
SEMIOTIC FIELD / CONCEPT / CONCEPTUAL SPHERE / DISCOURSE / DISCOURSE ANALYSIS / CORPUS / THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE / THE CHINESE LANGUAGE

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Bingbing Huang, Kamensky Mikhail V.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY in the English and Chinese languages through the application of the methodology of critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. The article is based on the materials of the Chinese English Learners Corpus (CELC) and the combined materials of the BROWN and the written British National Corpus (BNC) for studying the vocabulary co-occurrence of the node word “family” from the point of view of collocation, colligation, semantic preference, and semantic prosody. The differences between Chinese and Western family cultures are revealed from the perspective of critical discourse analysis and the use of a horizontal combination of vocabulary relevant to the semiotic field of family. The study exemplifies the significant differences between Chinese learners and English native speakers in the choice and the use of core collocations in the minimal context of the family-related vocabulary. The conducted examination of the use of the node word “family” and its collocations in the Chinese English Learners Corpus compared to the combined English native speakers corpus in terms of semantic preference and semantic prosody demonstrates the most significant differences in understanding of the related concept as observed through the most common collocations. The article demonstrates the efficiency of the critical discourse analysis use in combination with the methods of corpus linguistics for the purpose of validation and verification of the conclusions regarding the content of the semiotic fields, as exemplified on the basis of the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY. Future research developments are seen in the possible extension of the corpus material base, including the materials on a wide variety of languages, for the purpose of further comparative analysis.

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Текст научной работы на тему «DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE SEMIOTIC FIELD OF THE CONCEPT FAMILY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CHINESE AND ENGLISH PARALLEL CORPORA»

АПФ&ПЛ

Тематический выпуск

ДИНАМИКА СОВРЕМЕННОГО СЕМИОТИЧЕСКОГО ПРОСТРАНСТВА: ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКАЯ ПЕРСПЕКТИВА

CIP&PL

Thematic issue MODERN SEMIOTIC SPACS: THE LINGUISTIC DYNAMICS APPROACH

http://philjournal.ru 2023 No 1 152-16Q

семиотика МЕдииного дискурса

SEMIOTICS OF MEDIA DISCOuRSE

Original Paper

https://doi.org/10.29025/2079-6021-2023-l-152-160

Discourse Analysis of the Semiotic Field of the Concept FAMILY: A Comparative Study of the Chinese and English Parallel Corpora

Huang Bingbing1, *Mikhail V. Kamensky2

1 2 North-Caucasus Federal University, 1 Pushkin Str., Stavropol, Russian Federation, 355017;

1 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0156-2999;

2 ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8358-9516;

2 Scopus Author ID: 57192075117;

*e-mail: mkamenskii@ncfu.ru

Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY in the English and Chinese languages through the application of the methodology of critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. The article is based on the materials of the Chinese English Learners Corpus (CELC) and the combined materials of the BROWN and the written British National Corpus (BNC) for studying the vocabulary co-occurrence of the node word "family" from the point of view of collocation, colligation, semantic preference, and semantic prosody. The differences between Chinese and Western family cultures are revealed from the perspective of critical discourse analysis and the use of a horizontal combination of vocabulary relevant to the semiotic field of family. The study exemplifies the significant differences between Chinese learners and English native speakers in the choice and the use of core collocations in the minimal context of the family-related vocabulary. The conducted examination of the use of the node word "family" and its collocations in the Chinese English Learners Corpus compared to the combined English native speakers corpus in terms of semantic preference and semantic prosody demonstrates the most significant differences in understanding of the related concept as observed through the most common collocations. The article demonstrates the efficiency of the critical discourse analysis use in combination with the methods of corpus linguistics for the purpose of validation and verification of the conclusions regarding the content of the semiotic fields, as exemplified on the basis of the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY. Future research developments are seen in the possible extension of the corpus material base, including the materials on a wide variety of languages, for the purpose of further comparative analysis.

Keywords: semiotic field, concept, conceptual sphere, discourse, discourse analysis, corpus, the English language, the Chinese language.

For citation: Bingbing H, Kamensky MV Discourse Analysis of the Semiotic Field of the Concept FAMILY: A Comparative Study of the Chinese and English Parallel Corpora. Current Issues in Philology and Pedagogical Linguistics. 2023, no 1, pp. 152-160. https://doi.org/10.29025/2079-6021-2023-1-152-160 (In Eng.).

оригинальная статья удк 81'372 + 81.114.4

https://doi.org/10.29025/2079-6021-2023-1-152-160

дискурс-анализ семиотического поля концепта семья (на материале китайско-английского параллельного корпуса текстов)

Х. Биньбинь1, *м.в. каменский2

1,2 Северо-Кавказский федеральный университет, 355017, Российская Федерация, Ставрополь, ул. Пушкина, 1;

1 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0156-2999;

2ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8358-9516;

2Scopus Author ID: 57192075117; *e-mail: mkamenskii@ncfu.ru

Резюме: Настоящая статья посвящена исследованию семиотического поля концепта СЕМЬЯ в английском и китайском языках с применением методологии критического дискурс-анализа и методов корпусной лингвистики. Материалом для анализа послужили тексты двуязычного китайско-английского корпуса текстов обучающихся английскому языку (CLEC) и аутентичных англоязычных корпусов текстов носителей языка BROWN и British National Corpus (BNC). В результате исследования репрезентации узлового слова «семья» в корпусном материале с точки зрения установления частотных коллокаций, коллигации, семантических тенденций и семантической просодии определены ключевые различия в культурной интерпретации концепта СЕМЬЯ в пространстве англоязычных лингвокультур в сопоставлении с китайской лингвокультурой. Предпринятое исследование демонстрирует валидность применения методологии критического дискурс-анализа в сочетании с методами корпусного анализа языкового материала в качестве теоретического и методологического основания изучения семиотических полей разносистемных языков посредством исследования линейной сочетаемости узлового слова-репрезентанта концепта и его частотных коллокаций в минимальном контексте употребления. Полученные результаты проясняют существенные различия в культурных коннотациях лексических единиц, репрезентирующих концепт СЕМЬЯ, и в образуемом данным концептом семиотическом поле в его культурно-специфической реализации в каждой из изученных лингвокультур. Продемонстрирована эффективность применения квантитативных лингвостатистических методов обработки корпусных данных и их применимость для валидизации и верификации выводов о лингвистическом наполнении семиотических полей на примере семиотического поля концепта СЕМЬЯ. Перспективы дальнейшей разработки изученной проблематики усматриваются в расширении эмпирической базы корпусного материала и в привлечении корпусных материалов на различных естественных языках для дальнейшего сравнительно-сопоставительного анализа.

Ключевые слова: семиотическое пространство, концепт, концептосфера, дискурс, дискурс-анализ, корпус, английский язык, китайский язык.

Для цитирования: Биньбинь Х., Каменский М.В. Дискурс-анализ семиотического поля концепта СЕМЬЯ (на материале китайско-английского параллельного корпуса текстов). Актуальные проблемы филологии и педагогической лингвистики. 2023. №1. C. 152-160. https://doi.org/10.29025/2079-6021-2023-1-152-160.

Introduction

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) mainly studies the relationship between language, power, and ideology. It aims to study how discourse is produced in the social, political, and cultural environment, explores the hidden relationship between discourse and social and cultural forms, analyzes the ideology implicit in discourse, and exposes the inequality, injustice, and prejudice in discourse [1]. Different from the traditional one-dimensional discourse analysis viewpoint, CDA suggests interdisciplinary analysis methods and social analysis of text and discourse metalanguage.

Since the 1960s, corpus linguistics (CL) has developed rapidly and has made significant contributions to revealing the tendency of language use, language functions, and language ideology [2; 3]. The results of the CL study have led the critical discourse analysis to pay more attention to the ideological meaning implied by the cumulative effect of linguistic co-occurrence, and to use the CL method to improve the objectivity and systematicity of the study at the level of selection and analysis of the corpus. The contemporary developments in the sphere of CL and CDA have opened up possibilities to explore the structure and the content of semiotic fields representing the core cultural concepts through the careful application of both qualitative and quantitative analysis of representative text corpora.

The aim of the article

The primary aim of the article is to apply the CDA methodology and the CL methods to the study of the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY in order to explore and reveal the differences between Chinese and Western family cultures from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. We accomplish this goal through the analysis of a linear syntagmatic combinability of vocabulary represented in two electronic English corpora: (1) a combined English native speaker corpus consisting of the materials of the BROWN and the BNC (British National Corpus) corpora; (2) CLEC (the Chinese English Learners Corpus), a parallel corpus of texts in two languages: Chinese and English.

A review of the literature

Contemporary corpus linguistics research shows that the study of words or phrases that appear multiple times in context can reveal their nuance and connotation, but if these words are examined individually, these subtleties and associations are not easily detectable [4]. Specifically, words can often express value judgments and reflect ideology, which is difficult to reflect in a single entry and text. Therefore, it is generally agreed upon that it is necessary to study the ideology reflected in social discourse. Based on a large amount of authentic social corpora, the importance of the CL method in the research of CDA is self-evident.

Although there are considerable significant developments in the sphere of CDA per se [5; 6; 7], the understanding of the importance and the degree of practical application of the CL method in CDA research in contemporary linguistics studies are still far from enough. In their reflections on the CDA, Chouliaraki and Fairclough acknowledged that CDA has always been criticized for failing to conduct a systematic analysis of large-scale and representative texts. This includes the use of quantitative and computational methods. In fact, it can provide a solid language foundation for CDA's social propositions on discourse [8]. Although the Chinese scholars have noticed the trend of interaction between CL and discourse research in recent years, only a few of them, such as Lu Changhong [9] and Xu Jiajin [10], have mentioned the combination of CL and CDA in passing, and only a few scholars, such as Qian Yufang [11], have done CDA research using a corpus with the total token count exceeding one million words.

During the 20 years of development of semantic prosody research, scholars have continued to explore its conceptual properties, polarity classification, research units and measurement methods, as well as the relationship between semantic prosody and semantic preference [12; 13; 14].

Nowadays, there is still disagreement over the determination of the unit of study for semantic prosody. Partington argues that the semantic prosody of a word or phrase can be measured by the polar attitudinal meaning (negative/neutral/positive) of the collocations with which it co-occurs at high frequencies [12: 131]. He also mentions the importance of semantic tendency in establishing semantic prosody [12: 151]. Although some scholars argue that the method of determining semantic prosody through polar attitude meanings is somewhat subjective [15: 122], the existing empirical literature on semantic prosody mostly identifies the specific attitude meanings conveyed by compound lexical items as polar attitude meanings, and researchers calculate the strength of semantic prosody by the percentage of indexed lines of a certain type of polar attitude meaning to the total indexed lines. Based on the results of this calculation, the specific attitudinal meanings of semantic prosodies were analyzed further [14].

We conducted a preliminary analysis of the 26 CSSCI publications retrieved from China Knowledge Network between 2000 and 2020 with "semantic prosody" as the keyword. In the empirical studies of lexical semantic prosody, the objects of investigation are mostly causative verbs [16] or phrase structures [17]. There are few empirical studies comparing negative critical semantic prosody from a cross-linguistic perspective, and there are almost no studies investigating the semantic prosody of nouns whose targets are semantic families. Therefore, in this paper we select the negative critical discourse analysis in semantic prosody to discuss and study the content of the concept FAMILY with the node word "family" chosen as the central unit of investigation.

Research methods

In our study we implement the combination of CL and CDA methods and attempt to analyze and compare the corpora of native speakers of English (BROWN, BNC) and non-native Chinese English Learners (CLEC) from the standpoint of the representation of the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY in discourse.

Because the English learners concentrate on the use of vocabulary, especially when they maintain grammatical correctness, and typically reference the core concepts of their culture in speech which are encoded in the semiotic system of their language, the study of the two above-mentioned corpora may reveal the differences between Chinese and Western cultures and ideologies when it comes to the understanding of the concept FAMILY.

In terms of corpus selection, this research uses the BROWN Corpus1 and the British National Corpus (BNC)2 as a base to form a native speaker corpus with a total of 2 million words as reference material; the learner corpus is based on CLEC (Chinese Learners English Corpus) with a total of 1 million words as reference material. The content of the corpus of native speakers and English learners is analyzed to compare the similarities and differences between the two in terms of word agreement, frequency of use, and context of use under the negative critical discourse analysis in semantic prosody, and the factors of reasons for their differences.

We aim to observe and compare the use of the node word "family" by native speakers and English learners, explore the similarities and reveal the differences between native speakers and learners in the use of the vocabulary related to the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY, and explore the differences in social culture and ideology reflected in this vocabulary. We have chosen the concept FAMILY as a research example because it is a significant core notion of people's social life in various cultures. Because the chosen concept is reflected in high-frequency vocabulary, the base number of entries collected in the corpus is large, which confirms that the conveyed study is objective and verifiable. In addition, the concept FAMILY is closely related to people's lives, can fully reflect the differences in social culture and ideology between countries and nations of different cultures, and thus is a representative entry point for critical discourse analysis.

In terms of the dimensions of observation, this research follows the analysis method of "extended lexical units" proposed by Sinclair and advocated by Rundell [18]. Sinclair opposes traditional linguistics regarding grammar as the basic framework and vocabulary as filler, opposes words as the main unit of meaning, advocates that the regular unit of meaning is a phrase, and treats vocabulary and syntax as a language phenomenon at the same level. There are four abstract variables, namely collocation, colligation, semantic preference, and semantic prosody. We utilize Antconc 3.5.9 as the corpus analysis software and use the words "family", "society" and "government' as the search items. Separate searches were made in BROWN / BNC and CLEC corpora, observing the frequency of the node words, from near to far, according to the order of collocation, colligation, semantic preference, and semantic prosody. We then gradually expanded the scope of observation, focusing on the analysis of their semantic preference and semantic prosody with the CDA method, and summarized the differences between native speakers and English learners for these three words distinctively and analyzed the reasons for the observed differences.

Results and discussion

The students selected in this study include middle school students, CET-4, CET-6, lower grades of English majors, and upper grades of English majors. The target group, therefore, includes a variety of ages and all levels of English proficiency. This research does not consider the difference between the singular and plural forms of the nouns studied and excludes vocabulary misuse caused by grammatical errors. The search data shows that the word "family^ in its singular and plural forms appears 1296 times in CLEC and 853 times in BROWN and BNC. We used the collocates function of Antconc 3.5.9 to retrieve the collocation co-occurrence words of the concept FAMILY in the two corpora respectively and set the span size between 5L and 5R. The search results are shown below in terms of collocation and colligation in the studied corpora.

The closest collocates include the article "the" (1033 times), the possessive pronouns "their" (215 times), "my" (167 times), and the prepositions "to" (355 times) and "of" (275 times). In the native speaker corpus, the articles on both sides of the node words include the article "the" (575 times), the possessive pronoun "his" (94 times), and the prepositions "of" (374 times) and "to" (207 times). In order to observe the semantic pref-

1 BROWN Corpus. Available at: https://www.sketchengine.eu/brown-corpus/. Accessed February 9, 2023.

2 British National Corpus (BNC). Available at: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/. Accessed February 2, 2023.

erence and semantic prosody of family more concretely, we removed the articles, prepositions, possessives, etc. from the significant collocations with the word "'family' in the two search results, and manually selected collocations with the more prominent semantic core representations. Below we provide the top 10 significant collocates formed by the node word "'family' (Table 1).

Table 1. The significant nuclear collocations of the word "Family" in BROWN/BNC vs. CLEC corpora:

The node word "Family" in CLEC: Significant nuclear collocations The node word "Family" in BROWN and BNC: Significant nuclear collocations

Significant nuclear collocation F(c) F(n,c) Significant nuclear collocation F(c) F(n,c)

Members 193 169 Members 544 29

Patient 1059 121 Home >999 25

Reunion 114 78 Children 894 22

Together 376 65 Life >999 18

Burden 182 64 Royal 270 16

Dinner 143 31 Business 718 15

Big 515 28 Service 690 13

Poor 355 18 Core 77 12

Union 35 17 God 717 9

Celebrations 28 12 Church 633 9

Note: F(c) represents the frequency of collocation words, F(n, c) is the frequency of co-occurrence of nodes and collocation words in the co-text (±6).

Observing the research results, we can see that the distribution of the significant, relatively concentrated and the most prominent collocations include the words members, patient, reunion, together, etc. Although the frequency of the words members and family is ranked first in the two corpora, the co-occurrence frequency of members and family in CLEC (169 times) is much higher than the co-occurrence frequency of members and family in BROWN and BNC (29 times). Going back to the two corpora to observe the source context of the co-occurrence of members and family, we can obtain the semantic preference of learners of English and native speakers when the words family and members co-occur. Chinese learners tend to emphasize the importance of family reunion through the use of the words family members, together, union, celebrations and other similar vocabulary. For example: all the members of a family will come together to have a festival, all members of the family sit together to appreciate the reunions on this day, the family members gather together and have a full moon3.

From the above context we understand that the words family and members are the core words in family-related vocabulary. Contrariwise, native speakers tend to talk about the scattered character of family and members, and emphasize the various aspects of life involved in religion and society. The high concentration of the relevant language units can be observed in the following example which, although it doesn't reflect the casual speech as such, demonstrates clearly the semantic preference embedded in the concept FAMILY: "The family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture. Many families are living this situation in fidelity to those values that constitute the foundation of the institution of the family. Others have become uncertain and bewildered over their role or even doubtful and almost unaware of the ultimate meaning and truth of conjugal and family life. Finally, there are others who are hindered by various situations of injustice in the realization of their fundamental rights. Knowing that marriage and the family constitute one of the most precious of human values, the Church wishes to speak and offer her help to those who are already aware of the value of marriage and the family and seek to live it faithfully, to those who are uncertain and anxious and searching for the truth, and to those who are unjustly impeded from living freely their family lives. Supporting

3 Full moon and reunions. Available at: https://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-09/10/content_13663066.htm. Accessed January 28, 2023.

the first, illuminating the second and assisting the others, the Church offers her services to every person who wonders about the destiny of marriage and the family."4

By looking at the search results in Table 1 above, we can see that the collocations that co-occur most frequently with family in the corpus of native speakers include home (25 times), children (22 times), life (18 times), business (15 times) and service (13 times). Consider the following example taken from the CLEC:

The three principles and five rules of social ethics, to which the traditional Chinese attach the greatest importance, are based on the family as the basic frameworkfor thinking. The family or clan is the main frontier of Chinese self-identity, and the individual self is not the centre of interest. The strength of clan ties is an important and influential feature of Chinese society. According to Lin Yutang, "China is a nation of individualists, and this clanism is an expanded individualism ". According to Wei Zhengtong, "the traditional Chinese family, whether it is a small couple family, a large joint family, or a medium-sized family, is consistent with what Western sociologists call "familism"5.

For comparison, consider the following examples taken from the combined English native speaker corpus: In matrimony and in the family a complex of interpersonal relationships is set up - married life, fatherhood and motherhood, filiation and fraternity - through which each human person is introduced into the "human family" and into the "family of God," which is the Church.

The family finds in the plan of God the Creator and Redeemer not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. The role that God calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: family, become what you are6.

It can be seen that there are big differences in the semantic prosody of the word family in Chinese and Western cultures. "Collectivism" in Chinese culture leads to understanding the Chinese concept FAMILY as a collective unit composed of many family members. Therefore, in the Chinese learner corpus, the most frequently used significant nuclear word with family is the word members. Together, the two highlight the concept FAMILY as a collective unit. At the same time, the "individualistic" thought in British and American cultures cause native speakers to use the term family to focus on individual members of the family. Therefore, the topic involves all aspects of life, such as the relationship between family members, welfare, care for vulnerable individuals in the family, etc.

Third, when it comes to family-related issues, Chinese and Western concepts are also very different. Observing the search results in Table 1, it can be seen that the words that manifest significant co-occurrence with the word family in CLEC include patient (121 times), burden (64 times), and poor (18 times). It is possible to trace back to the source context to observe the semantic prosody when the word family co-occurs with the above words. For example:

The relationship between the nuclear family and the kinship network can also be seen in the way in which the elderly age. For urban nuclear families, supporting both parents is a responsibility and an obligation that children also consider unshirkable7.

Compare the above to the following examples reflected in the combined English native speaker corpus: According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the wider community of the family, since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordained to the procreation and education of children, in whom they find their crowning.

4 Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes. 52. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_ gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Accessed February 7, 2023.

5 Wei Zh. Chinese Culture and Modern Life. Renmin University of China Press, 2005: 33. Available at: https://books. google.ru/books/about/% E4%B8% AD%E5%9B%BD%E6%96%87%E5%8C% 96%E4%B8%8E% E7%8E%B0% E4%BB%A3%E7% 94%9F%E6%B4%BB.html?id=GZ3aAAAACAAJ. Accessed February 7, 2023.

6 Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes. 15, 17. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_ gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Accessed February 7, 2023.

7 Wang Y. An Analysis of Individual Families, Network Families and Kinship Circle Families - A Combined Historical and Practical Perspective. 2010; 04. Available at: https://www.lishiyushehui.cn/article/item/869. Accessed Ferbuary 8, 2023.

All members of thefamily, each according to his or her own gift, have the grace and responsibility of building, day by day, the communion ofpersons, making the family "a school of deeper humanity"8

The examples given above show that the family-related issues that native speakers and Chinese learners care about are very different when it comes to the level of attention to family life, family economy, and family services. To a certain extent, it also reflects the differences in the connotations and the implications of the concept FAMILY at large.

Fourth, the sub-concept FAMILY SIZE is different. It can be seen from the research results that when Chinese learners talk about family size, the co-occurrence of the words big and family is relatively high (28 times). The notion of "four generations living under one roof' in traditional Chinese culture makes Chinese people advocate happy and harmonious families, although, with the passage of time, the family model in China tends to develop towards small families. When talking about their own families, Chinese people are habitually proud of having a large family. In fact, the word family here not only refers to the collection of family members who live together on a daily basis but to the entire family institution as a whole. In the native speaker corpus, the word with a higher frequency of co-occurrence with family is core (12 times), which refers to the nuclear family - a family composed of two generations, the members of which include the couple and their unmarried children. This shows that in the Western family culture, family members are more discrete and independent compared to the Chinese culture, and Western family culture emphasizes the life and development of each family member as an individual.

Fifth, the relationship between family, religion, and political system also manifests a significant difference in Chinese and Western cultures. Observing the research results, it can be concluded that the high-frequency significant nuclear collocations co-occurring with the word family in CLEC do not include the vocabulary related to religion and government, and there is no substantial relationship between family, religion, and government in traditional Chinese culture. In the English native speaker corpus, the high-frequency collocations related to religion and government are royal (16 words), God (9 times), and church (9 times). Consider the following example:

Enterprise attempted solely to reassure the royal family as to the prince's welfare. It would be a reunion that was presently raging around the royal family. They were together having to suffer, the royal Family's woefully reduced circumstances, they missed when these things happen. The local "family of God" has failed its new members through neglect, the teachers of the young people in the church family, the leaders of home groups. Thank you too, for thing program of St Leonard's so that the church family may grow in grace and knowledge of you. — For Jesus9.

As the United Kingdom belongs to a constitutional monarchy, the royal family has attracted people's attention and has a significant social influence. In addition, "family of God" and "church family" generally refer to families that have believed in Christianity for generations, and the influence of religion on Western families is therefore apparent.

Conclusion

The method of combining the corpus study and the critical discourse analysis applied to the semiotic field of the concept FAMILY allowed us to overcome the shortcomings of the application of the CDA methodology based on a small number of CDA texts to make the analysis based on a larger discourse base more convincing and verifiable. The results of this paper demonstrated that although the word family is a high-frequency vocabulary unit for both native speakers and English learners, due to social and cultural differences, there are also large differences in their discursive use. These differences also reveal the significant differences in the cultural implications and connotations of the concept FAMILY in Chinese and English languages, which are largely impossible to understand by observing a limited amount of texts. The use of English as a lingua franca in China is not only reflected in grammatical errors and inconsistencies, but demonstrates the significant cultural differences hidden behind words related to the studied semiotic field of family as a representation of the core concept of culture. The conducted comparative study of the discursive usage of the word "family' based on the

8 Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes. 14, 21. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_ gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Accessed February 7, 2023.

9 British National Corpus (BNC). Available at: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/. Accessed February 2, 2023.

corpus of learners and native speakers allowed us to exemplify and validate the most significant differences in understanding of the related concept as seen through the most common collocations.

Based on the conclusions and analyses of the empirical data, we can conclude the following: 1) Chinese learners of English show a higher density of distribution of significant core collocations of the word family compared to the native speakers, although the distribution of significant core collocations of family is high among native speakers as well; 2) Chinese English learners tend to combine the word family contextually with words such as together, union, celebrations, etc., which indicate a family gathering, while native speakers tend to talk about family members in a more scattered and diffuse way which may involve religious, social, and cultural issues; 3) The Chinese cultural idea of "collectivism" has led to the understanding of the Chinese concept FAMILY as a collective unit consisting of many family members, so the most frequent significant noun in the Chinese English learners corpus used with the word family is members. On the other hand, the "individualism" of British and American cultures leads native speakers to use the word family with a substantial focus on the individual members of the family, while the topic coverage includes various aspects of life, such as relationships between family members, welfare, and care for the vulnerable members of the family; 4) in the English speaking countries, for native speakers, it is common to refer to families that have been Christian for generations and where religion has a strong influence on the Western family. A family under the influence of religious thought refers to a couple living together with unmarried children. Contrariwise, after the founding of New China, which is a socialist country, the culture and moral values became influenced by the culture of Confucius, as well as Buddhism and Taoism as types of religion. As such, for Chinese English learners, family and religion are unrelated, and the family of a husband and wife and children is considered to be a small family, while each family member is closely connected to each other to form a large family group.

While the coverage of the corpus material chosen for our research is significant and representative enough to be conclusive and verifiable, the observable difference in corpus sources will inevitably have a certain impact on the statistical results obtained from the analysis of data. Therefore, our next planned step is to convey a more extensive and in-depth research of the discursive use of the words representing the concept FAMILY and its collocations on a broader base of language material.

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История статьи:

Получена: 23.01.2023 Принята: 08.02.2023 Опубликована онлайн: 25.03.2023

Article history:

Received: 23.01.2023 Accepted: 08.02.2023 Published online: 25.03.2023

Mikhail V. Kamensky, Prof. Dr. habil.(Philology), Associate Professor, Institute for the Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Linguodidactics and Intercultural Communication, North Caucasus Federal University, Stavropol, Russian Federation; e-mail: mkamenskii@ncfu.ru.

Bingbing Huang, Instructor, Institute for the Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Linguodidactics and Intercultural Communication, North Caucasus Federal University, Stavropol, Russian Federation; e-mail: bingbing.huang@yandex.com.

Сведения об авторах:

Каменский Михаил Васильевич, доктор филологических наук, доцент, профессор кафедры лингвистики, лингводидактики и межкультурной коммуникации Гуманитарного института, Северо-Кавказский федеральный университет, Ставрополь, Российская Федерация; e-mail: mkamenskii@ncfu.ru.

Биньбинь Хуан, ассистент кафедры лингвистики, лингводидактики и межкультурной коммуникации Гуманитарного института, Северо-Кавказский федеральный университет, Ставрополь, Российская Федерация; e-mail: bingbing.huang@yandex.com.

Bionotes:

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