Russian Students’ Associative View of Germans

The article investigates semantic forms of the association field ‘German’ in the linguistic consciousness of Russian students. It systematises Russian stereotypical ideas of Germans through a word association experiment. Five thematic areas of the semantic form ‘German’ are described. Both direct (from stimulus to response) and inverse (from response to stimulus) test items probing the associative field ‘German’ were analysed. The results indicate how stable stereotypical ideas of Germans are in the consciousness of today’s Russian students.

A growing body of research in linguistics utilizes associative experiments, with many investigators turning to the field of word associations (e.g., Entwisle, 1966;Deese, 1965;Cramer, 1968;Marshall et al., 1970Marshall et al., , 1986Postman et al., 1970;Kiss et al., 1973;Anderson et al., 1973;Made-van Bekkum van der, 1973;Nelson et al., 2000;Tikhonova, 2014). In psycholinguistics, semantic relations are based on the fundamental associative types of similarity, contiguity and contrast first articulated by the philosopher Aristotle. Within the framework of cultural approaches to linguistic phenomena, classifications of associative responses were developed (e.g., Sabitova, 1991;Ivanova, 1997;Eršova, 1998) that allow the structure and content of the 'naive, every day and subjective linguistic view of the world' (cf. Puzynina, 1992, p. 9;Apresjan, 1995, pp. 66-67) to be constructed. In this context, the goal of associative experiments is to expose the ideas surrounding particular facts and realities of modern life in the consciousness of a lingua-cultural community. Not of interest to the researcher, here, is the classical behavioural chain of "stimulus -response -connection between the two" or the linguistic features of responses evoked during an experiment. Rather, from the perspective of cultural psycholinguistics, it is much more important to gain a picture of individual images of the outside world in the consciousness of the speaker. Several classifications in comparative research on national consciousness are constructed on the basis of similar principles.
One of the newest and most original ideas in the classification of associations comes from Yury Karaulov (1999). In my view, his classification system shows the role of associations not just in a person's linguistic system but also in his naive, every day and subjective linguistic world view. In his work, Karaulov has introduced a revolutionary structure that he describes as the "semantic form [gestalt] of associative space"a dynamic feature that enables fragments of the naive, linguistic picture to be "reconstructed". In essence, the semantic form recreates models of typical speakers for every national culture -ones that reflect the stimuli in the speaker's surrounding reality (Novikova, 1998, pp. 22-23). This structure is expanded upon through assignment of a response to one or more stereotypical characteristics of the speaker. These assigned responses activate different semantic features that are brought together in a thematic field. The combination of semantic fields forms "a gestalt" that reflects a particular aspect of the naive, linguistic world view of a lingua-cultural community. In essence, the naive linguistic picture is a kaleidoscopic combination of unique semantic forms.
This article attempts to reveal the semantic form of the association field "German" in the Russian linguistic consciousness. More specifically, the aim is to systematise Russian stereotypical ideas of Germans through a word association experiment and to determine how stable these ideas are in the consciousness of today's speakers (the last decade of the 20 th and the first years of the 21 st century).

Materials and Methods
The 'Russian Association Dictionary' (RAD)  served as the source of all test material. This associative thesaurus was created under the direction of Y. Karaulov and represents a comprehensive compilation of linguistic associations that speakers of Russian typically make. The dictionary was the result of a mass experiment that employed the following task. A questionnaire consisting of different word stimuli was administered to 11,000 participants (students from the 1 st through 6 th semester). In the first stage of the experiment, participants were asked to answer the question: "What do you associate with the Germans and Germany?" From this prompt "direct" reactions were recorded. In the second stage of the experiment, a different group of experimental participants were instructed to generate associations to the "direct" reactions obtained in the first stage of the experiment. These answers are referred to as "inverse" reactions. The participants had to write next to each stimulus the first associative response that came to mind. To analyse the associative field 'German', lexical items were chosen such that the outcome was either direct (from stimulus to response) or the inverse (from response to stimulus).
The total number of selected lexical items pertaining to the semantic form "Germans" was 607. The responses were classified into constant/stable, individual and unexplained. The individual and unexplained responses constituted types of semantic relations whose motivation could not be established (Sokolova, 1999, p. 25). The predominance of constant/ stable/fixed responses attests to the stable character of ideas in the naive world view of the speaker. The predominance of individual and unexplained responses is a sign that in the naive world view of a lingua-cultural community, stereotypical ideas are being transformed in that a few stereotypes cease and new stereotypes form.

Results
In what follows, a description of the thematic areas of the semantic form 'German' is provided.
Thematic area 1. Germans as subjects or actors in social and historical events.
1.1. Germans in the Middle ages росток -Ганза (germ/seed -because of the homonymy in Russian [rostok] as a plant part and as a German city).

Germans in the Second world war
The most frequent word associations observed in the RAD are those that represent Russians' knowledge of the Second World War (especially the Great Fatherland/Patriotic War, which is how Russians describe their fight with Hitler's Germany) in the structure of the semantic form. Germans/German/ Germany. It has been noted that study participants belong only to the third post-war generation. They are therefore not eyewitnesses but rather carriers of various discourses -institutional (inter alia celebrations to mark victory in war), everyday (talks with eyewitnesses) and art discourses about the Second World War. The most frequent responses to the stimulus German were those that can be assigned to the association field The Second world war: aриец (Aryan -2 1 ), война (war -5), враг (enemy), Гитлер (Hitler -2), националист (nationalist), солдат (soldier), фашист (fascist -17), фашизм (fascism).
1.4. Germans as Aryan The most frequent response to the stimulus German was Aryan. This seems to indicate a strong connection between these two terms in the national consciousness of Russian students. It should be emphasised that in the analysed association field the original and rather outdated meaning in the Russian vocabulary of the word арийцы (Aryan), as a description of Indians and Iranians and later of all people that spoke an Indo-European/Indo-Germanic language, was only sporadically present. The following responses, even when from a naive and frequently false interpretation, can carry such meanings as: ариец -иностранец, африканец, восток, вьетнамец, негры, туземцы (Aryan -foreigner, African, Eastern, Vietnamese, Negro, local).
1.5. Germans after the Second World war In the RAD there are also word associations based on certain book knowledge connected to contemporary history and German social society. In this way, the toponym Germany is reflected in the responses to Germans after the Second world war. The responses to the stimulus Германия (Germany) are the following: The stimulus немец (German) produced among others the following responses: ГДР (GDR), турист (tourist), Хоннекер (Honecker).
In addition the following responses can be included: The complex statistical analysis of the word associations that make up the thematic area Germans as subjects or actors in social and historical events of the semantic form 'Germans' leads to the results shown in Table 1.

Information sources
In the responses to the stimulus Германия (Germany) 'information sources' can also be ascertained: таблица (table), фильм (film).

'Geo-Civilisational orientation point'
The most frequent responses to the stimulus German were русский (Russian -10) and иностранец (foreigner -7), which, despite their antonymic meanings have the same function of instantiating the opposites 'our own -not our own'. In other words, 'to be Russian' means 'not to be like a German', and 'to be German' means 'not to be like a Russian'. Similar responses are found in the following: Германиядалекая (Germany -remote/far/distant), немецзаграница (German -abroad), немецкий -не русский, чужой (German ADJ -not Russian, foreign/alien).
The complex statistical analysis of the word associations that make up the thematic area German characters and areas of the semantic form 'Germans' leads to the results shown in Table 3.

Characteristics of the German language
The ethno-cultural stereotype belongs not only to the idea of the 'speaker' but also to the foreign language. The word associations of немецкий (German ADJ) characterise the German language: зубритьнемецкий (to swot up -German ADJ), немецкий - трудный (German ADJ -heavy/difficult), немецкийчерт голову сломит (German -Not even the devil would find his feet here), слишком -немецкий язык (too much -German).
The complex statistical analysis of the word associations that make up the thematic area Germans and their language of the semantic form 'Germans' leads to the results shown in Table 4.

Thematic area 5. German precedence phenomena
An important place in the associative field German occupies the so-called precedence-phenomena. This term refers to personalities, their words and deeds, as well as objects from the past or also the present that can be updated in communication (Karaulov, 2007, p. 216), e.g., Also today turn up soon here, soon there new Stalins and Hitlers. As sources for precedence, texts from Germans and Germany in Russia literature, cinema and modern folklore. Thereby, precedents from the military field dominate: ариец -истинный 13 (Aryan -a true -13 (quotation from the film '17 moments of spring': 'a true Aryan with a northern character)), ариец -Штирлиц (Aryan -Stirlitz -5), фашизм -обыкновенный (Fascism -a common one (title of a film by M. Romm), вторая мировая война -Гитлер капут (the Second World War -Hitler kaputt!), момент -айн, айнмомент (moment -from German ein, ein Moment), немец -русский и поляк (Germansthe Russian and the Pole [as the butt/explanation of a series of jokes]).
The complex statistical analysis of the word associations that make up the thematic area PRECEDENCE PHENOMENA of the semantic form 'Germans' leads to the following results (see Table 5).

Discussion and Conclusion
The complex statistical analysis of the word associations 'Germans' and 'Germany' leads to the following results shown in Table 6.
The above table contains statistical analyses of all obtained reactions to the semantic form 'Germans', which were divided into positive, negative or neutral attitudes according to the word's connotation in Russian students' consciousness. The following criterion shows how deeply fixed the reactions in Russian collective consciousness are. The perception of these associations can be fixed/constant or individual/undetermined. A fixed perception of items indicates that they are stable ideas, ones that contribute to a stereotypical Russian picture of Germans. The use of individual/undetermined word associations cannot be explained in terms of a generic, stereotypical picture of Germans; that is to say, they are not represented in the consciousness of today's Russian students.
After analysing 607 stimuli and responses that belong to the semantic form 'Germans', it was found that in the naive linguistic world view of Russian students neutral associations of Germans prevail (377/62%). The majority of negative perceptions (133 out of 157 negatively connotated semes of the whole semantic form) belong to the thematic area Germany and Germans as subjects or actors in social and historical events. Meanwhile this thematic area includes like no other the vast majority of individual and undetermined/unexplained associations. This indicates a change in relations between Russians and Germans that is first and foremost connected to the Second World War and the unleashing of fascist ideology.
As shown in Table 6, in all other thematic areas of the form 'Germans', positively connotated semes prevail. This permits the conclusion that Germans as a nation are predominantly positively or neutrally perceived in current Russian student society. Despite the considerable military and ideological confrontations of the last century, for the most part a positive picture of Germans has taken root in the Russian collective consciousness.
Noteworthy is the fact that only 80 units, or 13 percent of all reactions, were "individualized"; that is, reactions given by single participants. The constant/ fixed nature of most associations (527/87%) reflects the stable character of stereotypical ideas in the Russian picture of Germans.