Научный архив: статьи

The notion that a language worldview is shaped by a system of key concepts as well as ideas and motifs linking them, which are expressed in the meaning of individual lexemes and phrases, has informed a number of studies of culturally specific words and even entire semantic fields. Comparison of different language worldviews has revealed many differences, which at first sight seem insignificant but may hinder successful communication. The concept of hygge occupies a special place in the Danish language worldview and has become somewhat of a Danish hallmark. Our study uses corpus data to analyse six co-occurrence patterns of words representing the concept hygge, which allows us to explicate the implicit meaning components of the lexemes in question and to identify the most frequent patterns. The material used was the Danish Gigaword Corpus (DAGW), which includes texts collected from the Internet. The corpus covers the Danish language in all its diversity: a variety of genres and types of texts are represented in the corpus (law, social media, subtitles, debates, conversation notes, encyclopaedia articles, fiction, news, etc.). The high frequency of the words representing the concept hygge in the corpus texts once again confirms the importance of this concept for Danish culture. The combinational properties of all the models studied show a striking uniformity: all collocations are characterized by positive connotations and can be categorized into a small set of thematic groups (place, time, atmosphere, hobbies, spending time together and communicating). The above co-occurrence analysis allows us to identify the following set of characteristics of the concept hygge: a feeling of peace, tranquillity and security, enjoyment and good mood that comes from being engaged in active pursuits, presence of close, familiar people, a familiar, wellknown place, a shared time together

Letters from Russia by Robert Watt, published in Denmark in 1867, were born as a result of the Danish writer’s trip to Russia to cover Princess Dagmar of Denmark’s arrival in Russia and wedding with Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich in 1866. Robert Watt was a journalist, a writer, a translator, and the artistic director of Tivoli Gardens amusement park from 1866 to his death in 1894. Letters from Russia contains seventeen chapters, in which the writer describes his impressions of his trip to Russia, from the moment he said farewell to Denmark standing on the deck of “Mermaid” frigate, which was raising sails heading to Kronstadt, to the ceremonial reception of the Danish Princess. Road diaries of those who travelled across Russia have always been an important source of information about the country and the epoch, and Robert Watt’s book is no exception. Watt’s book is partly a guidebook — he describes all places of interest in Moscow and St Petersburg, but he also ponders on specific features of life in Russia and the national character. Most of his characteristics are highly positive, he doesn’t pay much attention to unsightly sides of life. The observer’s assessment depends on their personality, previous experience, the recipient (in this case the book was aimed at the Danish reader), and the political situation. We could assume that as the writer was sent to Russia to cover Princess Dagmar of Denmark’s wedding he did not intend to pay attention to the ugly sides of the Russian life. Nevertheless, Robert Watt’s book, unknown to a wide audience in Denmark and Russia, is an important cultural monument which supplements the history of relations between Denmark and Russia

The paper focuses on the concept of the Jante law (janteloven), formulated by A. Sandemose in 1933 in his novel En flyktning krysser sitt spor. Fortelling om en morders barndom (A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. A story about a murderer’s childhood), which later became an element of the cultural code of Denmark and Norway. In this study we follow C. Levisen in his distinguishing between the “literary Jante law”, described by A. Sandemose in his novel, and the “linguistic” Jante law, which is a collocation in the Danish and Norwegian languages. This lexicalization of the concept has been brought about by the specific Scandinavian mentality, conditioned by a number of reasons (the agrarian Scandinavian culture, the Lutheran ethos). In the modern Danish and Norwegian languages the concept of janteloven is negative and is used in specific types of discourse (sports, popular culture, business, politics, psychology, schooling, immigration problems, feminism). Besides, there are numerous reformulated Jante laws (den positive jantelov, den omvendte jantelov, antijantelov, jenteloven, Danskerloven), which proves the precedence of the notion in the Danish and Norwegian cultures. The dominating American individualistic culture influences the development of a new system of values (ambition, self-concern, pushiness are no longer viewed as negative qualities), which results in a conflict between the traditional and the new in the Danish and Norwegian cultures: the Jante law comes into conflict with the so-called achievement culture (præstationskulturen). As a social construct and a secret regulator of public relations the janteloven has found its place between the number of other concepts (hygge, trivsel and so on), yet the janteloven has been specifically reflected in political practices, both in its formal expression (development of various “canons”) and in the methods of countering the imposition of certain phenomena on the part of government authorities