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Abstract: The study of ideas about moral’ (morality) and nravstvennost’ (morality) in Russian and French linguistic cultures is undoubtedly urgent both in the light of the modern socio-cultural situation and in linguistics itself. In French, there are concepts of morality and ethics, very similar in meaning; they act as regulators of human behavior in society. The concept of nravstvennost’, with the meaning that it has in the Russian language, does not exist. It is translated into French as morality. It is associated with certain confusions in the understanding of Russian and French words that are close, but not fully synonymous. Classical literature, and specifically Pushkin’s heritage, is of special interest in the study of the national specificity of the concepts under analysis. The research object in this article comprises French epigraphs, containing the appropriate vocabulary of the semantic field “nravstvennost’”, which A. S. Pushkin chooses for his works. The novelty of this study is also represented by the author’s research angle: the French epigraphy of the Russian poet in the perception of a modern French person. As a result of the analysis of the most significant epigraphs to the novel in verse Eugene Onegin and the novel Arap of Peter the Great, the article shows differences in the perception of the concepts of moral’ and nravstvennost’ by the members of French and Russian linguistic cultures. In addition, the author pays attention to the semantic structure of these concepts in their historical dynamics. For this purpose, he uses the methods of definitional analysis of the lexemes moral’, nrav, nravstvennost’, conscience, morality, virtue in various types of dictionaries; elements of the etymological analysis and historical commentary of words; procedures of the structural-semantic method, psycholinguistic experimental methods (free associative experiment, the results of which are used to model the associative field of morality), and the method of direct interpretation. The practical value of the study consists in the author's observations on the peculiarities of foreign speakers’ perception of Pushkin’s epigraphs, as well as some preliminary guidelines for the use of Pushkin's unique bilingual creative experience in the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language.

About the author(s) :

Jerome Nick Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin (Ekaterinburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7436-4097

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 02.11.2024; date of publication: 28.12.2024

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