TOPONYM «BREST REGION» IN THE MIRROR OF AN ASSOCIATIVE EXPERIMENT

Abstract. The article is devoted to the study of the fragment of linguistic consciousness of the residents of the Brest region. The purpose of the article is to present the findings obtained during the implementation of the research project «Brest Region through the Eyes of People of Different Professions» with the assistance of the Main Department of Ideological Work and Youth Affairs of the Brest Regional Executive Committee in Septem-ber 2023. The toponym «Brest Region» was used as a stimulus word. The respondents were representatives of public administration (200 people). The object of the study is the semantics of the word as a subjective value, a fragment of the linguistic consciousness of representatives of public administration. The study was carried out in two stages: field stratification of the verbal-associative network «Brest Region», thematic ranking of the ob-tained associates. Modeling the field structure of the associative field made it possible to distinguish stereotyp-ical and variable parameters in the associative image of the territory of residence. The results of the study show certain thematic zoning of the image of the territory in the linguistic consciousness of respondents, con-tribute to the practice of analyzing the associative profile of the region.