THE HYPOSTASES OF THE «MENTALITY» PHENOMENON THROUGH THE PRISM OF CORPUS LINGUISTICS

This study, aimed at examining the lexical distribution of adjectives with the noun «mentality», exemplifies the comprehensive interdisciplinary approach characteristic of modern linguistics. The work attempts to integrate methodological approaches from scientific fields of corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. The application of corpus linguistic methods allows us to identify objective patterns in the functioning of specific linguistic units in written discourse, as well as to trace the dynamics of semantic changes in the studied lexical distributions in the diachronic aspect of language and speech. The analysis of the cases of using the adjectives «national», «Russian», «specific», «slave», «Soviet», «ethnic» in distribution with the noun «mentality» is carried out on the basis of examples presented in the Russian National Corpus, in accordance with the following criteria: a) the specific functioning of these lexical distributions in the diachronic aspect; b) psychosemantic, sociolinguistic and cognitive-linguistic features of the actualization of the semantics of the considered phrases; c) genre and stylistic features of these distributions in various contexts. The main research method is concordance analysis, which allows us for a detailed examination of the interaction of the studied lexeme with other linguistic units and the identification of trends in its use in modern Russian. The results demonstrate that the concept of «mentality» acts as an important element of the cultural code, reflecting the ccommunicative attitudes, values and speech behavioral patterns of native Russian speakers.