This dissertation focuses on the Anglophone linguistic worldview in Ireland. The Anglo-Irish worldview was formed during the continuous linguistic and cultural interaction of autochthonous Celtic and imported Anglo-Saxon linguocultures. The peculiarity of the contact can be described through the fact that despite the leading position of the English language, the Irish was culturally significant. The factors of linguistic contact in the situation of the Anglo-Irish interaction were predominantly of an extra-linguistic nature. An important consequence of intensive and permanent contact is the productive borrowing of the Celtic language vocabulary into the Hiberno-English. In addition to the lexical level, the Irish influence is found in the grammar system of the Irish English language. These and other facts indicate the favorable conditions for the development of Anglo-Irish bilingualism. However, bilingualism in Ireland is not symmetrical, since there are more speakers of English as the first native language than the speakers of Irish. It is argued that English and Irish languages form the situation of unbalanced bilingualism with the dominant position of the English language.
The situation of unbalanced bilingualism influenced the formation of a new Anglo-Irish linguoculture with a number of cultural keywords. It is determined that such key concepts of the Anglophone worldview in Ireland as IRELAND / EIRE and IRISHMAN are adequately verbalized by means of their key words.
The concept IRELAND is verbalized by means of lexical units which were derived from etymologically different sources: native wordstock (Ireland) and Celtic borrowing (Eire). The sense components of the concept ('land of ancestors', 'dry land', 'country, state', and 'place, destination') show historical stability but asymmetric correlations with the key namings of the concept. The name Ireland occurs in contexts that correlate with the full set of conceptualized features, while Eire establishes correlations predominantly with 'land of ancestors'.
Differences are also observed in the correlations of the names of the concept with actualized images. The contexts with Eire actualize the sacred images of the Queen-Mother, the Martyr-Mother, the Virgin-Savior. These images are historical variations of the archaic image of the matron goddess Eire. The contexts that include Ireland are patriotic and related to the images of a woman, garden or battlefield.
The evaluative layer is also unequally represented by the names of the concept in question. The recognition of Eire as the highest value is based on the associations with the autochthonous (Celtic) culture and the exclusively positive Irish self-esteem. The name of the concept Eire embodies the moral and aesthetic aspect of the evaluative layer (beauty, love, fidelity). The keyword Ireland is focused on such moral and ethical values as patriotism, will, independence, dignity, devotion as well as anti-values, such as danger, betrayal. The structure and content of the concept IRELAND / EIRE were formed under the influence of extralinguistic factors (political and economic dependence of Ireland on England, religious sentiments, social and language policy in the state that was aimed at domination of the introduced Anglo-Saxon culture. The simultaneous functioning of the two keywords reflects the bicultural situation in Ireland and the existance of Anglo-Irish bilingualism. The important event in the history of Ireland determined the relevance of the internal (Eire) and the external (Ireland) perspectives of the concept of IRELAND / EIRE, which complement each other and harmonize the various ethnic components of the culture.
The concept IRISHMAN is an ethnic auto-stereotype. The main sense component of the concept was embodied in the name Irishman ‘inhabitant of Ireland’, which later evolved to ‘member of Ireland’s culture’. Language, as one of the key components of national self-identification, has become a means of consolidation that is well reflected through another conceptualized feature such as ‘speaker of Irish (English)’.
The image layer of the concept is represented by perceptual and cognitive images. Conceptual metaphors IRISHMAN is WARRIOR and BEAST have not been rigid through the history of the Irish culture and Irish English due to the impact of various social factors.
The evaluative component of the concept IRISHMAN is represented by contexts that examplify the correlation of the IRISHMAN with moral, ethical, and other values: honesty, kindness, beauty.
Free and directed associative experiments allowed the verification of the results obtained by means of semantico-conceptual analysis. Such approach enabled the identificaion of the psycholinguistic significance of the concepts, and increased the informativeness and objectivity of the results. The data of the experiment confirmed the conclusions obtained during the analysis of text fragments.
The results of the study may suggest a bro
