The concept "prayer" in the consciousness of young people: psycholinguistic analysis

Abstract

Transformation of religious institutions and the creation of the Ukrainian local church are the reasons for religious discourse investigation in Ukraine. The aim of this research is to analyze verbal representation of the concept “prayer”. Free word association test (WAT) has been used for psycholinguistic analysis. The paper overviews the main linguistic, philological and theological Ukrainian and foreign studies of the concept “prayer”. The automation of social religious life on the Internet has been indicated. Structural-semantic components of prayer texts and types of prayer, have been described. As a result of the free WAT, 280 responses to the stimulus word “prayer” were, among them 125 different associations. Among the most frequent responses were “request”, “faith”, “Our Father”, “oration” and “Talking to God”. The logical and grammar characteristics of the obtained associations have been analyzed. It has been shown that central paradigmatic reactions to the stimulus word “prayer” predominate. The thematic features of the associations to “prayer” have been analyzed. Eight different thematic groups have been identified: religion, appeal, request, forgiveness, gratitude, external attributes of prayer, time, emotions. The most numerous thematic groups are religion and appeal. The least numerous thematic groups are gratitude and time. The large thematic variety of the associations indicates a low level of students' awareness of the concept of “prayer”. Prospects for further study of this problem lie in an in-depth psycholinguistic analysis of religious discourse and concepts faith, sacrament and priest.