Associative fields of lexemes "Homeland" and "Vatan" in Russian and Tatar linguistic consciousness

Currently, one of the important concerns in linguistics is the study of human linguistic consciousness, the tradition of studying goes back to the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt and his followers about the relation between language and spirit of the people, the inner form of language and so on. Among the research methods of linguistic consciousness one stands out the association experiment which is a survey of informants, united by a certain community (language, occupation, area of residence, etc.) in order to identify their associations to a particular stimulus. The paper used the following methods of linguistic analysis: generalization and systematization, analytical method, descriptive, comparative method of association experiment, etc. The association experiments including the stimulus word "Vatan" (Motherland) have been carried out, with 500 students of Kazan - the native speakers of the Tatar language. The results have been compared with the materials of the "Slavic Dictionary of Associations". Both common components of associative fields of the lexemes "Homeland" in Russian and "Vatan" in Tatar (patriotism, love for country, willingness to defend) and specific features have been elicited. The analysis of the reactions of the respondents indicated incompatibility of volume of the studied lexemes: the Russian word "Homeland" corresponds to two linguistic units in Tatar (Tugan il, Vatan), and the lexeme "Vatan" has a literary colouring. Thus, the association experiment reveals systemacy of the content of consciousness image standing for a word in different languages, and confirms the uniqueness and originality of the image of the world of each culture. The study has practical significance, because the obtained results represent a valuable and rather reliable material for the study of certain fragments of language consciousness, national-specific phenomena, knowledge, values, etc