Conceptual Representation of a Politically Correct Vocabulary (Exampled by the French Language)
In: Russian Foundation for Basic Research Journal. Humanities and social sciences, S. 107-114
ISSN: 2587-8956
The research offers a way of studying the formation of lexical and phraseological units in the French politically correct discourse. Despite a quite scrutinous study of various aspects of modern ideology and politically correct language – mostly, in the English language, – the issue how to model politically correct language remains obscure. This paper attempts to identify formation models of not just individual language units in French that have the potential to mitigate and camouflage negative social practices and tabooed life phenomena, but also entire nominative areas of politically correct discourse. Within the framework of this research, the authors has carried out a conceptual analysis of politically correct lexical and phraseological units of the modern French language representing different areas, and identified regular conceptual models of the formation of a politically correct vocabulary. At the present stage of the research, it is possible to state that metonymic models play a leading role in the replenishment of a politically correct language. The study helps to identify seven metonymic conceptual units of an organized system. Inside the units, concepts are clustered and arranged according to the degree of generalization, which corresponds to the extent of their euphemistic potential to mitigate and camouflage represented phenomena. The concepts of different units correlate in the formation of the language unit semantics. The research describes the basic models of such interaction.