LINGUISTIC DIAGNOSING OF RELIGIOUS RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH WORD ASSOCIATION RESPONSES

In the increasingly globalized world, primordial connections of people based on religion have been downplayed. Nevertheless, growing uncommunicativeness among representatives of various religious groups living in relatively monocultural settings demonstrated a great need for a careful study of the influence of the religious factor on the nature of coexistence of people from similar cultural but different religious backgrounds. Different religious roots of communicants often involve sets of quite different experiences reflecting different subcultures within the broader cultural context of a country. The paper discusses some issues connected with the verbal codes of communication. Considering a language as a socio-cultural phenomenon and a form of behaviour underpinned by the cognitive peculiarities and mental stereotypes that characterize every nation, the author shows the opportunities provided by the use of free word association methodology in linguistic diagnosis of religious relationships. The word association method can be treated as a valuable resource for gaining knowledge about religious values of each nation since it helps to transform the intentions of speakers into signals in the culturally accepted code. To investigate how a language reflects the attitudes to differences in religious values, principles of self-identification and the character of perception of members of one religious denomination by the members of others, the author uses the free word association experiment data collected in 2014 in different universities in Moscow (Russia) where there are groups of students that hold various religious views. 1346 students participated in the study. The results of the study revealed that the religious differentiation among students was clearly represented only in respect of Moslem community, and the religious markers did not carry negative connotations. Moslem community was perceived as culturally "different" but not as "alien". Hence, it is evident that religious intolerance is not dominant in the cultural space of Russian students and distrust of Moslem communities, if any, is a consequence of political and non-religious factors.