Kornienko A. V. (2025). The Modern-Day Psychologically Valid Meaning of the Concept of Power. In Political Linguistics. No. 5 (113), pp. 93-101. (In Russ.).

Abstract

The following article sets out the results of the first phase of a linguo-cognitive study on the concept of power, a concept pivotal in the field of politics. The analytical study was undertaken with the aim of comparing the purely lexicographical meaning of the lexeme power, i.e. the basic rendering of the concept of power, with its  present-day psychologically valid meaning, which objectivises the views of ordinary speakers of Russian linguoculture on power. The study has adopted a semantic-cognitive approach to language using semantic analysis. The empirical basis of the study consists of materials drawn from the Media and Blogs corpora of the Russian National Corpus (RNC) for the period from 2015 to 2023. The analysis results established that written journalists and social media users alike make active use of only those lexicographically fixed statutory meanings of the lexeme power which are part and parcel of public administration, specifically power in the sense of public government bodies and their individual entities, and as an overall system of public administration. As such, the psychologically  valid meaning  of the lexeme power that is characteristic of the present time, reflecting its ongoing existence in Russian linguoculture, seems to be the standard meaning, albeit narrower in comparison with the lexicographical definition. At the same time, it goes beyond the latter, revealing a significant semantic increment, the seme ability denoting the requisite, in the view of some native speakers, intrinsic quality of the ruling entities, ensuring the efficacy of their activity. The results obtained might be used in the compilation of dictionaries of concepts, as well as in elaborating their classifications.