Cognitive scenario of “school attendance” in linguistic consciousness of the Russians and Chinese

The goal of this work consists in determination of similarities and differences of cognitive scenario of “school attendance” in linguistic consciousness of the Russians and Chinese. The linguistic terms “concept”, “scenario”, and “frame” are clarified. Comparison is conducted on lexicographic meanings of lexical units 学生 and ‘student’. The author analyzes the associative fields of ’学生 – ‘student’, 小学 – ‘elementary school’, 中学 – ‘middle school’, and ‘school’; compares the scenarios of “school attendance” in Russia and China. The relevance of this work is substantiated by the trend of strengthening of cooperation and exchange in the sphere of education between Russia and China. Cognitive analysis of associative field allows reconstructing the concept as a unit of individual mental lexicon, and cultural phenomenon. The concept is defined as a core meaningful unit of memory, mental lexicon, conceptual scheme of the entire worldview reflected in a human psyche. The frame is a special type of cognitive model, which represents knowledge belonging to either specific or common situations; while scenarios are the structures of knowledge particularly designated for recurrent sequence of events. The article applies a free association experiment that is one of the means of externalization of linguistic consciousness. The scientific novelty lies in selection of the relevant, but insufficiently explored topic – the comparative study of cognitive structures in the sphere of education of Russia and China. As a result, the author determined the differences in cognitive scenario of “school attendance” in linguistic consciousness of Russian and Chinese students. The differences consists in the following: 1) school uniforms; 2) distance between school and home; 3)requirements for physical training of the students (Chinese students to morning exercises, some activities between the lessons, and eye exercises; 4) ceremonies and rituals (on Mondays, Chinese schools do the national flag-raising ceremony; and welcoming ritual at the beginning of each lesson); 5) and length of the education process. The acquires results may be valuable in further comparative study of Russian and Chinese educational discourse.