Reconstructing Linguistic Worldview from Lexical-Semantic Noun Groups in Russian Textbook Exercises

Worldview linguistics extracts lexical-semantic vocabulary from a limited corpus of texts. Such studies were especially popular at the beginning of the 21st century. This approach relied on the presumption that the linguistic worldview is formed primarily by the vocabulary, which is a system of interconnected topics. This research featured lexical-semantic groups of nouns used in exercises from Russian textbooks. It offers a new perspective on the cultural code, where codes are based on texts rather than dictionary entries or phraseological units. The research relied on the anthropological paradigm, consistent with systemic-structural linguistics. For the first time, exercises in Russian textbooks were examined in terms of their axiological potential. The exercises came from three of the most popular modern Russian textbooks for high schools. The author extracted 10,373 word forms, which corresponded to 4,455 lexical-semantic variants of meaning. The lexical-semantic forms, not words, were chosen as research units because the meanings of a polysemantic word can be attributed to various lexical-semantic groups. Based on the quantitative analysis, a lexical-semantic group is an important fragment of the linguistic worldview. Such fragments can be reconstructed from text corpora if the elements of the lexicalsemantic group possess axiological potential, provide synonymous series, and represent cultural codes. In this research, the linguistic worldview reconstructed from Russian textbook consisted of lexical-semantic groups that reflected verbal, temporal, anthropic, and bodily codes of culture.