VERBAL ASSOCIATIONS OF BULGARIAN TEENAGERS FOR ‘NATURE’

This paper presents a part of a survey aimed at studying the content of the concept of ‘Nature' in the linguistic mind of Bulgarian children and adolescents. The issue under study is: "Are there significant differences in the group associative fields of the word nature in the minds of Bulgarian teenagers depending on the differentiating factor of gender?" The method of study used is a chain associative experiment carried out following the S (stimulus) – Ri (reactions) pattern. Each participant is required to write down the first words that come to their mind when the word nature is pronounced. 1000 reactions are used to reconstruct the associative fields objectifying the conscious and unconscious layers of the cultural concept of ‘Nature' in the linguistic mind of the participants (100 girls and 100 boys). The results of the paper can be commented upon along three aspects: 1) psychological – according to the type of reaction; 2) psycho-linguistic – a) according to the verbal reactions in the minds of the participants, b) according to the lexical and grammatical meaning of the words-reactions through which the associations have been expressed; 3) didactic – according to the degree of correspondence between the thesaurus that can be drawn (a system of knowledge about the world expressed through language) and the thesaurus of the concepts set in the syllabus of the natural sciences subjects.