Semantic shift in the meaning of the word "charitable" and its derivative: institutional factor
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The subject of the study is the change in meanings of such words as "charitable" and "charity" in connection with the facts of the institutionalization of charity as a public activity in the history of Russia. The object of the research is the influence of social and political processes on the usage of words and the dynamics of their collocational patterns in discourse. The author examines in detail aspects of the topic such as the quantitative method of identifying the moment of change in the meanings of words with precision to 1-2 years, and the subsequent comparison of the formulated regularity with socio-political and social processes. Special attention is given to the fixation of contexts in which the first usages of the studied words in their new meanings are noted, as well as identifying the last context that allows establishing an approximate time for the fading of one meaning and its replacement by another. The research is conducted with the help of data from the National Corpus of the Russian Language, using methods of a complete sample of contexts of specific word usage, and statistical counting of word frequency. To compare the identified quantitative regularities with the practice of institutionalizing the studied phenomena, a cultural-historical method was employed. The main conclusions of the conducted research are the established chronological periods for the emergence of the meaning "public" for the word "charitable," and "public activity" for the word "charity," displacing the older meanings "generous, merciful" and "personal attribute," respectively. A significant contribution of the author to the research of the topic is the establishment of parallels between the emergence of the new meanings and the beginnings of the systematic organization of charity as a social institution, followed by the displacement of the old meanings during the explosive growth of charitable activities in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. It should be noted that the usage of the word records social changes with a "delay" of 20-30 years, which can be explained by the processing of the changes in linguistic consciousness, as well as the use of materials such as memoirs and reminiscences, where the year of writing may be significantly later than the time of the described event. The novelty of the study lies in both the identification of the semantic shift of the words "charitable" and "charity" and in the substantiation of the connection of this shift with the ongoing reforms and spontaneous social changes using quantitative data.
Source: Litera
Author: Yuliya Viktorovna Shuiskaya
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7152432035