According to J. Stepanov the “concept” is “a basic cultural cell in the mental world of a man” (Stepanov 2007, 248). Concept is a mental structure that represents the knowledge of an individual about a particular segment of the world. Being a part of the world picture, the concept reflects the orientation of values of both the individual person and the entire linguistic community. It implies that the concept may include the generally valid features as well as the individual characteristics of native speakers. Analyzing the concept from the cultural point of view, it should be born in mind that the content of the concept will remain within the frame of particular culture and epoch.
There are many points of view on the structure of the concept. G. Slyshkin and V. Karasik propose to consider the cultural concept as a multidimensional meaningful construct, where the notional, figurative and value sides are distinguished. The notional aspect of a concept is the linguistic fixation of a concept, its name, description, feature structure, definition, comparative characteristics of this concept in relation to other groups of concepts. The imagery side of a concept is its visual, auditory, tactile, taste characteristics of objects, events, events which in one form or another are reflected in our consciousness. The value side of a concept specifies the importance of educational process, both for an individual and for a team.
The understanding of the concept as an operating unit of thought is a way and the result of quantification and categorization of knowledge. This is because the object of the concept is the mental entity, whose formation is determined by the form of abstraction, and the model of which is specified by the concept, which not only describes the object but also creates it.
Conceptualization is the process of the creation and construction of concept in the human recognition. It is also the process of thought concerning the new information that causes the creation of concept. The study of concept is the main task of the cognitive linguistics. Every attempt to realize the nature of concept causes the realization of the fact of presence of closely-related concepts and terms. Concept is the intellectual category that may not be recognized visually. This fact causes the presence of the wide area for the interpretation of concept.
The classification of concepts: Basic (Concrete) Concepts (such as objects, actions, qualities) : normally expressed by independent words or radical elements; | Derivational Concepts (less concrete, as a rule): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements or by inner modification of these; differ from type I in defining ideas that are irrelevant to the proposition as a whole but that give a radical element a particular increment of significance and that are thus inherently related in a specific way to concepts of type I; | Concrete Relational Concepts (still more abstract, yet not entirely devoid of a measure of concreteness): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements, but generally at a greater remove from these than is the case with elements of type II, or by inner modification of radical elements; differ fundamentally from type II in indicating or implying relations that transcend the particular word to which they are immediately attached, thus leading over to; | Pure Relational Concepts (purely abstract): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements (in which case these concepts are frequently intertwined with those of type III) or by their inner modification, by independent words, or by position; serve to relate the concrete elements of the proposition to each other, thus giving it definite syntactic form. |
Walker and Avant method of concept analysis 1.Select a concept: * Concept selection should reflect the topic or area of greatest interest;
2.Determine the aims or purpose of analysis: * To clarify the meaning; * To develop an operational definition; * To distinguish between the normal, ordinary, and scientific; * language usage of the concept; * personal interest in conducting the concept analysis;
3.Identify all uses of the concept: * Dictionary, thesauruses, colleagues, literature; * Do not limit search to just nursing or medical literature;
4.Determine the defining attributes: * On examining the different instances of a concept, taking notes; * on the characteristics that appear over and over again. These characteristics become the critical or defining attributes of the concept; * the cluster of attributes are the most frequently associated with the concept; * Allow the broadest insight into the concept;
5.Construct model case: * A real life example of the use of the concept that include all the critical attributes of the concept; * The model cases can come first, or be developed simultaneously with the attributes, or emerged after the attributes are tentatively determined. 6.Construct additional cases: * Borderline case - contain some of the critical attributes but not all of them; * Related case -related to the concept bit do not contain the critical attributes; * Contrary cases - not the concept; * Invented case– constructed, not existed in the real life illegitimate cases—improperly use of the concept;
7.Identify antecedents and consequences Antecedents: * Events that must occur prior to the occurrence of the concept
Consequences:
* Events that occur as a result of the occurrence of the concept
8.Define empirical referents * Classess or categories of actual phenomena that by their existence or presence demonstrated the occurrence of the concept; * Very useful in instrument development; * Contributing to content and construct validity of any new instrument; Analysis of the definition of the basic lexeme, representing the concept.
According to the wordnik and free dictionaries, self - made man means a man who has risen from poverty or obscurity by means of his own talents or energies.
Wikipedia gives the following definition of this word combination a "self-made man" or "self-made woman" is a person who was born poor or otherwise disadvantaged, but who achieved great economic or moral success thanks to their own hard work and ingenuity rather than to any inherited fortune, family connections or other privilege.
In the cultural history of the United States, the idea of the self-made man, an "essential American figure", looms large. It has been described as an archetype, a cultural ideal, a myth or a cult.
This word combination in a context is represented as a part of fiction. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. Hard Times by Dickens, Charles.
Sir David Archer, the Foreign Secretary, was the only one of them who was a self-made man, and the only one of them who looked like an aristocrat. The Man Who Knew Too Much by Chesterton, Gilbert K.
According to corpus COHA (1810-2012), the term self-sufficient person, that a synonym of self made man, was mentioned in 1877: "A good - natured, broad-shouldered, tactless, self-sufficient person, he had taken up his work with a complacent feeling that no field." (LassOLowries)
COCA includes 2 examples of this word combination. It was comparatively later, than a previous one, in 1991.
"His father, James, a self made man of the classic stripe, had acquired so much money as a dry." (AmHeritage)
"The figure of the self made man - the main hero of the stories - became a source of inspiration for many Americans." (AmerStudies)
Analysing data about self made man, we can see that this word combination is not just a part of vocabulary, but also a cult of Americans. It reveals their peculiarities of character.
Firstly, it appeared in 1877, as a part of fiction novel; then, a magazine published the idea of successful men, who were poor, but due to hard work, they took over everything and achieved prosperity. A cultural idea became one of stereotypes about Americans. However, the earliest references described an independent man, not a woman. After that, when women started playing more considerable role in society, there were cases of women's success.
https://archive.org/details/cu31924024902557