Questionnaire to study the public opinion on the axiological picture of the world of English speakers

[bkhimyak]

Fellow linguists and everyone interested in linguistics!

I invite you to take part in my research comparing the axiological worldview of native English and Ukrainian speakers. Your answers will help to expand our understanding of language and culture.

Please fill out the questionnaire at this link and share it with your friends and fellow linguists:
https://forms.gle/PcWYUA3G2pHRCuTS6

Thank you for your support!

[Salmoneus]

Have you considered that people might be more likely to help you if you DON'T spam the same post over every subforum?

In any case, this doesn't really seem to be axiology, but simply semantics. You're dealing here with what are called 'thick' moral qualities - qualities that combine an axiological judgment with complex, context-dependent cultural significance. The problem is, the axiological attitude adheres not to the things (people, actions, events, states of affairs) described, but to the cultural significance inherently asserted by the word - which, as that significance IS axiological, is not an axiological attitude to anything at all, but only a pleonasm. Which ultimately comes down to good things being good and bad things being bad.

The same things (i.e. bearers of value-judgments) can be referred to by different thick words in order to express value-judgments. Often, the same thing can be given diametrically different value attributions by the choice of word. So a person may be "proud" (good), or "vain" (bad), while being exactly the same. The same event can be described as "courageous" (good) or "foolhardy" (bad), without any disagreement about the nature of the event itself. And so on. One person's "miserliness" is another's "thrift", and their "squandering" might be another's "largesse".

So if you compare the value judgments inherent in a specific English word with the value judgments inherent in a specific Ukrainian word, you're not actually comparing anything about the "picture of the world" (we usually say "worldview", although philosophers traditionally retain Kant's German and say "weltanschauung"). You're just testing whether you've translated the Ukrainian word into English correctly.

For example, if you ask English speakers about their attitudes to the word "unchaste", you'll get quite negative responses. Because that's inherent in the word. Describing a woman as unchaste is inherently saying something bad about her. But that says nothing about the speaker's attitudes toward chastity - it's just what the word means. The speakers' attitudes are revealed by whether they USE the word, and, if so, when, and about whom. If you have no problem with unchastity, you don't call people 'unchaste'. Conversely, nobody ever uses the word "frigid" in a positive sense (either literally (very cold) or metaphorically (disinterested in sex)). It's inherently negative. Nor "prudish" (excessively unwilling to permit 'improper' conversation). If you ask a pornstar their connotations of "frigid", you'll probably get similar responses to if you ask a religious fundamentalist who believes that all sex should be banned. These two people would have totally different worldviews and sexual attitudes, but they would both know what the word meant. Just one would be more likely to use it than the other. Conversely, the other might describe the former as 'brazen', for instance.

[there are some thick terms where the connotations DO differ with worldview - the pornstar might see "slutty" or "harlot" as having more positive connotations - but this is generally where a subculture is actively 'reclaiming' a specific used to describe them, and is essentially a political split within the speaker base]


So the questions your suvey asks are semantic - they attempt to map out exactly what a certain word means in English. They don't by themselves give you any axiological information (that is, they don't tell you about English speakers' actual value judgments), because they don't tell you how often people actually USE the word, or when. [you might be able to guess at this from the "what other words might you use instead " question, but not very reliably].

In particular, you can't meaningfully compare my use of the word 'cunning' to a Ukrainian's use of some Ukrainian translation of that, because if our axiological content is different that just means you've chosen the wrong translation!

[sangi39]

Fellow linguists and everyone interested in linguistics!

I invite you to take part in my research comparing the axiological worldview of native English and Ukrainian speakers. Your answers will help to expand our understanding of language and culture.

Please fill out the questionnaire at this link and share it with your friends and fellow linguists:
https://forms.gle/PcWYUA3G2pHRCuTS6

Thank you for your support!

Have you considered that people might be more likely to help you if you DON'T spam the same post over every subforum?

I've deleted the other three (since no-one had replied to them yet). Like Sal said, this didn't really need posting four times in different subforums

[Khemehekis]

I notice you have an age category for 35-43 and another for 44-54. Is this a mistake? Given the other age ranges, I'd think you meant to put the divide between 44 and 45 instead of 43 and 44.

[eldin raigmore]

I found the questions difficult to interpret; and also, uninteresting.
I don’t see how or why this information would benefit any Ukrainians people or any Ukrainian people.
So I won’t answer it.