Historical and etymological aspect of the conceptual triad mercy-indifference-cruelty in English and Russian

Osadchaia Ol'ga Nikolaevna PhD in Philology Senior Tutor, Department of Foreign Languages, Russian State University of Justice 69 Novocheremushkinskaya str., Moscow, 117418, Russia zuba-zuba@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The relevance of the research topic is due to the need for a deeper study of the origins and functioning of the representatives of the linguistic and cultural concepts of mercy, indifference, cruelty in the compared languages in order to clarify the common and specific features of the worldview of representatives of the compared linguistic cultures, the peculiarities of national and cultural mentality. The anthropocentric vector of development of modern linguistics is focused on the analysis of epistemological and socio-cultural dimensions of science. The content of philosophical concepts and linguistic conceptual apparatus become the focus of interdisciplinary research. Key cultural phenomena, being a kind of markers of the linguistic picture of the world of a particular people, refracted in the minds of native speakers, show their specificity or, conversely, possess universal characteristics. This work is devoted to the study of the conceptual triad mercy-indifference-cruelty in English and Russian in an etymological aspect.

A systemic triad is a complex of three relatively independent, interconnected semantic elements, related to each other, each differing in special content, qualitative specificity, and collectively forming a single whole ^[9]. The triad as a method of philosophical construction consists of two opposites connected by a middle link and ensuring the completeness of being in their unity. Mercy, indifference and cruelty as separate phenomena and their dichotomous pairs have been studied in numerous philosophical works. Philosopher N. O. Lossky considers mercy in the outline of religious and ethical guidelines, absolute moral values and imperatives necessary for the self-consciousness of a modern person ^[14]. In the PhD thesis of E. G. Logunova, mercy is interpreted as a phenomenon of a socio-philosophical plan, emphasis is placed on its oppositional invariants indifference and cruelty ^[13]. According to philosopher I. A. Ilyin, mercy and compassion are the highest point of human moral development, achieved through brotherhood and unity of souls ^[7]. V. P. Starostin in his works on ethics explores the traditions of compassion, mercy and charity in the social and spiritual life of Russian society ^[21]. P. J. Buchanan's research interest focuses on the phenomenon of indifference as a negative phenomenon inherent in a secular consumer society ^[4]. Y. Moltman analyzes in his work the composition of a new value system with dominant indifference and absurdity ^[15].

The research material devoted to the study of these concepts in linguistics is also quite extensive. Linguoconceptology, focused on describing the processes of implementation of linguistic and cultural concepts, has significant resources when comparing linguistic units in various discourses and linguistic cultures. In our study, following V. I. Karasik, a linguistic and cultural concept means a unit of culture endowed with significant meaning, the plan of expression of which is language resources capable of revealing the essence of this concept ^[8]. The main characteristics of the linguistic and cultural concept are its multidimensionality, that is, the presence of various semantic components; the hierarchical nature of significant features; ethnospecific fullness ^[6].

A sufficient number of works have been devoted to the study of the linguistic and cultural concepts of mercy, indifference and cruelty, with the aim of revealing the verbalization of these phenomena both in the form of independent cultural units and at the level of their dyadic relations on the material of one or more languages. L. V. Kulikova in her PhD dissertation explores ways of verbalization of the value and anti-value components of the dichotomous pair Mercy / Cruelty in English and Russian linguistic culture ^[12]. L. R. Baidavletova analyzes the concept of mercy within the framework of the concept sphere "law-law-crime-punishment-mercy" ^[1]. Linguist N. V. Basko explores the ways of representing the linguistic and cultural concept of indifference in the Russian linguistic picture of the world ^[2]. In the collective monograph by E. V. Biryukova, O. N. Osadcha, L. G. Popova, L. M. Shatilova, the value component of the concept of mercy is analyzed from the point of view of its verbalization using paremiological means ^[3]. Russian Russian linguocultural concept of mercy belongs to the key concepts of the Russian linguistic worldview, revealing the idioethnic features of Russian society ^[17]. The linguist N. A. Krasavsky focuses on the concept of cruelty in the individual author's refraction based on the works of the Austrian writer Robert Musil ^[10]. In this study, for the first time, an attempt is made to analyze the triadic relations of the linguistic and cultural concepts of mercy, indifference and cruelty in English and Russian.

At the present stage of the development of linguistics, in the process of updating the concept, its base layer is revealed in the form of a core, due to fixity in lexicographic sources. The dictionary meaning of the lexeme, which represents the core of the concept, is revealed on the basis of explanatory dictionaries, which allow to reveal its content most fully and establish the features of the linguistic embodiment. The cores of the studied concepts of mercy, indifference, cruelty in English linguoculture, according to dictionaries, are the lexemes “mercy", “indifference", “cruelty".

Mercy – compassion or forgiveness towards someone who can be punished or harmed (compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone who it is within one's power to punish or harm) ^[28].

Indifference – lack of interest in someone or something (lack of interest in someone or something) ^[25].

Cruelty is behavior that causes physical or mental pain to others and causes them to suffer (behavior that causes physical or mental pain to others and makes them suffer) ^[28].

Russian Russian dictionaries have been used to define the core of the concept of mercy in Russian linguoculture, which consists of two lexemes: "mercy" and "mercy", forming a dyadic model. The core concepts of indifference and cruelty in the Russian language are the lexemes "indifference" and "cruelty".

Mercy is a magnanimously kind, merciful attitude, as well as a boon, a gift, a merciful act ^[22].

Mercy is the willingness to help, to show leniency out of compassion, humanity, as well as the help itself, the condescension caused by such feelings ^[18].

Indifference is the state of an indifferent person, indifferent, devoid of interest, passive attitude towards others ^[22].

Cruelty is a cruel act, treatment ^[20].

One of the effective approaches in the study of concepts is the study of the etymology of the core of the concept, based on the data of etymological and historical etymological dictionaries. Russian Russian etymological dictionaries of the English language ^{[27, 28]} and Russian language ^{[23, 24]} were used to clarify the specifics of the verbalization of the cores of the concepts of mercy, indifference, cruelty in English and Russian linguistic cultures. The reference to etymological sources helped to establish the time of the appearance of lexemes and to determine their meanings in a particular time period.

According to etymological dictionaries, the lexeme “mercy” first became part of the English language in the XIII century in the form of a loan from the French language ^[28]. The basic meaning of "salary, payment, remuneration for service" was present even in classical Latin (merced) and was later supplemented with meanings related to postclassic Latin: pity, mercy, (secular) grace, heavenly reward. Before the Norman invasion, lexemes such as “milce” and “mildheartness” were used in Old English to denote mercy. Etymologists distinguish among the ancient roots of words of world languages the proto-Indo-European root meth with the meaning "core", which reveals the first root mei/me/m, actualizing the meanings of "measure", "point of reference", as well as "soft, light" ^{[11, 19]}. Thus, in our opinion, the motivation of the lexemes of the Old English period allows us to explicate the concept of mercy as the highest moral value, a kind of starting point of the worldview.

The nuclear lexemes "mercy" and "mercy", representing the concept of mercy in the Russian language, along with the above-mentioned lexemes "milce", "mildheartness", can be counted among the cognates identified during comparative visualization as linguistic units with a similar root, in order to identify evidence of genetic kinship of the studied languages. According to the national corpus of the Russian language, the appearance of the lexeme "mercy" dates back to 1080 ^[16], formed from the basis of mi-, denoting peace, from Latin mitis "gentle, calm", ancient Indian mayas "joy, delight, pleasure" ^{[23, 24]}, Indo-European mei "soft" ^[19]. The lexeme "mercy" comes from the Old Russian milosrd, the Old Slavic milosrd, which is a tracing paper from the Latin misericordia ^{[23, 24]}.

The appearance and use of this Latin tracing paper was also observed in English at the beginning of the XIII century, simultaneously with the lexeme "mercy", but it was replaced by the latter from active speech communication.

Based on data from etymological dictionaries of the English language, it was possible to find out the time of the appearance of the lexeme “cruelty” in English linguoculture, explicating anti-value as a fragment of the conceptual triad mercy-indifference-cruelty, which coincides with the time of the first fixation of the lexeme “mercy”, namely the XIII century ^[28]. This lexeme goes back to the Latin crudelis with the meaning "ruthless, cruel, heartless".

The lexeme "cruelty" in the Russian language space has its roots in the Old Slavic language, where the lexeme cruelty, along with the gesture and the cruelty "severity", meant "merciless" and was inseparable from the word hard in the meaning of hard, strong ^[24]. The root gesture itself refers us to the literal translation of the ancient Greek skelh, which has a significant number of meanings: "dry, hard, hard" (the term sclera is the "cornea", the hardest part of the eye), "ossified, dry, lost flexibility" (the term sclerosis is the hardening of blood vessels), "strict, severe, relentless, cruel, vicious" ^[11]. Thus, the genetically related concepts of rigidity and cruelty were endowed with common semantic characteristics. The choice of one or another value was characterized by situationality and eventfulness in order to achieve a given communicative goal. The divergence of the concepts of rigidity and cruelty and their formation into separate lexemes occurred in the XV century, presumably due to different interpretations of the full and short forms of the adjective rigid. At the present stage of the development of linguistics, the boundary between rigidity and cruelty is sometimes not very clearly marked and depends on the degree of manifestation of hardness: the lexeme "rigidity" explicates a justified rigid position, and "cruelty" is unjustified, condemned by society. Thus, unlike the English representative "cruelty" with its unambiguous negative connotation, demonstrating semantic constancy in historical retrospect, the lexeme "cruelty", which verbalizes the anti-concept at the present stage of language development, is etymologically based on the duality of the nature of things in the perception of representatives of Russian linguistic culture.

The connecting link in the dichotomous relations of the concepts of mercy and cruelty is the linguistic and cultural concept of indifference, due to which a triadic construction is built. In English, the nuclear lexeme "indifference" has a Latin origin of indifference with the meaning "having no differences, indifferent, indifferent", undergoes a semantic shift under the influence of a time factor. At the time of its appearance in the XVI century, this lexeme conveyed a positive connotation, in which semantic accents were placed on neutrality, impartiality, objectivity ^[28]. Since the XVII century, the meaning of "indifference, indifference, indifference" has begun to prevail in English linguoculture.

A similar pattern is observed in Russian linguistic culture. The lexeme "indifference" entered the Russian language from the language of the Old Church Slavonic in the meaning of "inner calmness, firmness, constancy, impartiality", but since the XVII-XVIII centuries it has acquired a negative connotation for verbalizing a state of indifference, lack of interest in the outside world, apathy ^[5].

According to etymological dictionaries, nuclear lexemes that verbalize the linguistic and cultural concepts of mercy, indifference, cruelty in English and Russian have different registers of historical lexicography. The mercy lexeme has the highest frequency of use in the English language, which is part of a group of words that occur from 10 to 100 times per million words, including a wide range of neutral vocabulary. The representative words "indifference" and "cruelty" are numerically less represented, belong to the category of linguistic units occurring from 1 to 10 times per million words in the English language ^[28]. They usually refer to literary vocabulary.

In Russian texts, the lexemes "mercy" and "mercy", which are part of a group of words with the use of 10 to 100 times per million words, have the highest frequency. The lexemes "indifference" and "cruelty" are less often reflected in the corpus of the Russian language, the frequency of their use ranges from 1 to 10 times per million words ^[16]. The results of the analysis of the quantitative representation of nuclear lexemes explicating the conceptual triad mercy-indifference-cruelty in the compared languages demonstrate the predominance of representatives of the concept of mercy in English and Russian linguistic cultures. In our opinion, this is due to their long-range etymology and the ambiguity of the core. The high frequency of use indicates their stylistic neutralization. Thus, the lexeme "mercy" in the expression "Mercy me!" is semantically emptied and denotes surprise or fright, depending on the context. In Russian, as part of speech cliches, the word mercy is desemanized, turning into a formula of politeness (Welcome!).

Russian Russian linguocultural lexeme The historical and etymological analysis of the triad of linguistic and cultural concepts mercy-indifference-cruelty in the compared languages allows us to conclude that the nuclear lexemes verbalizing the concepts of mercy in English and Russian linguistic cultures are characterized by an earlier lexicographic fixation: the appearance of the lexeme "mercy" in the Russian language dates back to the beginning of the XI century, the English lexeme "mercy".mercy" by the beginning of the XIII century. The English and Russian lexemes that verbalize the linguistic and cultural concept of mercy have the highest frequency of use. This circumstance is explained by the age of the tokens and their dyadic model. The representative words "mercy" and "cruelty" in English and Russian have semantic stability in diachronic terms, while the lexeme "indifference" in the compared linguistic cultures has undergone a significant semantic shift. Due to the etymological characteristics of the studied layer of the axiological fund of the compared languages, namely, representatives of the linguistic and cultural concept of mercy, signs of genetic kinship of the studied languages are revealed. According to etymological dictionaries, the nuclear lexeme "cruelty" in the Russian language picture of the world, unlike the English one, shows its specificity, endowing the concept under study with a duality of perception.

This study opens up prospects for the study of the conceptual triad mercy-indifference-cruelty as a reflection of the collective consciousness of the compared societies at the present stage of the development of linguistics, as well as from the point of view of their phraseological activity.