Pan-Art Pedagogy. Theory & Practice Philology. Theory & Practice Manuscript

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ISSUE:    Philology. Theory & Practice. 2025. Volume 18. Issue 6
COLLECTION:    Theory of Language

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LANGUAGE SENSITIVITY: determination of the concept content

Tatyana Alexandrovna Martynova
St. Petersburg State University

Elena Vladimirovna Orlova
St. Petersburg State University

Dmitriy Anatolievich Vinitskiy
“Knowledge Lab” LLC, Moscow
Submitted: June 25, 2025
Abstract. For the first time the concept LANGUAGE SENSITIVITY (LS) emerged in linguistic research at the end of the 50s of the last century. Over the last decade this concept has been attracting the attention of researchers and instructors in the field of social sciences. The aim of this study is to determine the content of the concept LANGUAGE SENSITIVITY by describing its characteristics and specifying the attributes of SENSITIVITY. The scientific novelty of this study lies in describing and summarizing the revealed characteristics of the emerging concept LS based on the interpretations in the English-language publications, as well as in identifying four distinct attributes of SENSITIVITY as a core component of LS. The article provides the authors’ original conceptualization of LS based on the theory of viewing language as a social practice and proposes the research agenda for further studies of the concept. The results of the research show three main characteristics of LS, namely, a deliberate choice of words by the speaker who takes into account the needs and interests of other participants; the ability of a language-sensitive individual to critically analyze the context of communication by recognizing (in)appropriate behavior; a non-confrontational communication when every participant feels satisfied with the outcomes of communication. The study identified four attributes of SENSITIVITY in the course of the concept analysis after the methodology offered by Walker and Avant: (1) perception and reaction of an entity to a stimulus; (2) relatedness to variations; (3) detection of slight changes; (4) a property which characterizes an entity’s ability.
Key words and phrases:
концепт ЯЗЫКОВАЯ СЕНСИТИВНОСТЬ
концепт СЕНСИТИВНОСТЬ
определение концепта ЯЗЫКОВАЯ СЕНСИТИВНОСТЬ
характеристики концепта ЯЗЫКОВАЯ СЕНСИТИВНОСТЬ
признаки концепта СЕНСИТИВНОСТЬ
concept LANGUAGE SENSITIVITY
concept SENSITIVITY
definition of the concept LANGUAGE SENSITIVITY
characteristics of the concept LANGUAGE SENSITIVITY
attributes of the concept SENSITIVITY
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