Sphere of moral concepts in research discourse on ecology: a contrastive study (the English, German and Russian languages)

The paper focuses on the problem of moral space in research discourse. Definitions of morality and moral values are discussed, a review of previous linguistic research into moral values is done, a list of universal and culture-specific moral concepts made on the basis of linguistic analysis is offered. The choice of integral approach as an optimal method for the purpose of study is proved. A basic integral model for the sphere of moral concepts is proposed. The results of the contrastive study of the sphere of moral concepts in research discourse on ecology in three corpora of English, German and Russian texts are given. The universal integral model for the sphere of moral concepts in research discourse on ecology with its three culture-specific variants is offered. Possible reasons for variation are discussed. Perspectives of further research are outlined.