Modeling the associative-verbal field of the category "friend"

The article attempts to model the associative-verbal field of a member of the opposition "friend or foe", the category "friend", based on the results of a free associative experiment with 190 subjects. In modern realities, the question of the need to build a dialogue between cultures and understand the archetypal ideas embedded in the minds of a person and an ethnic community is particularly acute. A special place in the understanding of reality today is occupied by the category of “friend or foe”, which is the deep core of the culture and mentality of both the nation and the individual. This is one of the basic cultural and psychological categories, fundamental for the development of an ethnos, allowing an individual to structure the space and determine the properties of the objects located in it in relation to himself or his personal space. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that in modern conditions of increasing trends of globalization, integration and multiculturalism, it is necessary to further study the opposition "friend or foe" as a special way of categorizing reality. An analysis of the actualization of the category "friend" in the linguistic consciousness of native speakers of the Russian language allows us to develop and present the image of a person who most appreciates people close in blood and spirit who live with him on the same territory. The material obtained during the free associative experiment is systematized into semantic modules representing the elements of the associative-verbal field. A free associative experiment allows you to establish psychological connections between words, to determine their subjective significance for native speakers.