Negative concepts in hearing and hearing-impaired teens’ mind

The paper presents the method for identifying the level of concept awareness and the level of moral competence based on experimental data obtained during the survey of hearing and hearing impaired teenagers. The author carries out the componential analysis of dictionary definitions and the teenagers’ responses and identifies those semes in the teenagers’ responses, which coincide with the semes of dictionary definitions. To calculate the levels accordingly to the mentioned method, the mathematical formula and the percentage scale proposed are given, including three levels: high, medium and low to be interpreted. The level of awareness of the moral concept is tied with the individual’s ability to give an interpretation of the concept close to the dictionary definition. The level of moral competence is determined by the individual’s ability to assess somebody’s action according to the analogical moral concept. The processed results show that teenagers are not always aware of concepts in terminological use and substitute one concept with another. The author reveals low levels of concept awareness and moral competence on the developed percentage scale, as well as the teenagers’ inability to evaluate somebody’s action in correlation with the same concept. To analyze the process of concepts substitution, the correspondence table has been worked out, which includes, on the one hand, the main semes of concepts studied and semes of synonymous concepts presented, and on the other hand, the analogical feelings/emotions as those mentioned in psychology. Such a representation of moral concepts and their equivalents in the form of feelings allows us to find out the very feelings respondents describe, as well as the cases of concepts substitution. Linguistic and psychological concept correspondences presented by hearing and hearing-impaired teenagers are discussed and compared.