Representation of the Binary Concepts LIGHT and DARKNESS in the Russian Linguistic Worldview (Based on Social Media Materials from 2015 to 2025)

Purpose. This article presents an analysis of the binary concepts of LIGHT and DARKNESS in the Russian linguistic picture of the world. The study is based on corpus material covering the period from 2015 to 2025. Results. The material used was social networks contexts with lexemes representing the binary concepts of LIGHT and DARKNESS. These contexts were extracted from the subcorpora “Social Networks” within the “National Corpus of the Russian Language”. The main cognitive features of the concepts of LIGHT and DARKNESS were identified by analyzing their core zone, degree of abstraction, opposition in structure and figurative and emotional features. A sample of 2,000 contexts was analyzed for the study. Conclusion. Conclusions are made that the number of cognitive features of the concepts LIGHT and DARKNESS based on contexts is presented in the form of a nuclear zone, a perinuclear zone and a peripheral zone, cognitive features of the concepts LIGHT and DARKNESS with varying degrees of abstraction, features that form oppositions in the structure of the concepts LIGHT and DARKNESS, as well as features of the concepts LIGHT, DARKNESS in specific features. In general, this research is innovative and has a developmental impact on the study of linguistic culture. It is also the basis for cross-cultural research and multilingual comparative research.