Representation of the discursive meanings of the concept 'school’ in popular songs

Based on the material of song lyrics of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods (the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century) considered as supertext, the paper reveals the ways of speech representation of the idea of school in Russian mass culture and analyzes the significant cognitive and discursive features of the concept school. Some of these features (school as an educational institution, school as a building, school as a collective) have been found to correlate with the common language components of the semantics of the corresponding lexeme as presented in lexicographic definitions. Other features (school as the time of childhood, school as the time of first love, school as a place to find friends, school as a special world, school as home, etc.) are determined by the functioning of this concept in particular speech practice - the discourse of mass songs about school in different musical styles and genres (Soviet estrada song, socalled author song, school lyric song, pop, rock, rap songs, etc.). The mass culture of the second half of the 20th and the early 21st centuries is characterized by stereotyping of the ideas of school, which is conditioned by the fact that: first, most of the songs are dedicated to the standard events of school life (First Bell, graduation party, Knowledge Day, Teacher’s Day, class reunion, etc.); second, the target audience of songs about school is, as a rule, limited by age (children, teenagers, young people who are graduating or have graduated from school recently). Based on the previously unexplored material, the paper describes the evolution of the perception of school in the mass consciousness. The study deepens the understanding of the linguistic, cognitive and discursive peculiarities of the concept school as one of the socially significant fragments of the Russian- language worldview.