Semantic space of reality: structural taxonomy of the foundations of self-regulation of interactions in the youth environment

In the course of sustainable development of a society its parameters are maintained within a certain range by the younger generation; this ensures the continuity of self-regulation patterns. But in socio-cultural dynamics, experience is not only reproduced, but also reinterpreted; as a result, different socio-cultural patterns related to the markers of different historical periods emerge in the space of young people’s concepts and meanings. In accordance with the “correlation” between young people’s experience and certain meanings, socio-cultural samples are selected, which serve as the basis for the reality images and the way young people interact with each other and with society. As a result, interactions that are similar in form are filled with different meanings, and the meanings themselves undergo transformation and in a new and altered form serve as the basis for self-regulation of social interactions.

The formation of the semantic space of reality is accompanied by cognition, comprehension and mastering of reality. The key place in this process belongs to the subjective interpretation of objects, events and phenomena of reality, i.e., endowing them with special concepts and meanings. The meaning contains young people’s understanding of the essence of everything that fills their life and at the same time acts as a “discrete impulse of a special kind of intentionality” [1]. This implies that the meanings that have been formed as representations of the essence of real objects and their significance for life penetrate into the structure of motivation of life activity, where they take the form of values. In turn, values – ideas about meanings formed in the collective consciousness of young people – fill interactions with the content of world outlook.

The cognition of reality and the construction of meanings take place not only in the everyday interactions of young people with each other, but also in intergenerational communication. In turn, the subjective understanding of meaning serves as the basis for self-regulation of young people’s social interactions (both in the youth environment and in society as a whole), giving a meaningful orientation to group and interpersonal interactions.

The sources that shape meanings include, on the one hand, historical experience in the form of historical memory as a product of socio-cultural development of society contained in the collective unconscious; on the other hand, young people’s specific living conditions, in which they obtain life experience and in which their socialization takes place. The interaction of these meanings reflects both differentiation and syncretism, so the differentiation of meanings and their carriers is accompanied by an even more complex process of layering different patterns in the minds of the same groups. Since fundamental changes do not occur simultaneously, there are different, often contradictory, concepts and meanings in the semantic space of reality.

Understanding the formation of meanings and the content of semantic space requires an in-depth study of the mechanisms that form semantic projections; this is associated with an answer to one of the key questions about the interaction of unconscious and conscious, social and cultural, traditional and modern elements within the mechanism of social self-regulation.

Methodology

When analyzing young people’s semantic space, its formation and further influence on the self-regulation of interactions we use a holistic approach that takes into account various elements of the self-regulation mechanism – archetypal, mental, habitual and stereotypical components, meaning-of-life values, types of culture, and trust in other people.

Structural and taxonomic modeling was used to analyze the meanings and identify the functions of elements of the mechanism in the structuring of the semantic space of young people’s reality [2; 3, pp. 87–94; 4, pp. 95–98; 5, pp. 147–152]. It allows us to understand the process of meaning formation and semantic self-regulation and to identify its features that are not easily identified with the help of standard research methods.

The method of structural and taxonomic analysis (modeling) is a set of formalized procedures for hierarchical clustering or automatic classification; procedures for structural and taxonomic interpretation of the obtained partitions; structures of the most significant (according to the criterion of “maximum proximity”) relationships between the image parameters (“subjects”) and between the selected taxa (semantic groupings/associations). The significance of meanings is determined by calculating the closeness of the relationship between the indicators. The algorithms allow us to identify automatically the elements closest to each other by a sufficiently large number of parameters and group these elements into natural taxa classes. Thus, the meanings corresponding to the elements are not distributed randomly, but are arranged in a certain hierarchy in accordance with the values of the proximity measure selected. In this sense, each taxon defines a subspace for a specific semantic field, and in the aggregate, the semantic fields corresponding to the resulting taxa, considered in their relationship with each other, form the structure of semantic space (groupings of taxa).

The results of the first experience of taxonomic analysis contained initial data on the semantic fields corresponding to the selected taxa, and an analysis of the correlation of these taxa with specific manifestations of youth self-organization [6, pp. 15–35; 7, pp. 59–75]. In the present article, we focus on the key features of the semantic space of reality, which are the grounds for self-regulation of young people’s interactions with those around them1.

Image elements that present the main parts of the mechanism of self-regulation of young people’s life activity developed by the Center for Youth Sociology of ISPR RAS were used as image elements (“subjects” in the contingency table) [8; 9, pp. 14–19; 10, pp. 164–186; 11, p. 48; 12]: archetypes identified on the basis of the proverbs with which young people agree and which contain samples of the collective unconscious; mental (traditional) and modern features of worldview attitudes that are directly related to the specific features of national character and that are noted by young people as features of their own generation ; the meanings of life as an understanding of its essential dominant; types of culture constructed on the basis of P.A. Sorokin’s approach; meanings that arise within the framework of youth subcultures and that are the main principles of intra-and inter-group interactions; habitus as established behavioral practices; basic trust/distrust in others.

The normalized Euclidean metric was used as a measure of proximity. The image elements representing young people’s semantic space were divided into natural (previously undefined) taxa classes according to the “nearest neighbor” method (maximum proximity criterion) in a sevendimensional coordinate system defined by the features of young people’s attitude toward others.

In contrast to the Pearson correlation coefficient, which represents one of the angular proximity measures in the structural taxonomy that allows us to obtain structural distributions of image elements by the criterion of maximum proximity in orientation , grouping by the criterion of the smallest Euclidean distance between image elements makes it possible to divide the entire set of images directly by their metric proximity in a multidimensional characteristical space.

The semantic space of reality: structure and dynamics

The fundamental basis of meanings includes the archetypal and mental components of culture that contain a generalized image of the past2 and reflect national specifics of organization of the life of people who were socialized within the framework of a common culture and territory [12; 13]. This is “a way of people’s perception and evaluation of their surrounding world, their way of thinking and feeling, which has a supra-situational character and manifests itself in their specific behavioral activity” [14]. Archetypes are present in the collective unconscious in the form of myths, sayings, fairy tales. Being passed down from generation to generation, they participate in the formation of the “core” of people’s firm ideas about themselves and the social world. According to Ya.E. Golosovker, archetypal elements represent a set of “semantic images of culture” [15]. They shape ideas about events and phenomena in the form of the unconscious, when they are not yet subjected to conscious reflection, but are the object of experience. Semantic images play an important role in people’s search for the meaning of their life, ways of arranging it, highlighting its main goals and means of achieving them.

Archetypal and mental patterns reflect the ways of understanding associated with broad layers of culture. Being enshrined in stable images of reality (stereotypes) and habitual social practices (habitus), they turn into an active behavioral form. The “practical meaning” that determines the content of habitus reflects people’s past experience, connects it with the present and becomes an integral part of their life activity. A stereotype as a simplified image of the attitude toward certain objects is used to classify them and refer them to a certain meaning. Based on cliches and template representations, a stereotype levels the details of the images of reality, reducing the meaning to a “frame” or a “contour”. As the products of socialization, stereotypes are formed as mechanisms for identifying “insiders” (“us”) and “outsiders” (“them”). Common simplified images and ready-to-use behavioral attitudes based on historical and current experience affect the emotional perception of reality.

Acting as a product of joint activity, meanings are felt emotionally as the closeness and similarity of views and ideas about reality, which are shared with other people. Along with the comprehension of the common reality, awareness of involvement in the same events and phenomena, and most importantly, their similar interpretation, the sensations that people experience move to the conscious level. Conscious meanings are given an axiological value; they are transformed into effective regulators of consciousness and behavior. Thus, a semantic space of reality is formed, in which the meanings themselves, the objects that are endowed with the meanings, and the carriers of these meanings – individuals and groups –interact. Space is a form of existence of both objective and subjective worlds, “a fundamental ... concept of human thinking that reflects the multiple nature of the existence of the world, its heterogeneity. A multitude of things and objects, existing in human perception simultaneously, forms a complex spatial image of the world, which is a necessary condition for the orientation of any human activity”³.

Rational, irrational, and emotional impressions about objects, actors, events and phenomena of the material and spiritual world are perceived by people on the basis of a stable meaning or an idea, which is embedded in them4. At the same time, the image, once in a certain context, is able to generate meanings. But the meanings that already exist in this context, in turn, generate images that do not necessarily prove viable.

In the process of socialization, young people “master and appropriate” meanings⁵. The set of subjective images of reality formed in the process of interaction of individuals and groups with each other and with the environment, included in the process of self-regulation, constitutes a semantic space of reality .

Semantic space consists of many social fields, each of which is understood as “the unity of meanings and concepts, processes and results of the cognitive-discursive activity of an individual and society” [16]. A semantic field is a construct, a set of meanings and their interrelations in a multidimensional context space.

In the process of interaction between the environment and the individual, and between the individual and culture, collectively developed meanings are translated into personal concepts, and concepts are translated into meanings”, while “meanings are subjectified, and concepts are objectified” [16, p. 321]. The meaning is considered not as a “static finished product”, but as a result of the process of its construction and reconstruction, which is due to the real life relationships of the actor and his/her individual practice.

Considering semantic fields as ways of functioning of meanings and relying on the work of psychologists and linguists (D.A. Leontiev, A.V. Kravchenko, Y. Zlatev, etc.), N.I. Kurganova writes the following: “Meanings are constructed by actors and at the same time ... are directed through collectively developed meanings.... Due to the continuous interaction of collective and individual knowledge, the semantic field is constantly updated in its various components and aspects, while maintaining a certain stable core , which is a set of the most typical and regularly reproduced strategies, schemes, models and cognitive operations. This operational core sets the dynamics of the semantic field and underlies the formation of shared knowledge. It follows from this that the essence of the development of culture is reduced ... to mastering the ways of understanding the world in accordance with cultural models”.

As a result, “being united by the commonality of language, space and time, people develop a common set of ways of acting with the world, i.e., ways of meaning formation that are regularly reproduced in the processes of cognition and communication” [16, p. 322].

Value systems, according to P.A. Sorokin, determine the semantic content of life activity and serve as the basis for classifying the semantic space of reality. “Each of the large cultural systems and super-systems is based on ... a pra-symbol or final value that a civilization generates, develops and implements throughout its life path in all its main components or subsystems” [17, p. 48]. According to P.A. Sorokin, integral cultural super-systems reflect basic semantic projections typical of many societies [18, p. 431]. The basic types of culture contain stable concepts with a set of fundamental values that are at the center of the thesaurus of most carriers of this culture. They are not realized, but “pop up in the form of ideas about certain problems or objects, encouraging people to perform actions, determining their orientation and predetermining the perception of the world” [19, p. 11]. Being the connecting threads between society and the younger generation, the basic types of culture influence its interactions.

However, despite the general similarity, basic types of culture differ not only in the degree of expression of their corresponding values, but also in the meaning that is invested in them from one epoch to another, from society to society, from one group to another. As a result of the new experience and the “new time” there emerge new contexts and new social interactions; they force the younger generation to reconsider the concepts and meanings of familiar phenomena. Different semantic fields are formed, in which the features of intra-group interactions of young people who are growing up/ socializing in modern society are transformed into characteristic features of the generation. The formation of such fields is a function of youth subcultures, in which “social reality is constructed and redesigned” [20, p. 8]. Together, basic and modern cultural types are elements of the semantic space of the younger generation and regulators of their interactions.

The modern semantic space of reality is formed under the influence of significant globalization and at the same time holds and contains the projections of local cultures with their recognizable traditional content. “The past is reinterpreted so as to satisfy the current reality” [21, p. 263]. In this regard, basic meanings are supplemented and expanded, new types of culture appear on their basis: adaptive culture (the value of security and self-preservation), hedonistic culture (the value of pleasure and impressions), the culture of moral anomie (the value of emancipation and independence). In a broader sense, they are reflected in the change in the general semantic vector identified by R. Inglehart [22, p. 347] as a shift from survival (“material”) to self-expression (“post-material”), from religious spirituality to secular rationality, from traditionalism to modernity.

However, in reality, this process leads to the coexistence of traditional and modern models with their characteristic meanings. Based on their combination, value structures are formed that reflect the local and global, traditional and modern, value and rational [23, pp. 173–189]. The phenomenon of socio-cultural hybridization of models of projective perception⁶ and structuring of social reality [3; 4; 5] is manifested in the youth environment as one of its main features.

Taxonomic analysis of semantic configurations

Structural and taxonomic modeling was used to classify main indicators of the semantic space [24]. The table of contingency of indicators of the semantic space of Russian youth, built on the results of a specific sociological study conducted in 2017, served as the initial information model. The normalized Euclidean metric was used as a measure of proximity; 48 indicators of the mechanism of self-regulation of young people’s life activity (“subjects” in the contingency table) were selected as image elements that define the semantic space of Russian youth; seven features of selforganization of young people (“predicates” in the contingency table) served as the basis that defines the context7.

The whole set of image elements representing the semantic space of Russian youth was divided in a seven-dimensional coordinate system, set by the basic features of youth self-organization, into previously unknown, so-called “natural” classes (taxa) according to the “nearest neighbor” method (maximum proximity criterion).

The image elements were grouped according to the criterion of the smallest Euclidean distance in a multidimensional characteristical space.

The result of the taxonomy of the first level of image indicators is 13 taxa that reflect the structure of relationships between the indicators of the mechanism of self-regulation of young people’s life activity in the space of the context of selforganization. The resulting structural map, in fact, is a representation of the semantic space of the life activity of Russian youth in 2017.

Taxa have their own semantic configuration. Each taxon is represented by a core, at least. Some have a more complex, multi-layered structure that represents semantic complexes.

The core of the taxon has the greatest expression and influence on self-regulation. It defines the main meaning of interaction, and additional layers expand this meaning.

Along with the analysis of the meanings that determine/define the semantic space of youth consciousness, taxonomic analysis shows the localization and roles of all elements of the self-regulation mechanism considered in their interrelation in the structural hierarchy, providing an opportunity to see in what combinations (sometimes unexpected ones) they manifest themselves, and, accordingly, to construct reasonable hypotheses on their interaction with each other.

When conducting the taxonomy of the second level, taxa can be combined into groups, forming semantic fields with a more complex structure. In this analysis, at the second level of division, three groups of taxa – Group A, Group B and Group C – were identified . Each group has its own core and its own layers. The number of taxa included in the groups and the number of layers in different groups is not set in advance; rather, “natural” group classes (taxa of the second level of division) are allocated. In them, not only the semantic configuration is even more clearly traced, but also the meaning of a concept or a group of concepts in their

Distribution of semantic configurations

Group “А” Taxa Core (first layer) Layer structure of images (second layer and above) Taxon 1 spiritual culture + “idealization of the past” (archetype) honor, dignity (mental trait) love for one’s neighbor (mental trait) trust in others adaptive culture hedonistic culture love for one’s motherland (mental trait) aproactive approach to life (habitus) Taxon 2 constancy (habitus) + predictability (habitus) good (archetype) mercy, compassion (mental trait) Taxon 3 moral anomie (type of culture) + feeling of being chosen, exclusivity (subculture) desire to be in the center of attention, to shock others (subculture) Core of Group “А” Taxon 4 glory (archetype) + love (meaning-of-life value) conscience (archetype) the “us –them” confrontation (stereotype) Taxon 5 kindness (archetype) + compassion (modern trait) desire to defend human rights (modern trait) sensuality (habitus) Taxon 6 physical development (type of culture) + self-expression, desire to be different from others (subculture) innovativeness (type of culture) Group “B” Core of Group “B” Taxon 7 attitude toward the country as a place of residence (modern trait) + faith in the savior (archetype) --- Taxon 8 protest against officialism (subculture) + openness to everything foreign (modern trait) freedom without restrictions (subculture) Taxon 9 rationalism (modern trait) + guilt and obedience (archetype) --- Taxon 10 quiet, comfortable life (meaning-of-life value) + retreat into oneself, escapism (subculture) suspicious attitude toward foreigners (mental trait) self-realization (meaning-of-life value) Group “C” Core of Group “C” Taxon 11 pursuit of truth (meaning-of-life value) + rightness of power (archetype) continuation of oneself in future generations (meaning-of-life value) struggle for justice (meaning-of-life value) Taxon 12 prudence (habitus) + risk (habitus) change (habitus) Taxon 13 distrust (attitude) + passive life position (habitus) political struggle (meaning-of-life value) Source: own compilation. structural hierarchy. The distribution of semantic configurations is presented in the Table.

The core of Group A – its most significant part – consists of Taxa 4 and 5. The table shows that they are a combination of traditional and modern semantic projections, thereby reflecting the phenomenon of hybridization and cultural mix discussed above. The archetype of glory nourishes the meaning-of-life value of love, and the archetype of kindness – compassion as a modern form of sympathy for others. These semantic combinations are strengthened by the archetype of conscience as an internal ability for moral reflection, supplemented and expanded by sensuality as the basis of interactions, and embodied in the desire to defend human rights as a modern value. It is noteworthy that human rights as a modern value, compassion as a modern trait, and the archetype of good fall into one taxon, and therefore into one semantic field. This combination indicates the specifics of formation of modern features of social interactions that are closely related to the deep layers of culture, which go down into the collective unconscious, so their strengthening is not always due to the destruction of traditional values. For example, strengthening takes place in the case of human rights. The same conclusion can be drawn by tracing the logic of the connection between the archetype of kindness and modern compassion. The desire to defend human rights is an active embodiment of the regulatory influence of this set of humanistic meanings.

However, for all the humanistic orientation of this semantic field, it contains a meaning that somewhat balances its refinement, introducing an element of struggle. This is a stereotype of the “us – them” confrontation. Its presence in the mechanism of self-regulation of interactions ensures the operation of a socio-cultural “filter” equipped with the “insiders” and “outsiders” markers, i.e. a set of features that are attributed to one and the other. The evaluation criterion is “conscience”, i.e. the judgment is “according to one’s conscience”, and on this basis there is a separation of “insiders” from “outsiders”; thus, one cannot count on the same manifestation of humanism to all. Previous studies have clearly shown that the border between “us” and “them” in Russian society, including the younger generation, runs along the line that separates the carriers of traditional attitudes (collectivism, compliance with norms, belonging to one nationality) from the carriers of modern ones (violation of norms, individualism, striving for enrichment, belonging to another nationality). Depending on these correlations, the issue related to showing compassion and recognizing rights is resolved, so the difference in the thesaurus leads to non-compliance with the requirement to respect the rights of like-minded people and opponents equally. This is especially evident in the political field of Russian reality.

Next, the layers of Group A were arranged as follows: Taxon 3 is located on the second level; Taxon 2 – on the third level; Taxon 1 – on the fourth level; Taxon 6 – on the fifth level. Let us consider what meanings were included in the general field.

Taxon 3 , which has a high degree of manifestation, consists entirely of modern meanings. The core of Taxon 3 contains moral anomie as a special type of culture generated by the destruction of normativity; it also contains a sense of being the chosen one and a sense of exclusivity as the most important subcultural marker.

The semantic basis of moral anomie is, first, emancipation raised to the highest value and understood as liberation from any form of restriction, the right not to obey anyone and anything, while constructing one’s own system of moral norms and at the same time not raising any of them to the rank of an imperative. Second, moral anomie is based on the assertion of the right to legitimize any otherness, and third, on the reinterpretation of deviation as a new normality.

Emancipation and moral anomie emerged in the wake of rapid liberalization; they established themselves in the middle generation and earned the status of a modern, but, rather, basic type of culture. The abandonment of deviation and the emergence of a new normality are products of modern times; therefore, they are mainly a youth phenomenon.

The feeling of being chosen, exclusivity – the second element from the core of the taxon – expands this meaning, and the desire to be in the center of attention and shock others concretizes the forms of implementation in social interactions.

Thus, Taxon 3 was built entirely on modern meanings, one part of which is connected with the modern basic culture, and the other two parts are connected with modern youth culture.

Taxon 2 , which is located further on, represents an organic semantic unity of two habitus – constancy and predictability – and the archetype of good. Moreover, the core of the taxon is formed by a practical meaning, and the extension – by an archetypal meaning. This semantic unity results from the basic orientation of young people toward stability, which has been of considerable importance since the late 1990s. This attitude was strengthened and consolidated under the impact of a difficult life experience of previous generations of young people, who lived through a series of economic, political, international, military and other crises. The habitus of constancy and predictability – the “thesaurus mechanism for stabilizing the sociodynamics of culture” [25] – is today perceived as a result of “practical reason” and as a compensatory mechanism that ensures stabilization of life situations at the individual, personal and group levels. This semantic field is formed in contrast to uncertainty, unpredictability and risk as an immanent component of reality in Russian society.

The meaning inherent in the habitus of constancy is expanded by the meaning contained in the archetype of good, and thereby receives political justification. It is not connected with any of the meanings that can be interpreted as conformity or loyalty to the regime, but is associated with an unconscious belief in good, which speaks in favor of this motivation as able to relieve tension in social interactions.

The next two lower layers of Group A represent Taxon 1 and Taxon 6 . The core of Taxon 1 is a semantic unity formed by the spiritual type of culture and the archetype of idealization of the past.

Taxon 1 is represented mainly by the dominant of traditional meanings, supported by high moral aspirations for the highest meanings of good, love, honor, dignity, mercy and compassion, love for one’s neighbor and for one’s motherland, a respectful attitude toward the country’s past and its history. The fact that most of these meanings represent archetypal and mental features gives them stability and corresponding intentionality.

Taxon 1 unites spiritual culture and the archetype of idealization of the past. Their interaction is generated by the type of spirituality that is not just covered by traditional attitude toward the country, respect for its culture, historical past and achievements, but is enshrined at the level of the collective unconscious. In such a semantic combination, spirituality itself is expressed through historical memory, which, in turn, forms the “moral climate” (D.S. Likhachev). If we understand spirituality as the highest level of self-regulation, at which the main motivational and semantic regulators of life activity are supra-individual values, then in combination with the archetype of idealization of the past, it can be a source of higher meanings of kindness, love, belonging and solidarity in the broader context of social interactions. On their basis, sources of consolidation of youth and society can emerge. The core of this taxon is enshrined in the following mental features: love for the motherland and one’s neighbor, honor and dignity. Russian philosophy and literature consider these features as the reflection of the “Russian soul”. The connection between these elements and basic trust indicates that they act as its criteria. This conclusion is confirmed by previous studies, according to which the groups that show the very mental traits we have named and that constitute the core of Taxon 1 enjoy the greatest trust among young people

This semantic configuration is manifested in the relationship with the adaptive and hedonistic culture. The connection with the adaptive culture as a life in the mode of economy and saving can be explained by the vulnerability of young people in a purely pragmatic modern world. Being oriented toward spiritual values and slightly “vintage” against the background of modern cynicism, they are forced to adapt and survive. However, the presence of a connection with a hedonistic culture in the taxon gives this refined spiritual image a completely modern flow. It is the connection with the culture of pleasure and impressions that does not allow us to interpret this semantic field only as the realm of selflessness and asceticism. This symbiosis suggests that the minds of young people contain both traditional and modern attitudes, which are an integral part of the semantic space of reality. The combination of such features, which cannot be explained within the framework of a flat and stereotypical view of young people, should be considered as a manifestation of much more complex connections in the mechanism of selfregulation of life activity. The habitus of an active life position, located in this semantic field, also speaks in favor of this conclusion. As we can see, the highest spiritual values and trust are the basis for its implementation, which gives the activity a reflexive and socially significant character.

Taxon 6, which completes Group A, has at its core a culture of physical development, combined with the need for self-expression and the desire to be different from others. In the expansion of this taxon, there is an innovative type of culture, indicating that young people’s development and self-expression occur through the development of new experiences and a craving for novelty. Taxon 6 clearly reflects characteristic features of the phenomenon of youth subculture.

From the point of view of interaction between the elements of the mechanism of socio-cultural self-regulation, Group A is a group that has a complete set of habitus, one of the meaning-of-life values (“love”), a large archetypal complex (five out of the eight archetypes), the main mental traits (love for the motherland, compassion, honor and dignity, love for one’s neighbor), typical semantic foundations of youth subculture (self-expression, exclusivity, egocentrism and the desire to shock others), a stereotype that feeds the confrontation of “insiders” and “outsiders”, and basic trust . A distinctive feature of this group consists in the fact that traditional spiritual meanings associated with archetypal and mental traits (the core of Group A (Taxon 4, Taxon 5) and Taxon 1) proved more pronounced than modern ones (Taxon 6).

The next group of taxa (Group B) has three layers. The core of the group (the first layer) consists of Taxon 7 and Taxon 8; Taxon 9 is located in the second layer, and Taxon 10 is located in the third one.

In the core of Group B , the collective unconscious and modern liberal motives in various forms, including anarchic countercultural protest, were combined into one semantic field. Thus, modern pragmatic attitude toward the country as a place of residence is combined here with an archetypal belief in the savior , and the subcultural protest against officialism is driven by the modern idea of openness to everything foreign as a modern feature and the same subcultural desire for freedom without restrictions .

Taxon 9 reflects a highly pragmatic combination of the modern feature of rationalism with the archetype of guilt and obedience. It is obvious that the manifestation of obedience expressed by loyalty and submission is the result of historical experience imprinted deeply in the structure of the collective unconscious. It manifests itself at the level of the genetic program of self-preservation as a voluntary rejection of subjectivity, because “it’s more trouble than it is worth”. Thus, the semantic field of Group B creates the basis for passivity both as an unconscious attitude and as a conscious rational strategy.

The core of Taxon 10 in its core is a combination of the meaning-of-life value of a quiet, comfortable life with a subcultural orientation toward escapism, “retreat into oneself”, expanded by one of the key meaning-of-life values of young people – the desire for self-realization. This combination of meanings indicates a high individualization at its basis. Retreat into oneself in this context means isolation aimed at solving individual life tasks, when any social participation is considered as a distraction from the main thing and an obstacle to self-realization. The position of isolation is reinforced by suspicion of everything foreign – manifestation of a mental trait. It emerges at the second level of this taxon.

Thus, in Group B , which consists of four taxa, the core of the semantic field determines the interaction of archetypal basic values and modern semantic attitudes; the interaction is supplemented and expanded by their connection with traditional mental and modern subcultural meanings. Pragmatism, but also trust; cosmopolitanism, but also caution, obedience and faith in the “patron”, but also protest against officialdom, freedom without borders, orientation toward well-being and self-realization, but also retreat into oneself – this is a contradictory set of complementary semantic attitudes that reflect this part of young people’s semantic space.

Group C, located at the next level, includes three taxa: Taxon 11 and Taxon 12, which constitute the core of Group C, and Taxon 13. The semantic field of this group is also ambiguous. At its core is the meaning-of-life value of striving for truth, which is understood as striving for a generalized ideal, combined with an archetypal belief in the rightness of power (the core of Taxon 11), supplemented by meaning-of-life values such as the continuation of oneself in one’s children and the struggle for justice, as well as the consistent interaction of two habitual attitudes – prudence and risk (the core of Taxon 12), logically related to the habitus of changes.

The semantic fields that formed the core of the group under consideration indicate an extremely active passionate type of self-regulation: it is practical, ready for changes and risks, but at the same time quite loyal to the authorities, since it perceives their rightness at the level of the collective unconscious (that is , a priori ). This combination of meanings is the most important stabilizing factor in the sphere of socio-political relations. It indicates the existence of a historically established model of relations, in which “mutual benefit leads both the ruler and the people to the same goal” [26, pp. 54–55]. However, it is important to note that in the youth environment, the archetype of the rightness of power itself is the weakest one in comparison with other archetypes, and it balances at the level of uncertainty with a weighted average coefficient slightly higher than four on a seven-point scale. Therefore, this shaky alliance can be broken if the achievement of meaning-of-life values in an alliance with a specific government is put in jeopardy.

Taxon 13 is based on distrust as a life attitude in combination with the habitus of a passive life position, which is supplemented by political struggle as a meaning-of-life value at the second level. Distrust and passivity is a fairly stable combination in youth environment, where distrust of others often plays a major role, and passivity becomes its derivative. The fact that a value such as political struggle is part of this semantic field indicates a high distrust of any political actions; this distrust is firmly set at the level of habitual attitudes. One’s own passivity and habit of not trusting others is converted into suspicion of anyone who somehow participates in the political process and leads to devaluation of their efforts. This circumstance clarifies the attitude of some part of Russians toward protest actions, in which the other part, on the contrary, participates quite actively. In this context, the suspicion of foreigners detected in a neighboring taxon has a similar meaning.

By its composition, Group C is a group of practical meaning based not only on pure experience and established patterns of habitual behavior, as evidenced by the combined habitus, but also meaning-of-life values. Most of the meaning-of-life values indicate the passionate intentionality of this semantic field. The attitude toward change and risk gives it dynamism, and their attitude toward power acts as a significant regulator.

Conclusions

Thus, the semantic space of young people’s reality creates complex configurations of meanings that are far from being obvious. It becomes possible to identify them with the help of more sensitive methods and procedures, in particular, structural and taxonomic analysis. The applied method allows us to see which meanings are regulated by archetypes and mental traits, which meanings – by types of culture and meaning-of-life values, and in which cases habitus and stereotypes dominate.

According to our analysis, both types of semantic projections – traditional and modern – are simultaneously present in the structure of young people’s semantic space. Patterns that are simultaneously associated with archetypal and mental structures, as well as with a new valuebased order, acquire a practical embodiment of self-regulation of social interactions. This means that the combination of traditional and modern meanings is reflected in the value structure of young people and determines their ambiguous reactions to events and phenomena of social reality and influences their choice of specific forms of behavior. With such a combination, it is difficult to expect an unambiguous, predictable reaction of the younger generation to social processes; therefore, if we set the task of identifying more or less pronounced carriers of traditional and modern patterns in young people, then these patterns will rather be conditioned by specific situations in which one or another semantic dominant may manifest itself. In general, we have to state the presence of interaction between different cultural patterns in the cultural space, in the consciousness and models of self-regulation in the youth environment. This conclusion is of fundamental importance for choosing the mode of interaction with young people within the framework of the state youth policy and for understanding ways to reflect the expectations of young people in the state policy.