The transformation of the concept БОГ (GOD) in the Russian linguistic consciousness

The study aims to identify the patterns underlying the transformation of the concept БОГ (GOD) in the linguistic consciousness of respondents with different types of religious socialization through a comparative analysis of associative fields obtained in a free association experiment. The article examines the associative field of the stimulus word “Бог”, elicited through a free verbal association experiment conducted among students at secular and religiously affiliated higher education institutions. Within a cognitive-discursive framework, five vectors of conceptual transformation are identified and analyzed: “Canon”, “Depersonalization”, “Sacralization of the Immanent”, “Subjectivization”, and “Desacralization of Form”. The scientific novelty lies in the first description and quantitative measurement, based on associative-experiment data, of the transformation indices of the concept БОГ depending on respondents’ type of religious socialization. The study establishes that, among respondents with institutional religious socialization, the concept retains a monocentric canonical structure. In the linguistic consciousness of respondents who do not consider themselves religious, it acquires a polycentric and fragmented character, with markers of formal desacralization and internal hybridization of discursive codes prevailing.