“A Hero of Our Time”: The Discourse Reflection of the “Герой”/ ”Hero” Notion in Slavic Linguo-Ethnic Culture

The authors examine the lexemes included in the semantic group united by a common conceptual meaning and conceptual idea of герой ‘hero’ in the Slavic languages. In historical and cultural terms, the process of transformation of the internal lexical content of such words as Russian герой and богатырь , as well as their equivalents in other Slavic languages, is highlighted. Due to their philosophical, ethnocultural, semantic-pragmatic and functional-stylistic potential, they can be considered discursive concepts that contain important behavioral, moral, philosophical and other foundations that form the general conceptual sphere of world culture; such concepts are formed over centuries due to the national extralinguistic features of each individual ethnic entity. Based on the material of Slavic languages, the etymological and semantic development of these words and their meanings is demonstrated, and their conceptuality in language and culture against a pan-European background is briefly presented. At the same time, both the general and nationalspecific aspects in understanding and interpreting the basic concepts expressed by these lexemes are shown.