The thematic network on study of world image of the indigenous people of the North could contribute to eliciting the specific and common features of the world image as seen by the Northern people who are united by similar landscape and traditional ways of life. As a special method of metering and defining a linguistic identity, associative dictionary helps to figure out the nucleus of the liguistic consciousness, thus, the world image. This fact is a very interesting and special one because it can help to diagnose the condition of linguistic consciousness and the indigenous languages’ status (e.g. Yukagir, Chukchi, Eveni, Evenki languages). Such method can also be used for making recommendations on how to optimize cross-cultural communiction and at preveting some cross ethnical conflicts.
The Sakha State University has been working on “the Sakha people world image” research project since 2005, supported by the State Russian Humanitarian Fond grant. In 2006 the similar research has been strated with the Yukagir language. It is further planned to make associative dictionaries on Eveni, Evenki and Chukchi languages.
This research work unites the Yakutsk State University (network leader), the Institute of Indigenous on Problems Peoples of the North (Yakutsk), the Institute of Linguistics of Russian Academy of Siences (Psycholinguistics and Theory of communication sector, Moscow), the Institue of Peoples of the North of the Russian State University named after Hertzen (Saint-Petersburg). Colleagues from the University of Helsinki (Finland ) and the University of Greenland expressed an interest in comparing the world image of indigenous peoples of Yakutia with that of the definitions given by indigenous peoples in Finland and in Greenland about themselves.
The thematic network makes it possible to spread the results of the research among interested members of the Uarctic. Within the network it will be possible to conduct such research among peoples all over the Circumpolar North, which will contribute to develop mutual understanding among the Arctic nations and to intergate the scientific results into the Uarctic’s educational process.