“SIBERIA” concept in the consciousness of representatives of American linguistic сulture

Nowadays positioning of a region became a very important target of the research for many specialists in different fields: economics, PR, sociology, political science, linguistics, etc. Regional place branding has been an issue for all major spheres of the scientific and mass-media discourse lately. The attention is focused on strong interrelations of the image of different regions with image of Russia on the whole. Russia can be considered as some kind of a jigsaw puzzle consisting of a number of compact models of the geographic space, which are located in the consciousness of representatives of different nationalities and form the image of our country. At present the most part of negative stereotypes concerning Russia is connected with one of its largest regions – Siberia. The concept of “Siberia” is constructed to detect the specificity of Siberia perception image by the representatives of English speaking community, and to define its image-building potential. 200 representatives of English speaking community were questioned and the following conclusions were made: foreigners perceive Siberia not only as a region rich in natural resources (including flora and fauna), but also as a land inapplicable for tourism and even living (cold, empty territory). There is also a favorable tendency for the negative image of Siberia, formed during the “Cold War”, to change and become more positive.

linguoconceptology, concept, frame, branding of a territory, Siberia