Scientific journal

Advances in current natural sciences

ISSN 1681-7494

"Перечень" ВАК

ИФ РИНЦ = 0,775

The joint use of food is a universal phenomenon that exists in different cultures: simple and complex, ancient and modern. The urgent need to study this phenomenon lies in the fact that without it one cannot grasp the fundamental principles of lifestyle, features of national-ethnic outlook and mentality. Feast is one of the basic rituals in each culture which embodies important values reflected in its functions. We believe a communicative function of a feast to be the main as a feast represent a special form of communication. When people gather together around the table they exchange the information and their feelings in a special atmosphere. Cultural values of feast in different countries sometimes coincide, but for all the similarities, the specific cultural content of the feast is different. To prove this hypothesis we conducted an experiment which involved 100 informants, of which there were 50 Russians, 50 the Chinese, aged from 17 to 40 years old. The Russian survey participants were asked to choose from the proposed concepts only three, which, in their opinion, characterize the word «feast» the most clearly, and arrange them in a decreasing order, from the most suitable to the least suitable. The results are as following: an evening party – 70 % of choices, a drinking bout – 60 %, a banquet – 56 %, a meeting – 48 %, a reception – 34 %, a joint use of food – 20 %, a food intake – 12 %. So we can conclude that the Russians perceive feast not as a daily process of eating, but as an event on a special occasion, which must necessarily include alcohol, since 19 out of 50 respondents put the concept of «banquet» in the first place, and 14 considered the word «drinking bout» to be the closest in meaning. While composing a questionnaire for the Chinese we faced a certain difficulty as it was impossible to find a vernacular word similar to the Russian «пьянка», that is why we decided to use a word «an evening party». Based on the results of this survey, we can infer that the Chinese don’t perceive «feast» as an official event either, because they also connect feast with alcohol drinking as their hieroglyph for «feast» consists of two parts – wine, alcoholic beverages and mat, place. Besides it coincides in one of its meaning with the word «a banquet». The results we got are: a banquet – 90 % of choices, a joint use of food – 86 %, a reception – 76 %, a meeting – 24 %, an evening party – 14 %, a food intake – 10 %. The fact that 39 Chinese correspondents put «a banquet» and 6 of them put «a reception» above all other synonyms proves that the Chinese perceive feast as something more official than a food taken together with alcoholic beverages. In this they differ greatly from the Russians.