Prototype Semantic Analysis of Abstract and Concrete Concepts Among Jordanian and American Students

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the extent to which culture may play a role in constructing the prototypical structure of every daily life concepts. Two concepts were investigated in this study: an abstract concept (freedom) and a concrete concept (drinks). The sample of the study comprised two distinct cultures, Jordanians and Americans, who are undergraduate students. To come up with the findings, the researchers carried out two experiments. The first experiment aimed at examining the impact of culture on generating semantic features and examples of the target concepts. The second one investigated the effect of culture on rating the prototypicality of the generated features and examples. To answer the first research question, the researcher calculated the frequency and the percentage of each response. The researcher used the SPSS to answer the second research question. The researcher used the t-test for independent samples (Jordanians and Americans) to calculate the means and the standard deviations in order to examine any possible significant differences that may result from cultural difference. Briefly, the findings showed that culture affected, to a considerable extent, the processes of generating and prototypicality rating of the examples and features of the target concepts.