Abstract
The paper examines the axiological component of the complex linguocultural character type ‘American businessman’ based on examples from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, dating back to 2000 at the earliest. Lexical representations of the type in English have already been identified earlier. Both for the main character type itself and for its subtypes, ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘top executive’, the assessment (self-perception of the type and assessment of others) and the value dominants (inner aspirations and life goals) are revealed. It is concluded that the main ‘businessman’ character type encompasses various aspects of the both subtypes. His main value is profit, and the assessment of his figure is twofold: on the one hand, it is recognized that the businessman is a job creator and the backbone of the American economy, on the other, negative qualities are attributed to him, primarily greed, the pursuit of profit. The main values of the entrepreneur are freedom and the opportunity to do what they love, while those of the top manager being time and personal income. The assessment of the entrepreneur's figure is mostly positive: entrepreneurs ensure economic growth, they experiment and create valuable products and services. The assessment of the top executive is ambivalent; top managers are in demand in the labor market, but many negative qualities are attributed to them: greed, contempt and inattention to ordinary employees, irresponsibility and dishonesty, wastefulness, incompetence. High incomes of top executives are perceived as undeserved. Thus, the assessments of the two subtypes are almost opposite, their values are radically different, and their only similarity is their prestige in the American society.
Keywords
linguocultural character type, linguocultural subtype, businessman, entrepreneur, top executive, axiological component, Corpus of Contemporary American English