The Behavior of the Characters in the Ritual of Meals in Chekhov’s Prose as a Manifestation of a National World View

Currently we consider A. Chekhov’s prose as a key to understanding a world view of a Russian person, using lexico-semantic analysis of a particular cultural area of daily life, that is the situation of meal in the conditions of a fictional text. A fictional text plays an important role in understanding a national world view, because the centre of an artistic world view can contain prominent ideas for the ethnic group and peculiarities of a national world view.
In the process of the research of A. Chekhov´s prose two kinds of behavior in the situation of meals were detected: the language or verbal behavior and physical or non-verbal behavior.
The analysis of the language behavior in the A. Chekhov’s character zone allowed to determine certain ritualistic forms of speech in the communication of the characters “at the table”, which have a bigger frequency. They are commonly used and can be included in any type of a dialogue: a pledge, a praise, a request, advice.
The non-verbal behavior is understood in the article as ritualistic actions, done by the characters of A. Chekhov in the situation of meal, which in the conditions of a fictional text acquire semantic interpretation. One should state that the ritual itself refers to symbolic forms of behavior. Thus in the process of analyzing of A. Chekhov’s works such ritualistic forms of behavior were detected as those, based on a custom, tradition, etiquette. They are all significant elements of a national world view. Chekhov’s characters in the situation of meals become the carriers of the national culture, reflect prominent ideas of the nation, manifest the combination of norms and traditions of communication.