The Notion of Tolerance in the Context of Modern Culture

Abstract

This paper examines the various semantic levels of the notion of “tolerance” and the particular way it is used in the present-day social and cultural context when this, essentially normative, notion is dragged to the limits beyond which “tolerance” receives a radically different meaning. Failing to distinguish between the semantic levels, one will be led to breaking the semantic boundaries and to supplanting the familiar term with a series of its “connotational associations” which, in their turn, are determined by the rules of word-usage in a given context.