Articles

The article discusses the main trends in the development of systematized repositories of human knowledge. From antiquity to the present day, both information carriers and ideological foundations associated with the tasks assigned to such storages have changed. Of course, the preservation of historical memory has always remained an unchanged guideline for the creators of archives and libraries. But the very ideas about the future, assumed by various projects of systematization of knowledge, were very different depending on the epoch. Of particular interest from this point of view is the concept of the archive put forward by N. Fedorov as part of his doctrine of mankind role in the universe. The article emphasizes that archives and libraries were called upon in different ways to perform a social function inseparable from their very existence. The prospects for the development of modern archives are directly connected with the processes of digitalization. Both document processing technologies and the way researchers communicate with the archive are being improved. The possibilities of scientific analysis of archival data are significantly increased. Currently, the objects of informatization of the archive should include: its acquisition and examination of the value of documents; acquisition, storage and search of documents on machine-readable information carriers; creation of an insurance fund and a fund for the use of documents. Obviously, the prospects for the development of archives in our country are closely related to their digitalization and, therefore, accessibility for an increasingly wide range of researchers. In turn, this circumstance should have a positive effect on the overall course of interdisciplinary research. It can be predicted that the change in the form of archival materials will serve as one of the factors in the transformation of the structure of scientific knowledge.

The paper examines historical narrative in a diachronic aspect, to which historians and philosophers of the 20th century have been ambivalent. Historical narrative as one of the ways of presenting and interpreting historical events, characterised by the consistency of the presentation of material, consideration of the causes and consequences of specific events, can take many forms due to the wide variety of purposes faced by historians, including both printed material and visual material embodied in documentaries and feature films. The importance of historical narrative in historical discourse is considerable. Historical narrative is not limited to the description of facts and events, it contributes to the formation of the perception of history from the position of the historian who created it, since the world view of the historian is conditioned by his or her milieu. The aims and objectives of this article are to analyse the arguments put forward by supporters and opponents of historical narrative; to identify the scale and type of events that allow their representation in the form of historical narrative. The results of the research show that historical narrative plays a key role in the perception and understanding of the world of the past. The research methods consist of analysis and synthesis of the studied narratives, coding, inductive and deductive methods, necessary to identify the patterns of the narratives’ themes. As a result of the research conducted, it was established that historical narrative plays an important role not only in the understanding and perception of historical events by the recipient, but also in the formation of his/her historical memory.

One of the cultural and geographical problems of literary landscape research is the definition of the very concept of landscape, which some authors reduce to a description of nature, “not noticing” the importance of its cultural component. 

Another theoretical problem stems from the first and is related to the understanding of the national landscape as a typically generalized image of native nature. At the same time, significant natural and cultural contrasts of a large country are not taken into account: it is not clear how to “generalize” forest and steppe, urban and rural, sea and river landscapes. 

One of the ways to solve the problem of the national landscape in literature is for the researcher to choose one of the regional landscapes of the geniuses of the place (Pushkin’s Mikhailovsky, Lermontov’s Tarkhans, Turgenevsky’s Spassky- Lutovinov or Meshchera Paustovsky) as a national landscape; but in this case, an important role is played not so much by the nature of the landscape as by the individual literary preferences of the researcher. 

Another objectified solution to the problem justifies the choice of a birch grove as a Russian national landscape.

The article focuses on the phenomenology of jew’s harp music art in traditional and modern cultural practices. The theoretical framework for the research were the works in the field of philosophy of culture, the concept of a symbol as a cognitive memory of culture, musical and psychological anthropology and a comparative approach to the study of cultures. On the basis of the cultural model of ethnomusicological codes, the authors have identified, typologized and analyzed intonation symbols of jew’s harp practices. The intonation-sound level of jew’s harp music art is revealed through the following elements of the symbolic field: the overtone scale as a natural sound invariant; the symbol of support; the symbol of the spiritual vertical; the symbol of prayer. At the visual and plastic level of jew’s harp music art, the following components of meaning formation are revealed: the symbol of the “external vocal cords” as a transcending voice; the symbol of the sound life of nature; the symbol of circularity. Special attention is paid to the understanding of the overtone scale as a comprehensive original musical sphere, concentrated in the sound of the jew’s harp and allowing performers to return to the lost integral connection with culture and nature. The revealed intonation symbols allow us to consider the jew’s harp as a “bridge” between nature and culture, and traditional and modern jew’s harp practices — as forms of transmission and actualization of the intangible cultural heritage of the peoples of Eurasia.

The article studies ethno-specific characteristics of Italian cultural landscapes nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List as representatives of national cultural identity and as symbols of the proxemic communicative code in international cultural diplomacy. The author examines the evolution of the concept of “cultural landscape” in scientific discourse and UNESCO documents, as well as the classifications of cultural landscapes developed by Russian scientists F.N. Milkov, Y.A. Vedenin, and V.N. Kalutskov. Based on the ethnological-geographical approach, the author hypothesizes that the cultural landscapes nominated by Italy can serve as symbolic topoi of national culture, transmitting concepts of national identity through the proxemic communicative code. The article contributes to the study of the role of cultural landscapes in the formation and representation of national identity. The author analyzes landscape descriptions, classifies them according to N.F. Milkov’s typology, and identifies two main topoi of national culture: mountain-sea and mountain landscapes. The study shows that the transformative method of interaction with nature is leading for the Italian national community, while associativity and the presence of signssymbols of the national cultural code determine the significance of landscapes in the global cultural context. The article contributes to the understanding of the role of cultural landscapes in the formation and transmission of national identity.

The paper analyzes the ways and means of constructing the country and national image in the public speeches of the Spanish King Felipe VI, which represent an example of the discourse of power. The study was carried out taking into account the theoretical developments of V. Demyankov, S. Zolyan, A. Chudinov, N. Klushina, E. Malysheva, J. Austin, J. Searle and D. Vanderveken and is based on the discourse analysis of the speeches from 2014 to 2024. Its main aim is to systematize ideas about ideologemes and metaphors as linguistic means of translating national identity in relation to the communicative intention of the speaker. It was revealed that ideologemes play a decisive role while constructing the image of Spain as a country and a nation. The authors also described the most productive metaphor sphere-sources needed to create this image. Moreover, it was concluded that in the discourse of the modern Spanish monarch the image of Spain is mainly transmitted by declarative and directive statements.

The article aims to review briefly the sociolinguistic history of the language contact between Chinese languages and English, presents an overview of basic English language education in the Chinese education system during different periods of Chinese history. The study traces the emergence and development of English as a variety in China, in the form of China English, Chinese English, and Chinglish. This study could be of important scholarly significance for World Englishes researchers in the context of considering the English speech of native Chinese speakers. Attention is paid to English education in the country, focused on the rules of the functioning of this language as a native language for representatives of the Anglo-Saxon culture, and to the situation in which, from the middle of the last century, an exonomative model of language teaching was formed in the PRC and has been actively operating until recently. The paper highlights the increased attention of researchers to the issues of revising the policy of foreign language education in the PRC, which is explained by the ideological need that dictates the attempts of Chinese scholars to secure for China English the status of one of the varieties of World Englishes.

The article presents the analysis of the research in the field of implementation of translanguaging models into professional training of students majoring in linguodidactics. The authors analyze various models within the framework of the opposition of academic and spontaneous translanguaging, as well as enhancing metalinguistic awareness model, model of using whole linguistic repertoire, integrated language curriculum model and model of translanguaging shift s from the perspectives of using two foreign languages simultaneously for the organization of bilingual training. Each of the presented models differs in type, intentions of using translanguaging, the subject who makes the choice of the languages, as well as in the ratio between the languages. Considering the theoretical foundations, the authors note the potential of each model in the linguodidactic process. In conclusion, the most effective and suitable, from the authors’ point of view, practices of transinguaging are presented. They allow flexible use of two foreign languages simultaneously for organizing classes and, accordingly, provide bilingual professional training that meets the requirements and challenges of the modern educational environment.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into education has allowed students to use selected AI tools in research work. However, along with its obvious advantages, the ability of generative AI to hallucinate raises questions regarding the effectiveness of its use for a variety of research tasks. In this paper, the authors a) review the regulatory and legal basis for the use of generative AI tools in research work in the preparation of texts of conference presentations, academic articles, term papers and qualification works; b) review pedagogical studies dedicated to describing the experience of using generative AI tools in solving research problems; c) propose the distribution of functions between a research supervisor, artificial intelligence and a student/researcher in the triad “teacher — artificial intelligence — student”. Generative AI tools can take over many functions that have traditionally been performed by teachers and research supervisors, as well as by young researchers. These include developing a research work plan, searching for research sources, conducting a literature review, writing an abstract, etc. At the same time, the authors claim that at the present stage it is reasonable to talk about a joint solution of a number of the above-mentioned research tasks by supervisors and researchers, using generative AI tools as an assistant, the feedback from which should be subjected to critical reflection and verification. By transferring some of the functions to generative AI, the teacher/ research supervisor is not excluded from the educational process and management of the student’s research work. Their functions are modified and supplemented with new ones to teach students how to interact with AI tools, correctly formulate prompts, critically evaluate the received feedback and take full responsibility for the process and the result of work with generative AI.

The article addresses the issue of developing foreign language teachers in the field of artificial intelligence integration. Artificial intelligence is part of the IT tradition and has significant potential to change the educational process, for example doing routine activities or giving feedback to students. Artificial intelligence technologies such as speech and text generation, machine translation, linguistic corpora, etc. are used in foreign language teaching. However, some studies show that only a small part of teachers are ready and willing to use artificial intelligence in their teaching practices. 

To raise awareness about the didactic potential of artificial intelligence, a special teacher training course was developed at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies of Moscow State University in 2023. The main goal of the course “Pre-trained generative neural networks in foreign language teaching” is to develop professional methodological competence and practical skills for working with intelligent learning systems. During the course, currently used artificial intelligence technologies are analyzed. 

151 teachers from different regions of Russia took part in the course, after which some of them took a survey about their attitude towards educational material. Respondents appreciated the theoretical foundation and practical skills for giving presentations, evaluating student work, and more.

The article discusses cognitive metaphors as one of the ways to verbalize human emotions. The relevance of the study of the emotive component is due to its multidimensionality and the immanent presence of emotions in the structure of language, consciousness and thinking. Emotions underlie human activity and are closely related to cognitive processes. Th e vocabulary of emotions is a reflection and way of expressing various emotional states, forming a person’s individual lexicon. Since emotive vocabulary does not have clear semantic boundaries, almost all lexemes can become emotives in a certain communicative situation. The blurring of the boundaries of the emotive field results in the appearance of many secondary nominations of emotions formed with the help of metaphorical transfers. Cognitive metaphor, conveying human emotions and combining sensory and rational components, creates a special layer of means of expressing emotional states in a language. In the process of metaphorization, concepts from various conceptual spheres interact, because of a categorical shift, new images and meanings are created with the effect of emotional tension. In order to study cognitive metaphor in the context of emotiveness, the article examines the interaction of various conceptual spheres of the French language, drawing on the material from political articles, interviews, advertising products and fiction. It is established that because of the integration of different concepts, not only an emotional assessment of the facts of reality is formed, but also an impact on public consciousness is exerted through the stylistics of language and emotive vocabulary, characterized by a wide verbal representation and semantic diversity.

The focus of the present paper is on “Metis futurism” as a conceptual framework that allows writers to actualize, construct and reimagine personal, cultural and other types of identity in and through fiction. Characteristics of “Metis futurism” as postulated by Ch. Vowell, a Canadian Metis writer, are examined through a study of her short story collection “Buffalo Is the New Buffalo” (2022) accompanied by the writer’s commentaries. The aim is to outline the key extralinguistic and linguistic aspects of Metis futurism as exemplified by Ch. Vowell’s fiction, as well as to analyze the function of the metaconcept in question within the author’s idioconceptual subsystem. 

The results obtained show that given the hybridity of genres, postcolonial speculative rhetoric, a set of culture-specific concepts relevant for the Metis people and other Indigenous cultures, alongside the extensive use of the speech strategy of discredit and non-English language means that the target audience is supposed to decode on its own, “Metis futurism” allows the writer to personalize and customize the format and the content of their fiction in accordance with their goal of inviting the audience to participate in the (re)construction of all kinds of identity in and through text, thereby performing its interpretive function.

In modern linguistics, many disciplines offer their methodologies for comprehending meanings in the process of communication, but none of them provides more or less clear parameters for their identification and assessment of the interaction levels between the elements within a completed work. 

The aim of this paper is to develop a hierarchy of semantic-syntactical bonds that can be applied in timbral analysis of a text, minimizing the degree of subjectivity in the study of a work. Using the term ‘text energy’, the authors aim to describe the dynamic relationship of text units to each other in the reading process. 

Within the framework of this study, the authors propose a scale of text element cohesion for analyzing written works of speech, consisting of three levels — explicit grammatical-syntactic, anaphoric, and implicit bonds. The effectiveness of applying this scale is demonstrated on the example of analyzing the text belonging to artistic styles — the most complicated in terms of semantics. 

In order to objectively determine the degree of cohesion of elements within the text, the authors propose a list of cohesion levels correlated with the universal scale of cohesion, which can be applied to texts belonging to any functional styles of speech.

Humanity has always strived to save energy of speech eff orts. According to the ancient Language Economy Principle, human speech has to be short and laconic, it has to insert the fragments of individual and collective experience into one or a few words to attain effective communication or adequate understanding. Syntactical compression and depth of sense, compact and striking phrases demand now the accelerated tempo. And for this certain linguistic rules, means and techniques are required. There appears a new integral graphic product — phrase epithet — the merging into one new word or word combinations. This new word acquires one new meaning that differs from the previous meanings of the epithet constructions.

The article considers the new educational and academic discipline “Regional studies”, with special attention to the discipline “Regional studies of Russia”. The main principles underlying the new discipline “Regional Studies of Russia” allow to fulfill several tasks, first of all, to respond to the urgent needs of the state and contribute to the realization of state policy, primarily in the sphere of state security, interethnic interaction, strengthening the unity of Russia. The main principle of the new direction is the study of Russia as a unified region with a common history, destiny and mechanisms of development. The conclusion summarizes the results of the work carried out since the opening of the new specialty in 2001. The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies of MSU has carried out serious work on the development and promotion of the new scientific and educational direction of regional studies. The main theoretical and methodological approaches were worked out, the source base, which determines the fundamental nature of the science mentioned above, was elaborated in detail. The key factors of the region formation, its main parameters, constants and dominants were identified

Pictorial and graphic portraits of Mikhail Lomonosov created in the 18th century, during the life of the scientist and for several decades after his death, formed and consolidated his recognizable visual image. It is only natural that these portraits have piqued the interest of Russian scholars. Within a relatively short time of research in the field a long way was covered from a complete absence of any information about the portraits to constructing an impressive knowledge system and an accumulation of scientific interpretations. A domain of investigative issues has been established; a range of questions were asked. Almost every scientist who has addressed this topic tried to find the answers. However, no historiographical analysis of the identified issues has been carried out yet. Neither has the birth of theoretical concepts or the authors’ interpretations been outlined, nor how they changed over time, or how they were often radically revised.

This article presents the first systematized historiographical material, and for the first time highlights the main areas of research issues that were relevant for Russian scientists throughout the 20th–21st centuries. It considers not only the history of existence of the most important theoretical concepts, but the history of individual works, aspects of their interpretation, the existing sociocultural context.

Comparative culture studies is one of the promising and actively forming areas of the Russian humanities. The development of polar processes of globalization and localization of cultures, ethnocentrism and multiculturalism actualizes the task of studying the cultural diversity of the world. The discovery of common principles of harmonization of the human society and nature in the cultures of different countries and continents opens up new ways to prevent and solve acute political conflicts and environmental problems of our time. Created at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University, the research group brought together staff from various departments of the faculty engaged in holistic studies of cultural practices of the past and present. Special attention is paid to the actualization of the values and conceptual foundations of traditional cultures of the world. Along with theoretical problems, the research group in comparative culture studies is involved in the development and modeling of new forms of intercultural interaction and ways to improve the cultural competence of university and high school students. This is achieved, among other things, by organizing field culture studies in which the students of the faculty take an active part. The prospects and relevance of both theoretical and applied work of the research group “Comparative Culture Studies: Traditions and Modernity” are evidenced by a large number of conference papers and publications. The importance of scientific research in the field of comparative culture studies is due to the urgent need to update the intercultural, interregional, interethnic and interconfessional aspects of modern humanitarian knowledge.

This paper explores the potential of modern information resources such as supracorpora databases for the multidimensional study of punctuation. On the one hand, in different natural languages, while the repertoire of punctuation marks and their graphic representations tend to coincide, there may be zones of functional divergence, so that the rules of placement of the same punctuation mark will differ from one language to another. To know these interlingual discrepancies is fundamentally important for a human translator and for training machine translation systems; otherwise, the translation may significantly distort the semantic content of its source text. Some of these differences were recorded in the pre-corpus era. More of them can be revealed with the aid of supracorpora databases, modern information resources created through the joint efforts of computer science, computational linguistics, and corpus-based translation studies; they not only help to verify the existing knowledge on a wide scale of texts but also to amplify it. On the other hand, punctuation has traditionally been regarded as an area of language that is fairly well-studied, tightly regulated, and therefore least susceptible to change and innovation. However, supracorpora databases provide an opportunity to identify new (not yet found in the normative literature) functional-semantic features of the use of a given punctuation mark. Nowadays, the development of artificial intelligence based technologies, namely voice assistants, makes it particularly important to thoroughly research the functional semantics of punctuation marks. The paper shows the opportunities that supracorpora databases provide for punctuation studies, using the example of the exclamation mark in Russian and French .

This paper addresses the question of pronominal substitution of singular common gender nouns and indefinite pronouns in the English language. As for many contexts this problem remains unresolved, the cultural relevance of “singular they” as the epicene, or gender-neutral pronoun for third person singular use, in speech and writing is analyzed. This issue is briefly discussed in historical perspective, supported by the examples from famous literary works. The approach towards which epicene to use and what grammatical number it should be, is shown to have changed over time. Particular attention in the paper is paid to the present-day English. A survey of educated English speakers has proved that in order to eliminate gender prejudices modern society chooses “singular they”, using the language as a tool to demonstrate commitment to the idea of people’s equality. The attitudes of authoritative organizations to the choice of the pronoun referring to sex-indefinite singular antecedent are analyzed. They demonstrate current linguistic trends in the modern world. Even though the choice of the epicene for third-person singular use in contemporary English is commonly “singular they”, there remain restrictions imposed on the written pronoun paradigm.

Political media discourse accumulates and creates its own unique field of various vertical context elements, whose connotations, associations and meanings are determined by the communicative situation. The present study is undertaken to explore the functional potential of vertical context elements and examine the impact of its rendition on the quality of simultaneous interpretation. The main functions of vertical context elements in political media discourse prove to be ideological, self-presenting/image-forming and culture-identifying. Being aware of the functional potential of vertical context elements, used in speech not sporadically, but to achieve a specific communicative goal, is crucial to the choice of the appropriate interpreting strategy encompassing relevant techniques for its implementation. The findings further reveal that vertical context elements are characterized by multifunctionality. Moreover, the combination of these functions embodies the communicative intention of the speaker. From the perspective of simultaneous interpreting practice, it seems to be a prerequisite to aspire to determine and render the prevailing function. In political media discourse, the function instrumental in preserving the communicative effect of the source utterance seems to be the ideological one, manifesting itself in its two key varieties, namely manipulative and discrediting. The present research identifies the following extralinguistic factors that impede the proper rendition of the functional potential of vertical context elements: fast or situation-adjusted acceleration of the speaker’s speech rate, excessive redundancy of the source speech, inefficient allocation of attention resources and the mode of simultaneous interpreting..

The article examines the problem of interlanguage idiomaticity from the translation studies perspective. The concept of idiomatic translation is clarified; such type of translation is viewed as a process of inter-language transfer of the original semantic and pragmatic content, which follows the lexical, lexical-grammatical, pragmatic rules for the compatibility of linguistic elements in the target language and takes into account the selectivity of this language in expressing the complex meanings of language units. The article summarizes the possibilities of overcoming translation literalism and inter-language interference. It is shown that the concept of idiomatic translation embraces both the implied-meaning relationships between the source and the target messages (their equivalence, genre-stylistic, sociocultural and pragmatic correspondences) and the form of expression in the target message which is to adhere to the usage conventions of the target language. Using the example of the Russian translation of George Orwell’s essay “The Prevention of Literature,” the author analyzes translation solutions for the selection of inter-language correspondences for syntagmatically related units of different types (idioms, clichés, collocations) that require idiomatic ways of expressing complex lexical and lexical-grammatical meanings by means of the target language. Particular attention is paid to the problem of expressing context-dependent and evaluative connotations of idioms and collocations in the process of idiomatic translation.

The article presents the analysis of the research in the field of informatization of linguistic education. At the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FFLAS) Lomonosov Moscow State University within the framework of the declared direction two research projects are performed. On the one hand, theoretical foundations for the development of tutoring institute in the national e ducation system as a key condition for successful digitalization of the educational process are being developed; on the other hand, methods of implementation of the latest technologies, including those based on and using neural networks and artificial intelligence (AI), are being piloted. The article names the lecture, special and interfaculty courses offered by the FFLAS, as well as two master’s and two supplementary programs aimed at the formation of professional information and communication competence of all participants of the educational process.

Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into learning takes place at various levels of education. This process includes the design of multimodal didactic material, development of language skills, control and assessment, mining and analysis of educational data, prediction of learning outcomes. It is important not to skip any of these steps so that AI is implemented not only for providing access to information and the execution of routine test tasks, but also for contributing of real transformation in education. In teaching foreign languages today, various technical solutions based on AI are used, such as voice assistants; smart tutors; social and educational bots; automatic systems for assessment and editing of written texts; recommendation systems; intelligent foreign language teaching systems, etc. The objective of this article is to consider innovative approaches to language teaching based on using intelligent learning systems, as well as to analyze the design features of these systems. The concept of personalized learning, which is about adapting the organization, content and pace of learning to the individual needs of students, plays a key role in the design and development of intelligent learning systems. Intelligent learning systems and smart tutors can automatically adapt and create personalized educational material for various disciplines, taking into account the target audience, level of foreign language proficiency, professional and educational goals, intended learning outcomes through multimodal clustering and recommendation systems, automatic text processing and image recognition. The three main components underlying such systems include a domain model, a learner model, and a methodological model. Effective teaching approaches, such as providing feedback, assessment, reflection and recommendations for students, are important components of intelligent learning systems

The article discusses the necessity to refocus teaching pluricentric foreign languages from linguistic and cultural features in the traditional countries onto the specifics of varieties considered to be non-native for their users participating in a wide international / intercultural communication. East Asian varieties are a good example of such a phenomenon. For an unprepared communicator it is quite challenging to perceive and comprehend varieties of this type — challenges occur at all levels of language structure: phonographic, grammatical, lexico-semantic, and discourse-pragmatic. The ways to solve these problems include raising students’ awareness of the existence of the varieties of a pluricentric language, i.e., the World Englishes paradigm; receptive training of Asian English speech comprehension; awareness of challenges in understanding students’ own (Russian) variety of English (or another pluricentric language) for communicators using other varieties; studying translingual literature written by authors of Chinese (or other Asian) origin; listening and reading mass media in the variety; training intermediary translation from the variety into Russian, and acquiring the basis of intercultural literacy. All these ways are relevant not only for teaching Russian students; they will also help in teaching Chinese students whose number has been increasing at our universities

This paper gives an insight into the major outcomes of the 2019–2023 MSU research project on investigating mediation as a language-and-culture bound communicative mode and as a new objective of modern tertiary language education in Russia. Mediation skills are thought to be of primary importance for the Russian academic elite’s intercultural communication in the world facing the war of values in which the academic elite is expected to act as a promoter of the dialogue of cultures and civilizations, able to preserve cultural heritage and counteract modern cultural vandalism, cultural imperialism and the policy of cancel culture whenever the latter happen to be in society. The paper starts with some introductory notes on the importance of the 21-st century terminology changes in language pedagogy because of a paradigmatic shift from traditional language skills as objectives of language education to 4 modes of communication (reception, production, interaction and mediation). It discusses the outcomes of the 2016–2021 international research projects on updating CEFR descriptors and on sharing pedagogical experiences in teaching and evaluating mediation skills. The author finds it necessary to rethink these research outcomes with a focus on the needs, objectives and training content of mediation education for different types of learners or trainees (MD / PhD students, PhD researchers of different ranks) and offers a linguodidactic vision of establishing a framework for a) teaching master’s degree students and PhD students to mediate a text & b) teaching university researchers/teachers to mediate concepts and to mediate communication. This conceptual framework is based on the 2018–2022 research results of several studies carried out to identify MD and PhD students’ needs to act as mediators in international academic settings, the needs, readiness and abilities of Humanities scholars to act as pluricultural mediators while participating in international scientific & educational communication.

The paper discusses culture-specific communicative features of official Russian, British, American, and Cypriot universities websites. The research focuses on context models of collective authors. The contribution deals with specific type of discourse which (following contemporary tendencies in discourse analysis) is referred to as “active effect discourse”. The study relies on interdisciplinary data provided by various spheres relevant to the issue under consideration. Thus, the study provides an overview of trends and tendencies in the development of modern education, outlines techniques used for online promotion of educational programs, describes specific features of communication environment. The paper analyses the structure and the content of official university websites, outlines verbal means used by collective authors of the texts under consideration in order to appeal to the target audience, and conducts analysis of culture-specific meanings conveyed through these means. The article also outlines prospects for future research on communication style adopted by the collective author of promotional texts functioning in digital learning environment.

The article examines the role of key words in the artistic organization of a literary work on the basis of Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. It has been discovered that the most frequently used lexical units in the text are adjectives with negative evaluative connotations: monstrous, horrible, dreadful, hideous and such like. Among them monstrous stands out as the main key word in spite of the fact that its frequency of occurrence is lower than that of its ‘synonyms’: 25 vs 48, 43, 32 times respectively. In fact, monstrous meets other criteria that seem to be essential in the case of key words. It appears in all significant episodes of the novel; it is characterized by lexical polyphony, great collocational potential, a variety of contextual links and due to the component “morally wrong” in its semantics is connected with the author’s global purport. It is also shown that the ‘intuitive’ linguopoetic analysis of key words can be supported by modern computer programs, like Sketch Engine, which work with text corpora .

The purpose of the paper is to point out some theoretical problems concerning the so-called textual inclusions, with their deep intertextuality and ability to generate new texts. Such approach gives a new impetus to outlining the ways of their possible role in the derivational mythological history, semiotic cultural memory and traditions. The cognitive aspects of these texts are analyzed, the chain links are constructed. Much attention is paid to the classification of the different types of the intertextual inclusions, specifically emphasizing their role in changing and reframing the reader’s cognitive system. The paper allows the author to take into account the interdisciplinary aspect of the cognitive linguistics linked with other interdisciplinary sciences.

The study focuses on the works of J. Ortega y Gasset, in which the Spanish philosopher offers a new vision of Linguistics analyzed from the point of view of Anthropology, Discourse Theory and Philosophy and first presented by him in 1938. Ortega’s bibliography contains articles in which he develops ideas relevant to Philological science, objecting to Saussure and criticizing Structuralism as the dominant research paradigm at that time. The subject of the research paper is the J. Ortega y Gasset’s ideology about the language and speech nature, formalized in the concepts called New Linguistics and Theory of Utterance, as well as the author’s views on the new approaches to the study of Philology (New Philology) and Grammar (New Grammar). In his works, the Spanish philosopher examines the dynamic nature of language and speech in its projection onto the speaker and substantiates the need to take into account the communicative intention and the communicative context, thereby anticipating the scientific research of the founders of the Speech Act Theory and Discourse Analysis J. Austin, J. Searle and Teun A. Van Dijk. The article makes an attempt to describe and systematize the main ideas introduced by J. Ortega y Gasset, relevant to such areas of modern Linguistics as Pragmatics and Text Linguistics.

The article is a review of the collective monograph authored by the Siberian Federal University scholars — Koptseva N.P., Kolesnik M.A., Leshchinskaya N.M., Samarina D.N. “Russian cultural identity in the Fine Arts of the 19th — early 20th century”. The researchers examined the features of Russian cultural identity construction in the works by V.G. Perov, I.Ya. Bilibin, M.V. Nesterov and B.M. Kustodiev. The relevance of the book lies in the fact that it is the first of its kind in the series of scientific art criticism and cultural literature “Russian Culture”. The scientific novelty of the monograph consists in the philosophical and art criticism analysis of religious philosophy as a source of cultural identity, in the substantiation of new theoretical concepts such as area-critical and area-romantic styles. The results of the presented work contribute to the study of the process of constructing Russian cultural identity from the standpoint of God-seeking in works of fine art of the late 19th — early 20th centuries. The practical value of the book lies in the systematization of the basic content of Russian cultural identity and the establishment of a connection with the key concepts of Russian religious philosophy, including the ideas of Russian Orthodoxy, Slavophilism, the concept of Sophia — the Wisdom of God in the interpretation of V.S. Solovyov, the application of the sociology of imagination in the study of mythology, symbolism, semiotics of signs, visual perception of painting. The results of the research outlined in the book can be used in teaching courses on the history and theory of Russian culture as well as in the creation of special courses and programmes based on the relationship between culture, philosophy, Religious Studies and literature.

The article focuses on the study of the peculiarities of interpretation of Greek myth in the Afro-Brazilian cultural space using the material of the film “Black Orpheus” directed by M. Camus, based on the play “Orfeu da Conceição” by Vinicius de Moraes. The author traces the origins of the appeal to the image of Orpheus in the works of Camus and Moraes, and reveals the connection with the French dramatic tradition and cinema. M. Camus transforms the Greek story through the prism of the culture of the Afro-Brazilian population of Rio de Janeiro — the inhabitants of the favelas. The film brings to the fore the musical component of the myth, with the help of which the originality of the Afro-Brazilian tradition and carnival practices of Latin America are revealed. Orpheus in the film appears as a tram driver, singer and leader of a samba school. His image combines the Dionysian principle (the carnival tradition into which Orpheus is “inscribed”) and the Apollonian (expressed in lyrical songs and cultural codes of bossa nova). The carnival “building” of mythological reality allows us to touch the spiritual layers of the Brazilian tradition — the syncretic cult of Candomble. The space of the Macumba ritual symbolizes the Kingdom of Hades, in which dialogue with Eurydice is carried out through musical magic that opens doors between the worlds. The passage through the Kingdom of the Dead represents a rite of passage in which the hero dies and is reincarnated in a new form: in the finale, Orpheus “transfers” his musical gift to the boy, symbolically gaining new life in him. The interpretation of the ancient Greek plot in the space of Afro-Brazilian carnival practices helps to reveal the civilizational specificity of Latin America and Orfeus as an “eternal image” that embodies the divine gift of love, the magic of music, and eternal existence through a change of forms.

In Chinese, verb aspect is expressed by verbs in combination with various linguistic means. Based on the difference between the verb aspect system of Russian and Chinese languages and the possible expressions of verb aspect in Russian, this paper aims to predict possible errors in the use of Russian verb aspect. In order to check the correctness of our analysis, a special diagnostic test was conducted. The test results show that the errors made by Chinese students primarily do not stem from the influence of their native language, but from the fact that students are not able to assess the situation, cannot find or even see certain reference points, available signals, directly indicating the use of this or that verb aspect. Errors are explained by elementary ignorance of the verb forms, especially in such cases as брать — взять, ловить — поймать and ignorance of the formation of the verb form itself, for example, the formation of the imperative form, etc. This is the result of insufficient training of students. In this case, the problem is not in students, but, firstly, in the complexity of the topic itself, and, secondly, in the method of teaching. We believe that it is necessary to give students a clear scheme of verb aspect meanings and identify those signals that can help students choose the type of a verb adequate to the situation of communication; the course of studying the verb aspect should be long enough, because strong and stable skills of the correct use of verb aspect are formed only as a result of gradual and regular work on the types of the verb, made over a long period of time. The results of this work can also serve as a starting point for determining not only the content of verb types teaching exercises, but also for developing methodological recommendations for them.

This article discusses the challenges and solutions for teaching Russian as a second language to students in China. It analyzes Russian and Chinese language teaching materials and identifies the factors that contribute to the low level of proficiency among Chinese students. The article proposes several solutions, including taking into account cultural differences and adopting teaching methods similar to those used in Chinese educational institutions.

The article is devoted to the period of the origin of Russian textbook studies in foreign languages, a significant contribution to the formation of which was made by Professor of Imperial Moscow University Ivan Andreevich Нeim (1759–1821), an encyclopedic scholar, teacher, and public figure. The article provides a brief description of the professional scientific and pedagogical biography of I.A. Нeim, who was at different periods of his academic activity not only a professor, but also the first Dean of the Faculty of Philology and the Rector of the University. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the structural and substantive characteristics of the first edition of the textbook by I.A. Heim “Russian Grammar for Germans” in 1789 (German: “Russische Sprachlehre für Deutsche”). Variant features of the metalanguage of the book in the field of translation of terms, as well as units at the graphical, orthographic, morphological and lexical levels are revealed. The content of the book, on the one hand, includes a theoretical description of the structure of the Russian language (in German), on the other hand, it is practical in nature, which is manifested in the absence of a large number of definitions, the presence of sections on teaching phonetics, a mini-dictionary and bilingual dialogues on everyday topics. The analysis of the textbook provides us with insights into the formation of textbook studies at the end of the 18th century and enables us to discuss the creation and development of prototypes of a modern tutorial book and phrase book of foreign languages.

Using paremiological dictionaries as an example, the article considers new approaches and trends emerging in modern English lexicography in connection with its digitalisation. From the initial scanned versions of authoritative paper dictionaries, e-lexicography is increasingly moving towards the development of pro ducts specifically designed for use on computers and mobile devices, a frequent first step in this process being the use of the resources of national linguistic corpora, followed by the creation of independent paremiological corpora. The creation of e-dictionaries is gradually becoming a separate lexicographic trend with its own subject and object of research. The present study has revealed a number of characteristics of English-language electronic paremiological dictionaries, such as: growing connection with language teaching; increasing unprofessionalism of compilers of Internet reference resources, leading to their unreliability; extending influence of the so-called “non-native speakers” of English; expanding range of non-verbal resources of elexicography, which are capable of performing some scientific tasks that are beyond the reach of traditional paper dictionaries (for example, dictionary fixation of the threefold structural-content-functional topological invariant of frequently reproduced memorable phrases). Professional lexicographers need to learn how to use the new possibilities of the modern electronic and digital era to the best advantage, combining the necessary linguistic, digital and design competences at a professional rather than amateur level.

The article presents a comparative analysis of the semantic portraits of the singer and the cultural hero Wainamoinen in two English translations of the epic “Kalevala” made by William Forsell Kirby and John Martin Crawford. Following a certain algorithm, the different-structured nominations of the hero are classified and subjected to component analysis, through which an inventory of semes and semes’ specifiers is fixed, which allows to identify isomorphic and allomorphic characteristics in the portraits of the hero. The study shows that the dominant position in the semantic portrait of Wainamoinen is occupied by the so-called song space of the hero, since singing is the main activity of Wainamoinen by means of which he influences the surrounding world. The semantic portrait of Wainamoinen is a four-level structure, including nominations (1) characterizing him as a singer, (2) characterizing his singing, (3) characterizing the process of his singing and (4) characterizing functions of his singing. The study also demonstrates an importance of nominations which have the structure of a sentence and super-phrasal unity. They allow to fix additional semes in lexical nominations. The article concludes that the semantic allomorphs of Wainamoinen’s portrait characteristics are determined by both linguistic aspects (the choice of the source text for translation: original text in the Finnish language and the interlinear translation in German) and extralinguistic aspects: differences between British and American lingua cultures and personal preferences of each translator.

The article presents the results of a linguopragmatic study of explicit and implicit means used by journalists of law-related corporate mass media to model the positive image of a modern Russian lawyer. The author observes that at present there is a social need to replace deeply rooted negative stereotypes about lawyers/advocates in the collective consciousness, since it is the representatives of the law who form patterns of law-abiding behavior. Mass media play a significant role in forming images of lawyers whom many Russian citizens rarely meet in person. Analyzed interviews with lawyers and lawyer biographies enable the recipients to learn more not only about the professional activities but also about personal life and inner world of lawyers, thus, demonstrating a great potential in modeling their images. The article highlights and analyzes three aspects that, in the author’s opinion, are of greatest importance for creating a positive image of a lawyer in modern Russian society

The article is devoted to the analysis of the effectiveness of the use of specific English-language alliteration in Russian-language ergonyms and advertising slogans. The purpose of this work is to determine the degree of emotional impact of this stylistic device on native Russian speakers and, as a result, its effectiveness for use in creating ergonyms and advertising slogans in the Russian language. The objectives of this study include the analysis of differences in approaches to the definition of the stylistic device “alliteration” in the English-speaking and Russianspeaking linguistic traditions; collection and analysis of Russian-language ergonyms and advertising slogans, built on the basis of specific English alliteration, by the method of continuous sampling. The research also looks into the functions of alliteration techniques in the Russian-language ergonyms and slogans, includes a sociolinguistic survey in the form of a questionnaire among 125 native speakers of the Russian language aged 18 to 40, of different professions, with University degrees.

The paper provides examples of Russian-language names and advertising slogans created using specific English alliteration. The results of the study indicate that specific English alliteration plays a role in promoting the attractive and aesthetic functions through ergonyms. The analysis of the sociolinguistic questionnaire showed that in five out of the seven proposed categories, the survey participants preferred ergonyms and advertising slogans created using this technique. Taking into account the results of the study it can be concluded, that today a specific English alliteration is an effective linguistic technique used in the Russian language for creating ergonyms and advertising slogans.

The article examines cultural standards of modesty in the Russian and Chinese languages. The study is based on dictionaries and text corpora of two languages. The purpose of the work is to determine universal and nationally specific features in the formation of cultural standards of modesty in the Russian and Chinese languages. The object of the study is modesty as a traditional value of Russian and Chinese linguistic cultures. Modesty is encoded using cultural standards that reflect the essential features of modesty as a sociocultural value that characterizes Russian and Chinese cultures. The study found that in the Russian language, modesty, which is predominantly gender-based, is mainly associated with the image of a girl (woman). Modesty as a universal human quality is realized contradictorily: 1) “the modesty of a hero, a real person” and 2) “the modesty of a quiet, timid, dependent person.” In Chinese linguistic culture, “modesty” occupies a strong position, and its “standard” implementation, determined by the ideas of Confucius, is an integral part not only of etiquette, but also the worldview of the Chinese. In the Chinese language, the “standard” implementation of modesty, defined by the ideas of Confucius, is an integral part of etiquette. The Chinese modesty system is associated with natural objects and plant images that are of great importance to Chinese culture. The results of this study can be used in lexicographic practice and in teaching Russian and Chinese languages.

The article considers the emphatic patterns of syntactic structures used for highlighting communicatively relevant elements in promotional discourse with a strong persuasive effect. The research was conducted on the material of 19 automobile promotional brochures containing valuable information about automobile brands and their manufacturers for the target audience. The aim of the research was to study emphatic structures occurring in the English promotional discourse and determine the most frequently used types of emphasis. The study found that the emphatic displacement towards the anaphoric syntactic position occurred most frequently for underlining semantically relevant speech elements. The anaphoric emphasis is intended for the rhematization of thematic parts, which, nevertheless, does not diminish the significance of the cataphoric position, being traditionally occupied by the rheme. In addition, the syntactic emphasis was actively accompanied by discursive intensifier words, which, according to the quantitative data, were used in the middle of the emphatic sentences most frequently, thus fulfilling the function of retaining attention in continuation of the emphatic beginning. Due to the rheme displacement and discursive words, the entire emphatic structure becomes in the focus of readers’ attention against the background of surrounding discourse. The most common syntactic means of emphasis, in descending order, are the following: fronting, pseudo-cleft and cleft sentences, inversion, elaborative, introductory and duplicative sentences. The results of the research can be used for teaching linguistic text analysis and applied aspects of linguistics to students specializing in linguistics and professional English to students majoring in advertising and PR.

The article examines the processes associated with the formation of the French designation system using the example of the name L’Hexagone and its interrelationships with other names: la France, la Gaule, la V-me République, etc. Taking into account the works of A.V. Superanskaya, R.A. Ageeva, G.S. Dorzhieva, G. Bashlyar, A. Dose, A. Dorion and others, the examination of linguistic and sociolinguistic data found in dictionaries, artistic, journalistic and scientific writings, as well as on Internet sites, is conducted. The purpose of the article is to establish the place of the Hexagone name in the French polyonym system and to qualify the associations underlying this name. It is shown that among them is the image of a regular geometric figure (circle, square, six- and octagon) with geopolitical, ideological and aesthetic connotations. A number of connotations bring this image closer to the “lived space” in the understanding of G. Bachelard and the metaphor of the container space of J. Lakoff and M. Johnson. The variability of the designations of France, forming a system of polyonyms and reflecting the development of a sense of identity of the French, is emphasized. A manifestation of this feeling is the sensory perception of the space of collective identity as harmonious and protected, which is manifested, in particular, in the name L’Hexagone.

The article briefly describes the milestones of the life and scientific work of Vladimir Vladimirovich Zakharov (09/13/1953–12/05/2023) — head of the Department of German Language and Culture at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies (Lomonosov Moscow State University), Academician of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation, Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences. Various aspects of his activities are considered: as a military interpreter and translator, a historian and an archivist, an organizer, and a teacher. Some key works of the scientist in various fields of military historical science are briefly analyzed: Soviet-German military, political, cultural etc. relations in the 20th century, economic aspects of the Second World War, the history of Russian and German intelligence agencies, issues of restitution of cultural and artistic values, etc. An important place in the article is given to the coverage of V.V. Zakharov’s works devoted to the activities of the Office of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SWAG) and the military intelligence. The article highlights V.V. Zakharov’s significant contribution to the introduction into scientific circulation of a large number of previously unknown archival documents on various aspects of military historical science. The author also draws attention to V.V. Zakharov’s pedagogical and organizational activities in higher educational and scientific institutions in Russia, as well as his educational and methodological works

While there is a vast literature on translation transformations and techniques, little attention among Russian researchers is paid to the omission. The article attempts to contribute to the debate by analyzing the omission as a translation technique, as well as verb omission examples when translating a literary text from Russian into French. The omission means elimination of a source text (ST) element while translating into target text. The omission can occur at the semantic or structural-semantic levels. The latter implies not only semantic but also syntactic changes. The omission can be due to the redundancy of an element in the ST. Redundancy in ST can be caused by the structural features of the source language, repetition of information in the text or by the opportunity to extract information from the situational context. The analysis of examples of verb omission taken from the translations into French of the novel Oblomov written by Ivan Goncharov showed that the use of this technique in relation to Russian verbs obeys the general patterns of the use of omission listed above: a French translator can omit a verb and use a more economical construction allowed by the norms of the French language; can translate one verb from two ST verbs with the same meaning; can eliminate the original verb if it’s meaning can be derived from the situational context. However, the original verb can convey stylistic meanings that are important in the work; if this verb is omitted, stylistic meanings disappear.

The article discusses literary travels in the historical period of the Tang Dynasty, which entered the history of the country as a period of flourishing culture — science, painting, literature, and especially poetry. Two great Chinese poets Li Bo and Du Fu created during this period. Literary and cultural-geographical approaches to the study of travelogues developed in Western, Chinese and Russian literary geography are presented. The historical and cultural contexts of literary travels are discussed. The cultural and historical specificity of the travelogues of the Tang Dynasty period is that many of them were made not out of interest in learning new lands and cultures, but out of necessity. For the most part, the authors of travelogues were applicants for the position of an official who had to submit a literary work at the state exam. Routes, vehicles, stopping places and other elements of travel are analyzed. The role of literary travel in the development of literature of the period under consideration is discussed. Special attention is paid to the anisotropy, or the disparity of different directions, of the cultural space of China of this historical epoch. This is due to the historically low cultural status of Southern China compared to other regions. Travelogue materials reflect this cultural phenomenon well.

The paper examines ecolinguistics as a new trend in linguistics, resulting from the study of language and the environment. The article’s relevance is determined by the insufficient amount of works on ecolinguistics and its subsystems. The purpose of the study is to establish particularities of interlinguistic communication, studied within the framework of ecolinguistics, the idea of which originated at the end of the 19th century and got its prominence at present. The research methodology is based on the theoretical works of the most prominent domestic and foreign scholars. Ecolinguistics is the result of the interaction of academic disciplines including linguistics, philosophy, psychology and cognitive studies. The formation of ecolinguistics takes place in such domains as cultural, political and scientific spheres, revealing various aspects of language interaction with the thinking process and the surroundings. The study of ecolinguistics’ evolution and functioning requires a comprehensive approach. The scope of the study includes studying ecolinguistics, clarifying the origins of this branch, presenting it in a generalized form, as well as the peculiarities of translation aimed at preserving the purity of the target language. As a donor language, English considerably enlarges the vocabulary of every language it interacts with. This is manifested in the digital translation, facilitating the process of new words, nomenclatural formations and abbreviations dissemination. The study has shown that the use of digital technologies developing in the digital world ensures the entry of the linguistic personality into the unified system of ecological space. It is concluded that lexical and grammatical units of different languages can peacefully coexist in one text without violating the integrity and harmony. It contributes to the effective interlinguistic communication determined by the ecospace of a particular language.

The present paper belongs to a series of articles with a focus on ethnospecific concepts and identity construction in multicultural fiction from a cognitive- functional perspective. It seeks to take a new look on ethnospecific concepts, namely those which belong to an author’s idioconceptual subsystem, the latter being understood as a unique configuration of concepts in one’s mind, and constitute cognitive matrices. In accordance with N.N. Boldyrev’s research, the term «cognitive matrix» is used to denote a system of interconnected cognitive contexts which open onto different conceptual domains. The aim of the study is to demonstrate the potential of using cognitive-matrix analysis to reveal the connections between the cognitive contexts in the structure of an ethnospecific concept which unfold in a work of fiction, as well as the conceptual domains they are related to, on the one hand, and the many facets of an author’s cultural identity on the other. The paper outlines the results of the cognitive-matrix analysis of the concept BISON as represented in the novel “A Grandmother Begins the Story” by M. Porter, a Canadian writer of Métis background. Detail is given on several cognitive contexts in the structure of the concept in question pertaining to the following conceptual domains: NATURE, HISTORY, SPIRITUAL CULTURE, SPACE, TIME. The results obtained show that the ways in which the ethnospecific concept BISON functions in the text under consideration are affiliated with the writer’s identity and allow her not only to implement her creative ideas but also actualize her cultural identity in fiction.

This article deals with the comparative study of the old age designation in Russian and Chinese phraseology. The subject of research in this paper are phraseological units of Russian and Chinese, in which the object of description is the age of an elderly person. The main research methods used in the article are the methods of definitions, field, linguocultural and comparative analyses. The aim of the paper lies in identification of similar and distinctive perceptions of an elderly person from the point of view of representatives of Russian and Chinese linguocultures. The paper analyses the plane of expression and the plane of the content of Russian and Chinese phraseological units, as well as cultural and linguistic features of those units. The scientific novelty of this study reveals itself in the fact that for the first time the phraseological means of elderly age representation of a person in Russian and Chinese linguocultures have been defined; for the first time the phraseosemantic microfield ‘old age’ in Russian and Chinese have been presented and compared. The results of the study make it possible to represent similarities and differences of the old age conceptualization by means of Russian and Chinese phraseology and to identify the features of the microfield ‘old age’ of the languages compared.

The focus of research devoted to the study of a term as a scientific conceptual unit is currently moving to the consideration of its metaphorical nature, given that the processes of metaphorical term formation occur in different scientific fields constantly, but with varying degrees of intensity, which does not reduce the level of relevance of this topic. In the vocabulary of terminological systems, a large role belongs to word-forming elements or derivational formants (prefixes), thanks to which new lexical units are formed and thereby the conceptual-categorical sphere of science is re-encoded. The prefix gives the base of the word and its first, main meaning a new meaning, and antonym prefixes cannot, in theory, be combined in one word. It is all the more interesting, in our opinion, to pay attention to terms formed by a combination of prefixes and antonyms (deconstruction). These formants have great derivational potential; they create new terms and concepts, new metaphors, in a word, new formants of thought, as happened thanks to the concept of déconstruction, one of the basic ones in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. The purpose of the article is to consider the features of the derivational function of formant prefixes using the example of the terminological nest construction, which includes the terms reconstruction, déstruction, déconstruction.

The object of this article is mythonyms that move into another class of proper names — pragmatonyms or verbal trademarks. The subject of the article was chosen mythonyms from the ancient Greek poem “The Odyssey” by Homer, which are widely used in modern advertising and commercial practice in Italy to name various products: furniture, interior items, clothing, jewelry, food, technical and medical equipment. The purpose of the article is to refute the generally accepted idea that the meaning of an onym (in our case, a mythonym) is impoverished during transonymization into a verbal trademark. The article identified mythonyms from the Odyssey that most often become pragmatonyms — Odysseus, Penelope, Polyphemus. As a result of their analysis, it was demonstrated that peripheral semes of meaning that are not relevant in the mythonym are actualized in the Italian advertising discourse of 2000-2021. Thus, the semantic field of the mythonym, functioning as a trade name, expands and enriches, and not vice versa. The article highlighted the following updated components of meaning: Odysseus — masculinity and freedom, Penelope — thriftiness and beauty, Polyphemus — creative force in the service of man. In the last mythonym, the core meaning of “the destructive power of the savage” completely changed the meaning to “civilizational power of creation”, and the vector of assessment changed. In this case, advertising discourse reflects the linguistic and cultural tendency that exists in Southern Italy to master and appropriate the symbolic space of Mediterranean culture not so much through the figure of Odysseus, but through the Sicilian Polyphemus. The study used a two-stage corpus analysis method: a continuous sample of product names to identify mythonyms from the Odyssey (68 product names) and a representative sample of products with the names Odysseus, Penelope, Polyphemus.

We discuss theoretical issues connected with methodological construction of problem-solving tasks for development of polycode competence in the system of language tertiary education. As one of the salient genres of polycode texts we take British and American political cartoon and the process of its interpretation. Yet another object of discussion is formed by particular difficulties when we try to include this format into text analysis. It gives us grounds to single out key features of polycode texts, which make them different from traditional text format. Here we include lack of precise genre typology, combination of various semiotic codes, lacunas presence, clip character, specific nature of intertextual chains. We single out several stages in the process of polycode competence formation and development. In particular, problem-solving tasks aimed at identification and primary decoding of certain elements typical for any polycode text; problem-solving tasks aimed at interpretation of verbal and visual components; carrying out group project/group projects of scientific educational or scientific research, of cultural and discourse character; participation in culturally-oriented discussions; assessment of the level of student’s polycode competence formation when interpreting a certain genre of polycode text. In this article, we focus upon possible problem-solving tasks of the first two stages. As one of possible solutions, we suggest conceptual cognitive metaphor modelling and oppositions. The oppositions in this case are built on basic sociocultural values while metaphor modelling includes structural, orientational and ontological concepts, which can be further found out in various types of polycode texts. As possible advantages of this approach, we consider it giving ground for interdisciplinary connections in the course of professional foreign language training. It also enables to widen the scope of questions and topics discussed with students as well as introduce certain linguocultural and sociocultural phenomena. All this assists in building professional competence of a would-be specialist as far as foreign media and multimodal environment is concerned, including its destructive practices. We also describe results of the experimental work. As part of the experiment, we assessed student’s ability to recognise images, symbols, archetypes, linguocultural subjects and meanings, precedent phenomena, continuity of forms and structures, conceptual metaphors and models, conceptual oppositions, basic and transferred meanings, connotations.

The article discusses the strategies for using artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of providing written corrective feedback in language education. It provides an overview of the latest research in this area, starting from the most significant publications in the field of Russian neurodidactics and international conferences dedicated to the use of AI in education, to practical examples of using chatbots for feedback in language teaching. The article emphasizes the transformation of the role of language educators through the application of artificial intelligence, highlighting the importance of focusing the teacher on the essential aspects of students’ communicative development while delegating the technical aspects of proofreading written assignments to artificial intelligence. The application of such technologies changes the ways feedback is provided, allowing for a more in-depth linguistic analysis and the creation of more extensive comments on written works. Examples of specific requests made to artificial intelligence when marking assignments and examples of their implementation are provided. In addition, the article summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of using AI technologies for assessment and draws conclusions about its role in providing written corrective feedback. The article also highlights the need for a thoughtful integration of AI into the educational process and calls for further research on the impact of artificial intelligence technologies on the development of students’ written productive language skills.

The article is a synthesis of a series of studies conducted over the last 10 years at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University and is devoted to the current topic of digital technologies application in linguodidactics. The paper provides an analysis of legal acts regulating the development of artificial intelligence technologies in the Russian Federation in all spheres of activity, including education, national standards that apply to the field of education and establish general provisions and terminology in the field of the use of artificial intelligence technologies in education, a description of the basic principles of the operation of generative artificial intelligence technologies, an analysis of the formats of tasks for the introduction of mobile, electronic and generative tools, including those based on neural networks, into General English courses. The main results of the study are the identification of new task formats based on artificial intelligence technologies, as well as the need to form provisions for updating the regulatory framework for the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies in foreign language higher education.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into the educational system in general and foreign language teaching in particular makes it possible to significantly enhance students’ foreign language practice and create conditions for more effective formation of foreign language communicative competence components. At the same time, the gradual implementation of AI tools in the educational process, along with its obvious advantages, may cause teachers’ concerns related to the gradual exclusion of the teacher from the learning process and their complete replacement by AI. As a modern paradigm of education, the authors suggest the triad “learner — teacher — artificial intelligence”, within which the interaction of learners with AI is built into traditional teaching methods, enhancing the educational process with new additional opportunities for learners’ foreign language practice. For objective reasons, little time and attention is often allocated to teaching learners to write in a foreign language. AI, which has significant language didactic potential, is able to take over the teacher’s functions of evaluating students’ written work and providing them with feedback in the form of an AI-generated version of an essay and/or recommendations for the revision of written work. In this paper, the authors propose 11 stages of a method for teaching learners to write creative works in a foreign language in the triad “learner — teacher — artificial intelligence”. Special attention in the method is given to the following aspects, which are new for teaching practice: a) compliance of students with the norms of authorship ethics when receiving various types of feedback from AI; b) the need to discuss the results of students’ interaction with AI during classroom sessions. At the same time, the authors note that the teacher is not excluded from the process of teaching learners a foreign language and evaluating their written work. The traditional method of teaching students’ written speech is enriched with additional stages of interaction with artificial intelligence, creating more conditions for students to develop the necessary foreign language speech skills.

AI technologies are already beginning to change the learning process, they contribute to the creation of a personalized learning path; help to analyze educational metadata almost instantly; provide access to big data, helping in solving various professional tasks and problems. The purpose of this article is to provide an analytical review of examples of the use of artificial intelligence technologies in language teaching and to create a typology of AI-based technological solutions that have been actively used in the educational process over the past five years. The proposed typology of AI-based technological solutions used in teaching a foreign language is based on areas of didactic activity and didactic tasks that can be effectively solved with the help of AI. Under the directions of didactic activity, we mean: teaching and learning of foreign languages; management of the educational process, including the analysis of educational analytics, the development of an individual learning path, the creation of recommender systems; organization of the educational process, that is, control and assessment, providing feedback and reflection, developing didactic materials for adaptive online courses and intelligent learning systems.

The paper is aimed at the objective analysis of positive and negative sides connected to the pragmatic and scientific investigation of Artificial Intelligence technologies. Special attention is paid to the opportunities provided by the artificial intelligence in different fields of social usage, such as: education, culture, medicine, communication, management, ethical code, academic science, military sphere, jurisdiction, etc. Bringing the studies together, the author proposed an expanded view of AI functions, which crucially emphasize the role and importance of network ties, at one side, and at the other side, drawing on a number of examples shows what happens when such network ties become loosened as a result of Artificial Intelligence overestimation.

In the process of creating emotive color structures, color nomination is considered as a product of cognitive-emotional activity. The purpose of the article is to show, using the example of the nomination of colors for consumer goods, the formation of complex mental emotive formations that program human consumer behavior. In today’s world of abundance and aggressive advertising, the consumer becomes immune to the influence of traditional marketing techniques. New methods and techniques that consider the individual psychological characteristics and states of a person (perception, imagination, memory, vision, touch, smell, emotions) are becoming relevant, since consumer behavior represents the interaction of cognitive and emotional processes due to external and internal circumstances. In this regard, the analysis of the perception of new information takes place in parallel with the study of the instincts and emotions that determine our needs, which are transmitted through color associations. Within the framework of neurolinguistic programming, color nomination is considered as a tool for influencing the buyer, its influence on the perception of information and decision making is studied.

The article is the first to propose a periodization of the world history of food. The chronological framework covers the period from the emergence of “Homo sapiens” to the present day. Periodization is based not only on the changes in the process of production and preparation of food, but also on a whole complex of phenomena related to food: the order of eating and serving food, taste preferences, cultural and social traditions, place in the historical context and interaction of cultures, national characters and issues of self-identification. This kind of systematization of the “gastronomic” history of mankind allows us to fit it into the general context of world history, to show the place and role of food and food traditions in the history of mankind. The article highlights the following periods, which do not always coincide with the general periodization of history. 1. The primitive period. The emergence and establishment of traditions of cooking and eating (40,000 BC — 10,000 BC) 2. The emergence and establishment of agriculture. The emergence of the first civilizations (10,000 BC — 1,000 BC) 3. Antiquity. Division of peoples based on food (1,000 BC — 5th century) 4. The period of formation of the food systems of the world. 5th century — turn of the 19th — 20th centuries. 5. The period of food globalization. Modern times. The turn of the 19th — 20th centuries. — present time.

The article analyzes M.V. Lomonosov`s heroic poem, which is about Peter the Great’s visit to the Solovetsky Monastery. The founders of the Solovetsky Monastery are Saints Zosima, Savvaty and Herman, who settled on a deserted island in the first third of the XV century. Over time, the monastery not only grew, but became one of the most revered in Russia. It is visited by thousands of pilgrims; kings and boyars make rich donations. The first of the Russian tsars to visit the Solovetsky Monastery was Peter the Great (1694). This visit will be described by M.V. Lomonosov in his poem. To create the image of an ideal ruler, the poet uses historical realities based on the Kholmogory and Solovetsky chronicles. However, there is also a free interpretation of historical facts that contributes to the creation of a heroic image to glorify the Russian state. The “historical inaccuracies” made by the author are identified and indicated: the feat of Peter during a storm on the White Sea, the history of the construction of the walls of the monastery, the “Solovetsky sitting” of the monks who refused to accept the reforms of Patriarch Nikon.

The paper analyzes the use and translation of zoometaphor in political media and Internet discourse. Translation of zoometaphors is discussed based on an English fable about the Donkey, Tiger and Lion. The research has revealed that in British English the word donkey metaphorically objectivizes the semes of ‘pomposity’ and ‘stubbornness’; in American English, like in Russian, the semes of ‘stupidity’ and ‘stubbornness’. However, the Chinese English discourse reveals a new meaning — ‘humbly doing hard work’, which is similar to the Russian derived verb ishachit ‘to drudge’. Meanwhile, a Chinese English context can be either negative and positive when the semes ‘without tiredness’ and ‘perseverance’ are activated. The word lion creates a metaphoric image due to the semes ‘power’ and ‘majesty’. British and Indian Englishes, as well as Chinese English reveal one more meaning — ‘power guard’. The word tiger as a metaphor has traditionally activated the semes of ‘danger’, ‘aggressiveness’, and ‘force’, but nowadays in the Asian context it has the positive seme ‘rapid development’ and the negative ‘high-ranking corruption’. The article compares the participation of these words in making phraseological units used in the political discourse and points to the challenges they present in translating to Russian. The paper concludes that it is a cultural underpinning that causes most problems in translating pluricentric English.

This paper focuses on the comparative analysis of the linguistic means of expressing ‘high self-esteem’ with the unit ‘face’ on the basis of the analysis of lexemes, phraseological units, proverbs extracted from explanatory and phraseological dictionaries of the Russian and Chinese languages. The methods used in the study include descriptive analytical method, definition, comparative analysis. The authors introduce the results of the research revealing that in both languages one of the meanings of the word “face” is associated with high self-esteem. But the difference is that in the 16-18 centuries in Russian the meaning of ‘face’ included ‘dignity, honor’, which is the key concept of ‘high self-esteem’, however, now this meaning is fixed only in Russian idioms. The word “face” in Chinese can express a whole range of meanings: ‘self-esteem’, ‘the desire to have a positive public opinion of oneself’, ‘the desire to achieve success in order to occupy a higher position in society’ . It not only includes the semantic component ‘dignity’, but also the additional meaning ‘vanity’ . Thus, “face” in modern Chinese is one of the most important means of expressing a person’s high self-esteem.

The object of discourse is an extraordinary person with all his creations, which is constantly replenished by reviews of every subsequent generation of spectators revealing their attitude to the author and his works. The legacy of the great Spanish artist Salvador Dali is a unique asset of the world artistic culture, which has come under scrutiny not only by his contemporaries, but also by a wide audience, art historians, scientists, film critics, literary scholars, poets and writers of the following generations. Due to the fact that the works of the great artist involve countless acts of interpretation and revision, and form an open space around the hitherto unsolved questions by the creator himself, the authors of the article proceed from the assumption that the discourse about Salvador Dali will continue to be enriched in the future cultural and historical context by the works of representatives of art and science. The present article focuses on the discourse about Salvador Dali and his creations, which has been named the Dalinian discourse in the Spanish-language art tradition. The subject of the research are texts written by Dali himself, his friends, and artists, as well as those written by the representatives of other sciences dwelling on the creations of the artist. The article attempts to systematise the main corpus of texts in Spanish about Dali’s visual and literary work and to present its typology.

The article is devoted to the designations in the language of cultural references that form and reflect the sense of identity of its bearers. Among them is the image of “your own space”, which is marked and formed with the help of special words related to both language and culture. Taking into account the works of F. Brodel, P. Nora, R.A. Budagov, L. Febvre, A. Rey, M. Ozouf, etc., the concept of “forcewords” (mots-force / lieux de force), having a long history, reflecting the culture and values of the collective, possessing emotional power and historically changeable, is substantiated. On the material of dictionaries, scientific, science fiction and fiction texts, Internet sites, two poles of representations of the Frenchmen about themselves are established. The first is marked by lexemes associated with civil society (Patrie — Nation — Etat / Nation, Contract, Drapeau; Republique). The second one is reconstructed in the article on the basis of the lexemes Pays, Paysages, Terroirs, Villages, Langues (plural) and is associated with the values of private life, the idea of the native land, local and family memory. Using the example of these lexemes, it is revealed that the nature of force words and the direction of their development are not data once and for all: in some circumstances, the identifying function of the word develops, in others, the force word weakens and loses its emotional impact and ability to be an identity marker.

The article is devoted to the question of the relationship between timbre and syntax in different functional styles of speech. The methodological basis for investigating the mutual influence of syntax (the level of conditioned constructions) and timbre (the level of inductive wholeness) is selected and explained. When considering the notion of “intentionality” within the framework of the direction of phenomenology, it becomes obvious that timbre should be understood as a hierarchy of communication elements, which creates the desired sound taking into account the invariants already available in consciousness. The timbre forms not only direct, syntactic links, but also expressive components contained in both the structure and semantics of the parts of a particular speech work. In order to create convenience and maximum objectivity of analysis when describing syntactic features of works of various functional styles, a specific range of consideration is set within the framework of this study — from the level of simple morphological relations to the level of hypertext unities. The field of analysis is represented as a simple target, where the core is the zone of wellknown standardized types of syntactic links, zone-2 is the space of links existing in the form of visible repetitions (anaphora, epiphora, refrain, syntactic repetitions), zone-3 is the zone of links of all existing linking elements within the text, which is difficult to interpret objectively (links fixed by ritual). The final part of this study presents an example of analyzing a poetic text in English and its translation into Russian in order to demonstrate the close relationship between syntax and timbre at different levels of the hierarchy.

The paper addresses decoding and interpretation of evaluative senses of diminutive and augmentative designations of person. The empirical corpus is constituted by the lexical units selected from lexicographic sources according to a number of criteria, among which are the following: a marker of person in the lexicographic definition, a morphological or syntactic marker of diminutivity and augmentativity in the lexical unit structure, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation marker in the definition, a connotational label. The methods of componential, structural, and linguocultural analysis as well as a descriptive method have been applied to bring into the open evaluative semantics of diminutives and augmentatives. Diminutive and augmentative designations of person are axiologically complicated. Alongside the meaning of diminution and augmentation they express emotional, evaluative, expressive, and stylistic connotations. Axiological potential of the vocabulary layer in question is of great importance for decoding the English speaking community values’ worldview. All diminutives and augmentatives of the corpus are ascertained to have a particular evaluative meaning. Ethical, aesthetic and intellectual evaluations are the most frequent, with emotional, hedonic and normative evaluations being less frequent. Behaviour, appearance, and intelligence are the most important bases for evaluating a person in the English cultural community. Diminutive and augmentative designations of person with rational-emotional and emotional semantics prevail, while designations with rational evaluation are few in number. Evaluative asymmetry also manifests itself in prevalence of pejorative diminutive and augmentative designations. Quantitative evaluation of diminutives and augmentatives is motivated by semantics of the root morpheme, morphological or syntactic marker and depends on the context of use.

The article is aimed at describing a number of certain recurrent features of Russian English in the academic, educational and literary domains of the written discourse in English created by the Russian speakers of English. The article argues that Russian culture, identity and academic traditions are verbalized through a range of translingual practices, starting with the transference of the Russian punctuation and sequence of presenting ideas, including lexical variety and Russian-English hybrids, and finishing with the “nativization and localization” [Platt, Weber and Ho, 1984: 2–3] of the common lexical units, terms, urbanonyms included, and even classic world literature, which is retranslated into Russian English from Russian (for instance, Andersen’s Thumbelina and Brothers Grimms’ Snow white). The combination of analyzed characteristic features invariably turns Russian English presented in the written discourse into a potent tool for the Russian identity construction recognizable both to the Russian and non-Russian speakers of English, specifically to those who are familiar with Russian culture and academic traditions. Yet, written discourse created via Russian English might mislead the speakers of other Englishes in case they have not been exposed to this particular variety on a regular basis.

Political speech (hereinafter PS) is a monological public speech of a political figure, which relies on a written text, the informative component of which is created at the lexico-grammatical level by the speechwriter, and the task of the politician is to ensure that the information is adequately understood by the listening audience. One way of doing this is to reduce the distance between the speaker and the audience. To achieve this “understanding”, the speaker uses the opportunities provided by the oral channel of communication both at the verbal level — the means of phonetic expression that create the prosody of the address — and at the non-verbal level — from body posture to gestures and eye expressions. In linguistics and psycholinguistics the synergetic interaction between prosody and kinesics is increasingly discussed today. How is this interaction realised in PS and what is its effectiveness? Is it possible to consider the realised PS as a multimodal speech utterance? In order to answer these questions this article examines the current approaches to the study of French PS presented in corpus linguistics [Goldman et al., 2009; Simon et al., 2010, 2013] and interdisciplinary linguistics [Kibrik, 2018; Guaitella, 2014] and discusses the relevance of their results to describe the prosody of address as a strategic component of PS.

The article is devoted to the study of models of training Russianists in China within the framework of “one belt and one path”. It examines the issues of testing, compiling textbooks, creating a system of academic subjects, forming the structure of the teaching staff in the Russian language in China. Recently, China’s cooperation with the countries of the Russian-speaking zone has reached a record high. Based on the current situation, teaching Russian in China should internationalize the concept of teaching, the model of teaching Russian, teaching materials, forms and types of testing, teaching staff and teaching methods. It is also necessary to constantly adjust the strategy of pedagogical activities to adapt China to external activities with the countries of the Russian-speaking zone. The article discusses such issues as the goal of training specialists in the Russian language, the system of subjects, testing, compilation of textbooks, the structure of the teaching staff in the Russian language in China.

The paper discusses the issues of a language teacher professional growth and improvement and increasing his/her competence in line with modern trends in education. It addresses the topic of self-development and its impact on the quality of teaching foreign languages. Self-development of language teaching staff is shown to be the main factor of their professional competence. The work provides a rationale for the relevance of the chosen topic and discusses the significance of teacher self-development in the modern world. Possible ways to improve his/her professional skills are considered. They involve a critical reflective analysis by the teacher of his/her professional competencies, the quality of teaching students a foreign language and prospects for personal growth. It is shown that the process of professional development should be ever-lasting, assume collegiality and provide mentoring within a single educational organization. Self-development and improvement of professional competence implies collaboration with foreign colleagues and experts in the professional field. The paper proposes a scheme of self-development for a language teacher, based on a reflective analysis of his/her professional competence and place in the profession.

Although by now the need to create a problem-oriented educational environment in higher education when mastering academic disciplines (including FL as a university subject) has already been proven both theoretically and experimentally, nevertheless, the Linguodidactic analysis of 100 syllabuses in a foreign language as an academic discipline and 100 FL course-books (written by Russian university teachers & published in 2019–2023) shows the lack of orientation among most of their authors towards its creation due to their lack of awareness of the linguodidactic foundations of modeling a problem-oriented educational environment in a university educational context, integrating communicative-approach, problembased approach and sociocultural approach in teaching & learning a foreign language as a tool of intercultural communication. The article briefly summarizes the results of scientific understanding of the problem-based approach in education, its general and specific features with the view to the linguodidactic interpretation of the concepts of “problem-based learning”, “problem-based teaching”, “problem-based mastering of the discipline” in relation to teaching a foreign language the learner and his/her socialization by means of a foreign language, gives a description of a system of interconnected cultural and linguocultural problem-solving tasks and assignments, problem-oriented types of learners’ monolingual and bilingual activities, creative types of university students’ verbal activities in co-learning languages, including recommendations for the methodological design of cultural problem-solving tasks, with which the teacher starts forming a problem-oriented educational environment in the FL classroom and outside it.

An ideologically-bound unit is a reference to a specific ideology that exists in the context of a particular epoch, and can be explored as an intrinsic element of the global vertical context. Undoubtedly, ideologemes represent a certain challenge for simultaneous interpreters who are not always able to adequately perceive the global vertical context of the source utterance and to properly convey the associative and connotative potential of these units. The present study is undertaken to pinpoint the peculiarities of the modern American political discourse, namely the public speeches of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and their simultaneous interpretation into Russian, carried out by media interpreters of “Voice of America”, an international multimedia news network of the USA. The research is aimed at identifying and comparing interpreting strategies employed to achieve the required level of rendition appropriateness and usability. The findings further reveal that the global vertical context of the source utterance and the communicative pragmatics of the interpreter-mediated event seem to impact the choice of an interpreting strategy that encompasses specific techniques. It is noteworthy that in order to render an ideologically-bound unit and its derivatives, an interpreter is expected to use corresponding equivalents in the target language, which do not distort the speaker’s intentions and voiced position, as well as convey the communicative effect of the source utterance and fit into the recipient’s ideological picture of the world.

V.N. Komissarov as a famous theoretician in the sphere of translation was introduced to his Chinese colleagues in 1984, when modern translation theory just started in China. For forty years now, his translation theories have been disseminated, adopted, and developed. V.N. Komissarov’s major works, including Questions of Translation Theory in Foreign Linguistics (1978), Linguistics of Translation (1980), Translation Theory (Linguistic Aspects) (1990) and Modern Translation Studies (1999), have been reviewed in Chinese academic journals. His last monograph, Modern Translation Studies (2004), was translated into Chinese. Chinese translation studies introduced his theoretical ideas in the sphere of translation, such as the nature of translation, translation equivalence, translation models, translation correspondences, translation norms, translation pragmatics, textological aspects of translation studies, cultural and sociological aspects of translation studies, translation teaching methodology, etc. Certain ideas, such as pragmatic translation adaptation, have been further developed. In general, V.N. Komissarov’s theoretical viewpoints have been studied and summarized in many scientific papers and various works, which contributed to the development of Chinese translation theory. Moreover, his translation thoughts are widely used by Chinese scholars for theoretical research and the training of future translators. Some of V.N. Komissarov’s views are applied to the study of the function of cultural translation, translation adaptation, the definition of translation, translation of the national style of speech and other theoretical problems. The scholar’s theory of translation is most often used to address a variety of issues in translation practice. The most influential theory is undoubtedly the theory of translation equivalence. While using this theory, numerous master theses and translation reports analyze issues in both fiction and information translation, as well as problems in interpretation and audiovisual translation.

Science popularization is undergoing significant transformations, including changes among popularizers themselves, which leads to the diversification of communication strategies and a shift in functional potential. The article deals with the strategies employed by the journalist author in the text of a book on law as a genre of popular science legal discourse. Two key popularization strategies that contribute to the implementation of the author’s communicative intention, and enable the agent not only to activate background knowledge of the target recipient, but also influence their axiological attitudes are analyzed and described. The right choice of popularization strategies makes special information accessible to the recipient and directly affects the effectiveness of the perception of a popular science text. The informative-explanatory strategy is used by the popularizer to interpret key legal concepts. The strategy of manipulative influence enables the agent to influence the target recipient by presenting special information from a certain angle. The conclusion is drawn that a contemporary popular science book on law does not only contribute to the public legal education but also shapes a reader’s ideology.

The article presents an analysis of precedent statements in socio-political discourse, which is reflected in different types of media texts thematically related to the coronavirus pandemic. The described means of language contributes to the realization of various communicative strategies, first of all the strategy of persuasion. The article demonstrates the role of precedent statements and illustrates their persuasive potential as one of the fundamental elements of intertextuality category in the framework of rhetorical media discourse. As an effective means of implementing both the global strategy of persuasion and specific communicative tactics — warning, threatening, manipulating, discrediting, etc. — precedent statements are regularly reproduced in different types of rhetorical discourse (political, economic, religious, etc.) and make a significant contribution to achieving the main perlocutionary effect — inducing the recipient to take a certain action.⁠

The present study is devoted to one of the topical issues of linguoculturology — integration processes taking place in the intercultural space. The realization of these complex processes is possible owing to the word and its semantic content, which is constantly enriched with new or well-known, but rethought in the practice of speech activity meanings. The article presents the results of the study of the semantics of the word mind and its adjectival variant smart in the comparative aspect of the Russian and French languages (l’intelligence, intelligent). The semantics of these words is actualized in modern speech due to new technological aspects of human life, such as artificial intelligence, information and digital technologies. They are of interest as concepts that formed the intercultural space of Russia and France as a result of the mutual influence of French surrealism and Russian avant-garde.

The present article aims to reveal the particular features of the way proper names function in an operatic text, in particular in the libretto of the British comic opera “The Sorcerer” created by William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. This study is based on the following hypothesis: within the framework of theatrical discourse, one of the main functions of a proper name is an information-accumulative, or cumulative, function. As an integral part of culture, an onym has the ability to store culturally significant information. “Decoding” such onyms in a literary or an operatic text provides the reader or viewer with all the context necessary for an understanding of what is happening according to the plot. For example, in “The Sorcerer” there are anthroponyms that indicate the status that the main characters have in the Anglo-Saxon society. Apart from anthroponyms there are also culturally significant toponyms, which have to be understood in order to grasp the comic effect created by William Gilbert, the author of the libretto. The analysis of the few chosen onyms made it possible to prove that a proper name may play an important role in the construction of the plot and in the creation of characters’ images within the framework of a musical theatre piece.

The article is an analytical review of some problems of dictionary codification of Luxembourg German Standard. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the Luxembourg variety of German Standard, which differs in a number of distinctive features from other national varieties of the German language, is still poorly studied. Some aspects of the study of the German language in Luxembourg, the criteria of the standard in general and the features of the Luxembourg standard of the German language in particular are briefly described. The main part of the study is the analysis of current lexicographic sources that codify the specific features of the pronunciation, grammar, lexical and semantic norms of the Luxembourg Standard. The results of the analysis of lexicographic sources, which are descriptive codifiers of the German Standard in Luxembourg, are presented: a pronunciation dictionary of the Standard High German language, the project “Regional Variation in the Grammar of Standard German”, dictionaries of varieties of the German language. The structure and content of the dictionary of the Luxembourg standard for the German language [Sieburg, 2022] are considered in detail. This includes general information about the mega-, macro- and microstructure of the dictionary, the subject and variable characteristics of the codified vocabulary, the features of the structure and content of dictionary entries. As a result of the analysis, a conclusion is made about the development of the normalizing activity of the Lu­xembourg German Standard and about the recognizing of this standard, which has specific features at different levels of the language system.

The paper presents the structure, content and organization of the glossary of English verbs and their word combinations functioning in the geographic register of scientific speech. The glossary is compiled at the Department of Foreign Languages for the Faculty of Geography. It is a kind of “active” lexicographic source which helps students and scientists to master ESP of geographic disciplines. Verbs are given as part of the most common lexical and grammatical collocations such as river flows, sea level rises, rain falls accompanied by brief contexts illustrating their real usage in scientific articles, textbooks and terminological dictionaries on geography. Verbs of different kinds: terminological verbs, verbs of general English, verbs of general scientific vocabulary are usually used in recurrent collocations and free word combinations. Their linguistic functioning is confined to a set of rather simple and logically based patterns. These verbal word combinations serve as the “building material” of scientific speech in the field of Earth sciences. Thus, our glossary contains the most essential information about the use of basic geographical verbs. It can also serve as the material for testing the knowledge of geographic ESP.

Foreign languages have always occupied a prominent place in Russia and the Russian culture. The paper states that despite being seemingly isolated from the outside world, Russia has always been closely connected with it, and not only by trade and political relations, but also by spirit and culture. The research contributes to the discussion of the role of foreign languages in Russian culture and reviews the development of foreign languages teaching system in Russia. Adoption of Christianity was the first significant reason for the spread of foreign languages in the society that brought not only a new religion, but also the Greek language along with the theological books. Over time, more and more foreign languages began to spread in the society, sometimes even entering into a conflict with one another: Latin with Greek (in the theological field), German with French (in the sphere of politics), French with English (in the literary field). In certain historical periods (for example, in the first half of the 19th century), foreign languages even displaced the Russian language in some social strata. The contribution underlines the importance of analysing such historical periods with special reference to interconnection between language as a means of communication and national identity. The investigation also argues that at times, for example, like in Soviet times, foreign languages acquired the status of the ‘dead’ languages and became an exclusive tribute to the tradition and a means of reading. In conclusion, the paper declares that foreign languages have always retained their important role, opening up new horizons for the Russian people and connecting them with the outside world.

The article discusses the principles of nomination in the field of Italian wine production for the period 2018–2022, the identification of an onomastic shift relative to the traditional principles of naming classic vintage wines in Italy in the 19th-20th centuries. Using the method of continuous sampling from the websites of wine producers and the blog of wine marketers, the units of the study were analyzed in terms of linguistic-cognitive criteria that guided wine producers when choosing non-traditional and innovative names for wines and champagnes. The article also reveals word-formation models of pragmatonyms in the wine-making sphere and a hierarchy of communicative functions. Particular attention is paid to the actualization of the associative-connotative series when forming the names of wines.

The article aims to study modern aspects of the variation of linguistic and cultural space and to clarify approaches to its study, using the example of the French-speaking space. The role of Romance studies in the development of the principles of spatial research, the establishment of spatial patterns, mapping and the creation of atlases is shown. It is proved that the peculiarity of the Romance school of areal studies is the increasing desire to reflect the connection of language and culture. Taking into account these features, it is established that the French-speaking space is a vast, fragmented area with a core and regional centers, showing a tendency to expand, having relative integrity, which is supported by the interconnections and development trends of its constituent zones. The question of whether the unity of the Francophone area is preserved or weakened as it expands requires further research. The results of the study confirm the immanent nature of variability as a property of language, the complexity of the relationship “center” — “periphery”, the role of borders in language and culture, the importance of self-esteem of speakers in maintaining the integrity of the area. These questions are important for studying not only the Francophone area, but also the areas of other supranational communities formed on the basis of other languages — Romance and non-Romance.

There are two opposing tendencies in the French speech stream. As a vocal-type language with a dominant open syllable and the absence of lexical stress, French creates sequences of two vowel sounds (gaping/l’hiatus) on the border of words in speech. Phonetic processes such as coupling (enchaînement) and binding (liaison) are used to remove this coarticulatively unfavorable context at the word junction. It is obvious that the implementation of coupling and binding at the border of words in the speech stream creates a diffuse acoustic marking of the external sandhi: words merge into a continuous physical signal. How do speakers create this co-articulatory cohesion of sounds in the speech stream? How do listeners manage to recognize in a continuous stream separate words that enter into certain syntactic and semantic relationships with each other? The article considers the external sandhi from the point of view of its articulatory, acoustic, auditory and cognitive processing.

The article deals with the cognitive essence of zoomorphic metaphor and its national and cultural identity in the Russian language. The study was carried out based on dictionaries and text corpora of the Russian language. The purpose of the article is to analyze the vocabulary material and its textual implementations in order to determine, based on the analysis, which cultural information is not fully reflected in explanatory dictionaries. In the course of the study, it was found that the names of animals, which represent cultural standards in the Russian language, mainly capture negative character traits of people and their appearance. The images of flying birds, on the contrary, capture and describe in a figurative form the positive characteristics of a person. The analysis of dictionary definitions showed that different names of the same animals often have different associative potential in the national-cultural sense. Explanatory dictionaries do not always capture differences in the connotative volume of lexical units. The results of this study can be used in lexicographic practice when creating a complex dictionary, which involves the inclusion of connotative and associative meanings in the interpretation of words. Such dictionaries are necessary both when teaching Russian as a native language and when working with foreign students who study Russian.

The purpose of the paper is to point out some theoretical problems concerning the role of cognitive methods in linguistics, and in the widening the humanitarian competence in general. The paper focuses on the investigation of the cognitive metaphor as a sense-creating device in the literary discourse, using cognitive, conceptual, frame/slot analyses with the elements of the component analysis. The author investigates R. Bradbury’s “Embroidery” in close connection with the metaphorical transfer of meaning and draws the conclusion that this approach opens new facets of conceptualization. The cognitive aspects of a literary text are analyzed, its deep intertextuality and ability to generate the new texts is established, the chain links are constructed. Such approach gives a new impetus to outlining the ways of its possible role in derivational text history. Much attention is paid to the intertextual inclusions, specifically emphasizing their role in changing and reframing the readers’ cognitive system. Furthermore, the paper shows the movement along the multiple ways of creating sense, ensures unlimited possibilities for literary and linguistic sense revealing.

The article is devoted to one of the relevant problems of understanding francophonie — the consideration of this phenomenon as a special literary field, where several texts in different languages (one of which is French) coexist. Francophone literature outside of France emerged as an independent phenomenon in the middle of the 20th century (with the exception of the province of Quebec and the historical francophone areas, such as — Switzerland, Belgium) and the study of these literatures has its own history. The purpose of the study is to consider several approaches to interpreting the problems of French-language literatures that are formed at the intersection of cultures. The article gives a brief overview of the concepts and theories used in the context of literary francophonie: the traditional “center-periphery” dichotomy, the concept of cultural miscegenation, post-colonial discourse and the theory of creolization. The research describes such markers of the borderland as the representation of a mestizo identity by French-speaking authors, the poetics of postmodernism, and the hybridity of the language code. The conclusion is made about the inextricable connection of French-language literary texts that exist on the border of two worldviews — “one’s own” and “alien”, simultaneously with the local and world literary heritage, as well as the relationship between the postmodern concept and postcolonial studies.

The article discusses the terminology of cultural memory research — the designations of reference points and/or vectors of culture that are important for the identification of a person and a collective. It is shown that the symbolization of culture can occur in different forms: the author examines the nominations that are used in the French-language scientific literature when developing the concepts of places (lieux): places of memory, places of knowledge, not places, places of transition. Most of the names with the place component are still close to metaphors and are not well known to the Russian-speaking audience. The article aims to trace the evolution of a number of designations proposed by the French-speaking authors of the second half of the XX–XXI centuries within the framework of theories of places of culture that can find wider application in domestic science. Based on the material of France and Quebec, it is established that in the French-speaking scientific discourse, the reference points of culture can be associated with the symbolism of places and reflect two sides of the existence of culture itself: static and dynamic. These sides are mutually reversible: in the process of the development of culture and language, new references arise, while “old” references are stored in memory, forgotten and resurface, revised and processed. The interchange and reinterpretation of old and new reference points, places of memory and places of transition are a sign and condition for the development of society, culture and discourses about society and culture at different stages of history.

The article investigates the issue of whether emphatic particles exist in the English language as well as looks into the ways of distinguishing these particles from similar phenomena including discourse markers and function words. Though particles cannot always be easily identified among other parts of speech, emphatic particles are quite distinct from other types of particles presented in grammar studies — structural, negative or adverbial ones — as well as discourse markers. To clarify the point, the authors dwell on the emphatic particles of the Russian language in order to highlight their main purpose — they help the speaker convey the full message to the addressee without adding any semantic connotations to an utterance. Thus, emphatic particles, along with other discursive elements, are used by the speaker to carry out a complex and multidimensional operation of controlling the understanding of the text on the part of the addressee. As emphatic particles fall into three functional classes — attention markers, background information markers, topic and focus markers — the paper provides a frame for presenting their semantic composition in lexicographic sources. Another objective is to distinguish between discourse markers, discourse particles and emphatic particles in the English language. As various languages prefer different parts of speech as the source of producing particles (prepositions, adverbs, interjections, etc.), there is great terminological variability in the number and purpose of particles used in communication. The findings reveal that in the English language words that are not essentially emphatic particles, such as adverbials or compound discourse particles derived from idiomatic word combinations, often perform the emphatic function. The outcome of the research proves the hypothesis that the English words ‘just’, ‘simply’ and some others are equal to Russian emphatic particles.

The sound [ǝ] refers to one of the most complex and variable phenomena observed in the French speech stream. One of the most important features of [ǝ] is its ability to be both a sound and an absence of sound in almost the same context, i.e. without changing the informative content of the message. The specificity of French [ǝ] also lies in the fact that it is pronounced as a labialized vowel. As a result, three rounded vowels of the front row and middle rise are pronounced in an unstressed syllable: fluent [ǝ] and harmonized [oe] and [ø]. Taking into account the acoustic and articulatory similarity of these sounds and the law of least effort, the [ǝ] ability for complete reduction could be expected to be transferred to [oe] and [ø], especially in rapid speech. Do these facts indicate the French unstressed vocalism tendency towards simplification? How is this variability tracked by the speaker while understanding and generating speech? The article summarizes empirical data (acoustic, articulatory and perceptual) on the [ǝ] variability from phonetic, sociolinguistic and neuro-linguistic studies. It highlights major challenges and open issues that should be addressed in further research.

The article examines the concept of “cultural revolution” in Russian science, the relationship between two cultural transformations in Russia and the term “Cultural revolution” in China. The author points out that the main consequences of the second cultural revolution in the USSR / Russia were as follows: 1. Condemnation of an ossified and unified ideology; 2. Erosion of cultural absolutism; 3. Cessation of the policy of strong active pressure on intellectuals. Based on the assessments of Chinese people from all strata of Chinese society, a number of cultural and mass movements, pluralism in the development of culture are described: autochthonous culture, religion, literature, art, etc. Based on the analysis carried out, it is possible to indicate a clear direction for the perception of the culture and image of Russia in the new era by the Chinese masses.

The sociocultural space of the UK, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was in a state of flux. During the time, the norms and values of two different epochs were in sharp conflict, bringing to light such phenomena as conformism and nonconformism. In “The Forsyte Saga”, John Galsworthy masterfully described the interaction between people from different social classes and their different mindsets. Strict compliance with acceptable norms and values, in the case of “The Forsyte Saga”, is what conformism refers to. Nonconformism refers to the struggle for freedom, love and happiness. It was a revolution against the ethos of the Forsytes, an ethos based on cold calculations and a need for profit. Based on the analysis of this phenomenon, the dynamics of the development of society can be traced. The Victorian era faded into the past. The Forsytes, the embodiment of the passing era, were the representatives of a society in which there was nothing more important than an impeccable reputation and a stable income. The new era belonged to those who put family, art and beauty above money and public opinion. Their aim was to determine the basis of a new sociocultural space.

Studying the city as a text of culture on the material of literary works is usually associated with the identification of its “inner meaning”, “feeling” and / or the main “idea”. We proceed from understanding objectification as fixation of the author’s perception of urban space in a literary text which leads us to the question of the ways and linguistic means that allow turning the thoughtform into a holistic, visible, in some cases almost tangible image determining the possibility of transmitting the author’s vision of the city to the readership. “Tales of Old Vilnius” by Max Frei has been chosen as a source for the research because it can be regarded as one of the most interesting urban texts which have appeared in the 21st century, where the characteristics of the existing city are combined with the author’s fantasy, as a result of which there appears a literary version of urban space which differs greatly from its invariant. The methods of linguostylistic analysis (with elements of linguosemiotic analysis) have been chosen, which enable us to reveal not only verbal, but also visual ways and means of objectivization of the city in fiction. As the analysis has shown, the specifics of the Tales are stipulated by its composition and the combination of verbal and visual ways of author’s objectivisation: they are implemented with the help of linguistic means of different semiotics, however, they complement each other in the process of creating the image of the city, where the real and the imaginary are closely connected. As a result, it can be concluded that not only the urban supertext can be enriched by the creation of a new literary image of the city, but that the new fictional image as well has the potential to foster the real future development of urban space.

Despite the fact that the main ideas of P.A. Florensky were formulated more than a hundred years ago, they remain relevant to this day. Their great influence on his contemporary writers is therefore obvious. Among those, we are primarily interested in writers such as D.S. Merezhkovsky, whose work is largely congruent with the religious tenets of the philosopher, and M.A. Bulgakov, who dedicated his “cherished novel” to Yeshua Ha-Notsri, but was not considered a religious writer either in the 30s of the 20th century, or today. It is known that the two pillars of Pavel Florensky’s work were religion and mathematics, but he wasn’t the pioneer of the idea of a scientific approach to the study of the foundations of Christianity; even Nicholas of Cusa, a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, a theologian and mathematician of the 15th century, was sure that it was possible to learn to understand the grand design with the help of the exact sciences. The report attempts to reveal the manifestation (consonance) of the ideas formulated by P.A. Florensky in his books “Imaginaries in Geometry” and “Iconostasis” in the works of D. Merezhkovsky and M. Bulgakov.

The language of naive painting, like verbal, is a universal communicative system, which gives reason to use a diachronic approach to explore its content arising from the depths of human nature. Being a combination of historical experience and psychological energy, the archetype becomes a symbolic unit of the analysis of naive paintings. The universality of the archetype is manifested in its ability to be realized in different time contexts, which makes it a very attractive subject of research in the works of naive artists of the second half of the XX century. Repeated reference to the archetype of the “ideal city” accelerates its adaptation to new cultural realities, becoming a method of interaction of a self-taught artist with the world. The relevance of the research is related to the interest in the implementation of the utopian project of the city within the framework of modern art space. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time the archetype of the ideal city will be considered in the works of naive painting by artists V.E. Sakiyan and Yu.D. Deev. The research is aimed at studying the diachronic aspect of the creative interpretation of the «ideal city» archetype in the images of Russian artistic culture.

The article analyzes the methodological approaches and strategies of the textbook “English for natural sciences (A2-B1)” in the system of preparing bachelors for the certification exam in a foreign language at level B2. The rationale for the structure of the manual and the logic of selecting textual material is given, the principles for developing training tasks and exercises are concretized. The author concludes the relevance of systematic and consistent training of bachelors to fulfill the complex task of improving the level of English language proficiency raising it to the upper-intermediate level (B2) in all types of speech activity, as well as mastering professional vocabulary and scientific discourse skills on specialized topics. Thus, it is required to strictly adhere to the verified logical structure of the manual, to increase the interest and motivation of students for self-education, to calculate the time to complete various types of tasks, to have modern technical equipment, and also to conduct regular testing.

Since the end of 2019, due to the ongoing epidemiological measures, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China was forced to transfer all educational institutions in China to distance learning. Distance learning, being a dynamically progressive method of teaching, has already been considered in many educational institutions of the world as an independent form, that can be used as an alternative to traditional face-to-face education, or integrated into the general system of the educational process. During the pandemic it was able to fully demonstrate its effectiveness, significantly expanding the contingent of students, increasing their motivation for self-educational activities, and developing their professional competence. Today, China is one of the leaders in the use of Information and Communication Technologies in education. This article examines the experience in the use of ICT in the process of teaching Chinese through the example of two universities from southern and northern China: Xi’an Jiaotong University and Shenzhen MSU-BIT University. Both Universities try using a personality-oriented approach in the learning process, which reflects the trend of development of modern education in China and around the world — lifelong learning. Special attention is paid to the teaching tools used, new methods of interaction between teachers and students, and other transformations of the Chinese education system in the era of digitalization.

The article explores creation of new fictional realia as a translation technique. Fictional realia are defined as a special kind of linguistic realia, also known as quasirealia or irrelia, which describes various aspects of fictional worlds: flora and fauna, everyday life, social and political structure, etc. New realia creation involves incorporation of new lexical units in a translated text, which may remain semantically connected with the original realia and its referent or eliminate the connection completely. When the new realia preserve the connection with the original lexical units and their referents, we observe the creation of a new realia-word, which may be categorized as an attempt to redesignate the original realia, rather than a direct translation. This type of realia creation is somewhat similar to modulation, but differs from it due to the impossibility to establish direct logical links, such as “part and whole”, “cause and effect”, etc. Elimination of the aforementioned connections leads to the creation of a new realia-object, the translator’s own invention, which is absent is the original text and the corresponding fictional world. Creation of a new realia-word may resemble adaptation, but it does not necessarily share the same goal. In both cases, creation of new realia is a creative process, which is heavily dependent on the translator’s personality, their own vision. Creation of new realia is demonstrated through the analysis of the translations of fictional realia from “We” by Y. Zamyatin, “Brave New World” by A. Huxley, and “1984” by G. Orwell.

The present paper focuses on the cognitive modelling of literary text space. The aim of the research was to conduct a comparative study of the cognitive proxemic models of the subconcepts “virtual space” and “real space”, as represented in the multicultural novel «Walking in Two Worlds» by W. Kinew. In accordance with E.A. Ogneva’s research, a cognitive model of literary text space is defined as a construct which demonstrates the correlation between various constituents of the nominative field of the literary concept “space”, which is perceived and comprehended by the reader. The term “proxeme” is used to denote a word or a word combination that is semantically related to parameters of space. The article presents data on the quantitative relation between the types of thematic proxemic models which comprise the nominative field of the literary subconcepts “virtual space” and “real space”, namely, models of personalised anthropocentrically marked literary text space, models of non-personalised anthropocentrically marked literary text space, as well as those of non-personalised anthropocentrically unmarked literary text space. For each of the abovementioned categories of proxemic models the most common types of proxemes are identified. In addition to this, the representation of dynamic literary text space and the spatial axes is examined. The results obtained highlight the qualitative differences between the significance of the virtual literary text space and the real literary text space, as conceived by the author of the novel. Despite the fact that the characters perceive real life as less salient and important than their performance in the virtual space, the real literary text space turns out to be more intense in terms of human activity than the virtual literary text space and, therefore, not less meaningful, whereas the virtual text space is represented as an environment conducive to creativity alongside revival and/or preservation of traditional culture.

This article is devoted to the study of the structure of the extralinguistic meaning of a proper name, the layers of information that it includes and the circumstances for their actualization. Onym possesses both linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of meaning, which makes possible the development and dynamics of information represented by the non-linguistic component of meaning. In its structure, archetypal, mythological, religious, scientific, historical, geographical, sociocultural, literary and aesthetic types of information are distinguished, the actualization of which depends both on the context of the use of a proper name and on the background knowledge of the recipient. The existence of several information layers in the structure of the meaning of the onym is analyzed from the standpoint of the theory of spiral development of the meaning of the proper name. The cumulative function of onomastic units and their ability to act as components of cultural memory, representative of the cultural and historical heritage is emphasized. The analysis of the functioning of proper names in a popular science text is illustrated with the examples from the work of Lynne Truss “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”. The interpretive potential of onyms is analyzed, the specifics of dynamics of certain information is singled out in the structure of the meaning of a name in order to achieve the goal of communication both from the point of view of transmitting a certain message, and from the point of view of the expressiveness of the use of linguistic material, which is underlined with the help of the ironic function as realized in it.

The article discusses linguistic and cultural values at the time of “cancel culture” within PR communications framework. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to trace the logical development of Political Correctness, the socio-cultural policy of Postmodernism, aimed at the transformation of the language and likewise the mode of thinking and lifestyle. Cancel culture is a policy of intimidation of all those who disagree with the abolition of traditional and the introduction of new universal values of the collective West, aimed at people’s dehumanization. The objective of this work is to identify the features of PR communication technologies aimed at shaping new ideas in society. The novelty of the research is determined by an attempt to characterize new values formation features of the Anglo-Saxon mentality that affect the whole world. The research methodology is based on the academic achievements in studying language, culture and spiritual and moral values, analysed from the philosophical and linguistic views. The research methods consist in the analysis and synthesis of the material on the chosen topic and its philological analysis. The study reveals that the social and cultural processes taking place in the Western world are aimed at completely replacing traditional values rooted in world religions, which may pose a threat to the rest of the world. The search for new values that are currently observed in modern society is directly related to the shift of paradigms.

This article tries to reveal a connection between fi ne art (painted images) and modernist theatre (A. Artaud, S. Beckett). Apart from the fact that critical essays of these authors are filled with various references to the artists and their paintings, diff erent forms of visual art become an integral part of dramatic performances and lead us to raising the question of their relation to the verbal form of expression. One of the ways to create images during the play is ekphrasis, the poetic description or visualisation of something that is not presented on stage, which blurs the lines between verbal and aesthetic and sets up the conditions for the most authentic and genuine expression of the author’s worldview. For both Artaud and Beckett a word alone is insignificant and shallow, it cannot speak the truth, but has the ability to create a vision, a number of images, which now constitute the core of modernist theatre.

The article focuses on the peculiarities of Bosnian cuisine of the early XIX century and its comparison with the dietary habits of the French of the same period. The aim of the work is to give a visual representation to the reader of the historical novel “The Travnik Chronicle” by Ivo Andrich about the problems faced by the family of a French diplomat sent to Bosnia, where the French consulate was first opened in 1806. In the absence of special literature devoted to this period, the researcher is experiencing some difficulties in reconstructing the state of Bosnian cooking at the beginning of the XIX century. The existing works are devoted to Ottoman, Turkish, modern Bosnian cuisine, as well as the history of certain foodstuffs. In this regard, the notes of travelers who visited the territories of Yugoslavia during the Ottoman period are valuable. The totality of information from various sources still makes it possible to understand to what extent the cuisines of France and Bosnia diff ered during the stay of Consul Jean Daville in the capital of the Bosnia Pashaluk Travnik. The study shows that the diff erences in most parameters were cardinal. First of all, food products differed. Thus, mutton predominated among meat products in Bosnia, while beef and pork were the basis of the meat menu in France. Dairy products, types of fats, spices were different. Of the alcohol on the French table, wine was usual, in Muslim Bosnia — plum vodka. In most cases, the methods of cooking and serving food differed. Therefore, to all the hardships of staying and the difficulties of fulfilling a diplomatic mission in the remote province of the Ottoman Empire of Parisian Jean Daville, the lack of habitual food is added. His compatriots travelling through the possessions of the Turkish sultan experienced the same problems.

The article considers the concept of culture as a universal that constantly generates theoretical and methodological problems and that is why it requires a special approach. The author of the article offers a comprehensive meta-disciplinary approach based on system principles and an original idea. Culture functions according to the algorithmic model of “cultural meaning — action — object/artifact of culture” in the mode of continuous process of objectification/deobjectifi cation of cultural meaning/artifact of culture. Cultural artifacts are cognitive artifacts; cognition provides interaction between consciousness and the outside world. From a cognitive point of view, culture is not an external set of alienated objects and not an “intrapsychic” systematization of them, but a dynamic “supersystem” cognitivepragmatic whole. The connecting link working with the cognitive-mental code is a thinking subject who possesses not only the “memory of culture”, but also a system of cognitive, creative competencies, capable of both systematizing cultural codes (synthesis operation) and segmenting the cultural space (operation of complex analysis of a separate cultural code/system of cultural codes). In the context of the author’s theory of cognitive-pragmatic programs (CPP), culture appears as a hierarchically organized, dynamic, polysemiotic, polydiscursive system of inextricably interconnected CPP of different types (a) metanarrative; b) derivatives; c) nationalspecific, which provide an inextricable connection of the system of universal concepts “language — culture — personality”. The core of culture is a system of nationalspecific CPP that synthesize the properties of metanarrative and derivative programs and act as the mental basis of the key ideological platforms of the culture of a person/ nation/people.

The article discusses the importance of the written fixation of the language of the Friulian ethnic minority, officially recognized by the Italian Republic as one of the twelve minority languages of the state. In the light of the policy of state language regulation, the authorities of the Friuli region (the northeastern region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia) have taken a number of measures to enhance the prestige of the Friulian language: these are television and radio broadcasting in Friuli, the introduction of native language lessons in primary and secondary schools, and the popularization of Friulian language in the region. However, most of the measures focused on fixing the language in graphic symbols: the creation of explanatory and bilingual dictionaries and a spelling corrector, the translation of precedent texts, the translation of toponyms and road signs from Italian into Friulian, the introduction of offi ce work in local authorities in Friulian. Accordingly, this article is devoted to the identification of these channels of written fixation, as well as the analysis of the linguo-pragmatic effectiveness of the measures taken. The study reveals that the introduction of office work in the Friulian language in local governments seems to be ineffective in the fi eld of language practice, but is justified from a cultural, historical, political and ideological point of view because it confirms the prestigious status of the official language. An unexpectedly strong vector for the actualization of linguistic identity was the introduction of written fixation of the Friulian language in the form of translation of sacred texts, toponyms, signs, commemorative inscriptions into the Friulian language, as well as the creation and publication of a huge number of bilingual dictionaries. This trend is already determined from the point of view of ethnolinguistic intention: it is necessary to remove the minority (Friulian) language from the traditional sphere of functioning of Italian dialects — oral speech

The purpose of the article is to consider the similarities and diff erences between concepts of language attitudes and language ideologies, the proximity of which implies their synonymy and even identity. Particular attention is paid to how these concepts are interpreted and used in Russian and Western scientific discourse. The research revealed that language attitudes and language ideologies differ in a number of parameters: the degree of normativity and awareness (rationalization), the nature of acquisition, group vs. individual representations, and abstract vs. object-specific character. The paper shows the bidirectional causal infl uence between language attitudes and language ideologies, although it is more evident how ideologies, as a more comprehensive and abstract construct, can influence attitudes and language practices. Language ideologies also differ from language attitudes in that the latter do not necessarily translate into speech behavior and can remain at the level of attitude to language without any actions, while language ideologies are detected through language practices. It is emphasized that the term ideology has both a broad and a narrower meaning; in the first case, ideology is understood as an all-encompassing construct without political connotations, inherent in any social group, in the second case, its source is seen in ruling groups imposing it on subordinate groups

The role of slang in modern English is highly controversial since the purpose of its use is rarely a simple exchange of information. Slang serves more as an identification of a social group; its functioning is a linguistic reflection of the modernity, which comes down to the changing of a certain discourse towards informal speech. The article is devoted to the study of slang in the Colloquial Singapore English. SMS of 2004 and 2012 from the NUS SMS corpus were used as the material for the study. The NUS SMS is the corpus developed by the linguists from the National University of Singapore. The purpose of this article is to observe the use of slang and its role in SMS. This study presents a corpus-driven approach where the statistical data analysis was used. As a result, it was found that the words which are commonly referred to slang originated from the Chinese and performing pragmatic functions of addressing and expressing the authors’ emotional state are widely used in SMS of 2004 and 2012 from the NUS SMS corpus.

The article deals with the typical means of personal deixis encoded in the texts of popular legal discourse, as well as the techniques that a scientist as a popularizer uses to construct his image. Popular legal discourse is viewed as a kind of popular science discourse with a number of distinctive features inherent in scientific communication. The authorial position in the text under analysis is impersonal, which is typical of scientific discourse, but the popularizer demonstrates greater freedom and variability of expression due to the less rigid stylistic framework of the popular science discourse. The combination of certain strategies of scientific and media discourses employed by the author, enables him to manifest high competence and professionalism in his field and at the same time establish some personal contact and convey the necessary legal knowledge to the audience of nonspecialists. Personal narrative, including subjective assessment of the events described, allusions to precedent court cases and known criminals, as well as the use of various stylistic devices, are powerful and efficient means to achieve various purposes and goals, namely, encouraging interest in legal knowledge in the future. The concepts verbalized by the author of a law-related popular science article are relevant for legal discourse.

The article provides the results of a study of German football fans’ communication where reference to the Third Reich can be detected. The represention of this issue is preceded by a general description of the problem with a reference to respected Russian and foreign scientists. A conclusion is made that allusions to the Third Reich are still strong in the national cognitive base and are inevitably projected onto the German linguistic consciousness and futher on to discourses, including sports discourse. New lexical markers are identifi ed to represent the conceptual sphere ‘The Third Reich’, especially its area in which German football fans (mostly ultras) let themselves resort to anti-Semitic narrative and symbols. The reasons for using nazi lexicon by fans are revealed, the prospects for studying this and related problems in linguistics (sexism, social discrimination, etc.) are highlighted. In the course of empirical material analysis complex methotodologies were employed: integrative approach, discourse, component, conceptual analysis, classifi cation, observation, description, lexicographical, contextual method, deduction and induction method. The obtained results allow us to supplement with new data the idea of what conceptual meaning constitues the categories “us — them”, “identity” in football fans’ world view, how individual and collective (linguistic) consciousness works within a certain subculture and on the level of the national sphere of concepts.

The article is devoted to changes in the semantics of color symbols in French from the 20th to the 21st centuries within the framework of cultural interaction. The examples chosen for the study are the names of the colors of everyday goods, because, as a communicative means of action, they are used as an emotional argument aimed at manipulating the buyer’s will at the level of his neuropsychological processes. Emotional color information is realized through advertising texts, verbal components of logos and emblems and refl ects, by creating additional meanings and connotations, the value preferences of buyers. In today’s world, with the growing interest in consumer goods, marketers are creating original color shades, which, on the one hand, are aimed at promoting the product, and, on the other hand, are features of the color categorization of a given era. The starting point is that, as part of the convergence of cultures, the process of creating color designations with a color reference represented by facts or realities from a foreign culture, is accompanied by the integration of intercultural concepts and the creation of a new mental space. The work uses the results of a study of the dynamics of the connotative potential of color designations in French of the XX–XXI centuries conducted on the material of advertising catalogues, websites of everyday goods and dictionaries of modern French language.

The article is dedicated to the lexical and semantic analysis of Mexican riddles about plants. The study of the picture of the world perception and verbalization associated with fl ora representation in folklore texts is of particular interest. Phytonyms in riddles carry a great semantic load, help to better understand ethnic priorities. Of particular interest are riddles in which ethno-specifi c features of the Mexican linguistic picture of the world are manifested. Units of culture are revealed in the texts of riddles, firstly, because they contain linguistic elements that are peculiar only to a given culture, and due to unique ethno-specific elements directly reflect the features of the corresponding culture in the language. Secondly, in addition to such a direct reflection, cultural units can be transmitted indirectly in texts, through specifi c structures, which find their expression in the way of describing hidden phytonyms. The lexical and semantic analysis of riddles about the plant world makes it possible to reconstruct the folklore features of phytonyms and, on the basis of the typology of these features, describe plants that are prototypical for the Mexican linguistic personality. The study of non-standard language explicants of plants allows not only to determine their most relevant features, but also to generalize the metaphorical or metonymic aspect of transfers.

The search for a new word for the name of a political, social or cultural phenomenon is the essence of the communication process and the development of the language as a whole. But in each area of intellectual activity, this process has its own characteristics, depending on the cognitive, stylistic or cultural postulates of each discourse. In the conditions of non-rigid boundaries between the objects of scientifi c fi elds of study, the intensity of interdiscursive interaction increases, during which a figurative, metaphorical comprehension of reality makes it possible to identify new, previously unexplored facets of the objects being compared. The process of finding similarities and differences between the phenomena studied is at the heart of scientific activity, in its language, in which there is inevitably a stage of “approximate meaning” of the concept before it takes shape in the form of a term. The spontaneity of oral speech, variability and verbal creativity in the broad understanding of these phenomena contribute to the emergence of new lexical formations — quasi-terms. The epistemological value of a quasi-term consists in the absence of the need for its clear definition. Changing the context entails the appearance of terminological analogues and quasi-terms. The subject of this research is the quasi formant in natural science, philosophical and cultural discourses, its grammatical, semantic, stylistic features in Russian and French. The purpose of the article is to compare the semantic and pragmatic qualities of the quasi–formant, to consider its discursive variant, to show its heuristic potential for interdisciplinary interaction.

The article is devoted to the specifi cs of teaching foreign languages to Chinese students in a Russian university. The purpose of the study is to identify and rationalize the linguistic and cultural features of teaching the French language and culture. According to a common point of view, representatives of diff erent cultures are characterized by diff erent forms of strategic thinking (Vyach.Vs. Ivanov, A.I. Kobzev, L. Levy-Bruhl, K. Lévi-Strauss, Yu.M. Lotman B.N. and others). Traditionally, several types of thinking are distinguished: a synthetic, eastern one, which is characterized by asymmetry, imagery, symbolism, and an analytical, western type of thinking (its features are logic, algorithmic, conceptual, systematic). These features infl uence the stereotypical scenarios of intercultural interaction, including the process of teaching foreign languages. The article analyzes some basic principles of educational and pedagogical communication in the Chinese cultural tradition and considers modern technologies for teaching foreign languages, refl ecting national educational traditions. Possible diffi culties for students are analyzed on the example of diff erences in the systems of French and Chinese at all structural levels (phonetic, lexical, morphological and syntactic). To conclude, it is necessary to take into account not only signifi cant diff erences in languages of diff erent structure in the learning process, but also the diff erence in methods of learning foreign languages, due to nationally specifi c features of speech behavior, cognitive strategies and culture in general.

The aims to study the interaction of two factors — hybridity and border — on the example of language education and functional multilingualism. The theoretical basis of the work is the concept of L.V. Shcherba on the relationship of language education with many other disciplines. It is established that the phenomenon of hybridity is associated with the idea of overcoming boundaries, mixing, in the field of language education, with the heterogeneity of students representing different countries and regions; belonging of students to different cultures, including educational ones. It is also connected with hybrid forms of education — full-time and distant learning; the concept of bilingual and multilingual teaching of foreign languages and cultures. It determines the relevance of the topic in terms of cultural and methodological aspects. Taking into account the works of N.V. Baryshnikov, N.I. Gendina, M. Causa, D. Marsh it is shown, that the use of a multilingual format mobilizes the resources of several languages that are in a situation of functional complementarity; it develops functional plurilingualism which is supporting an integrated system of communication. The condition for this is the systematic change of codes, or languages, in order to master and transfer the content of a particular discipline (translanguaring). The concept of information literacy (littératie / literacy) is considered, which implies the use of information resources in foreign languages, including digital ones, in order to educate a person who speaks several languages and has several sources of information. The question is raised about the results of the transfer of knowledge and concepts in a multilingual context and about the quality of the formed knowledge: integrated or disintegrated.

This article discusses designing and developing an innovative version of a digital textbook for teaching foreign languages. The main difficulty at the moment lies in the creation and design of the online learning environment of educational institutions, which implies the availability of relevant online materials, in particular, electronic textbooks, which are fundamentally diff erent from those used in the traditional form of education. Only specially prepared educational materials, requiring signifi cant intellectual, time and material investments, help to overcome many difficulties and increase the efficiency of the process of teaching and learning of foreign languages remotely. The article discusses the structure, general principles of designing an e-textbook, analyzes the digital and pedagogical technologies that are most often used to create this digital learning tool. The form of information presentation, educational interaction, task formats, types of control and assessment in a digital textbook are different from printed publications. Therefore, when designing a digital textbook, it is necessary to take into account requirements extending to the content of an e-textbook (methodological); the design (pedagogical design or ergonomics) and the technical features of an e-textbook. Particular attention is paid to the methodological principles that determine the quality and eff ectiveness of the content of an e-textbook. Developed in accordance with modern methodological requirements, the content will allow the teacher to implement a student-centered approach, provide individualization and diff erentiation of learning, taking into account the abilities of the student, apply the so-called adaptability of teaching aids, which is impossible when using a printed counterpart.

The article is dealing with the main traditions of education in Russia. These traditions have been developing over a long historical period and are still living. The process of acquiring knowledge in Russia has some specifi c national features. Education has always been under the guidance of the state. Consequently, the main initiative for reforms in this area has always been directed from above. The education in Russia has always been based on the idea of patriotism — not for personal benefi t only, but rather for the good of Russia. Otherwise it would lose its main purpose. The main idea in Russian education has always been to bring up a worthy citizen, to provide students not just with certain knowledge and skills, but rather some moral principles.

It has become customary to give the translator’s name on the front page of both fiction and non-fiction books, as well as in journal, newspaper and magazine articles. It is only fair that translators should take their rightful place in dictionaries of quotations next to the authors of memorable phrases, many of which would have never crossed the borders of their native linguacultures without the aid of a talented translator. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (ODQ), Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (Bartlett’s) and Konstantin Dushenko’s dictionaries of quotations were analyzed as the most authoritative and popular representatives of British, American and Russian traditions in the field of lexicographic fi xation of memorable utterances. The study revealed the specific approaches of each tradition to the inclusion in the dictionary of foreign-language material, to presenting it in the original language or in translation, with the name of the translator or anonymously. Among the key factors determining the lexicographers’ choice are the epoch when the quoted texts were created, the language they were written in, and their functional and stylistic properties, as well as the position of the dictionary compiler/editor, the personality of the translator, and the prospective user of the dictionary. In the Russian dictionaries, the proportion of anonymous translated quotations, especially literary quotations, is lower than in Bartlett’s, and signifi cantly lower than in the ODQ. In addition, the Russian dictionaries often include several translations of the same quotation with the names of their authors, which is rarely the case in Bartlett’s and completely absent in the ODQ.

The paper deals with the issue of decoding and functional characteristics of such stylistic device as pun or play of words in a literary text, paying special attention to one of its main subdivisions — paronymic attraction. On the extensive linguistic material (more than 600 pages) the most important decoding stylistic functions of this phenomenon (such as evaluative, expressive, characterizing, etc.) have been identifi ed, and the initial hypothesis that paronymic attraction may be closely tied up with all the language system levels, not only phonetic, has been proved. Besides that, the role of communicative, informative and expressive functioning of this stylistic device was established not only in the humouristic literary texts, but in the most serious political discourses as well.

The article discusses the concept of cultural transmission. The language is considered as one of the tools for the transmission of values from one generation to another. The work is based on the materials of dictionaries and the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The research confi rms the thesis about the existence of fundamental culture codes, which manage its language and perception schemes. Understanding the signifi cance of cultural codes makes it possible to form and develop a national cultural identity, which contributes to the implementation of cultural transmission. Special attention is paid to identifying linguistic areas of concentration of cultural meanings. In the course of the study, it was found out that the internal form of the word and evaluative vocabulary open up great opportunities for establishing cultural-specifi c meanings hidden from direct observation. The meanings of words containing a subjective component allow us to formulate some laws of “naive” ethics. The use of words with evaluative semantics indicates the moral rules of the society or reveals their violation. The article also shows how values are refl ected in the formation of the ethnic style of communication. This work is deeply connected with such topical questions as the national and cultural specifi city of connotations, the means of their lexicographical representation, the decoding of speaker’s value system.

The article deals with the direction in linguistics focused on the description of the language for productive and receptive speech actions. The developer of this direction, Igor G. Miloslavskiy, proves in his writings that the classification approach is clearly insufficient to describe in full the language understood as activity. Orientation to the reflection of reality and to the understanding of speech activity as a set of receptive and productive actions lead to the understanding that language serves to ensure speaking / writing and understanding when listening and reading. Different initial data (meaning and text) require that the grammars intended for reception and production should have fundamental differences. The speaker/writer’s goal is (ideally) to strive to make an accurate choice of language units and ways of connecting them that correspond to his intention. For a person reading / listening, the most important task is to extract complete and accurate content from lexical and phraseological units in the process of listening or reading, as well as distinguishing between objective and subjective meanings contained in the statement. As convincingly, showed Miloslavskiy, the activity approach to the language, demanded by life and society, is able to ensure the effective development of the linguistics of the future. The article presents a brief review of the works of Igor G. Miloslavskiy and the main stages of his scientific and pedagogical activity, strongly associated with the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Phraseological units are central to developing communicative competence, which is viewed as the main goal of teaching modern languages. They contribute to making our speech more figurative, expressive, and convey additional emotional, evaluative and pragmatic connotations, which determines an effective interaction with native speakers. In addition to the usual use, phraseological units are often subjected to individual semantic-structural transformations, which, in particular, are typical of newspaper texts. Acquiring the skills of using phraseological units, especially with transformations, is of particular difficulty for language learners, since this contradicts the perception of these units as ready-made and permanent in terms of structure and lexical components. Accordingly, this requires a deep understanding of their connotative, pragmatic, emotional-expressive and evaluative characteristics responsible for the transformations made. This calls for a methodically adequate presentation and the choice of practical tasks so that international students may use the expressions concerned in the proper form. The paper examines the common challenges that international students face when studying Russian phraseology. It also briefly reviews the types of transformations, and provides the author’s recommendations related to incorporating phraseological expressions, including the ones with transformations, in the learning process.

Area Studies is a relatively new academic discipline that is rapidly developing at the moment. It should be noted in this connection that the concept of Area Studies itself is often given alternative and even competing interpretations be researchers belonging to different academic schools. Despite the fact that the approaches used in Area Studies are rather different, though equally popular, practically all scholars working in the field have little doubt that nowadays the methodology of the discipline should be given special attention. It is of special importance for various aspects of source criticism since all Area Studies are based in some source of data and information. It is becoming more and more relevant in the context of the so-called Digital Turn and its influence on all fields of investigation. In Area Studies, Digital Turn has changed the source database that now includes digital sources. Digital Sources may include both digital versions of classical sources and those sources that do not have any material original version and are digital by nature. It should be stated, however, that the traditional algorithm of source criticism cannot be fully applied to digital sources that are absolutely unique in their nature. The paper deals with the difficulties researchers face while working with digital sources and formulates the objectives of a new applied discipline within Area Studies — Digital Area Studies.

This article dwells upon the functioning of precedent urbanonyms in the English-language mass media discourse and the features of their semantic derivation. The emphasis is put on the analysis of the use of the cognitive mechanism of metonymy to expand the existing meaning of a proper name and to form a new one. The study is based on the material of news articles published in the Reuters news agency in 2022–2023. As a result of the analysis, the main models of the metonymic shift are identified that are used to refocus the meaning of the urbanonym in a certain context. Precedent urbanonyms can be characterized by culturally stable associative characteristics. Their use for the purpose of nominating other objects leads to a shift in focus, semantic derivation of the name, which is not always realized by the recipient, but provides a field for the manipulative use of a proper name, in order to narrow its semantics or impose key characteristics of one conceptual- thematic area to another. Precedent urbanonyms are rarely used in the function of direct nomination in political news texts. They act as a kind of generalized (impersonal) source of information, pointing only to a certain state structure, not to a specific person, that also emphasizes the implementation of the password function of the urbanonym.

The purpose of this article is to present the basics of a systematic integrated approach to the study of the format and genre diversity of modern media speech, designed within the framework of a separate direction of media linguistic research — media textology. The relevance of the development of media textology as an independent direction is due to the rapid diversification of the format and genre structure of the modern media language under the influence of constant improvement of information and communication technologies and the emergence of new multimedia opportunities for the creation and distribution of media content. The theoretical and methodological apparatus of media textology is built on the basis of previous experience in typological description of speech media practices, taking into account the dynamics of media speech, the spread of new forms of media content representation and the peculiarities of its structuring, including the tendency to hybridization and convergence. The key principle of mediatextology is the selection of media texts proper from the set of texts functioning on the Internet, i.e. those that are created by professional journalists for online media and form the basic media content. Unlike other types of network texts created and distributed by individual users on various network platforms for personal purposes, network media texts are produced and distributed on media platforms that have the status of an official mass media.

The article is devoted to the problem of integrating ICT in the process of foreign language teaching in higher education and offers a step-by-step description of the pedagogical approach for developing academic writing skills of undergraduate students of the Faculty of World Politics at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The teaching a foreign language for special purposes to future specialists in international relations presupposes not only mastering a vast corpus of specialist vocabulary but also the ability to write professional texts of different genres. The article describes the experience of using the MOODLE e-learning platform which optimises the teaching of foreign language writing skills through collaborative learning and student-to-student and teacher-to-student interaction. By describing different stages involved in preparation of students’ research report the paper gives practical recommendations on how to organize Internet-based writing activities and use online learning as an additional tool in regular classes. on “Professional Communication in Politics”, specifying a set of tasks and exercises to consolidate writing skills both in-class and self -study hours, using an electronic educational resource MOODLE. The paper concludes that MOODLE platform is an effective resource that offers a powerful set of web-based tools for a flexible array of activities to improve the quality of English language classrooms and enhance students’ learning.

In today’s competence-based paradigm of language education, the priority direction is the development and formation of students’ not only productive foreign language speech skills and language skills that contribute to the creation of written and oral texts of various genres, but also the skills of interaction and mediation in the global digital space. It is possible to develop the above-mentioned skills using effective approaches, methods, technologies. Modern methodological literature presents an extremely wide variety of methodological models, pedagogical theories, specific technologies and approaches to teaching foreign languages. This article is devoted to the development of a general theoretical basis for the hierarchy of existing methods, approaches, methods of teaching foreign languages within the framework of a competent-based, communicatively oriented paradigm of modern education. The proposed hierarchy includes 4 levels, where the theoretical foundation of education is based on a certain psychological and pedagogical theory; the essence of learning activity corresponds to the general theoretical method, the principles of learning — to private methods, the learning process — to a system of tasks. Each level is responsible for a certain range of “didactic potential”. The essence of the lower level is the ways of implementing knowledge, and the up100 per one is the management of information transfer processes in the activity-based model of learning. This system is very important, because the hierarchically organized structure of methods allows instructors to understand how particular methods contribute to the achievement of the goals of teaching foreign languages. The article analyzes the psychological and pedagogical theories valid for the modern system of education — cognitivism, constructivism and connectivism. The typological characteristics are given for the classification of teaching methods, the main types of problem-oriented tasks are identified for the development of students’ foreign language skills.

The article attempts to establish a connection between the linguistic theories of F.F. Fortunatov and A.A. Potebnya. It is known that in nouns that name people and animals important to humans, the grammatical meanings of gender indicate their biological sex. As for the nouns that name inanimate objects, as well as some other animals, their grammatical meanings of gender for quite a long time were estimated by linguists as relics of an ancient form of thinking incomprehensible to modern people. However, if we consider the grammatical meanings of gender as a component of the inner form of the word, it becomes clear that when creating words, the meanings of the masculine gender were used to indicate the presence of such properties in objects that are inherent in male beings, such as their relatively greater activity, larger size, greater strength and greater independence. In turn, feminine grammatical meanings reflected the absence of these properties. The article emphasizes the similarity between the grammatical meanings of gender of nouns and the inner forms of words in their traditional lexicological understanding: (1) in different languages, the names of the same objects can have different grammatical gender meanings, (2) at the time of the appearance of a word, its inner form indicate the connection between the word and its lexical meaning, but over time inner forms can be obscured or lost, (3) like the traditional inner forms, the grammatical meanings of gender can either represent one of the components of the lexical meaning of the word, or may be part of its connotations.

Interdisciplinary research in the field of consciousness and ways of its representation using verbal and nonverbal codes seems to be particularly fruitful at the intersection of linguistics and philosophy, psychology and biology, medicine and neuroscience. Linguistic consciousness is considered in the works of E.S. Kubryakova (2012), R.I. Pavilionis (1983), L.S. Vygodsky (2018), A.N. Leontiev (1975). The information theories of consciousness in philosophy are analyzed in the works of D.A. Fodor (1987), F. Dretske (1981), D.I. Dubrovsky (2015), D. Chalmers (2013). The information theory of consciousness is applied as the basis of the conception of the spiral development of the meaning of a proper name. The concept of onomastic knowledge is analyzed, the conceptual complex structures, which serve as a basis for the mental representations of onomastic knowledge, are given. The concept of onomastic consciousness is introduced as part of the linguistic consciousness responsible for the formation and development of onomastic competence. The definition of onomastic competence is given as the ability to encode information using proper names, both of individualizing and characterizing nature, as well as the ability to manipulate proper names in all variety of systemic and discursive functions to achieve the goal of communication. The analysis of the cognitive-functional specifics of proper names is given on the examples of the novels “Piranesi” by S. Clark and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” by Q. Tarantino. The specifics of the proper name as an objectifier of consciousness and onomastic competence as an indicator of the formation and development of onomastic consciousness are analyzed. According to the information theory of consciousness, onomastic consciousness determines the meaning of proper names.

The paper deals with the feature of verbal and visual semiotic systems peculiar to historical discourse. The relevance of the research is determined by the necessity to identify the correlation of verbal and visual means used by historians in the transmission of information. The methodology of the article is based on the research works of home and foreign scholars. The methods that have been used in the research are: the method of discursive analysis, the method of linguistic analysis, the method of interpretive analysis. As a result of the analysis of historical discourse it has been established that the appeal to various semiotic systems facilitates and streamlines the assimilation of information about the events of the historical past of mankind, preserving the memory of them in the images proposed by the historians. History, which is not given to historians in their immediate experience, is reconstructed by them by means of different semiotic systems. The verbal code reinforced by the visual one sets a certain perception of historical events as they are viewed by historians. In historical discourse, the use of different semiotic systems in the transmission of the most significant historical events is necessary to attract the attention of recipients to them in order to change not only their perception, but also to transform the basic dominants of their mental space, in which the events of the historical past that are not reproduced in experience are reconstructed.

Any interpretation training programme aspiring to excellence must be closely connected with the professional world and make effective use of innovative teaching methods, cooperation with external stakeholders, and modern technologies in order to ensure a high quality of learning. This paper focuses on the different aspects of ‘quality’ in light of the advent of new technologies and the changing nature of the interpreting profession. Interpretation training programmes must learn today how to prepare a widely employable interpreter to survive the pressures of the professional world. A scenario-based approach, that simulates work-like situations, is effective in interpretation training. The paper will focus on mock conferences, as its most effective teaching practice. Mock conferences help to enhance the authenticity and diversity of lifelike situations in class, provide the students with contextualised practice that helps to develop non-linguistic competences. The latest technologies, e.g. ICTs, AI, etc., offer a new degree of automation to all professional language mediation activities, calling for a rethinking of the interpreter’s skillset. The future will accommodate both artificial and human interpreting, and the bar for humans will be raised. The interpretation students must learn how to use the latest technologies for the benefit of the client. A new, augmented interpreter profile includes the combination of the classical competences (interpretation, language and cultural, interpersonal, ethical, etc.) and technological competences which must be used for the benefit of the client and the events at which the interpreter works. The paper also explores the value added by human interpretation to communication, such as depth of message comprehension, teamwork, shared responsibility and liability and, most importantly, the value of the ‘interpreter who cares’.

The article deals with the mechanisms of generation and functioning of spontaneous speech and their influence on the interpreter’s spontaneous speech during simultaneous interpreting. The subject of the research is spontaneous speech in simultaneous interpretation, the object of research is functional notional types of oral speech which serve as the foundation for the algorithm of expressing the main idea of the message. Depending on the functional notional type of spontaneous speech that can be considered as the dominant one in the source message, the interpreter faces different challenges. Following the original message too closely may lead to an abundance of self-corrections, repetitions, slips of the tongue in the interpreter’s spontaneous speech, which, together with confusing syntactic constructions, make it difficult for the audience to understand the target message. Interpreting simultaneously at a higher cognitive level within the model of comparative cognitive transformations, which takes into account algorithms of expressing the main idea, the interpreter can produce a more coherent and smooth spontaneous speech in the target language based on the cognitive essence as a result of thought transformation of the original message. Pragmatic orientation of spontaneous speech predetermines methods of compression as a tool of pragmatic adaptation of the original message within the cognitive pragmatic circle of oral communication, which can be extrapolated to different functional styles of speech and types of discourse.

This article presents a review of the monograph titled “Constructions of Threat in Pre-electoral Discourse. Linguocognitive Analysis of papers and programs of the 2018 presidential campaign” by A.A. Romanov and O.V. Novosyolova. The authors examined different factors related to pre-election communication, such as cognitive-discursive, psycholinguistic, and pragmalinguistic factors. They analyzed representative material and used topical linguistic analysis methods, including Diatone, an automated program for analyzing textual data in pre-election communication. They also examined the emotional-suggestive impact of pre-election programmes. Prof. A.A. Romanov and O.V. Novosyolova’s monograph is topical since it is grounded upon present-day trends of conducting linguistic analysis on the basis of one of the genres of political discourse in a comprehensive manner. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it is the first time such a massive investigation has been completed. The results of the book under study significantly contribute to further development of various linguistic theories, such as pragmalinguistics, speech act theory, functional semantics, communication theory as well as political discourse, cognitive semantics, and communicative-pragmatic constructivism. The practical value of this research is evident in the sphere of political linguistics as well as in teaching courses such as “Topical Issues of Present-day Linguistics”, “Methods of Linguistic Analysis”, “Modern Political Discourse”. It also contributes to integration of new courses into programmes that explore interaction between language and thinking, language and speech, and language and society from a political science perspective.

The academic program of the course is based on the author’s many years of experience in theoretical and field research on ethnic cultures of Russia and in teaching the course “Cultures of the peoples of Russia” to students of the Department of Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies of Moscow State University. The interdisciplinary and comparative approaches served as the theoretical foundation of this course. Thematically, the material is grouped according to the types of cultures of the peoples of Russia: semi-nomadic hunters and fishermen of the north; nomads of the steppes and mountains; settled mountaineers of the Caucasus; settled inhabitants of the plains; diasporas of the peoples of the near abroad, far from their ancestral homelands. To create a comprehensive picture of the studied peoples, the main attention is focused on the continuity of culture in the following way: from autochthonous traditions to modern professional art (ethnic literature, music, painting, and cinema). Different types of ethnic art and literature are regarded in the context of the processes of cultural identification of peoples in the context of globalization.

This article presents a comparative analysis of criticism of conventional academic history, formulated in E. Wolfe’s book “Europe and the People Without History” and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference”. Critics address positivism, eurocentrism, progressivism, and stadial history, which Chakrabarty refers to as “historicism”. In the first part, the author explains the meaning of Chakrabarty’s concept of “historicism” and summarizes Wolfe’s description of conventional history, which fits in this concept. The second part focuses on the various elements of their criticism. In the third part we present quotes that showcase how both scholars strive to write history outside of the confines of the historicist paradigm.

Foreign languages have always occupied a prominent place in Russia and Russian culture. Despite the apparent isolation from the outside world, Russia has always been closely connected with this world. And not only through obvious trade and political relations, but also by spiritual and cultural ties. The first significant reason for the spread of foreign languages in society was the adoption of Christianity, which brought not only a new faith, but the Greek language along with theological books. The entire subsequent history of the formation and development of the country, all the key historical epochs and events in Russia are in one way or another connected with the problem of the outside world, primarily with the European one — even in those cases, quite frequent in Russian history, when this world was rejected, criticized and was considered a necessary evil, from which it was preferable to fence off with some kind of curtain. Over time, all new foreign languages spread in society, sometimes even entering into conflict: Latin with Greek in the theological field, German with French in the political field, French with English in the literary field. In certain historical periods, for example, in the first half of the 19th century, foreign languages even supplanted the native in a certain social environment and became a reason for unrest regarding the loss of national identity. And sometimes, such as during the Soviet era, these languages were deemed “dead languages”, serving solely as a tribute to tradition and a tool for reading. However, they always retained their important role, opening up new horizons for the Russian people and connecting them with the outside world.

The article explores adaptation as a means of rendering fictional realia. Fictional realia (also known as quasi-realia and irrealia) are understood as a special kind of linguistic realia (culture-specific items) that exist within the genre of speculative fiction. These lexical units describe various aspects of fictional worlds: flora, fauna, everyday life, social and political structure, etc. Adaptation in general is defined as a specific form of intercultural and interlingual mediation that relies heavily on capabilities and necessities of a target audience. Unlike regular translation, adaptation does not necessarily strive to preserve formal and, in some cases, semantic features of the original text. Adaption can be used for different purposes: to make a text more comprehensible to a target audience, to influence a reader in a specific way, etc. When it comes to rendering fictional realia, adaptation can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, it can be defined as adaptation of fictional objects, concepts, and phenomena to reality (when fictional realia are replaced by their real counterparts). And secondly, it can be understood as linguacultural adaptation that is conditioned by cultural and linguistic differences between an original and a target audience. The article primarily focuses on the second type of fictional realia adaptation. The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood are used as source material for the study. The article draws connections between fictional realia adaptation and creation of new fictional realia (a means of rendering fictional realia that can be defined as either giving a new name to an existing fictional realia or introduction of a completely new fictional realia).

Under the explanatory indicators of the meanings of unknown words, we mean such a way of revealing the meanings of words that are incomprehensible or obscure to readers, when the author accompanies these words with an explanatory comment. The purpose of this work is to analyze various ways of using explanatory indicators in the translation of F. Abramov’s novel “Two Winters and Three Summers” into English. In the course of the work, the following was established. Firstly, explanatory indicators are the most effective indicators of the meanings of unknown words, however, as a rule, they are used only in such literary texts that do not create the illusion of reflecting the events described by any of the characters and are clearly addressed to uninformed readers. Secondly, an effective way to translate Russian unknown words into English is practical transcription, it can preserve the phonetic features of the Russian language. Practical transcription is not used independently; explanatory indicators of meanings are often accompanied in translations by practical transcription. Thirdly, explanatory indicators can be used in the translated text in one of three ways: (1) replacing the Russian unknown words with a description of the meaning of the word in the translation (i.e., semantic translation); (2) replacement of the Russian unknown words in the translation with an approximate English equivalent, after which the meaning of the word is specified by means of a semantic translation; (3) replacement of the Russian unknown words with a practical transcription in the translation, followed by an explanatory commentary on the word.

The article determines the new term intervarietal, or intermediary translation and explains why the need for integrating this type of translation into curricula has been enhanced today. The challenges of intervarietal translation are viewed in the framework of L. Smith’s theory of intelligibility in intercultural communication — in the aspect of form, semantics, and pragmatics. These problems are directly related to studying varieties of the pluricentric English language, though they are also significant for studying other pluricentric European languages. The most urgent need for today’s translation practice is in study East Asian Englishes, translation of which results in a number of mistakes, since translators from European languages do not know the specifics of Asian Romanizations, transfer features typical of Asian English users, or Asian cultures. Based on syllabi of the LMSU Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, we have shown the possibility of integrating studying these problems in translation curricula.

Eponymous terminology plays an important role in medicine: it is impossible to imagine an area of study in which there would not be used compound terms with an onomastic component or common nouns derived from onyms. Nevertheless, there is an ambiguous attitude towards eponymous terms in the scientific community. From the point of view of displaying linguistic and cultural-historical information, the most important function which is realized in the eponymous terms with an anthroponomic core is the commemorative function. The aim of this study is to analyze the commemorative function of the eponymous terms of clinical neurosciences (neurology and psychiatry). Practical material is taken from MedicineNet.com. During the study, using the method of continuous sampling, 155 eponymous terms were selected. The study made it possible to identify the following problems of the current state of the terminological system of neurology and psychiatry: the use of patients’ surnames as an eponymous component of the term along with the surnames of doctors; inaccuracy of information about the history of the study of diseases associated with the perpetuation in terms of the names of doctors who are not pioneers; the presence in the terminology of negatively colored onyms associated with the ideologists and accomplices of Nazism.

The article is devoted to the description of peculiarities of the structure of news text (media-text) in Internet discourse, which from the structural point of view is a complex communicative unity of text, hypertext, dynamic (static) image and sound, providing non-linear, multi-channel, multi-layered and multi-dimensional perception of the conceptual meaning of the text. A distinctive structural feature of a media text, the main function of which in today’s media space is to manipulate and shape the recipient’s opinion, is its shaping in accordance with the model of an advertising text, based on the key strategies of an advertising message construction. The purpose of this article is to analyze the structural characteristics of news text (media-text) as the main form of information and psychological impact realization. The authors conclude that a modern news text resorts to the use of rhetorical and organizational techniques to influence the target audience, using appropriate advertising techniques. Creating it, the addresser is guided by different linguopragmatic principles. A model of a media-text similar to an advertising text seems to be justified as it is a part of a unified consumer society, where advertising and online discourse have defined the main patterns of interaction between the addresser and the addressee.

The article deals with the problem of semantic perception of a poetic text, in which the reader’s attention is de-automized by such foregrounding technique as the defamiliarization of the inner form of the word. Relying on the methodological frameworks of creative linguistics and cognitive linguistics, the author of the article aims at describing the inner-form-defamiliarization technique in terms of its functioning in poetic speech. Particular attention is devoted to identifying the factors of verbal and conceptual creativity, which determine the possibility of speech conventions transformations in poetry. The article provides a terminological clarification of the notions of “the inner form of the language” and “the inner form of the word”; emphasis is placed on the importance of studying these phenomena from the non-conventional meaning construction perspective. It is shown that the technique of the inner form defamiliarization has a complex implementation in poetry and contributes to performing a number of interrelated functions of the poetic language — cognitive, expressive, poetic and metalinguistic. Based on the examples of Arkadii Dragomoshchenko’s essays from the book “Phosphorus” and Charles Bernstein’s essay-poem “Artifice of Absorption”, the linguo-creative intentions of the poets are reconstructed. The techniques of the inner form defamiliarization, typical of these poets, are described, including poetic etymologization of the word through its occasional definition; paronomasia; renomination and attribution of occasional formmeaning motivation to the word. The cognitive universality of linguo-creative techniques of the inner form defamiliarization is described in relation to general functional mechanisms for switching and developing verbal associations, which provide for the non-conventional meaning construction.

This article presents the results of an empirical study of learners’ needs analysis to design a potential training course to adapt teachers to work in a middle school with International Baccalaureate (IB MYP) programs. The purpose of the study was to identify learning needs as well as gaps and expectations, preferred formats, amount of time that teachers in Russian schools have available for professional development courses in IB MYP programs. Using a survey method, the study identifies learning preferences of teachers as participants in a potential course: practice orientation, attention to documentation, preferred topics and formats of work. The learning needs analysis also revealed barriers that may prevent teachers from effectively engaging in professional development, including lack of time, conceptual complexity of the material, lack of institutional support and lack of professional guidance. The Learning Needs Analysis has proven to be a convenient, relatively simple, flexible, and effective tool for subsequent course design. The authors conclude that it is versatile for courses of varying focus and duration and suggest a number of ways to make the method more useful for understanding the learning context of specific groups by adding sociometric questions.

The current stage is characterized by the dynamic development of artificial intelligence technologies and their introduction into foreign language teaching. Chatbots are one of such dialogical interactive teaching programs capable of developing foreign-language oral and written speech skills of a learner by maintaining a dialogue with them and imitating human speech on the basis of natural language and machine learning technologies and the algorithms of human speech embedded in the programme. The present paper is based on the analysis and synthesis of methodological studies devoted to the development of methods of teaching pupils and students foreign-language oral and written speech interaction based on chatbots. The most frequently discussed aspects in the problems of modern research are identified, and the prospects for further research related to the use of chatbots in teaching a foreign language are defined. The most commonly discussed aspects in methodological papers include: a) identifying learners’ attitudes towards the use of chatbots; b) identifying the possibility of developing learners’ written and oral speech skills based on chatbots; c) determining the level of learners’ proficiency in a foreign language for educational interaction with a chatbot. As prospective research, we identify studies aimed at a) developing step-by-step methods of teaching foreign language speech interaction based on chatbots; d) defining the nomenclature of foreign language speech interaction skills with a chatbot.

The article is aimed at the analysis and classification of the main stages of digitalization of language education in the world. The use of computer technology in teaching foreign languages began more than 80 years ago. Until recently, this topic was the subject of discussion of a rather narrow circle of specialists, but with the onset of the digital era and the rapid development of mobile and cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, more and more foreign language teachers in our country and abroad are introducing open educational resources into the educational process and applications, design distance courses and massive open online courses for teaching foreign languages. At the moment, there is an urgent need to analyze the stages of implementing computer technologies in teaching foreign languages and to identify some methodological features of the organization of the educational process supported by ICT, namely: the dominant method of learning, some didactic potential of the latest technologies, the role of the student and teacher, etc. Five main stages of the digitalization of language education were identified, which were named in accordance with the dominant teaching method: behavioral, audial, integrative, social-communicative, task-based communicative. The article also discusses the types of learning that have appeared due to digital technologies, such as mobile, social learning, learning based on augmented and virtual reality technologies — immersive learning. Particular attention is paid to the opportunities provided by artificial intelligence — deep learning, chat-bot learning, robotic learning of foreign languages.

Although J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” has been rendered into Russian multiple times, in each new version its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, sounds surprisingly different. In this paper we seek to elaborate on some issues concerning the translation of the novel. We contend that it is vital to check translation against the reaction of the original recipient (the American reader) to the original text, on the one hand, and the effect the existing translations produce or produced on the new recipient (which is the Russian reader in our case), on the other. An examination of the difference between the former and the latter will create the necessary touchstone against which it will be possible to critically evaluate the existing renditions and offer guidelines for every new translator to follow. It is shown that data obtained through such analysis might provide more valid criteria for the criticism of existing translations and, appropriately enough, contribute to the quality of those yet to come. We also challenge the commonly accepted opinion that translation of slang expressions in the novel plays a dominant role in achieving the necessary level of equivalence. Against this backdrop, we make a few points about the narrator’s voice as something instrumental in character development. To this end, we shall focus on the more well-known Russian versions of Rait-Kovaleva (1960) and Maxim Nemtsov (2008), of which there can be found documented reader feedback, both professional and amateur. We do so with special regard to the author’s intentionality and sociolinguistic factors.

The article is devoted to the issue of preparing science students for an oral exam in English. The author analyzed the data of research considering the relationship between Teacher Talking Time and Student Talking Time in a foreign language classroom, conducted by C. Chaudron, V. Cook, D. Nunan, R. Ellis, C. Pesce, A. Korenev and D. Babaeva. The ratio of 30% to 70% was determined as optimal for oral speech practice and the conclusion is made that it is possible to increase Student Talking Time with the help of pair and group work.

The methods of preparing students for an oral foreign language examination are analyzed on the basis of teaching strategies at the biological faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The English language oral exam for undergraduate students consists of the following three tasks: a prepared monologue on the subject of personal and scientific interests of the examinee; an impromptu monologue-description based on visual materials on biological topics, and a dialogue with the teacher to continue the discussion of the topic presented in the visual materials. The possible difficulties that students face doing each task during an oral foreign language exam are listed. The author has proposed some solutions to overcome the difficulties associated with the insufficient practice of oral speech.

The article is dedicated to a number of theoretical and practical problems of intercultural business communication. The main focus is put on the analysis of the existing data and didactic sources designed to develop intercultural competence, required skills and abilities that ensure efficient communication in multicultural environment. It is generally accepted that conflicts arise as a result of a clash between individuals that belong to different social, cultural, religious and other groups, having negative psychological effect on communicators. These conflicts are difficult to avoid since people pursue individual self-interests lacking skills that could help them succeed in cross-cultural communication. In order to identify the underlying causes and issues of communication barriers and origins of cultural conflicts the authors investigate the content of the notion “intercultural communication” and speculate on its historical development. Despite the burgeoning interest paid to the issue in academic and business circles, we still witness lack of attention given to the development of intercultural communication and intercultural competence within the framework of educational process. The authors justify the need for implementation of some alternative technologies and resources such as multimodal texts, social networks, individual and group projects, role-play and debates as supplementary sources for existing Business English textbooks.

The article focuses on the integration of standard varieties of the German language, functioning on the territory of German-speaking countries in the teaching process. The author is aiming at analyzing briefly the main stages of German as a foreign language teachers’ interest in the mentioned issues. The major periods of the pluricentricity theory integration in the theory and practice of teaching German are discusses. The formation and the development of the DACH(L)-principle, the use of the concept of the German language variability in teaching languages and area studies, its integration into the process of language teaching on various levels of education are described. In addition, the problem of the diatopic functioning of the German language is analyzed in the framework of teaching translation. An overview of the literature, which codified the standards (dictionaries, grammar books, etc.), is also given. Special attention is paid to the review and analysis of textbooks and workbooks including phonetic, lexical, grammatical and pragmatic features of the German variety standards. The paper also raises the question of the relationship between the pluricentricity theory and the international German language tests. As a result of the study, the author comes to the conclusion regarding the major pedagogical potential of the pluricentricity theory of the German language.

The interaction of different fields of knowledge leads to the transfer of concepts. The new metalanguage often borrows terminology from areas traditionally considered contiguous, the enrichment of terminological units is due to cross-disciplinary invariants. The article touches upon the problem related to the cognitive potential of nomadic concepts. The purpose of the article is to study the heuristic potential of the interdisciplinary term platform. The objective of the article: to consider the cognitive features of the term platform in the communicative environment. The object of the research is platforms in the information network as a place for communication of scientific, social, financial and economic communities. The research material was: 1) comparison of the definition of the platform as a term in Russian and French dictionaries; 2) study of the meaning and heuristic potential of this nomadic concept and the concept in communication networks. As a result of the conducted research, the communicative significance of the nomadic term platform, formed as a result of the conceptualization of complex logical connections, has been revealed.

The category-based textual approach is utilized to describe the linguistic aspects of the English patent. The methodology is as follows: 1) identifying the author’s communicative intention; 2) taking into consideration the communicative function of the text resulting from the author’s communicative intention; 3) describing multilevel linguistic means used to convey the function and express the textual categories. The patent text is considered to be a product of the author’s intention finding its manifestation in the text function and the respective selection of content- and composition-related means of expressing the textual categories of theme, tonality, and composition being relevant for analyzing patents. As a structural category, the composition has the text-building role while the informative and appellative functions are typical of the compositional parts of patents. The theme of the patent is formed through the use of multi-component terminological collocations, with their syntagmatics being the result of the informative function. The subfields of tonality manifest themselves through the use of Present Simple and reference phrases in statements as well as non-categorical and neutral tones, with officialese words being typical. The compositional part Background has the appellative function resulting from the author’s intention to convey to the recipient the idea of the invention’s practical value and manifesting itself in the specific structure of the tonality where the emotionality subfield is expressed as an antithesis through the use of qualitative lexical units as well as metaphors which is not typical of other patent parts conveying primarily the informative function. The category-based textual approach to patents is deemed to provide systemic insights into the linguistic aspects thereof.

In the modern world, sport is considered to be one of the most important spheres of human activity. Sport is constantly developing, new kinds of sports are emerging, and, as a result, new names, terms, phrases, idioms appear and enrich the lexical vocabulary of the language.

Sports discourse is characterized by undeniable originality and consists of three components: professional and terminological communication of specialists, the description of sporting events in the media and the jargon of fans. With the development of information technology, the language of sports takes on its electronic form: discussions are held in chat rooms and forums, sports events are critically reflected on and analyzed. A new branch of linguistics is emerging –   Internet linguistics, the subject of research of which is Internet communication, which is becoming one of the most common forms of communication due to its interactivity, presence effect, and also information richness.

The article is devoted to the study of the stylistic features of the Spanish football minute-by-minute on-line commentary. The definition of this kind of commentary is given. The stylistic features of this type of commentary are explored: an analysis of the tropes and figures of speech used in it is carried out. Tropes and figures of speech are distinguished from a variety of stylistic devices. Actually tropes are tools which involve the deviation from the expected and literal meaning of words. Figures of speech involve a deviation from the typical mechanics of a sentence. The article also provides a brief analytical review of works devoted to the study of sports commentary and on-line sports commentary as a special genre of sports discourse.

The paper aims at analyzing culture-specific differences in genre conventions of research article abstracts from Russian and international journals on Applied Linguistics. The study involves the use of various methods of corpus linguistics (such as frequency lists, key words type/token ratio, concordances, clusters, etc.) along with the cognitive approach to analyzing the rhetorical structure of the text. Variations over time are traced using longitudinal comparison.

The comparative analysis of the two corpora reveals differences between the abstracts in terms of their overall length (the total number of words and sentences), prevailing vocabulary (for total number of tokens and for academic words), dominant semantic fields and rhetorical structure. Specifically, Russian abstracts are shorter and their structure is simpler. The verbs in the initial sentence are broader in mean- ing and the academic lexis centers around the subject-matter of the article. In contrast, international abstracts are longer having a manifested rhetorical structure (Purpose – Methods – Results – Conclusions). The verbs in the initial sentence are more variable and their meaning is more specific, whereas the academic vocabulary tends to relate to the methods of study. By and large, the Russian abstracts can be classified as indicative, while the international abstracts as informative.

The article examines historical perspectives of sociophonetic studies of the English language functioning in Germany at the end of the 20th century. The present study focuses on the sociophonetic features of the use of English by those whose native language is German. Between 1975 and 1999, a number of empirical studies were conducted that were aimed at identifying the sociophonetic features of the English language functioning in Germany. In 1980, H. Fink published the most fundamental and detailed empirical study of the pronunciation of anglicisms and English names of firms. It formed the basis for subsequent investigations into the issues in the field by other scholars. W. Viereck, in his turn, determined that partial assimilation in the German language is more commonly spread among people who do not speak English, and by elderly respondents. He also found out that it was only the pronunciation of anglicism that led to its recognition and understanding by the respondents. In 1990, M. Jabłoński identified the most common forms of assimilation that the respondents demonstrated during the test. He fixed cases of sound substitution, elision, epenthesis, and accentuation in accordance with the rules of the mother tongue. The article generalises their findings with the aim of comparing them with the data collected in the 21st century.

It has been customary to define fascist ideology as a revolutionary change of a preexisting value system. However, the results of the analysis of the value dynamics of Italian society provoke a consideration of an alternative interpretation. The supposition is that the efforts of the fascist ideologues were directed not towards changing the traditional value matrix of Italian citizens but towards reengineering the specific dominant values of the national culture. The question is whether it is pos- sible to construct values deliberately, as the constructivist paradigm claims, and whether these values will thrive in such circumstances. Or, as the primordial paradigm implies, these values can be sustained only organically? The purpose of this article, therefore, is to study the phenomenon of incorporation of fascist values into the traditional preexisting catholic value matrix. The first aim of the article is to highlight which aspects of Catholicism were chosen by the fascist regime as the most effective ones for the achievement of its goals. The second aim is to identify the functional value of the catholic religion for the regime and the objectives it attempted to realize. The third aim is to analyze the processes that took place inside a value while it was changing its modality.

The present article deals with the issue of how family members, education and instruction they provided influenced the transformation of life strategies of women in France from the middle of the nineteenth century up to the beginning of the twentieth. The research draws upon the primary sources including memoires of Judith Gautier, Louisa Michele, Cora Pearl and Sara Bernard. In the middle of the 19th century the French traditional family underwent several changes caused by the social, culture and economic factors. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century a woman was considered to be a family keeper, who was always under the control of her husband. She did not have any social rights and a chance to decide her own fate. However, in the middle of the century the situation started changing. A woman became more integrated into society. Family members were trying to educate their daughters, give them necessary skills, financial autonomy. As a result, women became more independent, were able to choose their own life strategy. They started working, could manage property. They had husbands, lovers and children, but the new attitude to life made them free.

The Soviet military administration was created in 1945. Its aim was to control the order on the territory of the Soviet occupation zone and to provide a decent standard of living at the territory. In order to carry out its policy efficiently, the Soviet military administration in Germany was interested in creating a positive image of the Soviet Union, so the social and cultural policy as a means of making an image was also of the utmost importance. The article focuses on the specific methodological aspects of the sociocultural policy of the Soviet military administration in Germany. The research deals with the main mechanisms of adaptation of the policy to the specifics of German culture in the sociocultural sphere. Special attention is given to the efficiency of these methods. This issue is regarded as a subject of intercultural interactions. It is concluded that there are two main mechanisms: inculcation and adjustment. The research reveals the main factors that influence the specifics of the sociocultural policy and provides the examples of implementation of these mechanisms. It is deduced that both mechanisms are efficient and proven to meet the goals of the Soviet military administration in Germany which were established at the beginning of its activity.

Public opinion polls conducted in the USA during the last several decades show that lawyers have plummeted in public esteem. The author of the article draws attention to the reasons of such a sharp decline emphasizing the so-called “cultivation effect” from the films about “bad” lawyers. Contemporary American filmmakers and writers believe that most Americans dislike lawyers, so they make movies and write books about dishonest lawyers because they are more likely to resonate with viewers/readers. Popular culture “teaches” people to construct a view of reality by means of information derived from its works. The numerous “bad” lawyer movies along with some other factors have contributed to the decline of the public image of lawyers. The article provides examples from different popular movies and books where representatives of the legal profession are portrayed as people who lack honesty, mercy, loyalty to clients and their harmful habits often interfere with their professional life. Movie and book characters are difficult to classify on the binary bad-good scale because it’s their nuanced characterizations that keep viewers interested. TV lawyers are more positively represented because they need to make people feel empathy with them and watch such shows each week. It might happen that the cultivation effect caused by the positive TV lawyers portrayals swamps the cultivation effect of negative lawyer movies.

Not a single work of art of 1930–1950s dedicated to the events of Stalin’s life could appear as a result of artist’s personal intention. The imagery of Stalin existed only as a form of interpretation and illustration of the canonical text – the biography of the leader, verified and approved by Stalin himself. In this regard, it seems almost unbelievable that this text in its “classic” form was shaped only by 1939.

This article explores the obstacles that stood in the way of creating the main biographical narrative of the epoch, its proximity to the traditional genre of hagiography, as well as those relations between the text and the image that have developed under the conditions of sacralization of the leader’s power and the formation of a special “religion-like” public consciousness.

Soviet creators of Stalin’s imagery acted as heirs to two traditions at once. On the one hand, adherence to the precepts of Russian realistic painting of the 19th century was proclaimed, which was understood as a return to mimesis, to artistic embodiment of life in the forms of life itself. On the other hand, icon-painting methods of working on the Stalin’s image and an attitude to the text of his biography as to hagiography, requiring unconditional faith and not allowing deviations and distortions were revived.

As a result, this demonstrated unique examples of art, realistic in form and sacred in content.

The conceptualization of the geographical space is a systematic cultural innovation aimed at creating a new geographical picture of the world. Conceptualization is associated with a conscious desire to transform space by creating by creating ideologically and / or status-new places.

In the twentieth century, Russia and the countries of the Near Abroad experienced two waves of conceptualization of space – Soviet and post-Soviet. Different countries are distinguished by a different orientation and intensity of modern processes of “reconfiguration” of space. However, desovetisation (and in some cases, de-Russification) of space, with its active saturation with national and religious components, is characteristic of all.

The basic element of the conceptualization of space is a geoconcept: it represents a new, innovative, “name of a place”, which has connotative meanings that reflect a certain idea or reveal an associative image of a place.

There are two main mechanisms for conceptualizing space – renaming a place and raising the social status of a place (while maintaining the same geographical name). Therefore, we called this mechanism of conceptualization of space status sublimation of a toponym.

The types of geoconcepts (sacral, political-ideological, ethno-historical, ethno-cultural) are considered, each of which forms its own space and its network structure.

The article is devoted to a new type of learner’s dictionary, namely a learner’s dictionary of quotations, whose twofold task consists in assisting budding scientists in both understanding and producing English texts in their sphere of research. As a means of education and cultural enlightenment, a learner’s dictionary is meant to help the student by concentrating the relevant information and presenting it in a readily accessible and easily understandable form. The first learner’s dictionary of quotations compiled for students of languages and literatures by MSU associate professors Lilia Boldyreva and Irina Gubbenet in 2000, is used as an example to demonstrate how the general principles of learner’s lexicography, those of minimization of the word list and optimization of the content, macro- and microstructure of the dictionary, could be realized and modified in the learner’s dictionary of quotations. Present-day lexicography is greatly facilitated by the creation of electronic corpora of English of various sizes – from representative all-embracing national and mega web-based corpora to the so-called “small” computer corpora pertinent to specific research projects. A corpus-based approach to compiling learner’s dictionaries of quotations will make determination of frequency of quotations and popularity of their sources in different styles, genres and disciplines of scientific discourse much easier and more reliable. According to preliminary observations that have to be verified by corpus-based methods, among the most frequently quoted authors in life sciences discourse are Shakespeare, Kipling and Carroll.

The article deals with the problem of language development and the language of mass media in particular. The on-going process of globalization appears to affect all aspects of social life, including language development and the language of mass media above all. This influence results in the language of mass media becoming increasingly international.

The democratization of social and everyday life over the past few decades, radical changes in the field of public relations have greatly contributed to democratizing the language of mass media. Whatever its negative consequences might be, the democratization of the language of mass media is an objective reality, а reflection of the current state of affairs. But the point is not only grammar and vocabulary defects found in the language of mass media. It is a common worldwide problem. There is an objective reason. The genre demands that information should be passed on to the consumer as soon as possible. There is too little time to correct and edit texts (speeches), which leads to journalists’ getting used to these standards and to lowering requirements for the precision and accuracy of their messages.

There are perhaps more advantages than disadvantages arising from the process of democratization, which can best be seen in the language of mass media. And it is probably the language of mass media that is crucial to language development.

This article is devoted to the language and culture of Provence/Occitania in the period of the late XI – early XIII centuries. It is shown in the article that the phrase of F. Brodel “forever another France” refers to a collective representations. According to Narcy-Combes J.-P who separated the terms “concept” and “construct”, the former is a result of a classification of natural phenomenon and people’s observation, while the latter is a result of people’s actions and will. The aim of this article is to show that the Provence/Occitanian identity, that goes back to the tradition of troubadours was created consciously on the base of identifiers. These identifiers formed on the one hand the uniqueness of the region in the eyes of its inhabitants and on the other hand they made it recognizable in the eyes of strangers. The feeling of belonging to Provence/Occitania has the features of a construct, which is based on special – “strong” words, or “words of power” (mots-force), “places of power” (lieux de force). The article shows that troubadours had a developed sense of belonging to their land. This sense of belonging was expressed through a system of strong words – identifiers such as iconic toponyms outlining the region, language designations, names of famous courtyards, names of patrons and ladies (including encrypted ones), as well as a built-in system of word-symbols reflecting the ideal, game, dream and values. In the article the conclusion is made about the troubadours’ language: it is an example of the way the words form an identity and the way they create a construct, which components don’t lose their meaning up to the present.

The paper discusses the need to develop new approaches to the problems of intercultural communication under modern conditions. Old theories were formulated in the middle of the 20th century under specific historic conditions and for certain purposes, today they are outdated. At the new times of globalization, a changing balance of powers in the world, increased mobility of ever growing masses of the world population, mainly in the field of tourism, education and labour migration, new approaches and theories are needed. Cultural globalization revived an increase in interest in national cultures, a desire to preserve national traditions, lifestyles, features of everyday life and even worldview. This process was stimulated by the confrontation of ever-increasing globalization with attempts to maintain national identity. Thus today for most peoples issues related to national identity are becoming especially delicate and important. This clash of two opposing vectors – cultural unification, on the one hand, and a kind of cultural nationalism, on the other, is leading to an increase in intercultural misunderstanding and conflicts. The sources used for studying the issues discussed in the paper were versatile and include the results of a survey of Russian and Chinese students studying at Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov.

The paper deals with the role of the national cultural worldview (Weltbild), embodied in the national cultural worldview and realized through the language of its speakers to facilitate the process of modern languages learning. The researchers’ interest in this issue is explained by their strive to comprehend the mechanism of this processes. The language and the national cultural worldview manifested through the native speakers are determined by the geographical setting that does not only establish the lifestyle of the people, their vision and verbalization of the surrounding world, but fosters the identification of one ethnic community from others. In modern languages learning the idea of the key role of natural environment in the formation of thinking, culture and language of each nation caused the need to introduce a new academic discipline within linguodidactics – geolinguodidactics, which can improve the quality of teaching modern languages. European languages as members of the Indo-European language family are noted for their lexical and grammatical affinity; however, each of them has its own particularities determined by the habitat that eventually affects them. To learn modern languages proper besides mastering grammar and vocabulary it is necessary to study culture and the way of thinking of their native speakers.

This paper provides a contrastive analysis of verbal actional characteristics in Russian and Italian, with major regard to predications that are hybrid in their actionality. The notion of actional hybridism is examined within the Compositional Approach to Aspect and Actionality. The main characteristics of actionally hybrid predicates is defined as the manifestation of their compatibility with a range of aspectual grams, typical of more than one actional class (e.g., states, activities and accomplishments). The next step is a brief outline of an actional classification of Russian verbal lexicon based on grouping (clustering) morphologically related verbs around actionally hybrid pivot-verbs. The clustering principle takes into account both morphological criteria, and the actional characteristics of the verbs (telicity, durativity, stativity, multiplicity, etc.). We organize cluster members around 6 pivot verbs, illustrating the inner structure of the action, described by members of each specific verbal cluster. Testing the correlation of cluster members with aspectual grams, we analyze their compatibility with grams describing structural stages of the action (ingressive, delimitative, completive, etc.). The use of such a classification principle suggests the next level of abstraction if compared to the binary organization in aspectual pairs, but still does not overcome the former.

The article is devoted to the study of linguistic means of describing Paris in the memoirs of Baron Haussmann, who had the post of the Prefect of the Department of Seine from 1853 to 1870. Based on the text of the memoires the article examines the signs of poetic discourse in a non-fiction literature, expressed in the metaphorization of the image of the city. Among the conceptual metaphors composing the components of the myth of Paris, there are metaphors of Nature (ocean), the metaphor of personification, centralization and the author’s appeal to the ancient name “Lutetia”. The idea of centralization is particularly clear, which reflected the goals of Napoleon III regarding the improvements of the French capital and its transformation into a “State in a State”. The text of the memoirs, on the one hand, describes historical events taking place in the second half of the 19th century. On the other hand, it expresses the author’s ideas about Paris and the author’s intention, thus combining the characteristics of non-fiction with the elements of fiction. The similiarity between the metaphors form the myth of Paris, used in the novels of the 19th century and the metaphors found in the memoirs of Baron J.-E. Osman are revealed. The conclusion about the spread of the myth of Paris to the texts of non-fiction is made.

The following article is devoted to the problem of speech acts within the frame-work of business negotiations and deals with the investigation of business discourse. The chief purpose of this article is to outline a range of speech acts with various illocutionary aims, which has been reached in the course of the research. The work is primarily based on the classification of speech acts, advanced by J. Searle, that encompasses representatives, directives, commissives, declarations and expressives. Later it has been expanded by A. Wierzbicka and M.A. Shelyakin, who added to the list interrogatives and vocatives respectively. In the analysis undertaken the following methods were applied: the method of discourse analysis (which gave an opportunity to highlight common for business discourse linguistic units), a continuous sampling method (which allowed to single out the speech acts, which contain performative verbs), and the method of analysis of visual material (which made it possible to value cinematography episodes as a reliable source of information on business talks). All the examples used in the article were taken from the following movies: 1) “The Big Short” (2015) directed by Adam McKay, “Wall Street” (1987) directed by Oliver Stone, and its sequel “Wall Street: Money never sleeps” (2010). As a result, it has become possible to consider illocutionary acts, which are used in the communicative situation of business negotiations, as well as illocutionary goals driving the communicants.

The article deals with the foreign literary geography development history, starting from the beginning of the XX century, the moment in which the first works on literary space and literary places appear. Works on literary mapping are an important part of all foreign literary geography studies. In the presented article by “foreign literary geography” the author means all works within literary geography that were published beyond Russia in the English language. The author attempts to present an overview of the establishment and history of foreign literary geography with special emphasis on the history of the development of its key areas. The author endeavors to analyze these key areas by the change of their content, authors and the geography. The presented timeline includes sporadic works at the beginning and the middle of the XX century, rapid growth in the number of works in 1970s, gradual rise in the quantity and quality of research in 1980s and 1990s and a significant increase in research in 2000s. The number of works in literary geography in the XXI century in estimated in hundreds. In the XXI century due to the change from printed maps to electronic maps the features of literary mapping method have changed.

In this article the role of military-political myths in the formation and development of Montenegrin statehood in the 19th and early 20th centuries is discussed. In the second half of the twentieth century the interest in political mythology in the humanities and social sciences increased. Scientists drew attention to how quickly myths fused with modern political ideologies and how successfully they were used in public life to achieve political goals. This popularity of myths was explained by the fact that myths affect not only the consciousness, but also the subconscious of the electorate, referring to the ancient archetypes that underlie different cultures. This is the power of modern political mythology. It is invulnerable to rational arguments, often appealing to historical feelings, and not to reason. History knows many examples when myths rooted in the deep past brought politicians substantial dividends in the present. In the XIX – early XX centuries such an active “exploitation” of military-political myths could be observed in the Montenegrin principality. The myth of the invincibility of Montenegrin warriors became an incentive for an irreconcilable struggle with the Ottoman Empire. The heroic epic created by the people over several centuries justified the need to build their own national state. Myths helped strengthen the authority of the ruler, gave him the opportunity to keep the country in a state of strict discipline and unconditional submission to the monarch. Montenegrin military historical myths also helped to strengthen the authority of the principality in the international arena. The leaders of the Russian Empire were determined to use the unique fighting qualities of the Montenegrins to achieve their own goals in the Balkans and therefore did not spare the funds for the modernization of the armed forces of Montenegro. However the result of modernization was unexpectedly small compared to the size of Russian subsidies.

Russian Language teachers are currently facing the most important pedagogical task – the effective organization of not only the learning process, but also the process of adaptation and integration of Asian students into the modern Russian socio-cultural space. In order to identify problems associated with the adaptation of Asian students and their subsequent integration into Russian society, the authors of the article conducted a study that helped to identify the main problems of respondents being in a natural language and new academic environment. The article analyzes the results of a survey of Asian students, on the basis of which the authors were able to identify and describe a number of problems of the surveyed group, which are primarily related to the communication process and, as a result, the socialization of foreign students. The survey data helped the authors identify possible effective steps to overcome the difficulties of intercultural communication in the academic environment. We conclude that the gradual mastering of the norms of Russian culture, values and patterns of behavior, as well as establishing contact with Russians by Asian students is gradually being achieved, therefore at this moment it is possible to talk about a positive trend in the adaptation and integration process.

In the context of modern globalization processes, cultures do not always come to dialogue. The subject of this article is the conflict on the territory of modern Belgium, which dates back to about the III century AD. The object of the study is modern manifestations of the Franco-Flemish conflict. At the heart of the Franco-Flemish conflict lies, first of all, the language confrontation, on which factors of a social, economic and especially political nature have been layered. The attitude of the Belgian population towards the conflict is reflected in various resources: scientific articles, encyclopedic data, journalistic publications, mass-media of Wallonia and Flanders, in corpus data, social networks, fiction and in the comments on the above sources. The goal set in this article is to investigate a multidimensional conflict, its causes, its course, the current status, and to draw a conclusion on its development trends. The hypothesis of the study is that the current status of the Franco-Flemish conflict is determined by recession or deliberate silence, as well as deterrence by the political elites of the kingdom of Belgium.

The article is devoted to the problem of preserving cultural heritage through its reproduction in cultural memory based on the Quebec documentary cinema of the first half of the 20th century. The aim of the research is to identify and to justify the features of films related to “direct cinema” as an important part of cultural heritage, a creative memory carrier. A memory’s need for self-identification in space leads to the creation of places that are for any group not only a scene of joint activity, but also symbols of identity and important points of memories. The appearance of a light and silent camera in the cinematograph in the second half of the 50s contributed to the birth of the “new wave”. The center of “direct cinema” in North America was the French-Canadian province of Quebec. The article analyzes the relationship between cinema and society, cinema language is considered a means of reflecting the characteristics of identity. These characteristics model cultural identity and illustrate the alliance of cultural bearers about ethno-integrating and ethnodifferentiating characters. The article clarifies the contribution of the first priestsfilmmakers to the formation of the collective memory of Quebec. The specificity of the visual solution and dramaturgy of “direct cinema” is analyzed on the basis of the film by Michel Brault, Gilles Groulx and Marcel Carrière. The conclusion about the peculiarities of innovative aesthetics and the significance of films of direct cinema as effective translators of the values of Quebec culture and generators of new meanings of cultural memory is made.

The article describes the urgency of creating a scientific anthology dedicated to the Russian Old Believers. Russian Old Believers are one of the most important spiritual, social, economic and cultural phenomena in the history of Russia. Attention to the Old Believer intellectual heritage is relevant for clarifying the course of Russia’s development in the world community of civilizations. Over the centuries of coexistence with the Russian Empire, the Old Believers developed their own counteractions to the Western path. Nowadays the Old Believers are an arsenal of spiritual, intellectual and cultural methods of resistance to Westernization. A selection of Old Believer texts should illustrate the various trends of Old Believer thought in different epochs, to see the Old Believers as ideology, as a world view, as a men- tality, as a way of life. The collection of texts on the Old Believership should give an objective picture of the place of the Ancient Orthodoxy in the history and the present of Russia. Editorial work should be based on a special methodology, so as not to perceive the Old Believers in an ethnographic or historical-museum format. Old Believership should be presented to the reader in the light of its current opportunities for building a new great culture.

The article deals with the evolution of ruins motif and ruin perception in Spanish poetry, from the Golden Age to contemporary poets. The starting point of the research is the perception of the ruins, after M.M. Bakhtin, as a chronotop, the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships. The ruins became an aesthetic category, whose reflection in the form and the content of a poetic work agreed with the ideology of a particular period – Renaissance, Barocco, Enlightenment, Romanticism, or Postmodernism. Studying the ruins topos in the context of Iberian mentality allows us to see the local tendencies in the perception of the ruins. The Renaissance poets were the first to draw attention to the ancient remnants, from Carthage later refocusing towards the Roman ruins and the Iberian space. Thus, in Renaissance Spanish poetry Garcilaso de La Vega and Gutierre de Cetina were the first to devote the sonnets to the Carthaginian ruins, while the 16th century Seville poets took a broader view, both geographically and historically. The two functions of the ruins established in the early poetic tradition emerged in the later works both individually and in their inseparable unity, to be interpreted in the 20th century poetry by Aníbal Núñez (1944–1987).

The subject of this study was the axiological aspects of the content of Russian classical literature, manifested in the genre and stylistic specificity of artistic works, the purpose of which is to reveal the peculiarities of the content of N.V. Gogol ‘s poem “Dead Souls”, to study the ideological and moral representations of the writer and the ways of their implementation in the text. The work uses relatively historical, system-typological, historical-functional methods, which allow us to consider a complex literary phenomenon in an integrated manner. The results of the work show that the poetry of “Dead Souls” is formed on the basis of the religious world view of the writer, the novelty of the work is that for the first time the topic of mercy is considered as key in the realization of the author ‘s plan in order to show the spiritual values of the Russian people. The results of the study can be used in lectures on Russian classical literature in higher and secondary schools, at seminars and practical classes, the work is of interest to all those interested in the problems of Russian spirituality.

Russian love-knowledge verbs are analyzed in the article, which reveal the specifics of Russian ideas about love - to admit, explain, and open up. The verb “to confess” gives love to a crime, “to explain” - to a riddle, incongruity, “to open” - to a secret. Each of these similes has a mythological and cultural-historical origin, and none of these uses is accidental. So behind the verb “explain” is an ancient (ancient Greek) myth that explains why two people feel a sudden strong attraction to each other, passion. The article explains the origin of the typical Russian representations of a couple of lovers and then spouses as two halves. We are talking here about a story from Plato’s “Feast” (a dialogue dedicated to the issues of love), about people who once lived, according to this myth, of three genders: men, women and androgynes, who had incredible power. It was for this that the last ones were cut into two halves by the will of the gods. “And when”, we read in Plato, “the bodies were thus dissected, each half longing for the other half, they embraced, intertwined, longing to grow together, and died of hunger and inactivity, because they did not want to do anything apart... From such a long time ago, people have a love attraction for each other, which, by connecting the former halves, tries to make one of the two and thereby heal human nature”. Aristophanes writes the same story about androgynes. He says that “love is called the thirst for wholeness and the desire for it.

To the same story, the “crime” of love is being built. A crime in the desire to unite contrary to the will of the gods. The etymologies of the words “gender” and “sex” indicate the same situation. The word “gender” (male and female), came from the Old Slavic “half” – half. The same picture is observed in other Slavic languages, where the root is associated with the concepts of “side”, “half”, “cut”. The situation of cutting off, separation is behind the word “sex”, which came to Russian from English, and there – from Latin. “Sexus” originally meant “separation”, “dissection” (see the single-root “section”, “segment”, “secateur. “Sexus”, like the Latin – the line of separation, separation, which was once separated, hence the attraction of the sexes, the sexual attraction, which, under any ideological tendencies, has never been questioned. The same subject constitutes a mystery, which must be hidden, and the decision to open requires courage and readiness to take risks. First of all, because it is the Slavs who love, would-be wife and would-be husband – parts of fate. Unlike the European destiny (Fortune), the Slavonic Sudzhenitsy, coming to the house to the newborn, is sure to discuss the issues of his future heart life. The article lists and analyzes examples from the love explanations contained in Russian classical literature, or rather, in Russian prose.

The paper continues discussing the subject opened in a previous issue concerning the need to develop new approaches to the problems of intercultural communication under modern conditions. This time it is illustrated by the important issue based on the experience of Chinese students who study in Russian universities and Russian lecturers who teach Chinese students. The number of Chinese students is steadily growing and Russian educational organizations are not quite ready to deal with such a great number of pupils. And students, in their turn, are unprepared for integrating into an alien culture. Old theories of intercultural communication, formulated in the middle of the 20th century under specific historic conditions and for certain purposes, today are outdated. The necessity of working out new principles, methods and theories in the field of intercultural communication is being considered, as well as the great need for presenting practical information in various forms – the internet, manuals, introductory courses for adaption foreign students in Russian educational system and everyday life. Courses for Russian teachers working with students from China, telling about Chinese educational traditions, behavioral customs and mentality are also very important. Some other ways of solving the problems of integrating Chinese students into the Russian world are suggested.

The article focuses on some issues of audiovisual translation, executed in voiceover mode within the scope of audiovisual media. Audiovisual translation is regarded as an interlingual transfer of the verbal component of layered multimodal texts that is characterized by a range of constraints that allow little latitude in the translator’s choice of pertinent translation strategies, procedures and techniques. The most significant to be mentioned are the time constraints, the requirements for synchronizing the sounding of the translated voice-over with the shots and frames of the video sequence, as well as the psychophysiological parameters of the perception of the translated content by ear. In this regard, it seems obvious that the traditional concepts of translation equivalence, which were posited on the basis of written, mainly literary, translations analysis, do not always turn out to be relevant as far as revoicing in media workflow is concerned, and therefore require to be revisited in the light of the communicative-functional approach. However, Comparative Stylistics and linguistics-oriented Translation Studies, contributed largely to building up an extensive taxonomy of translation operations, which have significant descriptive potential. For this reason, the present article uses the typological arsenal of translation techniques depicted by the seminal works which developed within the framework of transformation-centered approach (transposition, equivalence, modulation and adaptation). Nevertheless, the study focuses on the translation techniques the usage of which is motivated not by structural language asymmetry, but rather by discrepancies in the cultural and cognitive repertoire of the source and target languages speakers, as well as by specific conditions of multichannel perception of audiovisual media texts.

The present paper deals with the representation of the names of the ancient gods in New Testament translations. In the text of the original which was Greek the names of gods were naturally Greek. But as in Antiquity the characters of the Greek mythology were identified with the Roman ones, the text of the Vulgate renders them in Latinized form. Because in Europe before the Reformation the Latin translation was the main and the most authoritative version of the Holy Writ, it had been used as the source text for the rendering of the Bible, even by the authors, who were opposed to Catholic Church (e.g. Wycliffe). After the Reformation, the Catholic translators continued the use of the Vulgate as the original even until the middle of the 20th century. In contrast to them, the Protestants translated the Bible almost exclusively from Hebrew and Greek texts, but often retained the Latin names of the Greek gods until approximately the same period. The Russian tradition of translating the Bible is characterized by some peculiarities. On the one hand, there was a general orientation towards the Greek and Church Slavonic texts; on the other, the influence of the Latin forms also occurred in the early New Testament version edited by the Russian Bible Society in the first quarter of the 19th century.

When we use bilingual dictionaries, what makes us believe that the translations they offer are valid? Comparing the English nouns smile, grin, smirk, sneer with their translations in bilingual English-Russian and English-French dictionaries, I consider as criteria of translational adequacy the following: ostensive (referential) equivalence, etymology, morphology, phonology, (monolingual) definitional equivalence, (bilingual) reversion (reversibility). The special characteristics of reversion suggest that It might be worth distinguishing translation equivalents (=reversible items typically heteroglossal synonyms) as a hyponymic subset of translations (=heteroglossal definitions). Not considered here (for lack of immediately accessible evidence) is contextual or cotextual equivalence, though it would be significant if items in different languages had similar collocations and colligations.

The paper highlights (from a position of conceptual integration techniques) the ways the verbal anti/memes function in the modern political communication. Special attention is paid to the role and ways in which the definite memplex is used in the special politically controversial situation of Brexit, particularly for persuasive purposes.

This article is dedicated to the jubilee of the outstanding scientist, talented person and experienced leader, Professor Galina Georgievna Molchanova. Scientific interests of G.G. Molchanova cover a wide range of areas and topics in the field of cognitive linguistics, polycodal models of intercultural communication, clustering approach in verbal and non-verbal communication studies, memetics and other breakthrough interdisciplinary areas. The focus of special attention is on the issues of the cognitive and polycodal aspects of communication a) in speech; b) in text/discourse, mythology as a means of mind transformation in political discourse, cognitive memology, intertextuality as a semiotic code, semiotic approaches to the study of text and discourse. Author’s courses “Semiotics in intercultural communication”, “Modern techniques and approaches to the study of text/discourse”, “Cognitive studies in language and intercultural communication, intercultural adaptation of text and translation” are a platform for the development of students and the formation of young researchers. Achievements in pedagogical, scientific and administrative work spheres of G.G. Molchanova present a portrait of a brilliant scientist and an outstanding personality, her energy and inexhaustible scientific potential give prompt development and support to all those who work day after day with Galina Georgievna.

The article deals with one of the most important issues of current methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language, and, on a larger scale, of teaching foreign languages, which is the problem of adapting a literary text. The study is relevant today because there is a need to introduce a scientific and theoretical approach to this problem, since the underdeveloped theoretical and practical system of tools complicate the adaptation of the original text, and, consequently, the reading and understanding of the adapted version of the text. The article describes the author’s long-standing experience and presents the results of the comparative analysis of authentic literary texts and their adapted versions taken from Russian textbooks for foreigners. The question is raised concerning the correlation between the concepts of a secondary text and an adapted text. The academic novelty of the research con- sists in formulating the concepts of linguistic and non-linguistic principles of adaptation. The non-linguistic principles (citation, deletion, reordering) relate to the structural changes in the work of fiction, while linguistic principles (replacement, reduction, addition, inversion) belong to the sphere of language. A definition is given to the concept of an adapted literary text. A classification is proposed for the types of adapted literary texts (fragment text, editing text, variation text).

Content and language integrated learning of a foreign language for professional communication is a new approach for Russian higher education. Its distinctive feature lies in the dual purpose of teaching non-language-majoring students: a) a foreign language for professional communication and b) a basic specialty. Achieving the goal of the simultaneous formation of professional foreign-language communicative competence and a number of general professional and professional competencies will be largely determined by the subject-specific content of the integrated course and educational materials developed on the basis of this particular approach. In this paper, the authors points out the relevance of developing educational materials based on content and language integrated learning and contucts six stages of developing teaching materials on subject-specific modules of an integrated course: 1) determination of the content of subject-specific modules of the advanced course; 2) determination of subtopics of each subject-thematic module for study during the integrated course; 3) selection of professionally oriented texts for training; 4) highlighting active vocabulary in selected texts of professional orientation; 5) development of tasks for the development of types of speech activity; 6) development of tasks of professional orientation. The article details the content of each of the stages.

This article addresses the issue of the Event, which is of great importance for XX century’s philosophical thought (A. Badiou, V. Bibihin, M. Heidegger), but has its roots in Ancient “Poetics”, where Aristotle sees it as the basis of ancient Greek art and ancient Greek drama in particular. We examine the Sophocles’s tragedy “Oedipus Rex” to illustrate the duality of the Event as it unveils itself during the performance, combining theatricality, introspection and observation with action and pathos. The Event in full measure reveals itself through the main character, Oedipus, creating the tragic universe of the apollonian harmony and dionysian knowledge. It should be noted that previously mentioned characteristics of the phenomenon do not only reveal themselves on the stage, but have their roots in a real life experience, so we can refer to them as to the very beginning of the theatre. The Event has the ability to organize and emphasize special moments of the awareness and consciousness in the world of chaos and instability, and so becomes an “impulse”, the beginning of the theatricality itself. Thus, this peculiarities of the concept let us compare and analyze two distant epochs such as Ancient Greece and Modernism: find more similarities than differences in the operas of Sophocles, Artaud and Beckett despite the gulf of time which separates them, which is also a significant contribution of the Event.

The article analyzes the influence of mass culture on theatre experiments of Italian futurists. Mass culture is considered to be an opposition of elite or high culture because its production has a standard character, it is aimed at entertainment and it is commercial, while high culture is aimed at creating new esthetical experience and serves as a source for mass culture where it is reproduced in a reduced way. However, the study of Italian Futurist theatre of 1910–1920s reveals that it was mass culture that served as a source for the transformation of high culture and the creation of new language of theatre. In particular, Italian futurists turn to such forms of shows as variety theatre and music hall and borrow a number of their practices. In their theatre experiments they aim at changing the idea of theatre and separate it from literature as a different art genre. In order to do so they deny the dominating character of text in favour of other means of expression. Although Futurism as one of avant-garde movements, without doubt, belongs to high culture, it redefines the notion of public and turns to mass audiences trying to get them out of the state of passive perception by attacking their senses instead of their intellect. The avant-garde aims at transforming the world by means of art, and to solve this task it sometimes adopts the formal elements belonging to mass culture.

The article describes Japanese nourishment system as a subject of culturology. It investigates processes that are taking place in Japanese cultural tradition connected with innovation in Japanese food, penetration into the Japanese system of traditional nutrition of Western dishes and their impact on the food culture. Foreign words that are part of the Japanese language are recorded in a special alphabet called katakana. The same rule applies to the names of dishes. At the same time, there is an evident paradox: the dish can be very popular, becoming an integral part of the national cultural tradition, but at the same time its name will be written in the alphabet for foreign words, to emphasize its foreign origin. However, another process can be observed. Sometimes Japanese dishes themselves and their names combine both Japanese and Western traditions. However, many of the dishes that are served today in Japanese restaurants and in Japanese families have been borrowed from different cultures at different times. And the names of these dishes and the methods of their preparation underwent a certain adaptation, and today it is really difficult to imagine that until recently these seemingly truly Japanese dishes were not in the culinary culture of Japan. Yet the Japanese very carefully introduced changes to the methods of their preparation, and therefore, in many cases, the recipes remained close to the original. What was the only requirement for a recipe change? Seasonings, which are a kind of hallmark of Japanese cooking. What are the most important seasoning ingredients in the Japanese food system? Miso paste production and its role in nutrition and on the Japanese table.

The program of the lecture course is based on the interdisciplinary approach to research of traditional music that is regarded in connection with mythology, folklore, axiology and world view, ethnic historical memory, rituals, transformation practices, ethnic pedagogy, processes of ethnic-cultural identification of peoples through music in the modern world. This approach is based on years of experience reading a course of lectures on traditional music of the peoples of the world at the Department of Cultural Studies of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, Moscow State University. Thematically the course is divided into three units. The first unit covers the theoretical foundations of the course and methodology of comparative music culture study. The set of lectures of the second unit is dedicated to traditional music of peoples of Russia, India, China, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Scotland, Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, USA, Canada, American and African indigenous musical cultures and others. In lectures of the third unit the role of ethnic music in the modern world and the developing potential of musical ethnic instruments in actual cultural, pedagogical and art-therapy practices are considered. Throughout the text, traditional music of peoples of the world is delineated in a unifying culture study perspective, from autochthonous traditions to modern ethnic culture.

This article will analyze the concept of “French identity” in the theory of French researchers. Then we will consider the reflection of its main “pillars” in modern advertising. The concepts of different researchers differ from each other. The article deals with the theories of F. Braudel, R. Debray and P. Veil. Among the most important factors of French identity are: the French language and culture, a positive assessment of the French revolution, the principle of equality, respect for history and the past, a preference for words rather than images, and a cautious attitude to absolute happiness. They say that advertising is “a cultural weapon of economic domination and an economic weapon of cultural domination”. The ad appeals to all French people, so it would be interesting to see how it reflects the appeal to French identity. This is the purpose of this article. Modern advertising creates a new mythology. It not only reflects what is deep in the subconscious of the nation, but also creates its own new culture, drawing material not always from the native soil. The influence of not just globalization, but specifically American culture in this area is not in doubt: this is the culture of smiles, and the preference for a visual series of informative, and some iconic elements of mass culture (music, movies). However, you can feel the spirit of France in other things that are not always obvious: themes, symbols, sound design. The conclusion is also drawn in the article about new trends in modern advertising that bring to the forefront such human values as altruism and concern for the world around us.

The article is devoted to the study of the creative principles of the Russian opera director Boris Alexandrovich Pokrovsky, which he developed in the Chamber Musical Theater. The main content of the article is an analysis of the directorial concept of B.A. Pokrovsky. This issue has not been thoroughly investigated and requires further research. The relevance of the article is due to the processes occurring in the modern musical theater as a cultural phenomenon and is related to the functioning, social representation, stylistic and dramatic features of the genre. The fundamental changes taking place in the methodology of the stage interpretation of the classical and modern opera composition are a reflection of the powerful transformations of the value foundations of culture. In this regard, the scientific study of the unique creative method of Boris Pokrovsky as a cultural phenomenon can serve as a basis for identifying specific mechanisms for translating axiological characteristics of culture into artistic principles and synthesizing traditional and innovative interpretations of the director. Boris Pokrovsky was an outstanding stage director. He is best known as the stage director of the Bolshoi Theatre between 1943 and 1982 and as the founder of the Chamber Music Theater in Moscow. He put on stage many rare and even unknown operas. The phenomenon of the theatre is still a mystery to the theatre critics and art historians, whereas the methods of the director lend themselves to analysis and are disclosed in the article.

The paper belongs to a series of articles with a focus on mental models, as construed and actualized in discourse and embodied in texts. Identity is treated as a type of the above-mentioned mental models. Supporting the constructivist stance on identity (in R. Brubaker and F. Cooper’s terms), the author postulates that identity is fragmented, multiple and fluid, being molded and interpreted in discourse, and a function of various historical and sociocultural factors. Using “Quichotte”, a 2019 novel by S. Rushdie, who represents postcolonial literature, the author argues that constructivist stance on identity is a rightful and fruitful approach to exploring identity construction through the prism of fictional texts, the latter seen as results of discursive activity. The purpose of the study is to analyze the writer’s essentially multilevel reflection on multicultural identity in the novel within the novel, taking into account the perspectives of different characters, and describe the means of multicultural identity construction. The conclusion is made that the constructivist approach to understanding identity does not hinder a researcher’s examination of the ways human self-understandings crystallize in texts.

The article discusses the characteristic features and categories of the short story genre and the levels of translation analysis of such texts from the point of view of theoretical understanding of various aspects of literary translation. The purpose of our study is to consider the existing approaches to the translation analysis of the literary text as a whole, to correlate them with the format of the short story genre, and to justify the need for developing a translation strategy for this genre. The research is based on the data extracted from the analysis of 42 short stories by a German writer Wolfgang Borchert, the translation of which into Russian is currently being done by the authors of this article. The categories selected as relevant for the translation process are the categories of chronotope, dynamics, and narrator. The chronotope reproduces the spatio-temporal picture of the world and organizes the composition of the work. The dynamics is associated with both the generation and perception of the content of the text. The examined components include the components of the text dynamics such as the plot movement and statics, neutrality and expression of the style of speech, the economy and redundancy of language tools, the pragmatics of direct and indirect speech. The narrator is a mediator between the author and the reader, the fictional creator of the fictitious world of a work of art. One of the main tasks of the translation analysis of an original text is to identify these categories and their means of expression, and find means for their parallel deployment in the translation text.

The article deals with one of the most complicated aspects of the theory of artistic translation, i.e. recreation of the speech portrayal of a literary character in another language and within a different culture underlying it. The material under analysis is Mikhail Bulgakov’s landmark novel The Master and Margarita and two of its widely acknowledged translations produced by Michael Glenny (1967) and Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1997). The text of the novel abounds with lexical diminutives of all kinds, which enabled us to put forward a hypothesis that diminutives underlie and inform the complex multilayer system of the characters of the novel and their speech portrayals. Thus, diminutiveness is viewed as a linguistically relevant personal index. The research has shown that within the framework of the novel, expressive diminutives possess a large indexical capacity to identify and typify the characters as ‘us’ and ‘them’ as well as provide a rich source of humour and comic relief for those characters who, like Woland’s entourage or the narrator himself, are good at changing masks and voices when confronted with ‘them’. Due to the asymmetry of the Russian and English morphological systems, consistent recreation of the characters’ speech portrayals based on lexical diminutives, does not seem possible in translation, which does not preclude, however, occasionally finding excellent translation solutions.

The article focuses on the evolution, some principles and methods of pronunciation norm regulation in German-speaking countries. The author is aiming to analyze briefly the main features of the codification norm of the literary language in pronouncing dictionaries in historical retrospective. Special attention is paid to the fixation of exaggerated articulation, when the basis of the German pronounciation norm was the speech of actors in Germany (Bühnensprache ‘stage speech’); the systematization and codification of the pronunciation of professional radio and television announcers; the regularization of various forms functioning due to the convergence of the literary language and the oral speech. The macro- and microstructure of some pronouncing dictionaries of the 20th century and current ones, the representation of different sound units, specifics of native and of foreign word pronunciation, changes in the transcription and in the system of labels etc. are described. The paper also raises the problem of dictionary codification and the reflection of standard pronounciation variants in the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, etc.). As a result of the study, the author comes to the conclusion regarding the changes in the methodology of norm systematization and the dynamics of trends in the lexicographic codification of pronunciation norms of the German language.

This article continues a series of publications devoted to the study of the scientific register of geography (Komarova, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020). The scientific language of geography comprises texts of different functional and stylistic orientation: stylistically marked popular science prose, neutral educational literature and scientific articles characterizes by idiomatically restricted language; each of them having figures of speech fullfiling different functions. In terminology metaphors are used as a nominative technique in many branches of geography. As a result of the analysis of geographical terms in Russian, English, French, German, Spanish I have identified semantic types of metaphorical terms with the following areas-sources: “man”, “parts of the human body”, “physiological features of man”, “human behavior”, “occupations, professions”, “animals, plants”, “clothing, household items, furniture”, “architecture, buildings, home details”, “devices, tools”, “mythical images”[Komarova, 2020]. In real scientific speech which in every way strives for clarity and accuracy we usually stop noticing metaphorical terms because they function as neutral words. Therefore, along with metaphorical terms scientists tend to use foreign borrowings which lack additional figurative meanings due to their isolation from the system of a given language. Thus, some borrowed geography terms in Russian are non-motivated, i.e. devoid of symbolic value, while their equivalents in foreign languages still retain their metaphoric nature and connotations; the conclusion is true for different languages. The article discusses and describes geographical terms confirming this statement.

The article is devoted to the study of linguistic means of poetization of the image of Paris in the non-fictional narrative of the XIX century. The manifestation of poetization in non-fictional narrative is examined and compared with the image of the capital of France created in the fiction genre. This study is based on the texts of essays, guidebooks, as well as historical works about Paris, created by publicists, journalists and historians of the 19th century. The assumption about a desire of the authors in non-fictional narrative to strengthen the aesthetic impact on the reader is made. This intention is realized with the help of language tools, including metaphors and allegories, and therefore it entails the creation or modification of fragments of the reader’s perception of the world. Three main ideas that characterize the perception of Paris through the prism of poetization are examined: Paris as the center of depravity, Paris as the center of the country and the world, Paris as a place of cultural memory. All these ideas are also reflected in fiction. References to historical memory made by the authors confirm the idea of the preservation of the image of the French capital that has been formed over centuries. It is concluded that there are similar means of metaphorization of the image of the city in fiction and non-fictional narrative. Another conclusion about the sublime style of the Paris discourse is made as well as the one about the strengthening of the stereotype of the capital of France in the examined texts.

The article discusses ergonyms and their types and functions in the food industry of the Buryat Republic. The main onomastic function of an ergonym, as of a proper name, is nominative-excretory, which, along with the individualization function, determines the range of services that are provided by legal entities and individual entrepreneurs. The identification or informative function of ergonyms gives the consumer an idea of what is offered there and what quality the product is. The advertising function of ergonyms is inextricably linked with the informative function and is a market economy tool (IRISH PUB). The security function of the ergonym is associated with the image of the claimed brand and its status (CHURCHILL). The stimulating function positions this food company as a representative of a well-known company being in a certain sense a guarantee of high quality (KFC). The psychological or attractive function of ergonyms is aimed at creating confidence in the offered services that are already known as the consumer market (BURYATIA). Ergonyms in Russian reflect Russian culture and traditions (MASLENITSA, SAMOVAR), most food establishments with national cuisines are presented in Russian (CARAVAN-BASHI, SAMURAI). Ergonyms in foreign languages are addressed primarily to foreign tourists. Their choice is influenced by the affiliation of the given food enterprise to the international (SUBWAY) or the all-Russian food chains (ShashlykoFF). Ergonyms in the Buryat language appeal to the background knowledge of representatives of Buryat ethnic group, which have become common to people of other nationalities living in the Republic of Buryatia (ALTAN GEREL).

The article examines the questions of identity as a phenomenon, which has generalizing characteristics and which is connected with reconstruction based on individual fragments of more general cultural values. The identity phenomenon is connected with the phenomenon of tradition, which can be explained as a point of view of contemporaries on the cultural significance of the past (Pouillon J.). In order to study the dynamics of Provencal / Occitan identity the innovations of each period have been singled out – “milestones of identity”. This term implies identical references accumulating or replacing each other in the process of historical development. The examined material shows that in the history of South French identity there was a period of inertial fading and several periods of identical uplifts of various strengths. Over the centuries, the past was rethought, innovations occurred, and identity was reformatted. That is the reason why we consider each stage new, with its own differential characteristics - “milestones” of identity. Among them there are: the culture of troubadours as a reference base (1); stigmatization of the Albiguian and religious wars (2); the cultural matrix of the “eternal” Provence, sacralization and “musification” of the past, the role of the creative person (felibrism) (3); demythologization of culture; rational justification of identity (Occitanism), the departure of the Occitan language from real communication and the development of a secondary, symbolic function (4); virtualization, “depersonification” of identity; distancing from the past (our time) (5). These and other “milestones” mark the path that the South French identity has traveled. They also denote the general vector of its development – confirmation of the rights in conditions of interaction with the dominant North French / French culture.

The article reveals the linguocultural and comparative aspects of ontological space in English and Russian. The ontological space is viewed as a form of physical existence: the object of the world in fairy-tales exists in a certain environment (land, water, air) and lives in a particular place with geological specifics (depression, plain, mountain, peninsula, island) located in a certain direction (north, south, west or east). The investigation focuses on the comparative study of ontological space having the systemic organization of the lexical semantic field in English and Russian folktales. The structural parts of the field – its nucleus and periphery zone – are singled out by means of the comparative analysis. Isomorphic and allomorphic features are pinpointed. The nucleus is shaped by the “Geographical space” in English folktales and “Geological space” in Russian ones. The periphery of the lexical-semantic field “Ontological Space” in English and Russian linguocultures is presented identically: lexemes of “Natural Habitat” constitute the periphery. Such conclusions reflect the attitude of the English and Russians to the phenomenon analyzed. The investigation reveals the specifities of the ‘ontological space’ verbalized by nouns in both languages. A wide range of nomination variety is revealed. Resource data confirm the theoretical conclusions formed. Quantitative results are highlighted. The analysis of non-related languages permits to distinguish cross-linguistic specifics and outlines typological generalizations. This kind of approach is capable of producing further results in studying the folktales’ space within the world of unreality.

This article is devoted to a review of academic topics and reports presented at the international interdisciplinary academic and practical conference “Language. Culture. Translation. Communication”, which took place on October 26–27, 2020 at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University. During the conference a wide range of issues was discussed: the functioning of archetypical mythologemes in modern discourse, the representation of system-forming concepts in the linguistic picture of the world, the phenomenon of productivity in culture and language, methods of corpus linguistics in the study of a foreign language, consideration of the cognitive foundations of contact between two cultures, the manifestation of cross-modal iconicity in different types of discourse, communicative characteristics of the absurd. A wide coverage of the problems of studying intercultural communication, area and cultural studies was given in thematic sections, which took two days and became the most numerous in terms of the number of speakers. Questions of theory, history and methodology traditionally formed the basis of a heated sectional discussion. The participants shared their scientific research results in the field of modern linguistics, traditional and innovative approaches to the study of language problems. A separate sectional discussion was related to traditions and innovation in modern concepts of teaching foreign languages and Russian as a foreign language. The workshops allowed the participants to improve their competence in the use of information and communication technologies in teaching foreign languages.

Although lexical competence is a part of communicative competence, it has not always been regarded as a priority in the field of language teaching and, therefore, it has failed to receive all the attention that it deserves. Moreover, the urgent need for training highly qualified specialists in language pedagogy places increasing demands on language teachers and their professional training. While a great amount of effort has concentrated on improving teachers’ language proficiency, little has been said and done on developing their skills in terms of professionally-oriented vocabulary. This article examines conceptual features of notions “lexical competence” and “professional lexical competence” concerning the process of training pre-service language teachers. The article also analyzes their actual definitions. Thus, a revised term “professional lexical competence of a language teacher” is introduced. Besides, the article depicts the content of lexical competence and its position within communicative competence of prospective language teachers. As a result of the analysis made, one can consider lexical competence and professional lexical competence regarding the process of training future language teachers as core, interdependent elements that contribute to the ongoing development of professional communicative competence and communicative competence respectively. Finally, steps for designing a training model for pre-service language teachers are enumerated.

This article presents an experiment which was aimed at determining the English Language Teaching (ELT) majors’ views on the pronunciation of a competent English teacher. The relationship among intelligibility, comprehensibility and competence was explored in order to evaluate the necessity and possibility of updating the recommendations for teaching practical phonetics as a consequence of the spread of English as a lingua franca. A questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were used in order to collect quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The results revealed that English teachers who followed the Lingua Franca Core (LFC) were judged as significantly more intelligible and comprehensible to Russian ELT majors. This result proves the efficiency of LFC-based instruction if the goal is intelligibility. Native-sounding English teachers were rated as significantly more professionally competent despite their low intelligibility and comprehensibility, which supports the native-speaker bias previously described in scientific literature. The authors conclude that it is necessary to develop a new pronunciation model for the purposes of teaching phonetics to ELT majors, which would satisfy both their needs and desires by combining the LFC basis indispensable for intelligibility, with the features of native-speaker pronunciation, linked to the image of a competent professional.

The article is devoted to the prospect of conducting a foreign language internet-based exam at the Department of Biology and the Faculty of biotechnology at Lomonosov Moscow State University on the e-learning platform “University without Borders” (LMS MOODLE). The authors refer to the experience of authorized international English language test centers. The above mentioned faculties designed and gradually introduced their self-established format of the final “Foreign Language” exam for undergraduate students based on the international standard. The structure of the exam includes the following sections: Listening, Reading, Use of English, Writing and Speaking. Under the conditions of the urgently required shift to distant learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ways to introduce the online exam are presented. The LMS MOODLE platform allows assessing all types of tasks in Listening, Reading and Use of English in the automated mode, and tasks in the Writing and Speaking – in the manual mode. The authors analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the exam in the electronic format. Immediate and simultaneous coverage of a large audience of examinees, high speed and objectivity of assessment are distinguished among the advantages. However, a number of drawbacks of the technical and psychological sort were identified including students’ desire to cheat. The authors suggest using proctoring to monitor the examination process to prevent violation of the rules when taking the test. The authors come to the conclusion that the Internet-based exam is a worthy substitute for the traditional paper one and it allows for a successful assessment of the knowledge acquired by students.

Dialogic speech is the most prevalent form of communication. Teaching English dialogic skills at the university without modelling special situations is not an easy task. Communication within the class is different from the real one, therefore, it is important to create communicative situations similar to authentic situations. Since information technology is being actively integrated into the learning process, implementing game-based learning together with the use of information and communication technologies enable teachers to create situations close to real ones and thus immerse the learners in the experience. The article addresses a topical issue of integrating computer games in the process of foreign language teaching in the context of digitalization and gamification of education. The question of determining the criteria according to which computer games should be selected is discussed. In particular, the criteria of choosing digital games for teaching English dialogic speech to non-humanities students is described. Among them are a genre of the game, technical and didactic requirements as well as requirements to the content of the game. The given criteria are of practical importance due to the possibility of using them to select computer games for integrating them into the process of foreign language teaching at non-linguistic universities.

After the end of the war Germany was divided into four zones of occupation: British, American, French and Soviet. There were established military administrations, each of which pursued the policy of democratization, demilitarization, denazification and decentralization, which was specified in the Potsdam Agreement after the Potsdam Conference. When adopting a policy, it is necessary to realize that any region it is the people who live there and who form the main features of regional development, the same can be seen in Germany after the Second World War. In this regard dynamic cultural and social policy can be regarded as an essential part of the whole policy concerning the economy of Germany and political aspect in the divided country. However, the approaches to the sociocultural aspects differed in the Soviet military administration and in the American military administration. The article deals with these differences, the author makes a conclusion about the common and distinctive features of these approaches.

The article analyzes the dynamics of the development of sociocultural area studies as a branch of knowledge, and chronologizes this process with a separate indication of features of its three stages. The author focuses on the insufficiency of sources and on the attempts of researchers to deal with this problem. The second part of the article demonstrates the potential of the documents of the Soviet military administration in Germany as a source for sociocultural studies of interaction between Germany and the USSR after the war. The author dwells on the disclosure of the SMAG documents drawing on his own experience as well. The article includes the main documents available in the State archive of the Russian Federation. The author concludes that sociocultural studies are developing in accordance with the basic interdisciplinary laws and tendencies in the human sciences. The documents of the SMAG provide considerable opportunities for sociocultural analysis in order to more thoroughly understand the features of intercultural cooperation between Germany and the USSR in 1945–1949.

The article studies urban space as a text of culture, where various semiotic languages interact. With reference to this urban space can be perceived as a complex contexture of space, architecture, people, objects and names, as well as their interrelation in everyday life. The object of study in the article is a phenomenon of urban space landmarks and, on a large scale, the semiotics of landmarks as one of the codes which form and record the urban text. The author endeavors to interpret landmarks as a sign which constitutes a particular sign meta-system where a transmitted sign saves its appurtenance to its initial semiotics, but takes new features. This approach has enabled us to find out the changes in the pragmatics and semantics of signs and to characterize partly the specifics of the syntactics. The detection of semantically motivated correlation between this type of signs seems to contribute to the process of detection of new sense layers in urban texts and to result not only in the reinforcement of cultural memory, but also in the fulfillment of the creative function of the urban text.

Life-writing is increasingly coming into the focus of academic researchers, becoming the source of a better understanding of cultural categories and practices which go far beyond the biography of a specific individual. This article analyses the memoirs, diary entries and letters of the Russian artist Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin in order to examine his unique understanding of the category of space. Spatial perception lies at the basis of any cultural outlook, defining the worldview of its representatives. Petrov-Vodkin’s life-writing allows us to trace back the process of formation of his innovative perception of space, which is reflected in his artwork. The artist abandons the linear perspective and insists on a subjective and dynamic spatial perception, formulated in his theory of the ‘spherical perspective’. He examines the interaction between objects, people and the space around them. Petrov-Vodkin uses his private experience to interpret the laws of the universe and connects the future to a new cosmic understanding of spatiality.

The article revisits Karl Jaspers’ epoch-making work “The Origin and Goal of History” in a series of reflective prolegomena to a new reading of the key principles underlying one of the most significant historical and cultural conceptions of the 20th century. In the proposed hermeneutical perspective, Jaspers’ idea of culture as a historical unfolding of the vital fullness of human existence is analyzed by way of merging the interpretative horizons of psychology, soteriology and temporology in order to highlight the polyphonic counterpoint that is formed by the themes of fate, time, givenness and task, existence and transcendence. The resulting optics shows a path towards rethinking Jaspers’ fundamental concept of the Axial Age as the topos generated by the crossing of the temporal and the eternal, and, consequently, as a universal figure describing the transcendental conditions of culture in the space and time of human existence. Avoiding both the extremes of transcendentalism and the logic of immanentism, which is alien to the material, we eventually articulate an aspect of isomorphism of life and history that reveals the essence of culture as the constant effort of human self-transcending.

The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of play culture in the works of the German thinker, philosopher, and religious leader of the 15th century Nichiolas of Cusa, the author of the book “De ludo globi” which influenced both the representatives of the German classical philosophy and literature (Goethe, F. Schlegel) and the Russian cultural figures (Vl. Solovyov). The cardinal’s desire to solve theosophical problems with the help of exact sciences and his focus on mathematical symbols determines the specific nature of play semantics in his works. In the conversation with his interlocutors in the book Nicholas of Cusa seeks to cultivate the highest stage of human understanding in them, the mystical transintelligent contemplation, by explaining the rules and the purposes of the game. The book is the cardinal’s attempt of comprehending reality through philosophy; he uses play to teach the human mind the philosophical understanding of the cosmos, life, and God. Play symbolizes the spiritual aspirations and cognitive abilities of a person, facilitates the search for identity and the moral formation of the personality, and stimulates the spiritual and intellectual growth. In the conversation with his interlocutors Nicholas of Cusa tries to clarify the symbolic and mystical meaning of play bringing them to the understanding of play as a phenomenon of human existence. The bowling game created by the philosopher serves as an allegorical explanation of the secrets of the Universe, the relationships between people, God and the Infinite, and draws a parallel between the creative act of a man and the actions of God.

The article is devoted to the activities of cultural institutions during the pandemic of COVID-19. It should be taken into account that this question is largely unexplored so far. The article consists of content analysis of official websites of theatres and their pages on social networks, as well as numerous statements by representatives of the authorities and leading figures of culture and theatre during the period of spread of the new virus around the world. The scientific hypothesis is that such communicative mechanisms of culture as visualization, digitalization, and netting have arisen and proved their full potential and a general therapeutic function that is vital for this period. Moreover, it turned out to be saving for people who were forced to stay self-isolated. In the process of analysis of the situation in which the cultural arts community found itself, the prospects of international cultural cooperation, as well as the consequences of a sharp step towards digitalization and forced Internet existence of theatres in an unpredictable epidemiological environment, are considered. The theoretical basis for the work are the works of M.M. Bakhtin, N. Bol’ts, A. Maslou (the so-called “hierarchy of needs”), M. McLuhan, and U. Maturana.

This article reviews linguo-pragmatic aspect of media discourse on healthy lifestyle (a case study of “Women’s Health” and “Stern. Gesundleben” magazines). Media discourse on healthy lifestyle is a complex of media texts whose subject matter is health and means and ways of its maintenance. Linguo-pragmatic aspect of this discourse is characterized by its addresant/addressee, intention, subject area, functions, verbal and non-verbal means. The intention of this discourse is to inform its addressee on health problems, make popular healthy lifestyle and advertise means and ways of health maintenance. Its main functions are to inform, influence, popularize, motivate, instruct and advertise. The media discourse on healthy lifestyle is of hybrid nature because of its many functions. It means the discourse on healthy lifestyle contains characteristics of many other discourses, namely: of publicistic, popular-scientific and motivational-instructive ones. Like publicistic discourse, it is evaluative, expressive, original and novel. Like the popular-scientific discourse, the media discourse of healthy lifestyle is objective, precise, logical, well-founded but simple, and scientific but nonetheless comprehensive. Like the instructive discourse, it motivates and recommends. The article also describes verbal and nonverbal means of this discourse and it shows how magazines “Women’s Health” and “Stern. Gesundleben” use these means to influence their target audience.

The article is devoted to the study of the semantic content of Russian ethnonyms in the written discourse of the French from the XVII century to the period of active cultural contacts. The object of the research is the ethnonymic lexeme Tartare(s), which is a constant of francophone testimonies, so its content can be considered as a part of the cultural representations of the French about the ethnic structure of Russia at this historical period. The semantic content is analyzed by taking into account the concept of the Russian linguist V.A. Nikonov, according to which the name of ethnic communities can be divided into several levels of meaning: pre-ethnonymic or etymological meaning; post-etnonymic, which may not develop; and ethnonymic itself, correlated with the designated object. The problematic aspect of determining the semantic content of ethnonyms is the ambiguity of the correlation between the name and the object designated by it. As a result the main components of the semantic content of the ethnonym Tartare(s) were identified as: appearance of the Mongoloid race; Muslim religion; sub-ethnic division into Kazan, Nogai, and Crimean Tatars; disunited territorial location; features of interaction with Russia. The analysis of dynamics revealed trends in changes in the semantic content of the ethnonym Tartare(s), whose connotations shift over the specified period towards positive values. The image of the enemy in the view of the French is changing to the image of an ally and a Russian national. The increase in the territorial and cultural disunity of the Tatars and the partial assimilation of the Tatar people in Russian culture contributed to this fact. The experience of direct or indirect cultural interaction allowed the French to identify the objects of the nomination of the ethnonym Tartare(s) and expand the scope of its additional meanings.

The article deals with the region of Southeast Asia – the former Indochina as part of the research of the Francophonie area. French is used and taught in almost all countries in the region, of which four countries – Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand – were selected for this study in accordance with their membership in the International Organization of Francophonie (OIF). The relevance of the article is due to the fact that the rates of development of the French language in the Asian region are falling because of many factors, including the domination of the English and Chinese languages, the lack of clear language policy strategies, the closure of programs which support teaching French, and as a result – a lack of resources. The materials used for the article are statistical data from different years, reports of the activities of educational organizations to assess the dynamics, the French-speaking mass media of Vietnam, blogs, statements by local representatives of the political and intellectual elite to analyze the linguistic situation in the region. It turns out that the French-speaking Asian society faces a number of challenges: improving the image of the French language, increasing the rate of spread of the language, developing a language policy designed to promote the language, and searching for invest- ment. The priorities of the Asian French-speaking community are identified, including: increasing motivation to learn French; determination of the status and functions of the French language in the region; coordination of the actions of the authorities involved in the promotion of the French language; initiation of teacher support and ICT programs.

Metaphor functioning in political communication is a widely investigated scientific field as this rhetorical device is able to influence the addressee’s opinions and attitudes and change the perception of reality. The purpose of this paper is to describe the pragmatic potential of metaphors in Christmas messages (which are considered the main instrument of communication of the Head of State with his citizens) made by Juan Carlos I from 1975 to 2013, analyzing three metaphorical models (“War”, “Construction”, and “Way”). The solution to the current problems of Spanish society is associated with national unity, which is the leitmotif of all the analyzed Christmas messages. The metaphorical model “War” calls for fighting against common “enemies” (unemployment and terrorism); the metaphorical model “Way” convinces the audience of the correctness of the chosen political course, which leads to the country’s prosperity; the metaphorical model “Construction” shows that every citizen needs to participate in the development of the state, based on democratic values, and to underscore the important role of Spain in the European integration process.

As our society moves further into the age of digital document production, more issues will arise as to textual and non-textual infringement of copyright. The author of this article, which is dedicated to authorship attribution in the forensic context, believes that it is necessary to situate the very idea of author, which involves a number of archetypal images, with novelist being the most notable one. The populist conception of the author stems from the romantic period and seems to have changed little from that time. Apparent success of current author matching methods (such as the High Frequency Lexicon test, different computational methods) hides a number of defects because the author’s space is a public one and prone to occupation by other genre authors. Authors can either identify their work with the works of prominent same-genre authors, or stand in opposition to particular members of the genre group. Authors themselves can demonstrate inconsistency in their idiolects under the influence of social changes. Genre is viewed as a cognitive schema with underlying linguistic, sociological, and psychological assumptions. The boundaries between genres can be fluid with cross-genres or hybrid genres emerging as a result. Both the homogenizing nature of genre and individualistic features of the author style yield to the inevitable forces of social and personal entropy (decay) and ectropy (growth).

In this paper, academic writing and business writing are compared from the viewpoint of persuasiveness as one of their most important characteristics. Several genres of academic and business writing are considered, and a conclusion is made that students should be taught not only how to write correctly and in accordance with the discussed genres but also how to write persuasively if they are planning to become successful professionals, particularly with the 21st century skills in mind. The roots of persuasiveness are traced back to ancient rhetoric. Apart from traditional arenas of persuasion – courtrooms, political campaigns and commerce, today’s university textbooks on Persuasion consider traditional theories in such contexts as health promotion, advertising, behavioral prediction, social media, individualized tailoring of political messages, and many other issues. Contemporary topics taught today within the realm of the Theory of Persuasion indicate that it is a dynamic discipline with both substantial theoretical background and numerous practical applications. One of such applications is the English language teaching, and two aspects of it – business and academic writing – are looked at in more detail in this paper. Professional functions dependent on persuasiveness are considered, and the causes of the Russian students’ lagging behind in many genres of business and academic writing are revealed.

The article deals with the development of medialinguistics and other key trends in media language studies for the past two decades. From the year of its formation in 2000 medialinguistics has passed a long way and received the status of a full-fledged academic discipline with a clearly formulated theory, sustainable inner structure, worked out methodology and terminology. The article contains an expanded description of the basic category of medialinguistics – media text, which is defined as a combination of verbal and media signs, actualized in a certain media format and united by common message. The author also analyzes the dynamics of language and format characteristics of media texts under the conditions of digitalization and convergent media. The article gives an overview of the most popular branches of medialinguistic studies, including the analysis of different types of media discourse (news discourse, political media discourse), the study of broadcasting styles and comparative analysis of media speech practices in different countries. The second part of the article represents an overview of key branches of media language studies closely linked with medialinguistics, such as media discourse studies, media stylistics, media rhetoric, internet-linguistics and media textology. In conclusion the author emphasizes that under the conditions of rapid mediatization of all aspects of the contemporary society and dramatic expansion of media speech practices medialinguistics serves a reliable basis for further systematic studies of language functioning in mass media, integrating the existing achievements in the field and developing new vectors of research.

A comparison of the treatment of a culturally significant concept, the Crusades, in dictionaries of several languages, in the hope of learning about dictionaries and the dictionarate cultures that produce and use them – and in order to encourage colleagues to undertake such comparisons.

The article considers two variants recorded in the process of voicing a scientific written text (hereinafter referred to as WT): neutral reading and stylization of an oral message, a technique commonly used in scientific communication, when the speaker voices the prepared written text of his message in order to create the impression of oral speaking. The experimental corpus includes excerpts from articles by French linguists, each voiced by 8 informants (native French speakers) in two variants: neutral voicing of the written text (hereinafter VWT) and stylization of the oral message (hereinafter OM). In the second case, the informants still follow the written text, but they can use any necessary language tools to create the effect of oral speech production. The implemented lexical-grammatical transformations are analyzed by comparing WT/OM, while the prosodic ones are studied by comparing VWT/OM. The transformations implemented by the informants indicate the following: first, the cognitive strategy of voicing WT requires that prosody, being a secondary actualizer of meaning, subordinates to syntax, which is expressed in their unidirectional interaction; second, the transformations observed in the OM are destructive both at the syntactic and prosodic levels, ensuring equal participation of prosody in “stylization” of the oral message.

Stimulated by the recent rapid developments in the field of information and communication technologies, researchers are constantly searching for different methods and approaches to make the most of technological resources and put them to the best pedagogical use. This article discusses the experience of implementing PowerSchool Learning learning management system in the English Language training course for freshmen of the postgraduatе department FFLAS LMSU. The focus is placed on the development of the author’s supplementary online course designed to improve the effectiveness of postgraduate students’ preparation for academic communication in English. It should be noted that within the framework of blended and distance learning through PowerSchool Learning LMS it is possible to create an educational environment in which students feel more comfortable, becoming active participants in the educational process. Moreover, they develop their communicative, critical thinking and collaborative skills, being engaged in decision-making and problem-oriented discussions, which are crucial for successful professional development. As for the instructors, they should become “tech-savvy” and create innovative approaches to meet the needs of a new Net generation growing up in an increasingly globalized and a highly digitised world.

The article addresses a methodological approach introducing future translators to basic terms of a specific field exemplified by those related to the activities of companies. The authors consolidate their experience of teaching translation for sphere of business to students of linguistics, on the one hand, and teaching translation and legal English to future lawyers, on the other hand, paying special attention to the correlation of language and content. Teaching business translation has a close connection to the content of the corporate area. This implies familiarizing oneself with a large number of terms related to companies’ activities and extensive conceptual contexts in professional areas. Senior students have already learned that translation extends beyond the level of lexical meanings to culture and mentality, though the latter is not so widely represented in the cognitive-oriented texts. Consequently, legal translation tends to be mistakenly associated with reproducing some most obvious equivalents from a vocabulary list. At this stage, students require clear understanding that translation also covers the level of legal systems or traditions in a specific area. With future translators being unfamiliar with corporate and legal areas, the task is more complicated; practice and extralinguistic explanatory context are both absent. What becomes vitally important under the circumstances is a high level of methodological competence aimed at forming autonomous learning skills in specialised translation in general, as well as providing a variety of exercises to maintain motivation and students’ active involvement in mastering both language and content components.

This work analyzes the teaching method known as “Translation Workshop”, used in the course “Theory and practice of translation from Russian into Chinese” at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. “Translation Workshop” is a new method of training translators, whose qualifications more closely meet the requirements of the market. This method provides students with the opportunity to work together actively, allows them to improve translation skills, learn how to use automated translation tools, and gain practical experience in translation activities. Students are well prepared for successful work after graduation. The analyzed teaching method combines the theory and practice of translation. Students collaborate on projects on a variety of topics related to the real translation services market. Work on each project involves the following five steps, some of which are performed in the classroom, and some are intended for independent work: 1) distribution of responsibilities among students; 2) analysis of materials related to the topic; 3) translation of materials by students (individually or in groups) using automatic translation tools; 4) selection of the best translation and the formation of the final version of the text as a result of the discussion; 5) summarizing the results of work on the project and recording the translation into database. The article describes in detail all five steps. This method is of value both to the theory and practice of teaching the skills of translation from Russian into Chinese and from Chinese into Russian, as well as to the teaching of the Chinese language to Russian-speaking students.

The article suggests a new method of working on Russian vocabulary with foreign students, based on the associative similarity and semantic difference of lexemes with international roots. Errors in the use of these language units relate to semantic interference, when the lexical baggage of the native language is projected onto the foreign language being studied. Using associates as one of the methodological techniques will allow you to combine global and national, general and specific approach. Working with pairs of associates will help to avoid linguistic embarrassments, language and speech errors, enrich the linguistic and cultural competence of students. Teachers, except for classes at the initial stage, rarely use translator’s false friends. This method will help to correct this omission. The corresponding manual can be used as a supplementary material when working on vocabulary at an advanced stage of training. It is based on pairs of associates: дата/date; крест/crest; директор/director, etc. The pairs were selected based on the dictionaries of the translator’s false friends. Among the pairs, associates of two types stand out, which can conditionally be called “not at all” and “not the same”. The selected pairs are combined into thematic blocks that are relevant to the audience’s speech practice: “Education”, “Work”, “Transport”, “Leisure”, etc. Each topic section has several pairs: from 5 to 15. To work with each pair, the following types of exercises are offered: introductory, substitution, translation (intermediary language – English), and communicative. The introduction of each pair is accompanied by linguocultural commentary.

The knowledge of the professional eсonomiс language is a vital prerequisite for high quality teaching and successful employment proсess of undergraduates and future graduates of the University of Eсonomiсs, Prague. This article aims to сontribute to the quality and effiсienсy of teaсhing the professional Сzeсh language to foreign students, particularly to Russian-speaking students. This article contains didaсtiс reсommendations and proposals of speсifiс methodologiсal proсedures and exerсises which help to overcome adverse effects of the Russian language interference while learning the Сzeсh professional economic language at the University of Eсonomiсs, Prague. This article presents the results of teaching activities aimed at the Russian-speaking students in the framework of teaching professional economic Czech language at the University of Economics, Prague. Based on the research results, as well as the experience of working with students and applicants, recommendations were formulated that aim to maximise the effectiveness of mastering the Czech language as a foreign language, primarily taking into account Russian to Czech interlanguage transfer. In addition to methodological and didactic recommendations of a general nature, the article also contains specific examples of suitable practice materials.

The article studies the issue of borders of European regions. What is the marker for drawing the border – forests, woodlands, arable lands, mountains, coastline or regional culture? Being engaged in the polemics with German social scientist Karl Haushofer the author asserts that culture is the only basis for the definition of regional borders in Europe. Homeland begins with culture. The establishment of the Schengen Area in Europe in the second half of the 20th century did not solve the problem of borders. Firstly, the borders exist in the perception of people even if nobody asks them to show the visa. Secondly, the events at the turn of the 21st century make Europeans reassert control over the borders and the issue of its legality is getting more acute in the political life of Europe. To exemplify, the principality of Liechtenstein has recently appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and demanded that the Czech Republic returns the land confiscated at the end of World War II18. Even the special statement of the head of the Cabinet of the Polish President was necessary in order to allay the international fears that Poland has claims to Belarus where there are political upheavals nowadays19. To put it differently, the issue of borders in Europe is still acute in Europe. In this regard it is especially important to review the issue of the main principles of drawing borders. As a starting point of the discussion the author uses the collection of papers written by Karl Haushofer “Geopolitics”.

The subject of this research is that part of the creative heritage of A.N. Muravyov that has not previously been the subject of study in cultural and philological works, namely, samples of diplomatic materials (letters, official analytical and historical notes). This work is considered in the article as one of the directions of Russian romanticism, in the study of which Russian science has accumulated a lot of experience. The problem of realization of creative potential of the artist in the samples of business writing has not been considered by scholars before, the innovative approach to the problem as presented in the article consists in tracing, for the first time in history, the formation of the stylistic features of official correspondence of Muravyev, revealing the peculiar genre of the nature of these samples of business writing in his work. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time genre and stylistic creative components are considered as the main ones in the implementation of the author’s idea in order to show the spiritual values of the Russian people, to protect the Orthodox presence in the East. The work uses comparative-historical, system-typological, historical-functional methods that allow us to comprehensively consider a complex historical, cultural and literary phenomenon. The results of the work show that in the selected works for analysis (“A note on the salvation of ancient Chersonis”, correspondence with count M.V. Vorontsov-Dashkov from 1847, “Answer to Mr. E. Bore on the question of Holy places”), Muravyov remains within the Orthodox philosophical and religious worldview and romantic aesthetics of the 1820s and 1830s. The relevance of studying the artist’s holistic worldview has increased immeasurably in recent decades, so the results of the research can be used in courses of lectures on cultural studies, Russian classical literature in higher and secondary schools, seminars and practical classes. Russian literature is of interest to all those who are interested in the problems of Russian spirituality, cultural and civilizational features of the Russian world, diplomatic written culture and fiction.

The article focuses on the issues of national identity, which have become exceptionally acute in the era of international cultural globalization. Traditional national food is one of the most important factors that unite nations. With globalization tendencies being intensified there has been a peculiar upsurge of gastronationalism in particular countries and regions as a challenge to the current process of cultural unification. Food frequently becomes not only the most important national stereotype, but also a national unifier for people belonging to one culture. Being of paramount importance in foreigner’s perception of the British and being a national symbol for people living on the British Isles, especially for the English, beef and roast beef have turned into such a national symbol of Great Britain. The article based on a wide range of sources of cultural studies pertaining to a large period from ancient to modern times studies the history of transformation of beef into a national symbol of the English. The author refers to various historical and cultural sources: historical and statistical data, folklore, English memoirs and diaries, travel notes of foreigners about England, fiction literature and images, the print media, cookery books and the Internet. The issue considered is of fundamental importance as a part of regional studies since the issues of identity and the factors of its formation are the key aspects of Area Studies.

The article is devoted to the analysis of communication strategies and tactics in the right-wing populist German discourse of today’s Germany when covering the problem of migration. The aim of the work is to identify the features of the communicative behavior of the representatives of this discourse at the tactical and strategic levels. The relevance of this study is conditioned, on the one hand, by the active development of the current political protest movement in German-speaking countries, as well as the formation of right-wing populist discourse and, on the other hand, by an insufficient degree of study of its communicative characteristics. The work reveals the concepts of communicative strategies and tactics, studies the specifics of the most characteristic strategies and tactics, lexical and grammatical categories. The attention is drawn to the expressiveness and predominantly pejorative connotation of speech means used in the implementation of the identified strategies and tactics, which are illustrated by examples from the texts of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The authors come to the conclusion that the basic strategies of political discourse (self-presentation, struggle for power, retention of power and persuasion) are implemented in the framework of the migration crisis coverage, while only a limited number of tactics are used.

Each language is characterized by a unique set of language-specific means to designate various phenomena of the real world, which characterize a peculiar way of thought and life of a given nation. Japanese key words also give vivid and accurate reflection of the Japanese way of life and thinking and let us reveal the core values of Japanese culture. Key words in question and their analysis help to get insight into and explain the uniqueness of Japanese culture and mentality. Such words are the essential components of the Japanese language worldview. They serve as the eloquent testimony of the cultural worldview, which molds and explains the peculiarities of the culturally determined and unique way of life and thought of the Japanese. Centuries-old and deep-rooted in the Japanese consciousness commitment to form, norm and life regulation, expressed in Japanese in the keyword KATA, functions as an integrating framework of the Japanese consciousness and a key factor of penetrating into the specificity of the Japanese identity. Cultivated over the centuries, the appropriate and the only possible kata-ized way of doing something, and as a result, the only possible pattern of behavior in different situations is not confined to the widely accepted mechanical process of doing something. It is a sort of philosophy of the “Japanese way” in compliance with the norms of the Japanese morality and ethics. This “hidden” knowledge of living “in” or “out” of kata distinguishes the Japanese from other nationalities. The analysis of the key words can be considered as a bright and effective method of penetrating in the nuances of a culture. The knowledge of key words is of vital importance for successful communication with the representatives of another culture, doing business with them as well as for effective teaching international students.

The article gives an analysis of precedent statements from the informative space of political discourse, reflected in different types of media texts. Fulfilling a number of functions in political discourse precedent statements act as an effective means of describing socio-political realia. Moreover, precedent phenomena make the speech more dynamic, convincing, attractive, vivid, and these features influence the addressee, helping him to communicate not only with the speaker, but, following the theory of intertextuality, with the whole cultural context. Analyzing online newspaper media texts dealing with political matters the author comes to the conclusion that in political discourse the most important functions are text-forming, persuasive, evaluative and expressive, which facilitate realization of the global functions of precedent statements - semantic and pragmatic functions. Examples illustrating the changing socio-political realia in conditions of «new normality» and how politicians and journalists react on it make the article timely.

In fact, a mass influx of foreign words, expressions and notions into the native language is a very serious issue. Due to the concern of the public opinion and danger to the Russian language and Russian culture, the growing trend towards borrowing from English is becoming particularly important. Firstly, in post-Soviet Russia the influx of Anglicisms increased sharply. Some authors began copying English terms that had not been commonly used in Soviet scientific literature before. Secondly, it was later, during the Perestroika years, that young people started taking an active interest in Anglo-Americanisms, and Russian calques of English words emerged on the pages of newspapers. Thirdly, many Anglicisms that could be easily dispensed with came into the business community and the language of other professional circles. Fourthly, at a stage of transition from socialism to capitalism, the process of borrowing not only new notions, but also new institutions from Western countries, primarily from the USA, got accelerated. This context raises an issue of the need for adopting a reasonable state policy to protect the Russian language not only from contamination, but also from introducing meanings that are alien to Russian national interests. However, there is also another point of view. In some specialists’ opinion, there are more positive changes occurring in the Russian language than negative ones. The language keeps developing vigorously and becoming more emotional, with an active process of enriching the vocabulary of the Russian language currently underway. Thus, wouldn’t it probably be more reasonable to be guided by the economic principle laissez-faire with regard to the language?

The paper focuses on the cognitive metaphor as part of W.S. Churchill’s conceptual sphere. Metaphor is known to be one of the most powerful and frequent means of influencing the audience used by political leaders. It performs various functions in political communication, the main of which is cognitive, which consists in describing something new, complex, and / or abstract through simpler and more concrete images. The cognitive analysis allows for applying a broad approach to the material concerned. Thus, not only are metaphors, including those extended, studied, but metaphorical epithets, metonymies, periphrases, etc. are as well. Special emphasis is placed on the source domains and target domains of the metaphors analyzed. The paper addresses some of the eight key concepts explicated by the cognitive metaphor, which were identified as a result of a continuous sampling method used to analyze the politician’s pre-war speeches. The author concludes by stressing the key role of the cognitive metaphor in modeling the individual conceptual sphere. The data analysis is supported by a profound literature review covering fundamental works in the field of the theory of conceptual metaphor, concept study, and conceptual sphere.

Deontic modality is a modality of motivation for action, for compliance with certain laws, requirements and norms. It can be expressed in the form of an order / appeal, prescription, instruction, request, recommendation, permission, persuasion, reasoning, etc. The aim of the study is to show how the genre of the text can influence the choice of explicit and implicit means and ways of expressing this type of modality in the German language, which is realized during a specific discursive practice. Popular science, legal and literary texts became our empirical material. Particular attention was paid here to the phenomenon of isomorphism of modal verbs as markers of various situations of deontic modality. Isomorphism in this case is understood as the uniformity of the ways of expressing modal shades of an utterance in different linguistic forms. Due to this characteristic of German modal verbs, which are combined into one group, primarily based on the commonality of their etymological roots, the same verb can be a marker of different situations of deontic modality, which the article shows in the use of the verb können as an example.

Proper names serve different linguistic functions, ranging from basic – cognitive and communicative to affective, identifying, evaluative, password, pragmatic, characterizing, expressive, appellative, iconic, implicative, index, individualizing functions, in which they display their full potential. The functional repertoire of onomastic units is aimed at distinguishing a subject or object from similar ones, to give it a direct or indirect characteristic, to convey some information and evaluate. Proper names, once created by the author of a particular work, are often used in other texts, acting as allusions, thereby expanding the interpretive potential of onyms. The anthroponym represents a hero already created by another author, and for the perception of the novel it is necessary to know the prehistory. In modern culture, we often see a personal name going “beyond its borders” when it “jumps” from the pages of books onto movie screens, store windows, product labels, advertising billboards, etc. The name expands its information potential and the possibility of interpreting its culturally marked and semantic component. Now we see not only the continuation of the storylines or the usage of the name outside the original context, but also the mixing of spaces of different texts in one, within which all characters are allusive and to understand the storyline of such “patchwork” works requires a certain background knowledge of the recipient. In such works, the proper name not only realizes the individualizing, cognitive, communicative and other functions listed above, but also appears in a new representative function. This function is analyzed in the article in the series “Once Upon A Time”.

The paper pursued the aim to model linguistic picture of the world, relying on the frequency of the lexis in the Russian, English, and Turkish languages, established by the proprietary methodology of quantitative analysis of the Voronezh School of Applied Linguistics. The nuclear vocabulary, identified through several linguistic criteria, was included in the smaller parametric kernels and studied in this paper in the context of the linguistic picture of the world. A comparative method was applied to reveal general features and specific differences in the world pictures of the three languages. The result of the analysis found out that the nuclear vocabulary of each language, selected on the basis of linguistic-statistical grounds, provided a definite idea of the basic views of the linguistic community towards the world. The results of comparison of the lexical world pictures revealed that the smaller parametric kernels of the three (Russian, English, and Turkish) languages actualized both general spheres of cognitive interpretation of the world and specific spheres of knowledge. The coincidences of many fragments in the lexical world pictures proved that there were universal fundamentals in the life of the peoples. Whereas discrepancies in the given linguistic world pictures dealt with a specific mental-linguistic interpretation in the aspect of the internal detailing of the cognitive-semantic blocks as the fragments of the linguistic world picture (LWP). The discrepancies originate from the way a person sees himself/herself, his/her nature, his/her preference for particular types of physical activity, the ways how he/she evaluates the environment, the level of how he/she actualizes abstract concepts, and processes of mental activity, as well as the choice of objects of the tangible world, etc. The picture of the world of each language represents a basic model of the world perception of the native speakers of the Russian, English, and Turkish languages.

The aim of the present paper is to focus on identifying the main cognitive mechanisms in the mental world by which the human consciousness and traditional classical myths are renovated as motivated by the contextual factors and underlying modern technologies. Through a frame/slot analysis of the modern text/discourse we draw attention to the way in which the most typical intertextual properties of the renovated myths are represented. They are as follows: 1) the division of input spaces and their quantity number; 2) the semantic intertextuality; 3) the formal (structural) interteхtuality; 4) the allusive intertextuality; 5) the memetic intertextuality. We conclude that the archetypal myth strategies in the modern text/discourse can be renovated by two means: 1) remythologisation (that is, exploration and usage of the traditional archaic plot, narration, a literary bookish stylistic register, names, structural arrangement, semantic meanings in the new context); 2) demythologisation (that is, negative or ironical attitude to the main gods, titans and heroes; non-formal stylistic register; a low-level pathos; the modern plot and social context). All these properties transfer the archaic myth into the new semiotic unit, able to be functioning in the new social and temporary situation and communicating with the new generation of the 21st century.

The present paper deals with some aspects connected with the selection of the translation strategies represented in different Bible versions. The view according to which the piety towards the sacred content of the Holy Writ and the danger of its possible distortion stimulated the tradition of the literal translation and led quite often to the literality, archaization, etc., is widely spread among the specialists, although at the same time the great role of the Bible translations as the means of the formation and development of the many literary languages is also recognized. On the other hand, besides the pure linguistic aspect as such, the strategy of the different Bible translators could also touch the substantial part of the original due to different pragmatic reasons. This is particularly evident in so-called ‘modern translations’. This process has been influenced by the appearance of the new translation theories. In turn, ‘pragmatics’ itself may have a different character and be related with different sides of the text: from the methods of the representation of the so-called cultural words (‘realia’) to the interpretation consistent with the norms and principles accepted by the translation organizers and the target audience.

This article aims at analyzing some ways of providing effective feedback and organizing reflective activities in online learning of foreign languages. Feedback and reflection make it possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses in the work of students, the effectiveness and efficiency of the educational strategies and tasks used, make it possible to build an individual student’s route to overcome difficulties, compensate for errors and improve learning outcomes. The concept of feedback and reflection is considered as a mechanism for increasing student motivation, it helps create an interactive educational online environment, regulating and adjusting the learning process. The authors analyze the didactic potential of digital tools and mobile tools used to develop reflexive and communicative skills of students, provide some practical tips on organizing reflexive activity in online classes, highlight the stages of reflexive activity, the prerequisites for providing effective feedback. The didactic potential of digital tools allows educators to provide quick, targeted and timely feedback, to organize reflection, to introduce the elements of gamification into the educational process, to save the results of polls and votes, to conduct an effective analysis of positive and negative results, on the basis of which the teacher can make changes in his own pedagogical activity, and in the educational activity of students.

Telecollaboration is known to have several forms. This article concentrates on teletandem, i.e. tandem realised via telecommunications. Tandem method of learning languages means mutual free exchange of language knowledge: two native speakers agree between themselves to teach each other their mother tongues. In the course of their tandem interaction they constantly rotate their functions of teacher and learner. Their collaboration is absolutely autonomous: they are independent of any institution and free of any financial obligation to each other. They are equal and equally interested in successful learning their partner’s language (principles of reciprocity and parity of languages). MSU (Russia) and VCU (USA) adapted the initial tandem method to enhance their students’ compulsory/mandatory foreign language learning (English and Russian, accordingly) under their curriculum. The tandem-partners communicate via ICT (t-Tandem). Free independent tandem is transformed into institutional (i.e. included into the students’ curricula as an elective learning activity). The autonomy of tandem learning is preserved but in a slightly restricted way due to the necessity to evaluate its successfulness. A suitable for both sides structure of teletandem was worked out, which includes three stages: an introductory videoconference for MSU and VCU students’ acquaintance and making tandems; task-based autonomous learning in tandems resulting in the preparation of Power Point presentations on a developed theme and a final wrap-up videoconference with students’ showing their presentation for common discussion. The survey conducted among the students on their completing the project resulted in valuable observation, which made it possible to identify positive and negative factors in project implementation and outline the prospects for its improvement.

In the era of glocalization, the effectiveness of university teachers’ research activities largely depends on their translation competences and capabilities required for undertaking research and presenting research findings in intercultural scientific settings. The paper highlights the fact that a modern university teacher (who is not a professional translator) is much involved in translation/interpretation activities as an amateur translator who uses translation for his research purposes and, thus, needs an appropriate level of translation education. The author suggests that the notion of “translation education of a university teacher-researcher” (as an amateur translator and mediator) should be conceptualized on the basis of a linguo-didactic consideration and interpretation of the EU’s four level competency-based profiles of the researcher depending on his status rank, the presence / absence of an academic degree and professional research responsibilities. The paper describes the linguo-didactic technology of developing translation and mediation indicators for evaluating the university teacher’s abilities and capacities to achieve a communication and research success in the glocalized multilingual & multicultural context of “Open Science. Open innovations. Open to the world”.

The language captures the historical and cultural picture of the world, because without words it is impossible either to describe an object, or to preserve the memory of it. Language as a keeper and translator of cultural and historical values operates with a vast baggage of various means for the nomination of new objects, their description and representation. A proper name acts as one of the means of verbalizing new knowledge, and a form of representation of knowledge accumulated in the language as a whole. Onyms have encyclopedic meaning, which makes it possible to incorporate a large amount of information, but an adequate understanding of the information conveyed by the name depends on the background knowledge of the recipient. A proper name can be considered as a code with the help of which the author’s communicative message is verbalized; it realizes the cognitive, communicative, expressive, axiological and password functions in the text. For a comprehensive study of the functioning of the onomastic code of culture in the literary text, the work of Lev Kassil “Get ready, Your Highness!” was analyzed. This work is saturated with the realities of the corresponding era, and proper names in it sometimes represent social practices characteristic of that time. Onyms are used to represent one’s social status, indicate a political situation, not only identify a person, but also draw patterns of behavior typical of a given era. For an adequate perception of the work, it is necessary to decode the encyclopedic and socio-cultural information presented in proper names. The implementation of the coding function by the name is aimed at the semantic disclosure of the potential of the semantic development of a proper name, its use as a universal linguistic unit capable of simultaneously activating the function of linguistic economy and the function of multilevel interpretation.

The article focuses on the research of the sources, artistic distinctiveness, symbolism and functions of humorous play imagery of Death in Mexican and Mexican-American cultures based on mythology, folklore, music, traditional food, crafts and different forms of mass culture (caricatures, advertisement, internet, puppet installations). The concept of “La Muerte Sonriente” is regarded as a synthesis of the following historical and cultural components: the ancient Mesoamerican tradition of veneration of the Death as a deity and the idea of duality; the traditions of Medieval Europe (carnival forms, the macabre dance and Catholic traditions of All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day); the art of J.G. Posada and its development in Mexican folklore. The author comes to the conclusion, that the humorous play imagery of Death being a key “expression of Mexican spirit” has the following functions in Mexican and Chicano cultures: the transmission of the traditional worldview and values, the actualization of family and historical memory, establishing live connection with ancestors, as well as educating, ritual, entertaining, advertising and identity functions. The concept of “La Muerte Sonriente” has a special significance for Mexican-Americans in the process of their ethno-cultural identification, in marking borders of Chicano world in the national culture of the USA and in the actualization of a cultural dialogue with the motherland.

The article is devoted to the gender aspect of literary studies based on the works of the French writer and poetess Christine de Pisan (1364–1430).

The attitude towards “masculine” and “feminine” behavior has dominated for many centuries and has not lost its influence in modern society. The privilege of the patriarchal view in traditional culture also applies to the traditional cultural text. The development of gender studies in the second half of the twentieth century contributed to the interpretation of gender as a discursive phenomenon by its nature. These studies enhanced the differentiation of texts as cultural phenomena into “masculine” and “feminine” types in modern philosophical and cultural studies. The purpose of the study is to identify and explain the features of discursive practices as a reflection of specific female subjectivity. The article analyzes the main features of “masculine” and “feminine” discourse. The concept of “feminine writing” (écriture féminine, H. Cixous’s term), “feminine style of writing” (Derrida’s term) are specified, special attention is paid to the issues of representation and constructiveness of the subject. A specific nature of the discourse on female identity is analyzed using the works of Christina de Pisan as an example, who laid the foundation for the tradition of women’s essays in support of female representatives (“Book of Fortune’s Transformation” (Le Livre de la Mutation de Fortune, 1403); “The Book of the City of Ladies” (Le livre de la Cité des Dames, 1405). The conclusion is made about the interconnection between the intellectual side of women’s identity and the issues of women’s education in this type of discourse, where women’s education is a necessary condition for the transition of women from the role of an object to the role of a subject of culture.

The article examines the Italian commedia dell’arte as one of the components of the cultural heritage of Italy and the theater festival “International Day of Com- media dell’arte” as an information channel for promoting the cultural and historical national heritage of Italy to two addressees - the national and world communities. The article provides a brief description of the theatrical performances of the 2019 festival; it analyzes as well the thematic, dramatic, regional and linguistic specifics of the comedies selected for the event, identifies the main objectives of the festival on the national and international stage. In terms of intercultural communication, the author analyzes the difference in the presentation of the Italian commedia dell’arte in Italy and in foreign countries, respectively, reveals different approaches to positioning cultural and historical heritage depending on the addressee. The article identifies three general tendencies in the positioning of the commedia dell’arte: outside Italy, the classical staging of the commedia dell’arte prevails in order to familiarize foreign audiences with the tradition of the theater of masks; on the territory of Italy on stage they prefer to experiment with traditional scenes from the commedia dell’arte in order to update the historical message of comedy in today’s social realities, as well as to maximally involve young Italians, future carriers of national cultural memory, in the actualization of the historical tradition; workshops for modeling comedy masks should preserve the traditional theatrical tradition, which is on the way of “extinction”, and also serve as an incentive for modern Italians to tactilely experience the comedy del arte as something tangible, material, belonging to them.

In his play created in 2017 Ivan Vyrypaev presents his view of modern Euro- pean society, and specifically of the problems and difficulties that the intelligentsia in Western Europe is experiencing, discussing and trying to solve today. The play is limited to one day of a scientific humanitarian conference taking place in Copenhagen. All actions of the characters are exclusively verbal: they make reports, ask questions, discuss. As a result, a general image of a European intellectual is created on the stage and includes the social status, way of life, relationships within the community, ideology, and worldview. Among the common features of the linguistic construction of the characters, one should mention the frequent use of the pronoun “I”, emotionalism and arguing ad hominem which is not characteristic of scientific discourse. Besides, in the characters’ speech, we have revealed special formulas of politeness, including forms of address, expressions of apology and gratitude and clichés used in scientific presentations and discussions. A distinctive feature is the skillful use of rhetorical devices by all the characters. The high frequency of the words man, life, god, truth, freedom reflects the main topics of the play. The imagological approach used in this study presupposes an interest to the author’s special vision, which obviously reflects the image of a scientific conference on humanitarian issues that a part of the Russian creative intelligentsia has. In addition, it is important to take into account that Ivan Vyrypaev uses this plot to present his philosophical views.

The article describes the role of grammar in the development of new terms and meanings in the English language. As applied to scientific texts in most recognized journals published in 2020, scientific English is shown to differ from General English in that it contains grammatical metaphor that adds weight and authority to the message and functions as a tool for generating new terms and meanings. The article discusses the definition of grammatical metaphor, its place in a sentence and reasons for its use. Grammatically metaphorical discourse with altered word order sounds clear, concise and meaningful. With changes in life and new developments in science due to the pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) there appear new lexical forms in scientific publications that are grammatically metaphorical. As new terms, they get via mass media into General English opening up new horizons in its development.

This article continues the series of publications on the “active” grammar of the Russian language. The grammar of the “active” type, included in the socio-cultural context, makes it possible to identify and describe choice patterns of certain forms of actants depending on the meaning which the speaking (writing) subject aims to express. The research was conducted in the direction from the meaning of the verb to the expression form of its actant positions. This article is devoted to the role identification of the evaluative component of the meaning ‘shame’ of the verbs in the realization of syntagmatic properties within the actant structure. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how the subject’s negative assessment of his actions affects the way of designation of verbal actants. Analysis of the actant structure of ‘shame’ verbs has shown that the evaluative component requires a special arrangement of actants, one of which is the object of evaluation, and the second designates a witness, a real or potential eyewitness to an event unpleasant for the subject. The way these positions are formalized depends on the meaning of the verb, on the characteristics of the objects themselves, and on the value attitudes of the culture. In Russian culture, the “position of responsibility” is understood as a position for a person or a group of persons who occupy a higher position in the social, family or intellectual hierarchy than the subject. The “status” of Russian culture is indirectly reflected in verb syntagmatics.

The article is dedicated to the issue of the participation of the officials and public organizations of Russia in the selection of candidates for education in our country among Montenegrin youth in schools and higher educational institutions. Russian officials were interested in creating a number of specialists in the Slavic lands of the Balkan Peninsula, connected with Russia, who knew and loved Russian culture. Today, such a policy is called “soft power”, and in the XIX and early XX centuries this was a manifestation of pragmatism and strategic calculation in the foreign policy of the empire. Montenegro, which received international recognition after the Berlin Congress of 1878, became a privileged partner and client of Russia. Monarch Nikola Petrovich managed to convince the Russian government that in case of military complications in the Balkans, the Montenegrins would be able to assist Russia in the hostilities. In the last third of the XIX — early XX centuries Russian autocracy paid substantial subsidies to the Montenegrin authorities for the modernization of the state apparatus and the armed forces. Benefits were constantly increased and added up to huge sums. However, the ruler of Montenegro turned out to be an obstinate ward, inclined to forget about the support provided and ignore the political recommendations of the Russian tsar and his entourage. At the beginning of the twentieth century relations between the two countries were strained, and the behavior of Nikola Petrovich often seemed unpredictable. He easily broke his own promises, from time to time he showed a willingness to change Russian patronage for the friendship of Western Europe. Many Russian diplomats and public figures saw a way out of this impasse in preparing as many highly educated specialists as possible for Montenegro, who would join the political elite of the principality and become more reliable allies than the greedy older generation. Moreover, in Montenegro, which had recently switched from a tribal way of life to state life, there was neither a complete secondary school in the European sense, nor higher educational institutions. The calculations of the Russian leadership were only partially justified. However, in this small Balkan country, graduates of Russian educational institutions, sincerely grateful and devoted to Russia, did live and work.

In the second half of the 19th century the Russian Empire engaged in the active process of nation-building. Essential to it was the process of Russification, or the various forms of assimilation of ethnic minorities. This term is one of the controversial and ambiguous concepts in modern historical, social and cultural research. The article suggests a constructive approach to this issue which implies situational analysis of the process of Russification through specifying the conditions and actors of intercultural interaction. The article examines the understanding of Russification as an aspect of the process of Christianization, expressed by several prominent representatives of the Transbaikal and Altai missions. It focuses on the opinion of a Transbaikal missionary Veniamin (Blagonravov), who considered Russification a necessary condition for the success of preaching Christianity. Unlike in the western borderlands of the empire, where Russification took a distinct political and legal turn, in most cases in Siberia it occurred as a spontaneous process carried out through the interaction of the indigenous population with various social groups of the Russian people (artisans, government officials, exiles). Missionaries were among the most significant agents and mediators of the Russian language and culture in the region. At the same time, the conditions of interaction between missionaries and the indigenous population varied in different Siberian regions. The article reveals the differences in the understanding of the need for Russification in the process of Christianization of the local population by the missionaries and highlights the factors influencing the interpretation of the tasks and methods of missionary activity, in particular, the specifics of the local cultural situation, the degree of social organization of the indigenous peoples and the peculiarities of their traditional beliefs.

The turn of the 1920s–1930s is one of the most controversial periods in the history of Soviet culture. There are still many gaps in its study. In particular, the problem of transforming creative and ideological programs of many post-revolutionary art associations remains insufficiently analyzed. The article examines the most influential art organization of the post-revolutionary period — the Association of Artists of Revolution (AKhRR) — taking a more radical stance towards the landscape genre. Initially neutral, this position became extremely critical, even intolerable at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. An analysis of dozens of articles written by the ideologues of AKhRR reveals the ways how new, “revolutionary” criteria for describing and evaluating landscape paintings were developed and how an extensive system of accusations and a set of mandatory requirements for the genre were formed. Landscape was mostly seen as a “reactionary” genre, that made it possible to hide from modern reality, or, on the contrary, to “smuggle” in the Soviet art alien bourgeois values. The changing attitude towards the landscape also makes it possible to trace the transformation of emotional matrix of the era — the refusal to convey complex feelings, that for a long time were perceived as a basic characteristic of Russian landscape painting. The system of denying the landscape, so carefully developed by the members of the Association, was rejected by Soviet culture already in the mid-1930s. However, the events of the turn of the 1920s and 1930s demonstrate how the pictorial genre became a hostage to the movement of culture towards more radical, “leftist” ideological attitudes.

The article is devoted to the experience of polycultural education on the example of the subject “Cultural Parallels of Russian and French Literature” within the master’s program “Russian and French Languages and Cultures”, implemented at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Department of French Language and Culture and Department of Comparative Analysis of Languages. Intercultural interaction as a source of knowledge in the context of teaching a foreign language has become the subject of research by V.I. Fatyushchenko, S.G. Ter-Minasova, A.V. Pavlovskaya, T.Yu. Zagryazkina, J. Duverger, V. Tellier and others. In addition to the polycultural component, the article highlights the perception of Russia and France by Chinese students, studied by an online survey. The questionary showed the following results:

1)           Chinese literature is close to subjects about the “superfluous person”, love, virtue, images of masculine and feminine characters, relationships between generations;

2)           the discussion among master students was caused by questions of infidelity, betrayal, cunning and morality.

This paper critically reflects on the perspectives of developing value- oriented communicative education through co-learned languages and cultures which is designed with the view to the sociocultural context of human existence in a postglobal world burdened with geopolitical confrontation, political and economic conflicts, proxy wars, endless fake information attacks on the individual’s world vision. It gives an insight into the transdisciplinary basis for implementing an axiological approach to value-oriented language-and culture education as an outcome of the author’s transdisciplinary analysis of the Humanities researches and didactic reading of some draft documents related to Russia’s policy on preserving its traditional spiritual and moral values in modern society. It also discusses the purposes of introducing problem-oriented educational environment that may give Russian students an opportunity to master university disciplines in an innovative way in the classroom, and outside the university classroom, to be much involved into public speaking activities on critical issues of modern life and its values, as well as into research cooperation and science promotion in innovative areas of scientific knowledge. The reader’s attention is also drawn to some ways of creating a value-oriented and culture-bound research environment that helps to develop students’ competences needed to be able to act as a promoter of the dialogue of cultures and civilizations in their professional life, able to preserve cultural heritage and counteract modern cultural vandalism, cultural imperialism and cancel culture whenever she or he comes across it.

This is one of a series of essays comparing the treatment of related items in monolingual dictionaries of English, French, and Russian. Previous essays introduced and exemplified the principles of such analysis applied in the articles dealing with the Abrahamic religions and the Crusades.

The article discusses some issues of codification and semantization of language teaching terms in term-fixing texts (specialized dictionaries and reference books). It also describes other texts which involve the type of terms under consideration – term-creating and term-using texts. The paper outlines some key features of the language teaching terms, such as interdisciplinarity, social determinism, etc. The investigation reveals the requirements put forward for terminographic semantics, examines the parameters of the presentation of terms in articles of single and bilingual reference publications, and marks off the types of definitions in term-fixing texts. The research has included detailed analysis of the macro- and microstructure of a new German-Russian reference book of the Goethe-Institute’s innovative program for teachers “Learning to teach German” (German: Deutsch Lehren Lernen), published by the Moscow University Press in 2022. The contribution provides general information about the corpus of the reference book, the subject of codified terms and their formal features, characteristics of the structure and the content of dictionary entries, as well as the principles which were taken into account when describing the concept. Both verbal and nonverbal components are outlined as important terminographic definitional features. These parts of dictionary articles help users better understand the dictionary content of terms represented in the texts of the secondary sphere of use.

Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, questions of nomination are of particular importance. The article dwells upon functioning of toponyms in the English mass media discourse. The central question is the semantic derivation of the toponyms in English-language news of the Reuters news agency. This paper focuses on the main cognitive mechanisms of the formation of a new meaning, such as cognitive metaphor and metonymy, defocusing and profiling schemes. The article investigates the nature of the formation of new meanings and examines approaches proposed by Kubryakova E.S., Iriskhanova O.K., Boldyrev N.N., Babina L.V., Maslova Zh.N., Popova E.A., Ch. Fillmore, R. Lanecker, J. Lakoff. The data of the study consists of 57 examples of precedent toponyms Moscow, Russia, Ukraine, Kiev, Washington, roaches Hungary, Beijing, Britain, Georgia, Kremlin, Turkey, Venezuela that have rich semantics and great potential for the formation of new meanings. These toponyms are also used most frequently in the context of the current political agenda. The toponyms functioning in the English-language news of the Reuters news agency were analyzed for the cognitive mechanism that underlies the formation of the meaning. The findings show that the most productive mechanism of semantic derivation in media discourse is the mechanism of conceptual metonymy.

This study is a continuation of the author’s research of various approaches to the use of metaphor and other expressive language means in texts of English PR discourse (public relations discourse). The aim of the work to reveal the use of the linguistic and pragmatic potential of expressive linguistic units inherent in the texts of the sphere of directed communication, based on the material of the English-language PR discourse, taking into account the PR ends of informing the society and building a certain understanding of the described phenomena. Regarding the stance of attributing metaphor to complex mental mechanisms, public relations councilors resort to their usage to represent new phenomena through the sensory and social experience of a person. The novelty of the study is the conclusion that by using certain polycode language units, PR copywriters get the opportunity to transfer conceptual representations to a process or phenomenon that is difficult to understand, since complex professional texts can be adapted for understanding through similarity and analogy presented in language. The conducted research contributes to discursive studies, as well as to understanding of metaphorical thinking in theory and practice, which can be used in teaching courses in lexicology, phraseology of the English language, as well as for training specialists in the field of communication studies.

Traditionally discourse markers were defined as language entities that serve to connect sentences, having no impact on the meaning of the sentence itself due to the fact that they are completely deprived of any denotative meaning. Today the perception of the role and status of discourse markers has changed, and these “empty little fillers” that tend to pollute the language have become the subject of many studies from the standpoint of cognitive science and pragmatics. Despite the fact that discourse markers are devoid of semantic meaning, nevertheless, they received their functional recognition — the functions of location, cohesion and predication, and pragmatic characteristics were assigned to them. The aim of the article is to analyze the discursive and pragmatic features of the discourse marker “you know” in a political discourse. Based on the presumption that political discourse is a land of possible worlds, aiming to create the plurality of worlds in the consciousness of recipients while performing its core function (manipulative), the article gives an overview of macro and micro functions of the discourse marker “you know” focusing on manipulation. The essential characteristics of discourse markers in a political communication elicited in the article are ambivalence and bifunctionality. Some examples of the marker “you know” in a deictic microfunction will be given to prove the hypothesis that discourse markers transform their functions depending on the mode of its use in a natural or political language. The manipulative role of discourse markers in the interpretation mode is described in the light of the theory of relevance, translation strategies of discourse marker from English into Russian are analyzed using the approach of the functional-communicative theory of translation on the basis of D. Trump’s television interview.

The article discusses the terms sociolinguistics — contact linguistics — World Englishes paradigm. The structure of Contact Linguistics, whose central part is made by the World Englishes paradigm, is dwelt upon. Major problems of language contacts are overviewed, including differentiation of the global language, its localization and development of varieties. Varieties of a pluricentric language are defined as typified speech that is specific of a certain linguacultural social community, that reflects the mentality, cultural features and to a certain degree transfer of the native language. The author emphasizes that each variety is underpinned by a linguacultural identity of its users. Attention is focused on the legitimacy of the Expanding Circle varieties (according to B. Kachru) such as Russian and Chinese Englishes, need in their studying in theory and applied aspects.

The article examines the linguosemiotic content and functional characteristics of food rituals, which are a symbolic representation of folk beliefs, tra- ditional knowledge and collective experience relevant to this society. The study of the semiotics of gastronomic culture involves the analysis of factors that have influenced the modern cultural context in which certain gastronyms are endowed with symbolic properties. The article gives a classification of symbols by form and content: 1) according to the degree of complexity: simple (egg, noodles) and complex (Fish Ceremony); 2) according to the level of abstraction: concrete (lotus, round gingerbread) — abstract (dragon, phoenix); 3) according to the form of their expression: graphic (hieroglyphs chun lian 春联, chūnlián) — wishes of happiness, well–being before the New Year and subject (flashlight, seeds); 4) auditory — songs and poems dedicated to the Moon Holiday; 5) gestural — the choice of dishes for the festive table; 6) by origin: natural symbols (bamboo, fish) — artificial (yin and yang).

Depending on the functions, the article examines two groups of culinary symbols: mythological (egg — Food of the five virtues) and moral symbols (ducks — happiness). Semiotic studies of gastronomic linguoculture bring us closer to understanding not only the culture of individual peoples, but also the aesthetic universals and psychological constants of humanity.

In the domain of world intellectual history, the Sephardic language, otherwise called Judeo-Spanish or Ladino, occupies a special place. The article deals with terminological nominations corresponding to the language, accepted in the paradigm of modern philological studies; the concept of Judeo-Spanish which implies a heterogeneous dialect continuum, including various geographical varieties that formed outside the Spanish-speaking area and independently of the Spanish language; the multifaceted nature of the Jewish-Spanish in the projection on its history as a repository of collective memory and cultural heritage; the religious context of the appearance of Ladino; a certain tradition of understanding the Jewish-Spanish language as a place of memory and a metaphor for a lost home, which has developed in the ethnic mentality of the descendants of Sephardic Jews and has been fixed in the artistic and documentary narrative; conventional and institutional status of the Hebrew-Spanish language; modern formats and strategies for its promotion, as well as features of its positioning in the ethnic mentality of the descendants of Sephardim expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492/1496. Currently the language of Sephardic Jews, transmitted to different continents along with its native speakers, continues to be a powerful means of legitimizing the symbolic unity (based on maintaining a sense of secondary identity) of representatives of this traditional community. Despite active divergent processes, Judeo-Spanish or Ladino has a special status in the world intellectual history in accordance with its historical, social and cultural context and serves as a traditional basis in the structure of historical ethnic memory.

The course “Language and geographical space” is aimed at the study of modern dynamic linguistic and geographical situations associated with new political and cultural realities. At the same time, the approaches of cultural geography and critical toponymy are the main ones in the course. The key to the course is the problem of renaming geographical objects based on new ideologies and political attitudes. A comprehensive cultural and geographical approach considers renaming as an innovative and adaptive socio-cultural process. Mass renaming in cities leads to the replacement of one cultural and linguistic landscape with another, and widespread renaming of cities leads to the creation of a new geocultural space of the country. It is important to have an idea of the geographical picture of the world, which is solved on the basis of attracting various maps of the world; for linguists, familiarity with the possibilities of the cartographic method is useful. As a result, the course expands the scientific horizons and methodological arsenal of Master’s degree students.

The article examines the semantic organization of text-work by means of textual units, which convey meaning, unlike linguistic units, which convey significance. Textual units differ: a) in structure — simple (indivisible in meaning) and complex; b) by origin — unoriginal (quotations) and original; c) by function — neutral and marked: key units that accumulate meaning, and unit-keys that reveal meaning; d) by semantic volume — intratextual and intertextual; e) by position in the text — structurally marked and structurally unmarked. Certain formal and functional ways of their use in a text allow to identify textual units: repetition, their use for explanation or replication. In the Russian philological tradition, these units were called “symbols” [Vinogradov, 1980], “abbreviations of meaning” [Bakhtin, 1986], “narrative keys” [Toporov, 1983; Nikolaeva, 2012]. The author of the present article introduces the term “textforms” (“key textforms” and “textform keys”) which makes it possible to view textual forms as units of text grammar and grammatical forms as units of language grammar. The article presents an analysis of textforms that organize the semantic dimension of texts of confessional culture (“The Tale of Boris and Gleb”) and texts of secular culture that differ in artistic principles and forms of presentation of these principles (Pushkin’s novel “The Captain’s Daughter” and Brodsky’s poem “December in Florence”).

The article is aimed at finding ways for a systematically grounded determination of the causes of diachronic changes in any language, i.e. at the creation a way to explain any linguistic changes not by arbitrarily chosen single causes, but as a result of the interaction of social factors and intralinguistic factors caused by them. The article focuses on two processes taking place in the modern Russian language: the loss of declension by toponyms ending in -in(o), -ov(o) (for example, Ya zhivu v Pushkino / Butovo instead of Ya zhivu v Pushkine / Butove) and the replacement of the toponymic model Pushkinskaya ulitsa (ʻPushkin streetʼ) with the model ulitsa Pushkina (ʻthe street of Pushkinʼ). It is shown that the initial cause of both phenomena is social. It consists in strengthening the internal migration of the Russian population, as well as in the widespread dissemination of the media. As a result, the language community begins to consist of such native speakers who previously lived in different regions of the country or belonged to different social groups and therefore have mismatched background knowledge. The inability to rely on the knowledge of the recipients forces senders of messages, firstly, to avoid using am- biguous case forms (for example, when following the old norm in the sentence Ya zhivu v Pushkine, it remains unclear what the initial form of the toponym is: Pushkin or Pushkino), and secondly, to avoid using idiomatic toponymic models, since they do not make it possible to determine from which word the toponym is derived (the modern non-idiomatic toponym ulitsa Akademika Komarova (ʻStreet of Academician Komarovʼ) is much more unambiguous than the toponyms Komarovskaya ulitsa (ʻKomarovskaya Streetʼ) or ulitsa Komarovka (ʻKomarovka Streetʼ) built according to the old model).

Fable is the oldest literary genre, fundamentally studied by the humanities, but, at the same time, its relevance in modern life is obvious, and the prospects for its development have not been sufficiently studied. Fable is an international genre, but it is deeply national. A comparative study of languages and cultures is especially promising if we take into consideration their common foundations. French and Russian fables (La Fontaine and Krylov) are a clear illustration of this thesis. Using the most common universal subjects, fabulists inevitably develop the most nationally specific features of their linguistic cultures. This is the deep dialectic of their creativity. Lafontaine and Krylov are one of the key figures in Russian and French linguocultures. Their archetypal influence on the further development of not only literary processes, but also the general cultural dialogue between France and Russia is very strong. The “healthy” spirit of these writers, their “common sense” in the highest sense of this phrase make their heritage highly relevant today, when both Russian and French cultures in some way are increasingly striving for so-called traditional values. The French and Russian fabulists with their creativity seem to build a positive perspective for the development of our cultures.

The study of the phenomenon of plurality / diversity is a relevant topic related to the interaction of language, society and culture cf. the concept of “multiple modernities”; “multiple sociality”; “multiple person”, “plurality of culture and language”, etc. The phenomenon of plurality / diversity in language and culture has several interpretations and terms corresponding to these interpretations, which are close but not identical to those adopted in Russian and French-speaking scientific literature: pluriculturalism / plurilingualism; multiculturalism / multilingualism; pluriculturalisme/plurilinguisme; multiculturalisme / multilinguisme. Considering the concepts of D.V. Ivanov, Z. Bauman, B. Lahir V. Feussi, M. Bernardot et al., the article discusses the concept of multiple heterogeneous formations reflected in the language, the components of which do not have clear boundaries and freely flow into one another. The article examines the functioning and interconnection of a number of French lexemes: pluralité, diversité, hétérogénéité, mobilité, mobiliser, motilité, immobilité, hybridité, métissage, mélange, liquidité, fluidification. It is confirmed that these lexemes are interconnected and form a “linguistic node”, reflecting / forming the factor of plurality in the discourse about modernity, which is developing in the context of globalization and glocalization. As a research perspective, an assumption is made about the allocation of discrete “territories” in the streams of words, terms and concepts, including the sphere of language education.

L1 learning consists not only in acquiring phonological, grammatical, lexical, etc. prescriptions of a Saussurean ‘langue’ as a system of signs, but also in subconscious inferences concerning prototypical usage and creativity measures of linguistic signs actually used by adult native speakers in communication. L2 acquisition by adults differs from L1 acquisition due to practical limitations. Multilingual text corpora are helpful as a means of overcoming this deficit of information. Non-native speakers relying on statistics of the right-hand and left-hand contexts of lexical items, and not only on frequency of separate lexical items, can measure the degree of creativity of original texts and of their own linguistic production in a foreign language. Thus, the English phrase ‘highly likely’ is used in English texts rather differently from the way it is cited and understood outside English texts proper, e. g. in Russian mass media. The paper analyzes statistics and semantics of the contexts of the English expression ‘highly likely’ and its synonyms in a big English corpus of original texts. Thus, in my English corpus, ‘highly likely’ is less frequent than ‘highly unlikely’, which signals negative rather than positive expectations of the propositions supplied with such hedges. These and similar data are compared with the use of their correspondences in a big Russian corpus of original texts. Pragmatic and semantic differences of these expressions in Russian and in English have to do with expectations, connotations and ‘implied inferences’ not always immediately perceived by Russian speakers citing the fashionable English phrase in their Russian discourse. The Russian transliteration of the English phrase, and not the literal translation, may be the only adequate way of rendering irony in trans-cultural communication.

The article discusses the problem of productivity in culture and language in its positive (derivative) and negative (secondary) aspects. The author focuses on the role of derivative (secondary) mental and linguistic structures from the perspective of a cognitive approach. He analyses secondary functions, elements, systems, as well as the principles and mechanisms of their formation in the contexts of conceptual and language derivation and in terms of two main trends in language change: conceptual-linguistic (the structure and content change in the encyclopedic and linguistic knowledge) and formal-linguistic (new language units and expressions construction). The author argues the positive or negative effect of productivity regarding the nature of the associated processes of manipulation by primary verbal structures, taking into account the collective and individual aspects of these processes, as well as from the point of view of the primary and secondary interpretation of the world and knowledge of the world in language. As an example of the positive aspect of productivity the author considers creativity, the emergence of new meaning, the reproduction of any ideas in a new form and connects it with the construction of new knowledge about the world of the collective level or with re-structuring of the previously obtained knowledge. To the negative aspects the author attributes the processes of manipulation by verbal and non-verbal structures using illegal or not entirely legal means which are manifested in plagiarism, compilation of parts of the works of other authors, non-legitimate borrowings, kitsch in culture, science and language.

The article is devoted to the problem of the emergence of new words, and together with them concepts and new symbols in the language. The semantic meanings of words may symbolize different concepts in different linguistic cultures. A special role in this process belongs to the cognitive functions of the language, while communication and cognition exist in the indissoluble connection and depend directly on cultural-historical, socio-political, economic, industrial characteristics of the society.

The paper deals with absurdity treated as the absence of meaning in the situation where the meaning should be present. Four communicative types of absurdity have been singled out (ontological, fideistic, problem oriented and comical), the first one is an emotional protest against the loss of the meaning of life, the second one is based upon the principal incomprehensibility of the reasons of existence, the third one signifies the necessity of solving a problem in a radically new way, and the fourth one makes people turn upside down standard routines of everyday life. Four modes of absurdity as a cognitive obstacle have been specified: ostensive absurdity is understood as a collision between the known and the given situation, logical absurdity is a rational incongruity between descriptions or propositions, semantic absurdity may be qualified as blurring of the standard meaning of a linguistic unit and unlimited extension of its associative potential, pragmatic absurdity signals the impossibility of understanding why people behave in a particular way. Three functions of absurdity have been described: its destructive function expresses the speaker’s intention to break the common stereotypes of communication, its ritual function serves as a password uniting the group identity, its ludic function consists in a replacement of a natural interpretation of the situation by an unexpected interpretation. Relevant features of absurdity may be characterized as deviations from common sense, or from rational approach to reality, or from congruity of interpretative scenarios.

The paper presents a study of cross-modal iconicity which is viewed as a semiotic process of mutual assimilation of signs from different modalities via similarity. The research questions are as follows: Are there differences in cross-modal iconicity that can be observed between discourses with different combinations of semiotic systems and channels? How is iconicity revealed across signs belonging to verbal and non-verbal modalities in oral speech with gestures and in written texts with visual components. Relying on multimodal discourse analyses, the author investigates the interplay of verbal and non-verbal (gestural and pictorial) modalities and compares iconicity in two types of Russian and English discourse — spoken discourse (narratives, descriptions of paintings, and recipes) and written discourse (hybrid texts for news apps). It is demonstrated that irrespective of the type of discourse cross-modal iconicity follows the general principles outlined earlier for iconicity in language — i.e., “form mimes form and structure”, and “form mimes form”. The specific nature of iconicity in the two types of discourse (i.e., “form mimes function”) is linked to the character of semiotic heterogeneity, and, for the news app texts, to the affordances of the gadget, namely, to the scroll technology that determines the vertical movement of the main story, the limited nature of hypertextuality, and the compression of some parts of discourse into headings.

The article concentrates on the study of the contact of two cultures within the triad ‘real world — mental models — world of language’. Each of the worlds is viewed through the dichotomy ‘universal vs culture-specific’. The main emphasis is on the cognitive mechanisms underlying intercultural dialogue. We come to the conclusion that at the level of cognitive systems of two cultures the mechanisms of interactive alignment and inference are prevailing, at the level of mental spaces of the participants of the dialogue the mechanism of conceptual integration is at work. The contact of two cultures involves three mental spaces: 1) the mental space of one’s own culture; 2) the mental space of “other” culture; 3) integrated intercultural mental space. The latter inherits the roles and qualities of the two input mental spaces. The integrated mental space has its own emerging structure. Each of the three mental spaces is structured by its own frame. The third mental space is a result of the conceptual blending. This mental space is at the basis of intercultural discourse. The frame of this mental space structures and builds intercultural discourse. It helps to understand other culture, to infer conceptual information and find corresponding linguistic representations in each of the two cultures. All the above mentioned cognitive mechanisms providing the basis of two cultures contact involve knowledge of mental cultural models.

The paper is devoted to the survey of chronological classifications that had been offered by the cognitive and communicative approaches to the theory of generation boundaries. These include sorting out two types of data: 1) Russian generational chronology consisting of siх generations according to the classification by V. Radayev (2019): “generation of mobilization” (1941–1955); “generation of Thaw” (1956–1963); “generation of stagnancy” (1964–1984), “generation of reforms” (1985–1999); “millennials” (2000–2016), “centennials” (reached the stage of emerging adulthood after 2017). 2) American generational chronology consisting of four generations according to the classification by J.M. Twenge: Baby-boomers (1946–1964); generation Х (1965–1979); millennials (1980–1994); centennials or I-Genners (Internet generation) (1995–2012). On the basis of these, we outline some social and cultural characteristics of the two great cultures and their young New Generation representatives.

Linguistics of information and psychological warfare explores various strategies, tactics and methods of information and psychological warfare that are meant to be verbalized in political media discourse. Special importance should be attached to manifold methods of ideological influence and manipulation of public consciousness, among which semantic manipulation represents a subject for particular scrutiny. This method implies “careful selection of words that cause either positive or negative associations and thus affect the overall perception of information”. Obviously, such lexical units that have contextually determined negative or positive connotations and generate corresponding associations include, among others, ideologemes. Thus, ideologically-bound units are an integral linguistic component of information and psychological warfare. Due to their inherent semantic ambivalence and a high degree of associativity, ideologemes become an effective tool of semantic manipulation, which can give a definitive advantage to one of the parties in the ideological struggle. Moreover, ideologemes represent an undeniable challenge for simultaneous interpreters, who turn out to become immediate participants in the unfolding information and psychological war on a par with leading politicians who are supposed to voice the official position of the state.

The article provides a study of the components of gender neutrality, which are reflected in textbooks on the English language. As an aspect of political correctness, the concept of gender neutrality in English began to develop in the second half of the last century, and, as a result, various national and international organisations began to issue guidelines on the use of gender-neutral language. The focus of these guidelines is mainly on the use of gender-neutral grammatical and lexical strategies, as well as avoiding the use of gender stereotypes. Foreign researchers in the field of TESOL consider that teachers of English should not only use these strategies in the classroom, but also analyse the materials used in the classroom according to the aforementioned criteria, as well as pay attention to the equal representation of male and female characters, personalities and case names. The article analyses 10 text-books on the English language compiled by Russian and foreign authors for their compliance with the criteria of gender neutrality. In conclusion, the article presents the results of the content analysis and concludes that it is possible to make special recommendations for authors-compilers of English-language educational literature, which would take into account some aspects of gender neutrality.

The current article focuses on the methodical aspect of providing instructional materials for teaching Chinese as a second language within an intercultural educational paradigm as a part of an effective coping strategy for students with learning difficulties. Acquiring communicative competence plays a crucial role in language learning and teaching. Therefore, competency-based approach is suggested to define the major principles of designing innovative instructional materials for students acquiring bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The article discusses the experience in teaching 1st – 3rd year students majoring in Linguistics and Intercultural Communication and focuses on topical issues related to resolving difficulties that students encounter while studying. According to the survey performed among students studying Chinese as a second language, a comparatively low level of communicative competence was demonstrated. Didactic analysis proved the lack of tasks aimed at developing pragmatic component of communicative competence in the textbooks used in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. The author outlines a set of methodical principles for creating instructional materials aimed at acquiring communicative competence.

The article explores the existing linguo-didactic terms “phonetic competence”, “phonological competence”, “phonetic-phonological competence” in Russian scientific literature and defines the phenomenon within this work. The authors draw a line between phonological competence development in university students of linguistic and non-linguistic majors, as well as between productive and receptive phonological skills development considering the status of English as a lingua franca. The article reviews the main parameters of phonological competence assessment outlined in academic literature – intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness – in diachrony in order to define their relationship and suggest their translations for using in the Russian academic literature.

In The Travnic Chronicle by Yugoslavian author Ivo Andrich the reader follows the fate of the French consul Daville, his family and his colleagues who arrived in the small Bosnian town of Travnic in 1806. Thus, there is a conflict of cultural traditions of the West and the East here. One of the lines of that conflict is a conflict of two eating habits, the French one and the Bosnian one. The author of the article set a task of establishing the criteria of how to compare them. For this purpose, an analysis of the French culinary books, which reflect the relevant historical time, has been made. The result is the conclusion that members of the French society who had arrived in Travnik were used to tender, light, velvety, melting-in-the-mouth, fragrant, not too greasy food. Dishes typical of the French cuisine were fluffy smooth cooked using lard, butter, dairy cream, sour cream. Each dish had a certain sauce to go with it. Food was flavoured mainly with local herbs but in minimum quantities. Beef and pork prevailed among types of meat. Menus, even for children, had wines on them. Wine was an ingredient of many sauces. Coffee, which originated in Turkey, was served together with milk, dairy cream, liquors, and strong drinks. The identified and singled out reference positions will further assist in comparing the French cuisine with the Bosnian one and showing to what degree the problems encountered by the character of the novel, a native of Paris, who happened to be in Bosnia at the time, were the result of his personal eating preferences or presented a naturally determined conflict of cultures.

The cultural space of any country, region or city is an open book, a special text, the “reading” of which is an exciting and important professional occupation for a linguist, geographer, culturologist. Indeed, it holds, and for novice researchers withholds, deep layers of history and culture. At the same time, the history of a city or country, expressed in monuments and toponyms, always carries symbolic connotations. A monument commemorating the fallen soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, even if it does not possess high artistic merit, is a symbol of the victory of our people over the dark forces. Thus, the massive destruction of monuments to Soviet heroes in Eastern Europe means not only the erasure of an important layer of collective memory, but also – symbolically – the rehabilitation of Nazism. This work is devoted to the analysis of changes in the geocultural space during 2015–2020 in The Southern United States in relation to new interpretations of Confederate cultural heritage.

This article deals with the issues related to the preservation of traditional culture in times of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Today the world is mostly concerned about the biological aspects of the problem: when the pandemic will end, what the consequences will be, and how many people will survive. Another aspect that is given prominence is the economic effects, which for many nations are also connected with the issues of survival, prospects of massive impoverishment, unemployment and famine. Next on the scale of modern values comes the political dimension of the problem: not all country leaders and political systems have stood the test of a serious crisis. Finally, at the bottom of the list are cultural issues, “culture” understood in a broad sense as a way of life, traditions, mentality, communication patterns (both at the local and international level) of the world’s different peoples. Clearly, the crisis of “culture” does not immediately provoke any tragic outcomes – death, famine, disease – but it has far-reaching, delayed consequences, which, in a sense, are no less disastrous than biological, economic or political ones. These issues are discussed in this article.

The article examines the color values of the French language through the prism of gender issues and the processes taking place in the modern French society. The gender semantics of color designations is studied from the point of view of biological and socio-cultural characteristics of men and women, as well as taking into account marketing communications aimed at creating “male” and “female” color names for consumer goods. Cultural and social changes are reflected in the color category, in particular, in the gender semantics of the color of everyday goods. The article analyzes the color nominations of cosmetics and cars from the point of view of gender stereotypes that are introduced into the minds of consumers according to sociocultural norms that determine the psychological qualities, behaviors and activities of a person. Marketers and designers use gender differences when nominating a new color shade of a product in order to maximize its compliance with the value priorities of the consumer, which are changing in the context of globalization and reducing the differentiation of the social roles of men and women. In order to interpret the gender semantics of color values, the article presents the results of a free associative psycholinguistic experiment, during which the presence of values was recorded, both coinciding in the representation of men and women, and demonstrating the features of associative fields in conceptual pictures of the world.

The author examines compositional and stylistic features of law-related posts as a cross-genre of popular legal discourse, functioning in a virtual setting. Posts comprise hybridity of different types and levels. The combination of verbal and non-verbal elements makes posts polycode and enhances the impact of the online media text on the target audience. Legal terms and professional expressions are implanted into the texts of posts (linear hybridization). Much attention is given to multiple intertextual connections, represented by the use of allusions and cross-genre inclusions. Elements of institutional and personal discourse are intertwined, which is characteristic of virtual discourse. A mention is made of verbal indicators of popular legal discourse, which enables the reader/listener to easily identify and typologize the communicative situation as law-related. A wide variety of figurative and evaluative tools (emotionally colored words, fashionable words, metaphors, rhetorical questions, etc.) is employed by text authors to make a profound emotional impact on the target audience. The main goal of the articles of the post genre which belongs to computer-mediated popular legal discourse is to popularize the law and convince the audience to follow its norms, which determines the choice of appropriate discourse strategies and tactics.

The article deals with the issue of the British pronunciation norm and the changes in it in the course of the last few decades. Both segmental and suprasegmental features of phonation are considered with the aim of describing the most noticeable phenomena that characterize Standard Southern British as the norm of today and distinguish it from Received Pronunciation as the norm of the past. A comparative study of several pronouncing dictionaries starting from the earliest one published at the end of the 19th century to the latest one has made it possible to verify the changes in the phonemic as well as the phonetic composition of words. A large corpus of authentic recorded speech has been subjected to analysis through the prism of observations made by British phoneticians concerning the recent changes in the articulation of vowels and consonants. A few most obvious changes in the pitch movement of British English have been commented upon as their influence on the Russian language is impossible to ignore. No less important was the issue of the system of terminology used when describing the British pronunciation standard: as it reflects the changing nature of the norm, its overview helped to clarify the nature of the changes themselves.

The paper focuses on “kaleidoscopic” concepts, which are defined by A.P. Babushkin as cognitive structures that take different forms under the same verbal “skin”. The core of the research is the question raised by the author about the pos- sibility of “kaleidoscopic” performance being a feature not exclusively found in the concepts “captured” by abstract words. The idea that the concepts verbalized by concrete words can also be “kaleidoscopic” is investigated through a study of the concept TIGER, as actualized in the discourse space of the novel “When You Trap a Tiger” (2020) by Tae Keller, a young Korean-American children’s writer. The author presents a series of examples from the novel showing how cognitive structures of different kinds (e.g. mental pictures, frames, scenarios, schemes) are verbalized by one and the same concrete word, that is the name of the concept TIGER. For each case the type of the “kaleidoscopic” concept is defined, and the cognitive processes (i.e. profiling, conceptual metaphor, perspectivization, symbolization) activating the “shapeshifting” performance of the concept are described. Furthermore, using the data on the nucleus and peripheral areas of the concept in question, as presented in definitions of the key word tiger in several of the most authoritative dictionaries of English, the author formulates the principle of categorization of “kaleidoscopic” concepts that are verbalized by concrete words. It is deemed important that the above-mentioned principle is essentially different from the one pertaining to “kaleidoscopic” concepts named by abstract words.

A comparison of the treatment of three culturally significant concepts, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, in dictionaries of several languages, in the hope of learning about dictionaries and the dictionarate cultures that produce and use them – and in order to encourage my colleagues to undertake such comparisons.

At the beginning of this century, which is known as the century of globalization, learning a foreign language is inevitable. Therefore, almost a large part of society partly have to deal with foreign languages. Learning a foreign language is associated with many problems. Not only grammatical and lexical problem in both languages, but also the phonetic system in all their aspects such as acoustic and articulation characteristics, accent, intonation and stress. Such problems should be solved in order to realize the main purpose of the education, which means communicativeness with maximum approximation to the original language. The experiment was aimed at improving the acoustic and pronunciation skills of Persian-speaking students. The purpose of the analysis is to eliminate the interfering influence of phonetic phenomena of the native language on the target language as well as to correct and improve students’ pronunciation and using special instrumentation techniques bring it closer to the normative pronunciation of modern Russian literary language. The results of this study show that mistakes in pronouncing consonants depend directly on the characteristics of the consonant systems of the Russian and Persian languages. A comparison of articulatory movements of speech organs involved in the production of speech (both active and passive) of Persian and Russian fricative consonants revealed the fact that there is no similarity between them.

Auditory speech perception is the most important type of human speech activity carried out in the process of language existence. What cognitive procedures does a person use when moving from a chain of sounds to the meaning of a message? What units are created by a complex interaction of lexical-grammatical and phonetic means? Segmentation of the speech flow is now the focus of linguists working with orally generated speech (hereinafter-UPR). The segmentation basis is recognized as semantic predicates of N.I. Zhinkin, clause of W. Cheif, syntagma of L.V. Shcherba, accent-melodic pattern, prosodic breaks. It is known that the study of UPR is impossible without spelling fixation, the creation of which turns the sounding substance into a graphic one, and the process into a product. The methods of creating transcription, as well as the methods of using it, depend on the task set in the study. The article presents segmentation performed in three modes: auditory analysis without visual transcription support, auditory analysis with transcription support, and transcription analysis without sound support. The obtained results indicate that the main unit of UPR reliably isolated from the sound continuum is the phonation period, segmented on the basis of two perceptual-auditory features: the tonal design of the terminal syllable and the phonation break.

Switzerland’s multilingualism is a rich material for geopolitical, regional studies, (socio) linguistic research. In particular, the notion of the border between the areas of the French and German languages, called “Röstigraben”, is a phenomenon that has been superficially covered in domestic and foreign literature. The article shows how “Röstigraben” is used in the French-speaking press in Switzerland, what image it has and for what purpose the French-speaking population of the country use this term.

The term “Röstigraben” means “Rösti foss”, where “Rösti” is a potato dish native to Bern, the German-speaking canton of Switzerland. Overcoming the boundaries of the German area “Röstigraben” is used by the Swiss people to ironically denote the border between French-speaking and German-speaking areas in the context of culture and language. “Röstigraben” is used by the Swiss people to ironically denote the border between French-speaking and German-speaking areas in the context of culture and language. However, the expansion of the meaning of the concept under study indicates that the “Röstigraben” also has political, economic and social components. “Röstigraben” is a popular lexeme in the French-speaking media in Switzerland, and in the process of semantic derivation it undergoes some changes, preserving the archiseme “border” and acquiring the additional meaning of “difference”.

The article aims to analyze the word and the concept of mobilité / mobility in the language education discourse. This question is part of the broader issues related to the study of “discourse of modernity” and its markers – keywords, images, metaphors, reflecting the processes of globalization and glocalization which take place in society. The article shows that the field of teaching foreign languages is included in the streams, that M. Bernardo designated by the triad of keywords: mobility (mobilité), hybridity (hybridité), fluidity (liquidité). Meanwhile, this sphere is a special “territory” of culture because of the exclusive development of the term and concept of mobility / mobilité, as well as a complex of related lexemes that form a connotative knot: motilité – mobilizer – motiver – motivation. The subjects of mobility in this area are a foreign student / étudiant international and their teacher. Taking into consideration the works of Russian, French and Quebec authors, we conducted our own survey of teachers and master program students from China working under the program “Russian and French languages and cultures”. The parameters of mobility, the peculiarities of its perception as social capital are identified, and the assessment of its results as a social imperative and the main condition for the formation of the “third area” formed during the socialization of a person in a foreign language is given.

The objective of this action research is twofold, first, to work out the possible ways of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) integration in a blended CLIL course and to analyze the pedagogical impact of this intervention on developing student language and collaboration skills. The theoretical framework of the intervention is based on current MOOC theories, connectivism (G. Siemens, 2005) and SAMR model by R. Puentedura (2011) for implementing new technologies and open educational resources into teaching. Thirty bachelor students from Lomonosov Moscow State University enrolled in a blended course Methodology of English Language Teaching participated in the first cycle of the research. Student participation in the MOOC Understanding language: Learning and Teaching (Southampton University, UK) was evaluated using two assignments: the e-portfolios that reflected their participation in the MOOC forums and the course blog peer collaboration where they could comment on each other’s contributions and experience. The analysis based on the qualitative and quantitative data (post-intervention questionnaire) demonstrated the learners’ positive attitude to this intervention due to the following possibilities: getting familiar with the theories and terminology on EFL teaching and learning, sharing ideas and experiences on the MOOC forums with the learners from all over the world, and finally, improving their writing skills, digital literacies and EFL terminology knowledge.

The article considers parenthetical insertions and inversion as signals of emotivity of a literary text. Parenthetical insertions, inversion, and interjections refer to such significant words or phrases that do not carry a syntactic load, but they express the attitude of the speakers to the utterance, give them a certain assessment, and characterize the ways of their design. According to the author, they fit perfectly into the scheme that organizes the emotional space of a literary text. The main goal of the work is to identify the role of such language tools as inversion and parenthetical insertions as some “signaling” of the emotivity of a literary text. As a result of the research, fragments from the novel by Ch. Abdullayev “The Court of the Wrongs” were identified in which these linguistic means in total charge the text with expression. At the same time, it is taken into account that, on the one hand, they differentiate feelings and emotions that are part of the semantics of the emotive field. On the other hand, they are unified according to certain criteria. The results of the research can be used in courses of lectures on linguistics, analysis of literary text at seminars and workshops. This article will be of interest to linguists dealing with the problems of parenthetical insertions and inversion. В результате исследования были выделены фрагменты из романа Ч. Абдуллаева «Суд неправых», в которых данные языковые средства в совокупности заряжают текст экспрессией.

The syllabus of the discipline “Language situation and language policy in European countries” is an interdisciplinary review of key issues related to the problems of language policy in European countries and the current language situation in Europe. Classical methodological approaches to the study of these categories (sociolinguistic, legislative, institutional, medial, language teaching, etc.) as well as new ones (discursive, politically correct, pluricentric, economic, etc.) are analyzed. In addition, the course focuses on the specificity of language policy in some European countries, considering the variety of pluricentric European languages (e.g. the German language and German-speaking countries). The content of the program includes materials on the following topics: relationship between language and the state, language and society, language and power, definitions and typologies of language situations and language policies, language planning, language regime, minority languages, language rights, language contacts and conflicts. The course analyzes in detail the practices of language policies in European countries in various socio-discursive areas: legal regulation, language education, science, economics, media, applied terminology and others. The influence of the theory of political correctness on the development of language policies of European states is also discussed. The program is based on the author’s experience of lecturing at the Department of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication and the Translation Department of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

For texts produced in any natural human language and translated into other natural languages, translation theory has developed a reliable conceptual apparatus and terminology that allow their unbiased comparative analysis leading to valid conclusions as to the merits and demerits of the translations. Although the concept of intersemiotic translation was introduced into translation studies as early as 1959, it has been much less studied than interlingual translation: it is not even very clear to what extent the traditional concepts and metalanguage of translation theory apply to this type of translation. Having analyzed the illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass made by different artists, as well as television commercials and film adaptations of literary works, we show that interactions of semiotically heterogeneous strata within multimodal texts could be viewed as varieties of intersemiotic translation and their study could be based on the traditional categorical and conceptual apparatus of translation theory (the notions of equivalence, adequacy, domestication / foreignization, cultural adaptation, literal / freestyle translation, translation transformations, etc.). It has been revealed, however, that in certain types of multimodal (polycodal) texts the interaction of semiotic codes of different nature has obvious specificities that do not fit into the familiar theoretical paradigm and require an expansion of the framework of translation theory, thus contributing to its further development.

A linguistic representation of ethnic ideas of the French about the peoples of the Russian territories which were formed in the initial period of Russian-French cultural contacts are considered in the article. The material of the study is written French-language documentary records about the representatives of Russia of the XVI–XVII centuries. The research is carried out taking into account the main approaches to understanding the phenomenon of ethnicity, developed by Russian and foreign scholars of the XX–XXI centuries. The presence of shared ideas of the members of the ethnic community about the common origin, language, material and spiritual culture, the recognition of the important role of ethnic identity for the self- expression of the community and its recognition by others are taken into consideration. As a result of the analysis of the material, the following ethnic characteristics of the peoples of Russia were noted: language, territories of settlement, behavior patterns, religion, clothing, appearance. The main features of the formation of ethnic ideas of the French about the ethnic communities inhabiting Russia were also identified, such as: background knowledge of large ethnic groups whose names were reflected on the European maps; differentiation of known ethnic communities into sub-ethnic groups; special attention to peoples who successfully master military techniques; uncertainty in determining the ethnicity of a group; substitution of ethnic identity for regional; interest in areas of interaction between ethnic groups. The specificities of the formation of ethnic representations are reflected in the language in the following processes: adaptation of the French orthography of the ethnonym to the acoustic form of the Russian word; expansion of the list of ethnonymic lexemes, taking into account the differentiation into sub-ethnic groups; creation of ethnonyms-occasionalisms; use of ethnically unmarked substitutes instead of ethnonyms.

In this article the question of representation of the global scholastically common concept COVID-19 is described. The author gives reasons for considering the medical term COVID-19 as the conceptual sphere. The predominant role of the buzzwords is highlighted, as they reflect the changes in socio-economic and political areas. The author resorts to the methods of cognitive linguistics, ligvo-pragmatics and semantics analyzing the research material, which help to establish connections between cognition and perception, understanding of the existing socio-economic and political realities to trace the implementation of new meanings in the language. Applying the above mentioned methods to the material under analysis enabled the author to single out dominant color characteristics of the studied concepts, its verbal and non-verbal (“quarantine etiquette”, creolized text etc.) means of describing the conceptual sphere, the key buzzwords and lexico-semantic fields they comprise, and lingvo-stylistic means and devices, such as parody, pun etc.

The article is devoted to the Soviet influence on work of Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine according to the memoirs of its member Bartley Crum, who in 1947 published a book “Behind the Silken Curtain”. Anglo-American Committee’s work took part in Europe and the Near East in 1945–1946 and, as a result, the committee came to the conclusion that the solution of the refugees’ problem is to permit Jewish refugees to go to Palestine. The Soviet Union was excluded from the work, and even though some officials from the State Department and lots of British officials were afraid of the Soviet expansion and the increase of Soviet influence in the Middle East, the real impact was rather small. However, the deep distrust between former alliances made the solution of the Palestine problem uncompleted, the report of the Committee evoked the protest in the Arab world and the negative reaction of the Soviet government. Arab-Israeli conflict has not been settled yet. Although the relations between European Jews, Muslims and European nations have changed drastically, the new challenges in foreign relations connected with refugees’ problem and the Middle East conflicts demand the contribution of all main actors.

Paolino’s funeral is a ceremony held during the Greek Carnival in Martignano (Apulia region).This is an example of a restored tradition of the ethnolinguistic minorities of Southern Italy, but with the rather archaic and specific features of traditional culture being taken into account. On the one hand, the rite goes back to the tradition of burning or tearing of a Shrovetide effigy, typical of European city carnivals and symbolizing the passing period. On the other hand, depending on new conditions and political nomenclature, the tradition is supplemented with new meanings and newly invented elements. This study attempts to identify the degree of presence of Greek elements in the rite “La Morte te lu Paolinu”, describe the mechanisms that organizers use in the process of reconstructing an older rite, and determine the main functions of this reconstruction.

The last decades of the 19th century were marked by an unprecedented growth of the so-called “non-academic ethnography” in Russia. This period of time witnessed a rise in the number of ethnographic descriptions of the peoples of Russia created by non-academic researchers, such as teachers, doctors, government officials, clergymen, political exiles, rather than professional scholars. The texts created by them, both nonfiction and literary, are extremely valuable for the study of the spiritual heritage of the peoples of Russia. The article provides a definition for the term “non- academic ethnography” and substantiates the legitimacy of its use; it outlines the methodological aspects and the prospects of using non-academic ethnography for the study of traditional cultures of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. The two identified extensive groups of sources are missionary diaries and ethnographic works written by political exiles. The article proves the need for a discursive approach to their study and the importance of considering extra-textual phenomena, such as: the collective identity of the authors of these works, their behavioral practice, the ideological semantic field which defines the position and the goals of the non-profession- al ethnographers, etc. Although the research potential of the indicated sources is evident, its actualization requires the implementation of modern scientific methods.

Of a special interest to contemporary researchers are the topics related to the history of the second world war, especially concerning the “artistic intellectuals and the war”. No doubt that from the point of view of regional studies, this issue is relevant because it contributes to the further development of theoretical and methodological approaches to it, and the replenishment of factual knowledge about the features of tackling it in different regions. In this article, the issue is dealt with on the example of artistic contribution of the Polish intelligentsia in the struggle against fascism during the second world war. Poland was fully occupied and subject to regulations established by the occupying forces. It was in that country that the rules of the“New Order” were tried and tested, later to be introduced in other countries, including the occupied territories of the USSR. In October 12, 1939 in the Gazette of the Third Reich was published a decree on the General government in the Eastern parts of the Polish lands, while the Western ones were annexed to the Reich. The official programme in the field of culture for the Poles was also officially announced. It was actually aimed at the destruction of the Polish national culture. Many of the artists of Poland during the second world war were connected with the Resistance movement. They contributed to the struggle, creating works of fine and performing arts, music and cinema. In difficult illegal conditions there was even restored the process of teaching all types of art to young people by way of caring about the post-war development of national art creativity.

In the article the author examines the geoliterary aspects of “The Letters of a Russian Traveler” by N.M. Karamzin. This means that travel writing is seen as a way of literary exploration of space. Karamzin’s literary journey is characterized as a secular pilgrimage, in which holy places are replaced by cultural ones – natural, historical, cultural, and literary. The author changed the established vector of cultural assessments, considering Europe not as “paradise” and not as “hell”, but as a cultural space equal to Russia. “Notes” convincingly demonstrates that literary travel has a cyclical structure and a clear-cut spatial organization, which includes the linear space of roadside landscapes and the nuclear space of stops, which should be considered as an entrance to another culture. Important attributes of literary travel include a low speed of movement, which allows you to “read” the aesthetics and structure of the cultural roadside landscape, but also a low pace of the journey itself, which optimally combines stops and crossings, which allows you to harmonize the perception and images of new countries and localities.

This article deals with the study of behaviours peculiar to different peoples during the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic delivered a heavy blow to globalisation, both as a concept and a process. Its expansion and acceleration have been obvious in the recent years, including in the fields of culture and everyday life. One of the major questions raised by globalisation deals with its impact on the national (regional) cultures: does it destroy the local traditions, customs and lifestyles, or does it enrich them with new opportunities? The pandemic has clearly demonstrated resilience of national traditions, mentalities and distinctive behaviour patterns. In the time of a serious crisis it has become evident that national distinctness is preserved behind the external uniformity of the material culture. It has manifested itself in different areas, including in how different nations reacted to the pandemic- related quarantine and restrictions, and what steps their governments took. This study is predominantly based on media reports, web resources, statistical information, and data issued by a number of research and non-governmental organisations. As an additional source, it uses findings from a survey conducted by the author among the students of the Lomonosov Moscow State University in January-February 2021.

The 9th International Conference “The Creative Individual in the Cultural Context: Readings in Memory of V.I. Fatyuschenko” was held at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University in September 2021. The conference has existed for more than fifteen years and has become a traditional academic event in the life of Moscow State University. The conference participants are scholars from the humanities faculties of Moscow State University, leading Moscow universities, universities of Russia, near and far abroad. Within the framework of six sections, there was a comprehensive exchange of the research results evaluating the role of personality in traditional and modern cultures, in literature and art, science and culture of daily life. The conference participants focused on the problems of formation and preservation of individual and ethnic identity; the phenomenon of autobiography and the axiology of creativity; the image of the creator in historical memory and arts. The mate- rials of the papers, apart from a variety of artistic texts, included rare historical documents, folk music, spiritual traditions, materials of ethnographic expeditions, family photographs, and various egodocuments. A special place in the conference was occupied by the memorial section that develops the academic heritage of the outstanding scholar Alexander Vladimirovich Vashchenko.

This article attempts to examine the sociocultural space of the United Kingdom, along with its peculiarities based on “The Forsyte Saga” by John Galsworthy. Today, the notion of such a sociocultural space still provokes heated debate among scholars. This paper is an attempt to define the main characteristics of this during one particular period. The sociocultural space of the UK in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was in a state of flux, where the norms and values of two epochs were in bitter conflict. The main focus of the novel is on the representatives of the elite. The author masterfully depicts the ideals, norms and values that formed the basis of upper-class English life during this time. The Forsytes were a highly conservative family, whose outlook was based on cold calculations and a hunger for profit. By contrast, intellectuals and artists of the time saw this world differently. They valued love, family, and sincerity over cash. These contradictory mindsets form the core of a sharp conflict that completely reshaped the sociocultural space of the United Kingdom (particularly England). The ideals and values of a world of feelings and emotions prevailed over the norms and principles of a more materialistic world, and determined the many peculiarities of the sociocultural space of the new era.

The development of the Internet and Web 2.0 in the 21st century has led to the emergence of “new media”, creating the possibility of user interaction. The advancement of “new media” and “social media” as its part has made it possible for users to express their opinions and feedback to specific ideas and events more openly and freely, using the Internet as a platform for representation. However, the overflow of information also led to further disorientation and obfuscation of users. Studying the phenomena of the Internet environment allows, on the one hand, to gain a greater understanding of public opinion and attitudes and, on the other hand, to delve deeper into the problems of users’ understanding and perception of information. The behavior of Internet users in the Chinese segment of the Internet is attractive due to its peculiarities related to censorship and certain technical limitations. Chinese IT corporations created various social media platforms and microblogs to substitute for the Western web platforms restricted on Mainland China. Being a part of the Chinese internet segment notwithstanding, those platforms are subject to censorship as well. However, despite the apparent technical and political restrictions, the public opinion of Chinese Internet users (mostly netizens) in some cases can contradict the government’s official position. It also allows netizens to lobby their interests, showing that it is possible to express their civic position through the Internet even under the current political censorship conditions, transforming Chinese netizens into real social power.

The article actualizes the concept of ludic culture and examines its specific features in the context of the Russian Renaissance of the turn of the 20th century. It explores experimental play in the form and subject matter of literary fiction, as well as in everyday behavior, the usage of literary pseudonyms, the creation of literary societies, meetings, groups; the observance of cult rituals as pretend play, perpetration of literary hoaxes – all of it based upon the provisions and statements formulated in the book Homo Ludens by J. Huizinga. Elements of play which permeated the culture at the turn of the 20th century affected all aspects of public life. It can be difficult to trace back the origin of the ludic Renaissance which stirred up the minds of artists, awakened the creative potential of writers, painters, theater workers, etc. However, it can be argued with a high degree of certainty that play culture extended its influence to other spheres of human life: economics, politics, law, sciences. Having fertilized these spheres of human activity with its creative energy, it endowed them with the potential to influence the formation and development of a talented personality. Cultural luminaries of the time did not attempt to turn play into a field of knowledge and use it analyze the behavior of other people, influence or control them. The phenomenon of play culture took on the features of spontaneity and freedom.

In Russian Slavic studies of the XIX–XX centuries an important role was played by the Montenegrin principality. The struggle for independence against the Ottoman Empire left a deep mark on the history and artistic heritage of the Montenegrins. In the feudal era it was a small nation inside the Serbian state, but in modern period they waged endless wars against the conquerors, who considered the west of the Balkan Peninsula the possession of the Turkish sultan. Because of these wars, the Montenegrin tribes were doomed to poverty, hunger, social and cultural backwardness. For a long time Montenegro did not have the opportunity to maintain active ties with other European countries, remained aloof from scientific and technological achievements and from progress in the humanitarian sphere. As the result of the cultural isolation of the Montenegrins, which lasted for several centuries, the traditional tribal way of life, mythological consciousness, and the folklore were preserved. However, such an archaic state of society did not mean that the country did not develop. The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment were almost unknown to the Montenegrins, but their own scale of values was formed in their environment, based on important concepts such as freedom, honor, valor, loyalty, military duty, etc. They had their own meaning for the Montenegrins, significantly different from common meaning of these words in other European countries. The mechanism for the transmission of these values was also unique. Montenegrin youths grew up to the sound of Montenegrin gusle and the monotonous singing of folk song performers, absorbing the warlike spirit of these songs, the brutal details of the battles and admiring the heroes, whose names were passed from mouth to mouth from generation to generation.

The article is devoted to the specific features of Russian public art-a phenomenon of modern art that has been widespread since the 2000s, but has not been sufficiently studied yet in the Russian academic community. An attempt is made to generalize the works of domestic researchers that indicate a turn from onedimensional characteristics of public art to its multidimensional essence, to a wide variety of interpretations, the birth of new concepts that indicate conceptual shifts and cultural transformations of applied developments of public art. The authors focus on the current trends of Russian public art (the interest of officials and city residents in public art as a tool for the development of the territory; the demand for the development of urban space and cultural landscape in the context of the dynamics of the festival-biennial movement and the number of art residencies in Russia, the influence of digital culture and pandemic isolation on current forms of public art, etc.). The emphasis is placed on the competencies necessary for professionals to work in public art, as well as the prospects of this practice in Russia. The authors conclude that the development of modern art in the near future is moving towards the flourishing of socially engaged practices. The topics that concern the art community today are inclusion, social and political problems, postcolonial discourse, where art, as a form of collective public expression and the result of group activity, is replacing individualistic logic.

Age is the basic category that determines human existence and consciousness. It is a key parameter for determining the life characteristics of a person, their physical and mental states, behavior, etc. This article deals with the comparative study of verbalization of a person’s age by means of Russian and Chinese lan guages. The main research methods used in the article are the methods of definitions, field and comparative analyses. The aim of the work is to identify isomorphic and allomorphic features of verbalization of a person’s age by means of Russian and Chinese word-stock and to reveal similar and divergent ideas of human age from the speakers of Russian and Chinese. In this work comparative analysis of the structures of the lexical-semantic fields ‘age’ is carried out. The main age periods of a person’s life in the Russian and Chinese worldviews and ways of replenishing the lexical composition of the Russian and Chinese languages are revealed as well. The lexical system also reflects typical ideas of the speakers of Russian and Chinese about each age period. The results of the study reveal the specifics of verbalization of human age by means of Russian and Chinese word-stock and provide a better understanding of the worldviews of the Russian and Chinese nations in the sphere of comparative linguistics.

The aim of the present study is to determine the particular functions that a proper name can perform in the texts of comic opera librettos. Proceeding from the functional approach to the study of proper names, one finds it possible to assume that an onym is capable of performing the function of enhancing the comic effect. This study takes into account the existing theories of verbal humor in order to determine the mechanism according to which humorous onyms function. The novelty of present research lies within its subject, i.e. a proper name in theatrical discourse. So far proper names as a tool to create a comic effect were analysed solely within works of literary fiction. The libretto texts used in musical theater have not yet been studied to a considerable length. The analysis of onyms in the libretto of “Thespis; or Gods Grown Old”, a comic opera by William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, revealed that proper names can enhance the comic effect created within a theatrical text when said onyms follow the path of “inconsistency”, which is a key component of theories of verbal humor. In addition, the charactonyms found in the analysed libretto can also create a comic effect when placed in an appropriate context.

By the given article I continue a cycle of publications devoted to the analysis of the key words of the Japanese culture, which characterize their peculiar way of thought and life and let us reveal their core values. The key words and their analysis help to get insight into and explain the peculiarity of the Japanese culture and mentality. The given paper dwells upon the analysis of the Japanese word gambatte, which is most frequently translated as ‘do your best, try hard, work hard, hold on, don’t give up’. It is an eternal motto of the Japanese life and of all Japanese people using it throughout their lives. This particular key message helps people to progress in life fulfilling numerous duties and obligations towards the society and themselves (‘giri’ in Japanese) and avoiding a sense of shame (‘haji’) in order to achieve impressive goals, frequently earning the respect and admiration of the world as a result. Gambatte is the essence of the Japanese philosophy of life. The analysis of the key words is regarded as a bright and effective method of penetrating in the nuances of the Japanese culture. The knowledge of key words is of vital importance for successful communication with the representatives of the Country of the Rising Sun, doing business with the Japanese as well as for effective teaching Japanese students.

The article is devoted to the gender aspect of the study of the literary work of the French writer and philosopher Marie Le Jars de Gournay (1565–1645). Interest in gender issues in European literature at the turn of the 17th century is explained by a new round of the “The Woman Question” polemic about the relationship of the sexes. In many European countries, texts appear that address the problem of the position of women in society and their role in social and cultural life. In France, the works of Marie le Jar de Gournay – “The equality of men and women” (L’Egalité des hommes et des femmes, 1622) and “The Complaints of Ladies” (Le Grief des dames, 1626), become a kind of response to iconic anti-feminist pamphlets, in which the author defends not female superiority, but gender equality. The purpose of the study is to identify and justify the features of textual practices as self-expression of a female subject in literature. The article clarifies the concept of “feminine style of writing” and analyzes some productive strategies in the study of women’s texts. The specificity of gender discourse is analyzed using the example of the work of Marie Le Jar de Gournay, who continued the tradition of women’s essays in defense of representatives of the same gender. A conclusion about the prospect of using the concept of a woman’s writing is made. The aforementioned can be used for the further research of the authorship phenomenon and features of representation of women in texts and culture.

Football reports are considered to be the main dynamic form of Spanish sports discourse that has a strong identity through a rich tradition that reflects a nationwide interest in football. Among the different means of speech that are widely used by sports commentators with the purpose of eliciting the influence on the recipient (an ordinary reader, fan or professional) a metaphor as a universal technique, deserves special attention, as it reveals the peculiarities of the national mentality of the society, its perception of the surrounding reality. The purpose of the article is to analyze, from the point of view of the national and universal vision of the world, the basic metaphors of the sports discourse prevailing in football reports (2019–2021) in Spanish. The material for the study is the online versions of the leading print sports publications of Spain (“Marca”, “As” (Madrid), “Mundo Deportivo”, “Sport” (Barcelona), as well as the sites www.rtve.es, www.laliga.com. The study presents the main universal spheres – the sources of basic metaphors in the genre of modern Spanish football reports in the projection on the realities of the national mentality.

The article analyzes the mechanisms through which fictional realia, also known as quasi-realia or irrealia (special lexical units that describe various aspects of a fictional world: its geography, ethnography, social political structure, material culture, etc.), create new cultural memes. Despite the controversial status of memetics, the concept of meme as a sustainable and self-replicating unit of information became widespread among various researchers. However, very little research has been carried out to draw connections between memes and fictional realia. Furthermore, few researchers pay attention to the study of fictional realia as a whole. We choose the genre of dystopia due to its prognostic and preventive functions. Trying to warn the reader about a future that is both undesirable and frightening to the vast majority of humanity, the author “infects” the reader with different ideas, which proliferate from the host’s mind and “infect” more and more people. «1984» by George Orwell, one of the most prominent dystopian novels of the twentieth century, is a perfect example of such proliferation of ideas: the concepts introduced by George Orwell became an integral part of various cultures and languages. The analysis of various headlines and quotes from English articles demonstrates how fictional realia propagate and assimilate in real culture and real language.

The paper continues a series of works dedicated to the study of lexical concepts Zapad in Russian, West in English and 㾯 in Chinese languages as content-bearing mental structures in diachronic perspective. Since interdisciplinary research has been one of the main trends in cognitive linguistics these days, understanding of how various mental structures mediate real-world information to our mind is still a burning issue. It’s very well known that lexical meanings are constructed based on schematic mental spaces and can be considered as highly dynamic systems. However, as far as the system of spatial reasoning is claimed to be inherent and, hence, stable, the question of its conceptual structure’s inner dynamics appears to be one of the most challenging. Thus, diachronic perspective on concepts that embody the knowledge of cardinal points appears to be a promising technique to better understand the relations between different types of cognitive structures verbalized by the means of language and how original spatial knowledge is connected to more recent non- spatial knowledge in a conceptual content system. The author focuses on the role of extra-linguistic factors in conceptual knowledge formation on different stages of conceptual development.

The article considers the city as a text of culture which appears due to interaction of different semiotic codes in urban space. Due to this approach urban space can be regarded as the text which consolidates the results of historic and cultural life of the city with the help of architecture, toponymics, natural phenomena. With regard to multi-aspect nature of urban semiotics it seems reasonable to focus on the urban metaphor as a trope which conveys the main message as a figurative expression. The article studies the metaphor garden-city concept and its se- miotic modifications in XX–XXI centuries. The author attempts to analyze the transformation of this metaphor, which initiated the urban planning conception of E. Howard, into a dead metaphor which converted into a newspaper cliché and, as a result, lost its original semiotic sense. The ideological influence of new urbanism and the necessity of promotion of new housing complexes have stipulated the appearance of this modern variety of the concept: park-city concept. However, this fact allows to concentrate both on the change of approaches to urban planning and on the related changes in the urban text as a text of culture.

Drawing from the field of intercultural communication in which space is referred to as a non-linguistic form of communication, as well as linguocultural studies that treat it as one of the cultural codes used to categorize the world, put it in order and evaluate it, the author of this article focuses on the use of space in cognitive-functional modelling of acculturation in contemporary multicultural fiction. The research examines how acculturation, which is defined as a process of change that affects one’s personal psychological space as a result of continuous intercultural contact, is constructed in the short story “How to Pronounce Knife” (2015) by S. Thammavongsa. A study of the following key binary oppositions pertaining to the physical and the psychological space in the short story is caried out: centre – edge, up – down, front – back, inside – outside, regular (traditional) configuration/layout – deformed configuration / distorted layout. Taking into account the acculturation-related symbolic meanings attributed to these spatial oppositions by S. Thammavongsa, the author concludes that the invisible “air bubble” that the protagonist of the story under analysis carries around in a new culture resembles a tesseract, or a 4D hypercube, which rotates about the XW and YW planes, rather than an ordinary 3D sphere.

The article is devoted to the study of the reaction of the ethnic community of Friuli, a territorial-linguistic minority of the Friuli region, which is part of the multiethnic region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in northeastern Italy, in response to the legislative measures of the Italian Republic in the field of regulation of minority languages in the period 1970–2020, time of awareness of the Friulians of their cultural, historical and territorial authenticity. A brief overview of the legislative measures of the Italian Republic in the field of linguistic regulation of minority languages is given, which can be characterized both as supportive and restrictive at the same time. Among the main areas of support for the Friulian language on the part of local authorities and the ethnic community, the following are highlighted as priorities: the creation of television and radio broadcasting in Friulian, as well as the introduction of the practice of clerical work in the Friulian language in local authorities. The studied material allows us to assert that it is the media in modern society that retain the leading role in the construction of social-spatial “imaginary communities”, incl. and local ethnic communities. The practice of document circulation in the language of the national minority in the authorities is a guarantee that this language is as close as possible to the state language in functions, therefore, the status of the official language is confirmed, and not the dialect, the scope of which is the sphere of everyday communication. The national state (the Italian Republic) has the intention to keep under its control the volume and nature of social functions that the minority language performs and only forcibly lets the minority language into the sphere of functioning of the state language – media communication channels and official office work.

The purpose of the article is to consider the phenomenon of Hybridité / Hybridity as a point of intersection of language and culture in the context of the concepts: “another” – “foreign”; “the border”; “Third Space”; “cultural translation”, “translation”, “cultural transfer”, etc. Taking into account the concepts of M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, R. Jacobson, J. Derrida, K. Levi-Strauss, N. Bhabha, B. Cassin and other authors, as well as dictionary definitions, it is discovered that the evolution of the lexeme Hybridité/Hybridity represents a double transfer: 1) from one language (French) to many languages; 2) from one system of terms into a com- mon language and other term systems (biology – philology – common language – anthropology, cultural studies, etc.). The lexeme has the meanings of heterogeneity, border crossing, lack of a fixed structure, a high degree of volatility, as well as connotations: positive (creativity, vitality, the emergence of something new), negative (wrong, spoiled), in scientific discourse – neutral, in some cases – reduced (unstructured). The phenomenon of hybridity is at the heart of a number of theories that establish different directions of intercultural interaction within the dichotomy of “another” – “foreign”: 1) emphasis on cultural differences, imitation, ambivalence and endless hybridization of cultural symbols (H. Bhabha’s theory of post-colonial discourse); 2) emphasis on identifying differences and searching for integration (integration of untranslatable signs by Yu.M. Lotman; the concept of the untranslatable in the philosophical discourse of B. Cassen.

The conference was held from 19th to 20th of November 2021 within the framework of Scientific and Educational School of Moscow State University “Preservation of World Cultural and Historical Heritage”: focus area “Communicative Modality (codes) as a means of New Generation Humanities Competence.” The conference was dedicated to the 270th anniversary of the foundation of Lomonosov Moscow State University (the chair of the Programme Committee — academic V.A. Sadovnichiy, the vice-chair - dr. hab., prof. G.G. Molchanova.) One of the key issues argued during the conference was the discussion of the rapidly developing academic field — “the Digital Humanities”, an interdisciplinary area of research that unites the methodological and practical approaches within Humanities with the aim of implementing and interpreting the new technologies and ICTs. One of the aims of the conference was to contribute to the rather neglected area of the research — the dark side of digital instruments. Some plenary reports focused on what happened when the abilities of digital tools were overestimated. It was made clear that a detailed and careful study of the issue should be undertaken in order to save our teachers and students from some disappointment in the future.

Socio-political texts are quite significant as a means of propaganda. It determines the image of the country on the world stage. The quality of social-political text translation influences the effectiveness of propaganda. Besides, it affects the understanding of the actual content by the readers. Culturally distinctive words in such texts present difficulties for translation and the question of what translation methods to use requires further exploration. There are various types of national names with Chinese cultural connotation in the text “XI JINPING The Governance of China”. In the process of translation new things, the national symbolic expressions with idioms are influenced by the interaction of different nature of words and components. There are also expressions of national symbols with political syllables, derived from religious rituals, or from ancient poetry. These words in Chinese are often difficult to translate into foreign languages. Therefore, the way of translating these words has become an important research topic.

The article is devoted to a new paradigm of considering the professional communicative competence of the language teacher in keeping with the changing approach to the description of the content of language education, which is reflected in the documents of the Council of Europe, in particular the latest Companion Volumes to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) from 2018 and 2020. These documents indicate a transition from four traditional language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing (which laid the basis for the Russian language teaching tradition) to four modes of communication: reception, production, interaction and mediation. The reasons for and the essence of these changes are described in the first part of the article. Then the article summarizes the leading theories in the study of the language teacher’s professional communicative competence in Russia and presents a revised definition of the professional communicative competence. After that it provides definitions in Russian of the four modes of communication, as well as activities and strategies within them. When considering each mode of communication, their manifestation in the context of the language teachers’ target language use domain is described. In conclusion, the article presents a functional model of communicative activities of reception, production, interaction and mediation as part of the language teacher’s professional communicative competence.

The article presents a pedagogical model of the digital tutor designed for the purpose of automatization of the teacher/student interaction. The authors seek to justify its demand in higher education institutions due to the 2020–2021 forced distance learning. The study employs the methods of theoretical modeling in digital pedagogy and survey research. The latter identifies the attitude of 3-rd-year bachelors majoring in Linguistics in the University of Tyumen to the introduction of digital technologies and assesses their experience of using a digital tutor in the theoretical course of English lexicology. Automated learning models have come a long way from massive online courses to intelligent assistants. The high cost of their development slowed down their implementation. The model of a digital tutor presented in the article is based on the principles of adaptive education and individual trajectories of students’ development. The model can be implemented in theoretical disciplines. The demand for digital models will definitely increase since conventional learning strategies do not appeal to younger generations of students.

The development of modern civilization is characterized by information society and by the growing influence of media culture filled with different kinds of ethnic discourses — artistic works and contexts of ethnic cultural nature based on oral language and on traditional system of values. The paper focuses on the representation of Baffy Saint-Marie’s musical, educational and social activism work in media culture space. On the basis of internet-sources analysis, the author singles out the following conceptual blocks of modern aboriginal ethnic discourse in the works of the Canadian musician: axiology of Native American cultures in music episodes of children’s TV show “Sesame Street”; the authors’ educational Cradleboard Teaching Project for Native Americans on the basis of aboriginal cultures and languages support; authorial songs as the expression of the Canadian peace-making axiology; turning to aboriginal and ecological issues through participating in protest movement Idle No More, through public speeches and lectures. Ethnic musical art of Buffy Saint-Marie in media culture space serves as a support of aboriginal education, as a way of manifesting the main ideas of protest movement of Native Americans in Canada, as a means of live dialogue and unifying people sharing the same views of life and attitudes for protecting traditional values.

In the modern world, the scope of application of intertextual analysis methods is not limited only to artistic discourse. The aesthetics of the Modernist era is reflected in advertising texts. Advertising is within the limits of the message length limit and the requirement of the maximum amount of meaning. Reference to precedent texts allows us to solve this problem. Modern culture is all permeated with quotations, references, hints of various kinds. The purpose of this study is the manifestation of intertextuality in French commercials. There are several levels of information presentation in video ads: text, video sequence and sound. At each of these levels, a reference to a previously known cultural work or phenomenon may appear, thus, we can talk about the interdiscursivity and intericonicity of the advertising message.

The phenomenon of the border in the modern world is one of the most discussed and relevant, especially in the context of the pandemic, as a result of which the borders have become more tangible and often insurmountable. The purpose of this article is 1) to consider the ideas of the Swiss concerning the borderland between the two language areas, about the French variety; 2) outlining the tendencies associated with the value orientations of the language community of the region under study. The research materials are the epilinguistic discourse of cultural figures, scientists, media people, as well as authors of comments on media articles (digital periodicals in French: Le Matin, Le Temps, 24 heures, Tribune de Genève, SwissInfo) and publications in social networks, in particular, creolized text. The concept of röstigraben and its functioning was considered in Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 19. Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, No. 3-2021, however, the topic needs to be covered by the axiological aspect — the reactions of the Swiss francophones to this phenomenon. The attitude of the French-speaking Swiss to the borderlands, or “röstigraben”, and its aspects are considered in diachrony. By analogy with “röstigraben”, there are derivatives “poletagraben”, which separates the Italian- speaking area, “coronagraben”, which appeared in connection with disease statistics, and other innovations. The article is written in compliance with sociolinguistic approach.

Russian-Chinese relations have a long history. The formation of the image of Russia in China originates in the XVIII century in the work of the Chinese dignitary Tulishen. The analysis of the image of Russia in “Notes” is carried out within the framework of the problem-chronological approach: the perception of Russia is considered before the trip and after it with its results taken into account. Such aspects of the image of Russia as nature, political image, social image, historical image, national character and interethnic relations are considered as well.

In the article an attempt, based on the cultural and geographical approach, is made to critically comprehend the well-known poem by A.T. Tvardovsky “Beyond the Distance”. This approach considers the poem as a complex literary journey. According to S.Ya. Marshak, the author deliberately chose the form of a literary travel, which gave him a high degree of creative freedom. On the one hand, the hero makes a real trip along the Trans-Siberian railway — from Moscow to Vladivostok. On the other, the author’s thought makes a mental journey through the major — core — cultural regions of the country: Moscow — Volga — Ural — Siberia — Far East. The poet calls them “distances”. In this most important journey for Tvardovsky, he makes “long” poetic “stops”: separate chapters of the poem are dedicated to each region. This is the poet’s approach to literary travel: to think on the scale of a huge country. Therefore, each region is comprehended in the context of the Russian space, a spectrum of bright — national — geographical images was created for each region.

Currently, medicine is focusing not only on the physical health of people, but also on various psychological and social factors of modern life. In addition, general public uses medical terminology in everyday life. Medical terminology is characterized by the frequent use of eponymous terms that contain a proper name or a common noun derived from it, which is of a particular interest for linguists and specialists in the field of onomastics and cultural linguistics, since the study of this lexical layer allows to find in a term, in addition to linguistic, also cultural information. The aim of the work is to study the features of the influence of the linguocultural context on the formation of eponymous terms — names of syndromes in the field of neurology and psychiatry. Practical material is taken from MedicineNet.com. The portal has been in operation since 1996, and the doctors involved in its development are the authors of the Webster’s New World ™ Medical Dictionary. The article provides information on the study of eponymous terms in Russia, as well as a cognitive-functional study of the names of neurological and psychiatric syndromes containing an eponymous component.

Mid vowels are presented by two series of sounds: mid-high vowels /e/ ~ /ø/ ~ /o/ and mid-low /ɛ/ ~ /œ/ ~ /ɔ/ vowels. Compared to other vowels in French, they are characterized by significant variability, which is explained by several factors. One of them is the so called “oi de position” or closed/open syllable adjustment. This means that mid-high vowels are pronounced mainly in an open syllable, while mid-low vowels are pronounced in a closed one. Despite the existing phonological limitations, the realization of the law of position in the stressed syllable is becoming increasingly widespread in modern usage. This trend gives reason to consider the phonemes composing the oppositions /е/ ~ /ɛ/, /ø/ ~ /œ/, /о/ ~ /ɔ/ as positional variants of three phonemes /E/, /Ø/, /O/. Another important factor of the mid vowels vari- ability is distant regressive assimilation or vowel harmonization, which consists in the fact that the vowel of the stressed syllable affects the realization of the mid vowel in the preceding syllable. Until now, it was believed that assimilation affected the tongue height (first formant) of an unstressed vowel. In other words, high stressed vowels tend to increase the height of unstressed mid-low vowels, whereas low stressed vowels tend to low mid-high vowels. Therefore, in an unstressed position, as a rule, the sound of the middle timbre is pronounced [E], [Ø], [O]. The article discusses new data obtained in the corpus studies of this phenomenon in the last decade. Those data let us formulate methodological recommendations for teaching theoretical and practical phonetics of the French language.

The article discusses the translation of fictional realia motivated by non-fictional lexical units (as opposed to neologisms coined by writers of fiction). Fictional realia are understood as a special kind of lexical units that denote objects, concepts, and phenomena specific to a fictional world. The article attempts to draw connections between the degree of realism of a fictional world and the number of fictional realia motivated by non-fictional lexical units that are present in the text. Motivation by non-fictional lexical units is seen as a condition which makes it possible to translate fictional realia using ready-made equivalents. However, it is argued that the possibility to translate realia using the aforementioned equivalents does not make the translator’s task any easier. Conversely, this condition can present an obstacle, since the most obvious translation is not necessarily the most precise one. Translation of this kind of fictional realia involves a deep understanding of the role that a particular unit plays in the context of its fictional world. “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro, which can be considered an example of a realistic dystopian novel, is used as the material for the study.

The article considers the Chinese cuisine taste characteristics as an integral part of the national gastronomic art. Chinese culinary traditions have been formed for centuries, during which many culinary trends have appeared, thousands of different dishes have been created, differing in a variety of flavors. The number “eight” in Chinese numerology symbolizes prosperity and luck. The symbolism of the number “eight” is also used in Chinese cooking. The fundamental tastes of national cuisine — Eight Immortal Tastes: Hom — Tom, Tim — Sin, Fu — Lot, Heong — Gum. Of these, there are five basic tastes: sour Sin, sweet Tim, bitter Fu, spicy Lot, salty Hom and three minor ones — tasteless (bland) Tom, fragrant Heong, golden Gum. Combining registers of flavors and their complex combination are the main characteristics of authentic Chinese cuisine.