Articles

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.