Articles

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.