Articles

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.