Articles

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.