Articles

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.