Articles

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.

The phenomenon of the border in the modern world is one of the most discussed and relevant, especially in the context of the pandemic, as a result of which the borders have become more tangible and often insurmountable. The purpose of this article is 1) to consider the ideas of the Swiss concerning the borderland between the two language areas, about the French variety; 2) outlining the tendencies associated with the value orientations of the language community of the region under study. The research materials are the epilinguistic discourse of cultural figures, scientists, media people, as well as authors of comments on media articles (digital periodicals in French: Le Matin, Le Temps, 24 heures, Tribune de Genève, SwissInfo) and publications in social networks, in particular, creolized text. The concept of röstigraben and its functioning was considered in Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 19. Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, No. 3-2021, however, the topic needs to be covered by the axiological aspect — the reactions of the Swiss francophones to this phenomenon. The attitude of the French-speaking Swiss to the borderlands, or “röstigraben”, and its aspects are considered in diachrony. By analogy with “röstigraben”, there are derivatives “poletagraben”, which separates the Italian- speaking area, “coronagraben”, which appeared in connection with disease statistics, and other innovations. The article is written in compliance with sociolinguistic approach.

Russian-Chinese relations have a long history. The formation of the image of Russia in China originates in the XVIII century in the work of the Chinese dignitary Tulishen. The analysis of the image of Russia in “Notes” is carried out within the framework of the problem-chronological approach: the perception of Russia is considered before the trip and after it with its results taken into account. Such aspects of the image of Russia as nature, political image, social image, historical image, national character and interethnic relations are considered as well.

In the article an attempt, based on the cultural and geographical approach, is made to critically comprehend the well-known poem by A.T. Tvardovsky “Beyond the Distance”. This approach considers the poem as a complex literary journey. According to S.Ya. Marshak, the author deliberately chose the form of a literary travel, which gave him a high degree of creative freedom. On the one hand, the hero makes a real trip along the Trans-Siberian railway — from Moscow to Vladivostok. On the other, the author’s thought makes a mental journey through the major — core — cultural regions of the country: Moscow — Volga — Ural — Siberia — Far East. The poet calls them “distances”. In this most important journey for Tvardovsky, he makes “long” poetic “stops”: separate chapters of the poem are dedicated to each region. This is the poet’s approach to literary travel: to think on the scale of a huge country. Therefore, each region is comprehended in the context of the Russian space, a spectrum of bright — national — geographical images was created for each region.

Currently, medicine is focusing not only on the physical health of people, but also on various psychological and social factors of modern life. In addition, general public uses medical terminology in everyday life. Medical terminology is characterized by the frequent use of eponymous terms that contain a proper name or a common noun derived from it, which is of a particular interest for linguists and specialists in the field of onomastics and cultural linguistics, since the study of this lexical layer allows to find in a term, in addition to linguistic, also cultural information. The aim of the work is to study the features of the influence of the linguocultural context on the formation of eponymous terms — names of syndromes in the field of neurology and psychiatry. Practical material is taken from MedicineNet.com. The portal has been in operation since 1996, and the doctors involved in its development are the authors of the Webster’s New World ™ Medical Dictionary. The article provides information on the study of eponymous terms in Russia, as well as a cognitive-functional study of the names of neurological and psychiatric syndromes containing an eponymous component.

Mid vowels are presented by two series of sounds: mid-high vowels /e/ ~ /ø/ ~ /o/ and mid-low /ɛ/ ~ /œ/ ~ /ɔ/ vowels. Compared to other vowels in French, they are characterized by significant variability, which is explained by several factors. One of them is the so called “oi de position” or closed/open syllable adjustment. This means that mid-high vowels are pronounced mainly in an open syllable, while mid-low vowels are pronounced in a closed one. Despite the existing phonological limitations, the realization of the law of position in the stressed syllable is becoming increasingly widespread in modern usage. This trend gives reason to consider the phonemes composing the oppositions /е/ ~ /ɛ/, /ø/ ~ /œ/, /о/ ~ /ɔ/ as positional variants of three phonemes /E/, /Ø/, /O/. Another important factor of the mid vowels vari- ability is distant regressive assimilation or vowel harmonization, which consists in the fact that the vowel of the stressed syllable affects the realization of the mid vowel in the preceding syllable. Until now, it was believed that assimilation affected the tongue height (first formant) of an unstressed vowel. In other words, high stressed vowels tend to increase the height of unstressed mid-low vowels, whereas low stressed vowels tend to low mid-high vowels. Therefore, in an unstressed position, as a rule, the sound of the middle timbre is pronounced [E], [Ø], [O]. The article discusses new data obtained in the corpus studies of this phenomenon in the last decade. Those data let us formulate methodological recommendations for teaching theoretical and practical phonetics of the French language.

The article discusses the translation of fictional realia motivated by non-fictional lexical units (as opposed to neologisms coined by writers of fiction). Fictional realia are understood as a special kind of lexical units that denote objects, concepts, and phenomena specific to a fictional world. The article attempts to draw connections between the degree of realism of a fictional world and the number of fictional realia motivated by non-fictional lexical units that are present in the text. Motivation by non-fictional lexical units is seen as a condition which makes it possible to translate fictional realia using ready-made equivalents. However, it is argued that the possibility to translate realia using the aforementioned equivalents does not make the translator’s task any easier. Conversely, this condition can present an obstacle, since the most obvious translation is not necessarily the most precise one. Translation of this kind of fictional realia involves a deep understanding of the role that a particular unit plays in the context of its fictional world. “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro, which can be considered an example of a realistic dystopian novel, is used as the material for the study.

The article considers the Chinese cuisine taste characteristics as an integral part of the national gastronomic art. Chinese culinary traditions have been formed for centuries, during which many culinary trends have appeared, thousands of different dishes have been created, differing in a variety of flavors. The number “eight” in Chinese numerology symbolizes prosperity and luck. The symbolism of the number “eight” is also used in Chinese cooking. The fundamental tastes of national cuisine — Eight Immortal Tastes: Hom — Tom, Tim — Sin, Fu — Lot, Heong — Gum. Of these, there are five basic tastes: sour Sin, sweet Tim, bitter Fu, spicy Lot, salty Hom and three minor ones — tasteless (bland) Tom, fragrant Heong, golden Gum. Combining registers of flavors and their complex combination are the main characteristics of authentic Chinese cuisine.