Authors

In the context of modern globalization processes, cultures do not always come to dialogue. The subject of this article is the conflict on the territory of modern Belgium, which dates back to about the III century AD. The object of the study is modern manifestations of the Franco-Flemish conflict. At the heart of the Franco-Flemish conflict lies, first of all, the language confrontation, on which factors of a social, economic and especially political nature have been layered. The attitude of the Belgian population towards the conflict is reflected in various resources: scientific articles, encyclopedic data, journalistic publications, mass-media of Wallonia and Flanders, in corpus data, social networks, fiction and in the comments on the above sources. The goal set in this article is to investigate a multidimensional conflict, its causes, its course, the current status, and to draw a conclusion on its development trends. The hypothesis of the study is that the current status of the Franco-Flemish conflict is determined by recession or deliberate silence, as well as deterrence by the political elites of the kingdom of Belgium.

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.

Switzerland’s multilingualism is a rich material for geopolitical, regional studies, (socio) linguistic research. In particular, the notion of the border between the areas of the French and German languages, called “Röstigraben”, is a phenomenon that has been superficially covered in domestic and foreign literature. The article shows how “Röstigraben” is used in the French-speaking press in Switzerland, what image it has and for what purpose the French-speaking population of the country use this term.

The term “Röstigraben” means “Rösti foss”, where “Rösti” is a potato dish native to Bern, the German-speaking canton of Switzerland. Overcoming the boundaries of the German area “Röstigraben” is used by the Swiss people to ironically denote the border between French-speaking and German-speaking areas in the context of culture and language. “Röstigraben” is used by the Swiss people to ironically denote the border between French-speaking and German-speaking areas in the context of culture and language. However, the expansion of the meaning of the concept under study indicates that the “Röstigraben” also has political, economic and social components. “Röstigraben” is a popular lexeme in the French-speaking media in Switzerland, and in the process of semantic derivation it undergoes some changes, preserving the archiseme “border” and acquiring the additional meaning of “difference”.

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.

The article is devoted to the experience of polycultural education on the example of the subject “Cultural Parallels of Russian and French Literature” within the master’s program “Russian and French Languages and Cultures”, implemented at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Department of French Language and Culture and Department of Comparative Analysis of Languages. Intercultural interaction as a source of knowledge in the context of teaching a foreign language has become the subject of research by V.I. Fatyushchenko, S.G. Ter-Minasova, A.V. Pavlovskaya, T.Yu. Zagryazkina, J. Duverger, V. Tellier and others. In addition to the polycultural component, the article highlights the perception of Russia and France by Chinese students, studied by an online survey. The questionary showed the following results:

1)           Chinese literature is close to subjects about the “superfluous person”, love, virtue, images of masculine and feminine characters, relationships between generations;

2)           the discussion among master students was caused by questions of infidelity, betrayal, cunning and morality.