CC BY
32
УДК 372.881.1
А. А. Струкова
аспирант кафедры лингводидактики
Московского государственного лингвистического университета; e-mail: anastrand14@yandex.ru
ЛИНГВОСТРАНОВЕДЧЕСКИЕ СЛОВАРИ КАК СРЕДСТВО ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ СОЦИОКУЛЬТУРНОЙ КОМПЕТЕНЦИИ
В статье рассматривается возможное применение лингвострановедческих словарей как средства формирования социокультурной компетенции. В отличие от большинства исследований, в которых различные способы формирования социокультурной компетенции изучаются на примере английского языка, в данной статье внимание сосредоточено на итальянском языке. В статье проанализированы современные тенденции в преподавании иностранных языков, а также место лингвострановедческих словарей в системе средств обучения. Проанализирован процесс создания краткого лингвострановедческого словаря на основе произведения итальянской литературы, изучаемого на старших курсах университета. Разработанная модель словаря может быть использована для создания подобного словаря для школьников и позволяет сделать выводы о достоинствах лингвострановедческих словарей как средства формирования социокультурной компетенции и их роли в преподавании иностранных языков.
Ключевые слова: итальянский язык; социокультурная компетенция; лингво-страноведческие словари.
A. A. Strukova
Post-graduate student of Foreign Language Teaching Department, Moscow state linguistic university; e-mail: anastrand14@yandex.ru
LINGUOCULTURAL GLOSSARIES AS A TOOL OF DEVELOPING SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE
the article looks at the possible use of linguocultural dictionaries and glossaries as a means of developing sociocultural competence. the ways of building up students' sociocultural competence, which is an integral part of their intercultural communicative competence, have already been studied by quite a number of foreign and Russian experts mostly on the basis of the English language. the present article shifts the focus to the Italian language and deals with one particular means of sharing and acquiring the knowledge of social conventions and cultural peculiarities of the community where the target language is spoken. the article describes current trends in foreign language teaching and considers linguocultural dictionaries as tools in foreign language teaching and learning. the article provides a model which can be used to
compile a short LinguocuLturaL glossary on the basis of particular reading matter, in particular, for secondary school children. The model was elaborated while compiling a linguocultural glossary on the basis of a sample of Italian fiction studied by future bachelors' of linguistics. the compilation of the glossary revealed the advantages of this type of dictionaries, which makes them a useful tool for developing students' sociocultural competence.
Key words: the italian language; sociocultural competence; linguocultural dictionaries.
Introduction
It is common knowledge that the role of foreign languages in the modern world is emphasized by the ongoing process of globalization and the process of integration in all spheres of social life. Besides, when the value of knowledge and information is increasing, the importance of learning foreign languages cannot be overestimated.
To achieve success in today's multicultural society a person should be an intercultural speaker whose knowledge of foreign languages enables him or her to: a) develop mutual understanding with representatives of other cultures; b) have access to various sources of information, in particular, to get the information necessary to develop professional skills.
Foreign languages are now learnt at different stages of education. The present article is based mostly on the experience of teaching the Italian language to secondary school students.
An intercultural speaker: current trends in FLT methodology
It is noteworthy that the 'knowledge of a foreign language' does not mean merely the knowledge of the language itself, its structure, grammar, vocabulary etc., but it also presupposes a particular degree of the speaker's intercultural awareness and the development of a number of intercultural skills.
Intercultural awareness is produced by the "knowledge, awareness and understanding of the relation (similarities and distinctive differences) between the 'world of origin' and the 'world of the target community" (CEFRL1) as well as by the realization of the social and regional diversity
1 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
in both worlds and the "awareness of a wider range of cultures than those carried by the learner's L1 and L2. This wider awareness helps to place both in context" [CEFRL, p. 103]. Intercultural awareness is also believed to govern the perception of the members of one speech community by the representatives of another speech community, which may be distorted by the existing stereotypes due to a lack of background knowledge about a foreign culture.
The enhancement of intercultural awareness requires the development of particular intercultural skills. According to the 'Common European Framework of Reference for Languages', such skills include:
• The ability to bring the culture of origin and the foreign culture into relation with each other;
• Cultural sensitivity and the ability to identify and use a variety of strategies for contact with those from other cultures;
• The capacity to fulfill the role of cultural intermediary between one's own culture and the foreign culture and to deal effectively with intercultural misunderstanding and conflict situations;
• The ability to overcome stereotyped relationships [CEFRL, p. 105].
Moreover, the notion of an intercultural speaker is closely connected
with the notion of second language identity [Haleeva 1989], which is considered to be the objective and the result of linguistic education.
The second language identity is understood as a cross-cultural personality whose skills and competences enable him or her to communicate adequately with representatives of a foreign culture, and guarantee successful intercultural interaction.
The development of a second language identity involves the acquisition of the semantic code which constructs the 'linguistic worldview' of the speakers of the target language as well as the acquisition of the 'global (conceptual) worldview' which provides the necessary background information and experience to be able to understand a new culture and social reality [Galskova 2006].
Thus, foreign language teaching is not only about developing the students' ability to use the language accurately and adequately in various real-life social situations, but it is also about introducing them to another culture-specific worldview and way of thinking, which is necessary to become an intercultural speaker and to develop a second language identity.
Many students nowadays study more than one foreign language. In such cases students have to analyze, compare and contrast at least three worldviews and be ready to take into account their similarities and peculiarities while communicating [Фролова 2009, p. 11-12]. In particular, the present article is based on the experience of teaching Italian as a second foreign language. To communicate successfully, students have to be well aware of sociocultural peculiarities of their own worldview and the worldviews of native speakers of the first and the second foreign languages.
The aim of foreign language learning is one of the factors which constantly modify foreign language teaching methodology. As Susanne Niemeier puts it, the current trends in foreign language teaching include:
a) building language awareness;
b) focus-on-form approach, that is the combination of formal instruction and communicative language use in the classroom;
c) action-oriented approach, that is 'learning by doing' in order to develop competences to be able to act in the foreign language;
d) multi-channel learning, that is providing different sorts of information with the help of various means taking into account the differences between students. "Learners are not a homogeneous group; everybody has their own ways and strategies of how to construct knowledge" [Archard, Niemeier 2004, p. 98];
e) objective of intercultural competence, that is providing knowledge about the target culture. In particular, as from cognitive-linguistic prospective the language itself contains culture, students should make use of language analysis and language work to develop their intercultural competence.
The suggested trends are in line with Whorfs hypotheses which concern the interrelation and interdependence of culture, language and thought, though they are not connected to it explicitly.
Some educationalists distinguish four categories of modern foreign language teaching objectives, in particular:
1) the objectives which concern practical communication skills;
2) the objectives which concern the ways how students may learn the languages and the building of awareness of language;
3) the objectives which encourage students to develop a positive attitude towards the speakers of foreign languages and, in general,
to understand the speakers of foreign languages and their way of life;
4) the general objectives shared by different subjects in the curriculum, the objectives concerning the development of learning skills. [Byram, Fleming 1998, p. 3] Modern foreign language teaching is also learner-centered due to the recently introduced objective concerning the development of the students' understanding of themselves, their own culture and their own way of life. [Byram, Fleming 1998, p. 4]
It is noteworthy that the objectives mentioned above interact. For instance, "detecting and analyzing intercultural differences via the foreign language can even provide learners with a different, more distanced view of their own culture and thus initiate very helpful processes of a change in their self-image and of more empathy toward the foreign culture or foreign cultures in general" [Archard, Niemeier 2004, p. 97].
The same idea of learner-centered teaching is put forward by Russian linguists as well. In particular, they suggest creating a dialogue of cultures in the foreign language classroom to guarantee the integration of cultural values in the course of intercultural communication rather than suppressing the student's cultural identity for the sake of developing a second language identity. [ranbCKOBa, Te3 2006, p. 15-16] As a result, the dialogue of cultures enables the students to increase their awareness of their own culture and to get rid of 'prejudiced L1 views' [Archard, Niemeier 2004, p. 99], and it also enables them to realize that representatives of different cultures experience and perceive the world in different ways, which is reflected in their languages and value systems conceptualized in these languages.
Moreover, the predominant postmodern philosophy, which is characterized by anthropocentrism and the focus on the importance of power relationships, gave rise to new anthropological approaches. Such approaches emphasize the necessity to understand the ways in which cultural practices and discourses become predominant in a given society and the ways in which the social behavior of different groups of people "is constructed out of the relationships of power. These approaches also illuminate the process oftravelling between two 'cultures', of understanding one and of belonging to another" [Byram, Fleming 1998, p. 79].
In other words, the general trend in modern foreign language teaching is to develop students' ability to act in the language in the course of
intercultural communication not only taking into consideration cultural peculiarities and value systems of their foreign interlocutors, but preserving their own cultural identity as well.
Consequently, reaching a high level of foreign language proficiency requires, among other things, the building of students' sociocultural competence, which is usually viewed as part of their intercultural communicative competence and generally refers to their knowledge of social conventions and cultural peculiarities of the community where the target language is spoken.
Linguocultural dictionaries as tools in foreign language teaching and learning
The ways of developing students' sociocultural competence have already been studied by quite a number of foreign and Russian experts in such fields as linguistics, pedagogy, and foreign language teaching. The methods and ways are usually worked out on the basis of the English language, the most widely studied language in the world. However, it seems quite relevant to shift the focus to other languages, including the Italian language.
Since this research area is quite broad, we decided to concentrate on one of its aspects, that is the use of linguocultural dictionaries and glossaries in second language learning.
The target audience of our study were future bachelors of linguistics who have to deal with a lot of text material and use it for developing various skills which include the skill of assessing the cultural potential of an authentic Italian text and understanding culture-specific lexis.
The latter refers to lexical items that incorporate a cultural component in their semantics and have partial or no direct equivalents in other languages. Students tend to resort to monolingual explanatory or bilingual translation dictionaries that contain the definition and linguistic characteristics of a word or its equivalent in their native tongue correspondingly. Yet, in such cases a purely linguistic definition is not enough to understand the shades of meaning, connotations and the possible use of the lexical item under consideration. The explanation of culture-specific lexical items should contain both linguistic and encyclopedic definitions, that is information about the realia the word refers to or the cultural, social and historic context the lexical item can occur in. The type of dictionary that combines the
two sorts of definition is a linguocultural dictionary. The problem is that the number of linguocultural dictionaries and glossaries at the student's disposal is not large enough.
This leads to the necessity of elaborating a model which could help to compile a linguocultural glossary on the basis of specific reading matter. Therefore, one of the key objectives of the study was to compile a brief linguocultural glossary on the basis of a sample of Italian fiction.
A glossary usually has three types of structure: megastructure, macrostructure and microstructure [EepKOB 2004, p. 15-16].
The term megastructure refers to the general arrangement of a dictionary or glossary, including the arrangement of its sections.
The term macrostructure refers to the arrangement of lexical entries or lemmas within a section of the glossary.
The term microstructure refers to the arrangement of the lexical entry, the way the information about the lexical item is presented.
There are few bilingual Italian-Russian linguocultural dictionaries. One of the few is Dizionario italiano-russo della civilta italiana by Aldo Canestri (2012) which is not based on any particular reading matter and includes culture-specific lexis related to different aspects of Italian culture.
Our first attempt to create a linguocultural glossary, which could serve as a model for future glossaries for secondary school students, was based on the first part of the book 'Il Gattopardo' by Tomasi di Lampedusa. This novel is usually studied during the 4th or 5th year at the university by students of quite a high level of language proficiency, which determined the monolingual character of the glossary.
The megastructure of the dictionary compiled by Aldo Canestri is quite simple. It does not have any topic-related sections. On the contrary, in the present study the selected culture-specific items were grouped by referent following the principle of semantic fields (see Table 1) to guide the user of the glossary.
The range of referents reflects the key aspects of culture which a successful intercultural speaker should be aware of, though not all of the lexical items are crucial for understanding separately.
24 % of words and phrases refer to colours and their specific shades and mythology while 7.5 % of the selected lexical items are foreign expressions (mostly French). These items were not included in the glossary since they
Table 1
Lexical items by referent
Type of referent Percentage (%)
Titles 8,8
History 11,2
Religion 28
Geography 12,8
Art 3,2
Cuisine 4,8
Colours 15,2
Mythology 8,8
Foreign expressions 7,2
are not culture-specific as separate words, yet they generally foreground the cultural aspects significant for the Italians or are used to emphasize that the main events in the story revolve around aristocracy. This was mentioned in the introductory commentary to the glossary.
Thus, the glossary consisted of six sections: Titles (Titoli), Religion (Religione), Cuisine (Cucina), History (Storia), Geography (Geografia), and Art (Arte).
Another principle of classification applied to the lexical items selected for the glossary was the principle of frequency ofoccurrence, which reflects the significance of each aspect of culture. It made it possible to determine the final order of the sections. Each of the sections received an individual colour to facilitate the navigation through the glossary. The final megastructure looks like that:
Religione
Geografia
Storia
Titoli
Cucina
Arte
As for the macrostructure, in Aldo Canestri's dictionary the lexical items are arranged in alphabetical order to facilitate the search for words, which is quite typical of glossaries of any kind. The same principle of arranging lexical items was applied to the compiled glossary based on 'II Gattopardo\
For instance, the Titoli section was structured in the following way: Duca
Eccellenza
Padre
Principe
Principessa
Re
Soprastante Sovrano Sua Maesta Voscenza Vostra Eccellenza
Turning to the microstructure, a lexical entry in the bilingual Italian-Russian linguocultural dictionary by Aldo Canestri (Dizionario italiano-russo della civilta italiana, 2012) incorporates the following information (see Fig. 1):
a) the word itself, the lemma (1)
b) linguistic definition: grammatical features of the word, such as gender (2), possible translations of the word, its equivalents in the target language (3) and an example of its use in an authentic context (5)
c) encyclopedic definition: cultural information about the lexical item (4)
12 3 4
cappuccino m 1) капуцин ♦ Religioso di un ordine mendicante francescano risalente al 1528. Il nome deriva dal cappuccio che e attaccato al saio indossato dai frati ♦ «Chi domnadasse come fra Cristoforo avesse cosi subito a sua disposizione que'mezzi di trasporto, per acqua e per terra, farebbe verdere di non conoscere qual fosse il potere d'un c. tenuto in concetto di santo.» (Alessandro Manzoni) 2) капуччино см. caffe
5 3
Fig. 1. An entry from Aldo Canestri's dictionary
Each lexical entry of the glossary based on 'Il Gattopardo' consists of several components as well (see Fig. 2), though some of the components are predetermined by the fact that the glossary is related to a particular sample of Italian fiction.
a) Compulsory components:
1 Lemma - the lexical item itself, the selected culture-specific word or phrase that needs explanation.
2 Page number - the number of the page where the lexical item is mentioned for the first time.
3 Explanation - a brief commentary or some cultural information about the lexical item.
4 Context - a quotation from the novel, the context in which the word or phrase was used.
b) Optional components (not required for all lemmas):
5 Illustration - an image or a quote that illustrates the lexical item to make it clearer or to extend the cultural information presented in the commentary.
When dealing with a huge number of authentic texts students need a source of information that would be time-saving and user-friendly. A lexical entry like that provides relevant linguistic and cultural information about the word in a concise form, which enables future linguists to use it either in class or during individual work.
I 2 3 TITOLI
II .1 ....... . . .
Duca (p. 24) E uno dei titoli nobiliari piu elevati nella gerarchia araldica. E superiore al titolo di marchese e inferiore solo a quello di principe.
Le insegne del duca includono la corona "cimatat da otto fioroni d'oro (cinque visibili) sostenuti da punte" [4] oppure "bottonati da una perla o chiuse col velluto del manto disposto a guisa di tocco" [4], il manto di velluto porpora e l'elmo d'oro arabescato.
5->-
4->- Contesto: ...ilprimogenito, l'erede, il duca Paolo... Fig. 2. Example of an entry from the glossary
The suggested arrangement of the glossary may enable teachers and students to obtain the necessary information about culture-specific words and phrases in a concise form.
The compilation of the glossary helped to explore linguocultural dictionaries and glossaries as a teaching and learning tool and a way of developing sociocultural competence. It foregrounded the advantages of this type of dictionaries and glossaries in terms of foreign language teaching. They are as follows:
- in case oftime-limit, which is familiar to secondary school students', a linguocultural glossary is a quick and convenient way to obtain the necessary information since culture-specific lexical items can hinder the perception of information in a foreign language;
- linguocultural dictionaries and glossaries contain a wide range of culture-specific items referring to various cultural aspects ranging from forms of address and titles to historic events and national cuisine. This information contributes to the knowledge essential to become a successful intercultural speaker, which is the final goal of learning a foreign language;
- the information in this type of dictionaries is presented in the form of a brief linguocultural commentary, which makes it possible to use them in the classroom, especially when dealing with authentic texts.
Conclusion
To sum up, as the aim of linguistic education is to create a successful intercultural speaker ready to participate in the dialogue of cultures and to develop a second-language identity, promoting sociocultural competence is viewed as a crucial part of foreign language teaching and learning.
The development of students' intercultural communicative competence involves acquisition both of the target language and its culture. The knowledge of both linguistic and culture-related features of words enables future intercultural speakers to use the target language accurately and appropriately. A linguocultural dictionary or glossary is a type of dictionary that provides both relevant linguistic and cultural information in a concise, convenient and user-friendly way, thus becoming an efficient learning tool.
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