Welcome to Volume 2 of Professional Discourse & Communication – the platform that provides researchers and practitioners with the most up-to-date comprehensive and important research in the sphere of professional communication, paying special attention to modern linguistic approaches as well as the perspective of teaching methodology and acquisition of foreign languages for specific purposes. PDC’s editorial board hopes to continue to promote well-written high-quality papers with broad appeal, publishing theoretical overviews, research articles, viewpoint essays, book reviews and conference reports to inform readers about the latest trends and news within the topical scope of the journal.

The article presents the results of a study aimed at analyzing the dynamics of the development of the COLD WAR concept’s figurative component in political discourse based on the material of the American media. The research conducted using the methods of discursive, conceptualdefinitional and comparative analysis has shown that the COLD WAR concept is a complex multi-component concept-scenario (or dynamic frame) that evolved during the second half of the 20th century. The figurative component of the concept manifests itself in its metaphorization and develops as the concept penetrates into the American mass consciousness. Throughout its history the COLD WAR concept has been both the source domain and the target domain of metaphorization with numerous models of metaphorical reinterpretation. Moreover, the author states that demetaphorization of the concept has also played a big part in the development of its figurative component. The article opens up a perspective for the study of the conceptual field of the “cold war” in different linguocultures, which is very important considering the changing international situation and the emergence of such concepts as COLD WAR 2, COLD WAR 2.0, etc.

The paper considers metaphor as a tool of forming and/or maintaining stereotypes about Russia in German mass media discourse. The actualization of stereotypes in media texts plays a key role in creating the image of a country in the mind of the recipient, while researches pay attention to both extralinguistic factors and linguistic ways of introducing a stereotype into the text. Metaphor is one of the effective ways to actualize stereotypes, as it has the ability to influence the perception of information, it can have a strong effect on the recipient, including the formation of his/her world outlook. The author analyzes the implementation of stereotypes about Russia in German mass media through various metaphorical models. The empirical material comprises metaphorical statements selected from online versions of the most popular social and political newspapers and magazines in Germany.

The paper describes the “Meeting” situation model using componential analysis. The aim of the present study is to reveal and systematize functional-pragmatic and cognitive features of this professionally regulated genre. The results of the analysis may be summarized as follows: the speech interaction dominant has been revealed; the main speech strategies were defined within studied communicative event for every participant on the basis of their pragmatic goals; these strategies realize their status as a discourse person. The research considers the interrelation between participants’ speech strategies and semantic steps referring to their gender. We present a multilevel model of the situation, its structure and specific features of each level. The components of the cognitive level are constituted by the cultural background, shared by every participant. The distinctive feature of the paralinguistic level is the hierarchy of its components: participants’ pragmatic goals, the hierarchy of their speech strategies based on the criteria “shared/unique”, “dominant/peripheral” and their “contribution” into representing participants’ position status. On the lingua-pragmatic level, speech acts expressing communicative intentions have been summoned as an opposition on the basis of the “expressed modality” criterion, which also reflects some gender peculiarities. On the semantic level, there is no unequivocal correlation of the semantic steps, speech acts and the priority of semantic steps in realizing speech strategies.

The study of the mixing of language codes on a par with linguistic and extralinguistic factors that determine peculiarities of the equal functioning of two (or more) languages in a communicative act or in a literary text, in particular an anglophone literary text, is studied at the interdisciplinary level and is relevant. Traditionally, the phenomenon of mixing language codes is considered as a separate aspect of language interactions, as well as in the context of such linguistic phenomena as: borrowings, interference, bilingualism, diglossia, code switching, etc. The interest of linguists to language mixtures arose in the middle of the 20th century. This is evidenced by works in the field of structural phonology theory, information theory, bilingualism theory, considering successfully coexisting language systems (two or more). In linguistics, as in the other interdisciplinary studies, today debates about the nature of bilingualism and the prerequisites for its occurrence take place. Traditionally, bilingualism is considered to be a forced phenomenon arising from the established use of two languages in society. However, we emphasize that the so-called tradition of using several languages in speech is not always present in society, unlike the Anglophone postmodern literature of the last century, where the presence of language mixtures (foreign language insertions) is one of the characteristic features. The key issue of this article is the Anglophone literary text created by bilingual bi-cultural writers using the strategy of language mixing (code switching) not only as a language game, but also as a full-fledged linguistic phenomenon, the mechanism of interaction of components of language insertions, demonstrating a certain style, cultural way of portrayed social and linguistic environment.

The aim of the study is to analyze the language and speech activity of the characters of a certain language group on the material of the Anglophone literary text. 

The article is aimed at analyzing the cognitive aspect of educational discourse, viz. the effect of cultural competence on linguistic competence in the process ofspeech generation. The author considers the problem of transmitting knowledge about the world by means of language from generation to generation in the mental and linguistic ontogenesis. In contrast to the prevailing opinion, the author proves that language itself does not contain information accumulated within linguoculture, but only facilitates the transfer of cultural information that is not derived from language. It is drawn from other sources: innate cognitive programs, patterns of behavior, reactions to external stimuli, mental strategies; directly from the surrounding extralinguistic reality through senses etc. The author also describes the means and methods of fixing cultural knowledge in language structure. The research is based on English and Russian language material.

One of the core aspects the methodology of teaching foreign languages focuses on is the issue of interlanguage interference. In this paper it is referred to as some kind of a controversy between the primary and secondary linguistic personalities at the early stages of the latter. This is explained by the dominant nature of the native language compared to the foreign one and is represented:

• at the formal level by the mechanical transfer of a certain form of the original native language from one of its levels – phonetic, lexical or grammatical, or

• at the associative level of meanings and concepts – while constructing speech in a foreign language, one trensfers the association from the native one; this association is foregrounded within the framework of specific speech conceptual and semantic connections and is relevant for the native language, but senseless for the foreign one.

As a rule, calquing results in consequences of different semantic complexity – from blocking a certain speech fragment in a foreign language due to its complete meaninglessness, to inaccuracy and semantic distortion.

Interlanguage interference manifests itself differently in different language pairs. For a research it is important to understand how languages of the corresponding pair relate to each other – whether languages are completely different genealogically and typologically; or matching either genealogically or typologically; or closely related both genealogically and typologically. The aim of the paper is to study the interference in a pair of closely related languages: Azerbaijani & Turkish, where the former is native and the latter is foreign. This is a special case for study, since the significant similarity of the two languages, though providing many positive results, gives an absolutely specific type of interference. İt requires a detailed analysis in order to overcome the negative impact of the mother tongue on a foreign language in the process of foreign language acquisition. 

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the discursive field “Forestry activity in the Urals”. The relevance of the study is determined by the increased attention of modern linguistics to the problems of regional specificity of professional discourse, the development of which is at the initial stage. The aim of the article is the etymological and onomasiological description of the units of the discursive field, characterized as “Forestry activity in the Urals”. Semasiological, onomasiological methods and the method of scientific description are used to achieve this goal. Lexical units included in the field are identified, their origin is interpreted. The main field segments are defined. As a result of the analysis of the empirical material belonging to the “Forestry activity in the Urals” discursive field, it was revealed that in the Ural regional lexical system a specific system of concepts was developed. It has been implemented in the speech activity of dialect speakers. The Ural General dialect foundation is the basis for the modern professional communication of foresters and timber producers of the region.

Review of the monograph by a group of Russian researchers on multiple aspects of professional communication considered from the perspective of functional linguistics.