Building Intercultural Competence Through Studying The Phraseological Stock Of The Language

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of students’ intercultural competence development, which is one of the essentials in foreign language teaching, via the analysis of the language phraseological stock. It exposes the ethnocultural potential of phraseological units and their role in the background knowledge reconstruction of a foreign language culture. The study aims at demonstrating that the phraseological units in English, French and Russian are based on different images of consciousness, which is due to the differences in the real world interpretation by the representatives of different cultures. The applied interdisciplinary approach, which integrates certain provisions of cognitive linguistics, linguoculturology and the theory of intercultural communication, allows demonstrating the existence of a close connection between different types of knowledge that form the conceptual system of bearers of a particular linguistic culture, and their linguistic representation. The differences in the image component of phraseological units in English, French and Russian are shown to be due to the unique cognitive experience gained in the process of the reality cognition within a certain linguistic and cultural community, as well as the degree of significance of certain knowledge structures in the collective consciousness. The analysis of factual material, including data of English, French and Russian distinguishes cognitive basis and culture-determined nature of the phraseological units.