The development of metaphorical competence in the process of teaching Russian to natural bilinguals.

Abstract

Metaphor, being one of the main means of verbal imagery, is based on the conceptual system of language and is a way of reality structuring for members of a certain ethnic culture. In this connection the process of decoding Russian metaphors by the bilinguals living outside of the Russian Federation, for whom Russian is not the dominant language, presents certain difficulties, connected with insufficient knowledge of the Russian conceptual system and inability to recognize associative components, expressed in the form of figurative metaphorical connotations. Our work is aimed at substantiating the necessity of forming metaphorical competence, understood as the ability to realize the potential of metaphor in the process of communication, comprehension of reality and extraction of background cultural knowledge. The aim of this study is to develop an algorithm for the consistent development of metaphorical competence in bilinguals in the process of teaching Russian. The realization of the research took place in two main stages. At the theoretical stage, the cases of linguistic and author’s metaphors of K. Bulychev’s fantasy story «Fairy Tale Preserve» were analyzed. At the second, experimental stage, the work with the materials was carried out with the participation of 34 Russian-Greek bilinguals aged 11–12 years old. The results of the study showed that most metaphors in Russian-language artistic discourse cannot be correctly interpreted by bilinguals without the background knowledge of the national culture. Besides, bilinguals’ ability to create metaphors in a written text directly depends on systematic work in Russian language classes aimed at forming metaphorical competence in bilingual pupils