Russian Language Studies Research Articles

Readers' Comprehension of New Text Formats. Part I. Empirical Evidence from Russian and Research Methodology Behind It

In this article, we review a range of Russian-language studies investigating readers’ interaction with new text formats. We identify the key problems preventing proper generalization of such research data. These include: (1) the absence of agreed terminology for describing texts of new formats shared by most researchers, and (2) the lack of consistency in theoretical approaches for describing cognitive mechanisms underpinning processing of these types of texts by readers. The following factors further complicate comparison and systematization of the data obtained by different research groups: (1) the lack of explicitly described theoretical bases of the hypotheses formulated by researchers, (2) the lack of consistency in describing the putative connections between such theoretical backgrounds and empirically tested hypotheses, (3) heterogeneity of methodological approaches, (4) insufficient, unequal or unbalanced sample sizes, (5) low reliability of statistical approaches and tools used for data analysis, as well as (6) research artefacts confounding the results.

Epithetization of love in M. Tsvetaeva’s texts

INTRODUCTION. The study relevance is due to the need for a cognitive-semantic analysis of the mechanism of epithetization in M. Tsvetaeva’s texts. This is due to the central position of the characteristic vocabulary and the category of epithet in the poet’s individual style. The aim is connected to the study of the individual style specificity of the attribute verbalization of the concept “love” in M. Tsvetaeva’s texts, in the course of which the role of epithetization in the individual style system of the poet under study is revealed, the semantic content of this concept in M. Tsvetaeva’s texts, as well as the types of epithet words that verbalize this meaning.MATERIALS AND METHODS. Based on cognitive-semantic, component, lexicographic and lexicalsemantic, as well as statistical methods of analysis, the attribute verbalization of the concept “love” in M. Tsvetaeva’s texts is analyzed. The analysis of the characteristic nomination is carried out on the basis of the “Epithets of the Russian Literary Language Dictionary”. While studying the patterns of attribute verbalization of love in the poet’s texts, the main types of qualitative meanings actualized by the poet are identified.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The main trend within the framework of figurative understanding of the properties of this abstract concept was the anthropomorphization of “love”, personification, and the frequent use of metaphorical and metonymic epithet words with the defined concept “love”. Occasional features are expressed both by adjectival epithets and by lexemes atypical for epithet words, the most frequent of which is the substantive. The epithet paradigm, which verbalizes the characteristics of the concept under consideration, is represented by simple as well as compound epithet complexes in various positional variations.CONCLUSION. The research is addressed to specialists in the field of studying artistic speech, stylistics, linguistic poetics, cognitive linguistics, and linguistic color studies. The conclusion is postulated that M. Tsvetaeva’s creative style is distinguished by reflection on characteristic words, hints on the interpretation of their semantics or direct commentary. Various ways of verbalizing the characteristic component of the concept “love” emphasize the significance of this concept for the poet’s work. The study results can be used in further developments on the problem of epithetization in the Russian language and linguistic studies of M. Tsvetaeva’s creation.

Russian Studies in Contemporary Korea

The Russian Language Department of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) —one of the leading universities of the Republic of Korea— was founded in the same year with the University and is about to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Today the University and the Russian Language Department are the main popularizers of the Russian language, literature, culture and Russian regional studies in South Korea. There are several associations: KASEUS — Korean Association of Slavic-Eurasian Studies; Russian Language and Literature Association (based on the HUFS — Hankuk University of Foreign Studies); KAR — Korean Association of Russian Studies (based on the Korean University); KASL — Korean Association of Slavic Languages (based on the Korean University); KATPR — Korean Association of Teachers and Teaching Staff of the Russian Language (whose members are university professors and school teachers); and KRA — Korea-Russia Association. The Korean-Russian Society of Art and Culture KORACS was established in 2013 to organize cultural exchange between Korea and Russia. The associations organize and conduct scientific conferences, symposiums, forums, and some publish their own journals. In South Korea, there are exchange programs for undergraduate and graduate students of Russian and Korean universities, and Russian professors are invited here to give lectures. Every spring the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies holds a Russian language Olympiad for students of Korean universities. This competition is of great interest to Korean students and is an incentive for deeper study of the Russian language. The Russian language and culture are represented and preserved here: there are Russian professors, school teachers, Russian-speaking Koreans and citizens of other countries. Therefore, despite the difficulties associated with changes in the socio-political situation, Russian studies in South Korea continue to develop. Interest in the Russian language, literature and culture does not wane since people always need to learn something new and wonderful and this is how Russian culture is characterized.

Department of Russian Language at Herzen University (1918–2024)

The article highlights the main stages of history and the current state of studying and teaching the Russian language at one of the oldest departments of the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. In 2018, the department celebrated its 100th anniversary. When the Philological Faculty was emerged at the Herzen Institute, the best academic traditions of Russian studies and philology of the early 20th century intersected there, and it determined the prospects for scholarly research of the Russian Language Department for a long time. The history of the Russian language and Slavic studies, dialectology and lexicography became the main scholarly directions of the department, where outstanding linguists and lexicographers of the 20th century worked: B. A. Larin, L. P. Yakubinsky, N. P. Grinkova, F. P. Filin, V. I. Kodukhov, A. P. Evgenieva, S. G. Ilyenko, A. V. Bondarko, V. D. Chernyak and others. In the 1970s scholarly problem groups were organized, which determined the main directions of work of the department for a half a century: syntax, functional lexicology, functional grammar, the language of fiction, general theory of language. In the 1990s, the activities of the department were reformatted for the following reasons: the structure of higher education in the country and the linguistic paradigm had changed, and the faculty of the department was renewed. In the 21st century all the best traditions of the Russian language department were preserved and developed. Now we can distinguish three main areas of scholarly activity of the team: rhetoric and speech culture, syntax and text theory, lexicography.

Philosophy of J. Wahl as an independent phenomenon and as an interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy

The article is aimed at comprehending the perception of J. Wahl’s philosophy in Russia. The central role is assigned to the notion of “unhappy consciousness” in Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of Spirit” and to the interpretation of this notion in J. Wahl’s philosophy. The analysis of Russian–language studies dealing with his philosophy allows to outline two primary strands of engagement with it: within the framework of “French Neo–Hegelianism”, and within the framework of existentialism. Th e need to renounce this established characteristic of his philosophy is shown. Two arguments are stated in favour of this, conceptual and substantial. As for the former, the restriction of J. Wahl’s philosophy to the two aforementioned frameworks narrows the real horizons of his research. For the latter, the “unhappy consciousness” in J. Wahl’s philosophy besides the tragic–religious interpretation of Hegel’s ideas also contains pluralistic criticism of Hegel’s “monism” as a part of J. Wahl’s own philosophical project of “metaphysical empiricism”. It is argued that treating the entire corpus of J. Wahl’s writings will allow for a more thorough insight into the history of 20th century French philosophy, in particular “French Neo–Hegelianism” and the Franco-German debates concerning phenomenology and existentialism.

Dictionary of IT terms as a tool for Russian language studies and linguodidactics in the context of digitalization in education

The authors present a comprehensive description of the main features of a new vocabulary project aimed at expanding and systematizing the methodological competencies of a modern teacher of philology. The relevance of the work is determined both by the object of research itself, which is a corpus of terminological units relevant in the digital pedagogical space, and by the need to fix numerous changes in linguistic/linguopedagogical/philological education determined by the transition to convergent learning. The aim of the research is to characterize the specifics of the dictionary entry structure in this lexicographic resource, to describe the principles and methods of selecting terminological units, to identify ways of their defining and translation. The research material includes Russian terminological systems and their English versions, correlated with pedagogical and lexical phenomena of the Russian language. The following scientific methods and approaches were used: component analysis of dictionary entries, comparative method, functional analysis of English and Russian terminology (if there is a translated version), linguistic-cognitive analysis, data systematization and clustering, qualification data interpretation. The results of the study are as follows: a set of problems related to the constitution and categorization of new terminological units explicating the transformation of the educational paradigm is identified and described; the features of lexicographic definition and presentation of indices are characterized; various ways of defining IT terms in the aspect of foreign language teaching methods are proposed, examples of dictionary entries are given. The perspectives of the study are in further expanding, specifying and systematizing IT terminology in modern language education and creating on this base new lexicographic projects which would intensify teaching in Russian higher education institutions.

SHI GUANGNAN AND LU XIN: MUSIC AND LITERATURE IN THE DIALOGUE OF GENERATIONS

The name of the Chinese composer Shi Guangnan is extremely rare in Russianlanguage studies. But in musicological literature in Chinese, more than two hundred works are dedicated to him. However, most of them represent Shi Guangnan in a barely outlined cultural context. Therefore, identifi cation of the artistic environment of the personality and creativity of the bright Chinese composer of the 20th century seems relevant and promising against the background of intensifying intercultural interactions. The main fi gure who infl uenced Shi Guangnan was the writer Lu Xin, whose story was a basis for the composer’s best work - the opera “Mourning for the Departed” (1981). The paper considers the composer’s “dialogue” not only with Lu Xin, but also with the time, epoch and those personalities who were part of it and who Shi Guangnan met on his way.

William Joseph Gavin, 1943–2021

it is my task briefly to memorialize the life of William Joseph Gavin. This is a sad task, as are all memorials, but it is also an important one. Bill was a beloved and respected colleague, and it is the duty of the Society to note his passing.The basic facts of Bill's life are easy to recount. Born in New York City on 16 December 1943, he was educated at Fordham from ninth grade on. He earned his BA in 1965, with a major in Russian language and Soviet-area studies. He completed his doctorate in 1970 with a dissertation entitled “An Aesthetic Approach to the Philosophy of William James.” Bill taught at the University of Southern Maine—with occasional periods in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Japan and China—from 1968 until his retirement in 2014. He was the author, co-author, or editor of seven books, and wrote well over a hundred articles and reviews. Bill was an active member of SAAP forever. Long before we had T-shirts or posters, before there were prizes or even banquets, he was participating in our meetings and speaking on such figures as James and Dewey. A not irrelevant aspect in Bill's life was that he was married to the same woman, Catherine Kerley Gavin, for over fifty years, and together they shared a life of travel, sailing, and dancing. Bill died in Maine on 25 April 2021.In addition to his work in American philosophy with which we are most familiar, Bill's overall interests encompassed the sub-fields of ethics and aesthetics, medical ethics, Russian philosophy, and Existentialism. In his writings, these diverse aspects of his thought were seamlessly integrated and presented with a teacher's eye on the larger mission of philosophy: to try to answer such questions as these: “Why do we do what we do?” “What should we value?” “What should we believe?” “How should we live?”Running like a dark thread through Bill's writings are the themes of finitude and death. He emphasized that our beliefs in the secure and the permanent—our delusional expectations of control, our excessive demands for clarity, our hopeless quest for certainty—are all misguided. In his wonderfully clear volume, William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague, Bill writes: “[M]ost philosophers, and indeed most people . . . have pursued certainty, objectivity, and some form of universal truth” and “have assumed that such truth can be captured in language, that is, that a complete linguistic description of reality is at least possible and certainly desirable” (Gavin, William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague, Temple UP, 1992, p. 1). By means of his work, Bill shows us that all of this is delusional. He helps us to grasp what it is to live our lives without an adequate understanding of what we are doing, and to face the tragedy of having to endure when our choices prove mistaken. His view of life, and his approach to philosophy, are thus existential in the deepest sense.Philosophy for him was not some gussied-up academic pastime by means of which we polish and update the thoughts of others. Rather, philosophy lives only in a broader cultural context that also includes hunger and illness, yet has room for both poetry and dance. In the vital niche that Bill's work occupies between Pragmatism and Existentialism, he returned again and again to the diversity of our problematic contexts, and to the vague and tentative understandings that we cobble together to address our situation.

Functional paradigm in Russian studies: from the functioning of units to the regulatory concept of language

Today the Russian language has gone beyond Russia and forms the planetary Russian-speaking world, so Russian language studies, whose subject matter is traditionally considered the literary form of the language, seeks to reach a new level of comprehension of both the language and individual facts. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that at the present stage ideas of synthesis come to the fore in linguistics, there are tendencies to develop a theory of language integrating the latest achievements of different areas of linguistics on a single basis. In accordance with this, the aim of the research is to compare the regulative concept of language in the works of A.N. Rudyakov with the works of other linguists in order to establish the key features and principles of a new linguistic paradigm and define language as a regulatory system based on linguistic functionalism. Deductive, analytical-theoretical and modeling methods describe the current state of the scientific linguistic paradigm and general linguistic problems associated with the concepts under study. The key features of the modern scientific linguistic paradigm are established, since without defining theoretical guidelines, modern language science loses its practical value. As a result, the authors substantiated that the new paradigm is not only an appeal to new material and new research methods, but the creation of a fundamentally new theory that will take into account the role of language in society, its ontological, functional essence. Based on the definition of the key features of the functional approach to the language and its units, the authors demonstrate that linguistics not only borders on other sciences, but is in some way an integral part of them, the basis of the human Universe. In the future, the presented material allows us to see that the change of the scientific paradigm, despite the objective difficulties, today is a prerequisite for the further development of linguistics. It also outlines a range of theoretical and practical tasks that modern linguistics faces and which can be solved within the framework of a new paradigm.

Integrated Training Based on Information and Communication Technologies in the Practice of Teaching Russian language, Literature and Cultural Studies to Foreign Bilingual Students of Non-philological Specialties

The article presents an innovative method of teaching foreign bilingual students of nonphilological specialties (engineering, physics and mathematics, and natural science profiles of the RUDN University). The authors develop a teaching manual “Russian Literature on the Screen” which follows the principle of integrated learning (involving focusing students’ attention on interdisciplinary connections and replenishing their knowledge of Russian literature, culture, and history in the process of teaching Russian as a foreign language) and allows using information and communication technologies in the educational process.

Specificity of Dictionary Description of Abbreviation Appellatives and Onyms

The article is focused on the comparison of abbreviations-appellatives and abbreviations onyms, units that are abbreviated equivalents of divided common nouns and proper nouns respectively. It is not customary in Russian language studies to differentiate abbreviations according to the above categories, and, as a consequence, abbreviated appellatives and onyms are considered to be identical language units in terms of their origin and purpose. The aim of this work is to establish the basic differences between abbreviated appellatives and onyms and to substantiate the obligatory nature of this distinction in their research and description. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to develop a new approach to the lexicographic description of abbreviations, which emerged in connection with the modern trend to create multi-informative dictionaries of abbreviations. The study’s novelty stems from its identification of the specific features of abbreviations-appellatives and abbreviations-onyms as lexicographic units for the first time. The article contains a brief review of theoretical studies and dictionaries of abbreviations, which form a general idea of the established tradition of studying abbreviations. Different mechanisms of abbreviations appellatives and abbreviations-onyms formation and their influence on the functioning of linguistic units in texts are considered. On the basis of the published dictionaries of abbreviations the peculiarities of the dictionary description of abbreviations apellatives and abbreviations-onyms are established. The author reviews dictionary entries from specialized dictionaries, which can be offered as models of differentiated vocabulary description of abbreviated appellatives and onyms.

A book review: M.A. Bulgakov: Annotated bibliographic index. Vol. 2, 1941–1985. Rus. state library of arts; M.V. Mishurovskaya, I.S. Efimova, O.V. Golubeva (comps.); M.V. Mishurovskaya (ed.); A.V. Akimenko (bibliography ed.). Moscow, RGBI, 2021, 816 р.

The review presents the second volume of the Bibliographic Index publications on the works of M. Bulgakov of 1941–1985, compiled by the working group of the Russian State Art Library. These two volumes are the first complete set of Russian-language studies of Bulgakov. A brief annotation to each bibliographic unit (about four thousand of them) should be recognized as a significant benefit of this book. The second volume of the Index covers Bulgakov’s “boom” of the 1960s, when the forgotten and never-before-published works were revealed to the reading public, and, primarily, the novel “Master and Margarita.” At that time, numerous memoirs about Bulgakov, the first philological articles about his work, and the first books about him began to appear. It was a period of early academic research on Bulgakov. Therefore, the material of the second volume differs significantly from the first but is no less interesting. The sources are divided into domestic and foreign: the first part includes the texts written by Bulgakov and about him, published in the USSR from 1941 to 1985. The second part of the Index includes the Russian-language editions published in other countries.

Polyphony of Decoloniality

This review presents an analysis of the collection of articles Decoloniality: Present and Future, published by the Gorizontal’ publishing house in 2022. The collection includes essays, interviews, and travelogues of Russia by foreign researchers, poets, artists, curators, and directors. The authors analyze the concept of decoloniality, consider the main strategies for living and creatively expressing oneself in decolonial scenarios, and analyze their own traumatic experience in modern post-Soviet space. The relevance and significance of this collection are determined by the relatively small number of Russian-language studies and works devoted to decoloniality, as well as the recently increasing interest in rethinking the domestic colonial past (which means both the imperial conquests of pre-revolutionary Russia and the national policy of the USSR). The collection raises questions about overcoming the consequences of the colonial hierarchy, defining the cultural identity of so-called “small” indigenous peoples and residents of countries that were part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. An essential role is played by the discussion of decolonial art as one of the main strategies for the practical deconstruction of power relations and the creation of space for the polyphonic sounding of the voices of subaltern groups. According to the reviewer, this book makes a significant contribution to the development of Russian decolonial thought.

Тональные контуры русских да-нет-вопросов в условиях болгарской интерференции

The prosody of the Russian language is the most difficult aspect even for Bulgarian university graduates in Russian language studies. The aim of this paper is to determine the pitch contours Bulgarian students use when asking yes-no questions in Russian. The materials include samples of mini dialogues in Russian and Bulgarian. Six Bulgarian native speakers were recorded reading the dialogues. The pitch accents and intonation patterns in the recording of each Bulgarian student were compared with dialogue readings by native speakers. The sound files were analyzed acoustically and labelled manually in Praat using ToRI. The results allow to predict possible deviations from the norms of the prosodic system in a non-native language.

A Russian version of AMSTAR 2: validation and guidance

Relevance. Determining the quality of a systematic review is known to be of the main criteria to consider when making a clinical decision. And various assessment tools allow you to determine this, both for the readers themselves and for those who write a systematic review. Aim. In this study we investigate characteristics of the AMSTAR 2 assessment tool to determine the methodological quality of systematic reviews of intervention research, as well as validated the Russian version of this questionnaire. Materials and methods. We used an adapted Russian version of AMSTAR 2 (our own translation) to conduct a descriptive study of systematic reviews which were made in the Russian language. The search for Russian-language studies was carried out in the electronic scientific library named «eLibrary», by keywords and their combinations, without chronological restrictions. The selection of publications (total 10) was carried out randomly. After that, the methodological quality was assessed independently by three authors. The agreement of expert assessments was measured by calculating the coefficient kappa according to the J. Fleiss’ method. Under the null hypothesis H0 we meant kappa equaled 0, that is, the observed agreement between the reviewers is tantamount to random agreement. When testing statistical hypotheses, p < 0.05 was used. Statistical analysis was carried out in R 4.1.2 (RStudio 1.1.463), using the kappaGUI and irr packages. Results. We have translated the AMSTAR 2 questionnaire (16 signalling questions) into Russian, as well as made terminological and methodological additions to it. The preliminary analysis showed that our Russian-language version of this evaluation tool allows us to properly assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, their potential value for consumers of evidence-based information regarding the effectiveness of medical interventions. Conclusion. The AMSTAR 2 methodology allows critical evaluation of systematic reviews not only of randomized controlled clinical trials, but of non-randomized trials. The extended functionality of the questionnaire, in particular its Russian version, makes it possible to unambiguously determine the correctness of the methodology for writing a systematic review and meta-analysis, which will help in finding a high-quality review and control at the writing stage.

Оценка и развитие профессионализма преподавателей высшего педагогического образования: изменения концепции и технологии

The problem of assessing the quality of education today is relevant. There are many problematic questions: What should the technologies for implementing the links between school teachers and schoolchildren’s learning outcomes be? How to identify these connections and work with them? Is it possible to establish multidimensional relationships between the activities of a teacher, the results of students, between the competencies of a teacher and the quality of their professional training at the university? In Tomsk Oblast, the research is being carried out in two areas: (1) development and testing of a technology that makes it possible to analyze the learning outcomes of schoolchildren and establish the relationship between these results and the level of teachers’ professionalism, (2) establishment of a relationship between the identified deficits in the subject and methodological competencies of teachers and the quality of their professional training at a pedagogical university. In the first direction of work, the results of research on assessing the level of school teachers’ competence were summarized. The study used machine learning methods. The data obtained in educational institutions of Tomsk Oblast for the period from 2015 to 2019 (unified state exam in mathematics, physics, Russian language, and social studies) were processed. This work made it possible to identify learning difficulties among schoolchildren, and then to connect these difficulties with a lack of competencies in the professional activities of their teachers. In the second direction of the research, the goal is set: the development of a new concept for the assessment and development of the professionalism of teachers in the system of higher pedagogical education. The object of study is the system of continuous professional development of teachers in the system of teacher education. The study uses the methods of theoretical analysis, structural analysis, analysis of products of activity, focus group, method of expert assessments, educational design. The types of interdependence of professional and educational deficits of different subjects of educational activities are described. These types of connections are important for achieving the integrity of the assessment system, developing the professionalism of professors of teacher education and structuring managerial actions to ensure the quality of general and teacher education in the logic of their relationship. The following conclusions are made. (1) The proposed concept of assessing and developing the professionalism of professors of a pedagogical university is an element of a system for achieving the quality of school and university pedagogical education in the “school student – teacher – university teacher” logic. (2) An assessment of the level of teachers’ professional competences shows deficits that need to be addressed. (3) Changes in the preparation of students can be based on the analysis of professional deficits of teachers, which makes it possible to change the preparation of students, including ensuring the prevention of deficits.

Peculiarities of the USSR’s Foreign Policy Decision Making towards the Islamic Republic of Iran

This paper examines the earliest stage of the formation of Soviet foreign policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. The study offers a critical analysis of the state of the international scholarly field on the Islamic Re-public of Iran in its initial form, allowing for the diversity of expert perspec-tives that emerged in the early years after the Islamic Revolution, and trac-ing their reflection in the practical domain. The paper also examines the decision-making mechanism on Iran in the period 1979–1983 and the in-fluence of the views of different groups of Soviet experts on the process. In the context of realpolitik, the USSR tried its best to preserve the unexpected gift of fortune in the form of the new Islamic regime's rabid anti-Americanism, but at the same time it concentrated its efforts on trying to implant local leftist forces into Iranian power structures, following ideolog-ical dogma and being confident in the imminent leftist transformation of the Iranian revolution. The debacle of the Iranian Tudeh Party in 1983 forced the USSR to largely reconsider its policy towards the Islamic Republic and to definitively change its ideological approaches to purely practical ones. This paper draws on English-, French- and Russian-language studies car-ried out in recent decades, as well as ego-documents authored by partici-pants in the events from the main actor countries: diplomats, intelligence officers and scholars of Iran. The author situates the analysis of these ego-documents in the context of a thematically broader critical synthesis of con-temporary work from different countries.

Developing critical thinking skills in Russian language studies: Online learning tools in Chinese universities

AbstractThe article aims to determine the role of critical thinking skills in learning Russian at Chinese universities and to consider this aspect when organizing an online learning environment for students. The research involved 600 students and 50 teachers from the Russian language and math faculties. The analysis of Chinese students' Russian language learning allowed the conclusion that there is a possible relationship between language competence and critical thinking skills. At the same time, the study did not identify any educational standards that included critical thinking as a skill in the educational process. The study showed that the Chinese education system needs to align educational standards with fundamental concepts of critical thinking and move away from a random use of individual theories tools. Future research might concentrate on testing the hypothesis about the close relationship between critical thinking and success in learning Russian as an L2 using various statistical methods (for instance, Student's t test or Kruskal–Wallis test).

The Role of Domenico De Vivo in Developing Russian and Italian Language Studies in the Second Half of 19th Century

Very little is known about Domenico De Vivo (1839-1897). He was a disciple of the Italian linguist Giacomo Lignana and worked as a professor of Russian and English language at the Asiatic College in Naples from 1868 to 1870, and then as an Italian language lecturer at the universities of Dorpat and Odessa in the Russian Empire from 1879 until his death in 1897. De Vivo championed his ideas on language teaching and learning in his books Grammatica della lingua russa [Russian Grammar for Italians] (Dorpat, 1882) and Prakticheskoe rukovodstvo dlya izucheniya ital’yanskogo yazyka [A Practical Guide to Learning Italian] (Odessa, 1886; Odessa, 1890), and in his Dizionario Italiano-Russo. Slovar’ ital’yansko-russkiy [Italian-Russian Dictionary] (Odessa 1894). The purpose of this article is to examine De Vivo’s life and works, which represent the first recorded attempt – in De Vivo’s own words – “to promote Russian language learning in Italy and Italian language learning in Russia.”

Обзор лингводидактических исследований метафоры методами когнитивной и прикладной лингвистики

Metaphor is a traditional research object in linguistics. Works on the analysis of this phenomenon using methods of cognitive and applied linguistics in texts of various kinds are numerous and continue to accumulate. Peculiarities of the formation of metaphorical competence in language learners and native speakers can also be considered as an urgent area of research. In this regard, compilation of a review of studies on metaphors in the context of teaching and learning foreign languages using methods of cognitive and applied linguistics seems relevant and significant. This direction, on the one hand, is sufficiently developed and multifaceted for the accumulation of a significant number of publications that require comprehension and systematization (up to existence of graduation projects on it), and, on the other hand, it has a sufficient degree of novelty in order not to duplicate existing review materials, since, in particular, in Russian-language studies, problems of the metaphorical competence of students of foreign languages were posed and began to be considered relatively recently. Research materials were English-language and Russian-language research articles with full-text free access, published mainly in peer-reviewed scientific editions over the past 10 years, a total of 40. As a result of processing the material using general scientific methods of analysis, comparison and synthesis, a critical assessment was given in regards to the current state of affairs in the corresponding areas of research. The examination of English-language publications showed that foreign authors pay attention to simple and intuitive cases of metaphorical transfer, and also use conceptual metaphors mainly as a research tool that allows assessing the perception of various aspects of the pedagogical process or the language studied. The review of Russian-language publications revealed that domestic authors actively explore the metaphorical competence of students, develop new methods and techniques, clarify terminology, collect materials for further processing, but they often publish overly theorized works and are not always methodologically accurate. Also, the study of the collected works demonstrates the lack of a common basis for carrying out research of this kind. The results of the study led to the conclusion that application of the cognitive-linguistic approach to studies of foreign languages, largely based on working with metaphors, is considered by foreign and domestic researchers as a promising direction; however, de facto, the results obtained often do not correspond to this optimism: many works are narrow and typical, and at the same time end with bold generalizations; studies in this area as a whole lack a research perspective. The directions of further research, regarded as the most interesting, potentially fruitful and promising by the authors of this article, are also highlighted.