Intercultural communication as an academic subject was introduced into linguistic Bachelor and Master education in Russia about twenty years ago. Unlike various aspects of linguistics, English studies, British and American literature which have been part and parcel of the curriculum in foreign language departments for many decades, this subject is new both to teachers and students. Its appearance in the curriculum is due to Russia's entering the global educational environment. This subject as central theoretical component of training specialists in foreign languages requires practical manuals with reference to new educational standards. Intercultural communication as a field of study is so wide that it requires the efforts of specialists in linguistics, psychology, cultural anthropology, etc. It is but natural that teaching intercultural communication in universities is limited mostly to contrastive insights into communication between representatives of two linguo-culturesthose of Russia and the country/countries of a foreign language (mostly English). This paper discusses various ways and means of developing intercultural competence, practiced in Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education. The paper also presents the results of regular anonymous questionnaires among our students dealing with teaching intercultural communication. The authors conclude that theory of intercultural communication is firmly rooted as the subject that forms young people's cultural awareness. Our experience shows that students are genuinely interested in the subject, mostly because of its possible application to their future profession.

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.

The article is devoted to revealing the cultural and historic continuity of eidetic and abstract thinking and their structural parallelism. The author describes the cognitive archetype “Shape” in English linguoculture, shows what subject areas are modelled by using the above-mentioned archetype (mental states / properties, action and its effect, objective circumstances etc.) and points out the importance of the cognitive archetype in question for modern abstract thinking and modelling of reality. The role of the cognitive archetype “Configuration of objects” for abstract thinking and modelling of reality is emphasized. In particular, it has been demonstrated that among representatives of English linguoculture the image of a straight line is often associated with simplicity, truthfulness, honesty, sincerity, rejecting ambiguity in expressing thoughts, spontaneity, whereas the image of a curved line is often associated with complexity, deceit, insincerity, hypocrisy, resourcefulness, fraud, wrongness, deviation from the norm, standard, from a simple and clear presentation of thoughts. The author notes that the numerous language examples given in the article indicate an important circumstance in the field of cognitive science: a person does not believe that he has deeply understood the structure and essence of a non-perceivable object until he imagines its spatial outlines. The author states that information about the environment is received through sensory channels, with further processing of the information received through the channels, constructing abstract notions from sensory images, but, as can be seen from the examples, never loses connection with the images. The author also notes that man is an intelligent primate; his picture of the world, figuratively speaking, is a building of the human mind based on ape’s sensations. But the sensations that man has inherited from his animal ancestors do not prevent him from gaining genuine knowledge, developing abstract thinking, and achieving an adequate understanding of the world.

Материалы журнала доступны на сайте (articles and issues available at): philology-journal.ru RUВнутренняя форма языковой единицы как мотиватор ее значения (на материале английского и русского языков) Савицкая Е. В.Аннотация. Цель исследования заключается в том, чтобы уточнить характер соотношения понятий «буквальное значение», «транспонированное значение», «реальное значение», «образная основа», «внутренняя форма» единицы языка, «языковая картина мира», тем самым устранив имеющиеся противоречия в их трактовках. Научная новизна исследования состоит в том, что в работе освещен функциональный аспект внутренней формы единиц языка, а именно механизм мотивировки значений с помощью внутренней формы. Полученные результаты показали, что внутренняя форма языковой единицы представляет собой не ее буквальное значение как таковое, а отношение между ее буквальным и реальным значениями, лежащее в основе семантической мотивировки ее реального значения. Исследование проведено на материале английского и русского языков.

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