Conceptual-categorical approach to developing intercultural professional discourse competence

Abstract

In the light of the requirements of modern Federal state educational standards of higher education to the results of the development of bachelor's and master's programs, general cultural and professional competence of readiness for communication in a foreign language for solving problems of interpersonal and intercultural interaction in professional activities is determined. The achievement of this goal is associated with the solution of the problems of teaching not just a foreign language, but intercultural communication, which is a relatively new approach in the practice of training at the University. Communicative competence is a multicomponent phenomenon, which includes a number of other sub-competencies. The leading competence in the composition of foreign language communicative competence is the linguistic competence acquired in the comprehension of the structure of the language, its dictionary, grammar, rules of word formation, without which it is impossible to complete foreign language communication. The authors propose a conceptual and categorial approach to the formation of the competence of intercultural professional discourse, reflecting the increased interest of the modern humanitarian paradigm of knowledge to the study of national mentalities in the context of the contradictory development of globalization processes. This is confirmed not only in the expansion of contacts and rapprochement of cultures, but also in the ongoing ethnic conflicts, the desire of cultures to preserve its identity and mentality. The study of business cooperation practices indicates numerous communication failures in the organization of international contacts, meetings, negotiations, despite the growing foreign language competence of communication participants. The application of the conceptual-categorial approach to the formation of the competence of intercultural professional discourse is based on the use of cognitive approach in linguistics, asserting the relationship of language and thinking and recognizing the language as a universal form of conceptualization of reality. The main thesis of the authors is the belief that the individual's behavior is directed by the acquired knowledge, experience, opinions about what is happening in the outside world, about the causes and consequences. Knowledge is not a simple collection of information. Human perceptions of the world also project his linguistic behavior: what a person says and how he does it depends ultimately not only on his fixed needs, deep and eternal aspirations, but also on genetic inheritance. Analysis of the communication process from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics helps, in the authors ' opinion, to identify communication shortcomings and make appropriate corrections. The authors use the cognitive paradigm of linguistics, considering intercultural professional discourse in close connection with internal mental activity. Within the framework of the cognitive approach, language is considered as an element of human consciousness, which is a universal form of conceptualization of reality. Being the basic notion of cognitive linguistics and cultural linguistics, the concept includes cultural attitudes that manifest themselves differently in the speakers of different cultures, that is revealed in the analysis of the mechanisms of linguistic cognition. The concept is considered as a categorial notion of cognitive linguistics, i.e. the concept is an explanatory model, an interpretation of the object of reality. Although such understanding of the concept is shared by many researchers there are serious differences in the way the concept is constructed and how it relates to other types of knowledge available in human consciousness. The article shows that communication failures may be caused by the situation when communicants simplistically use language as a set of signs (words) to denote concepts, ignoring the relationship of language signs with the thinking of the speaker, without taking into account the concepts existing in the mental world of the interlocutor in the form of representations, knowledge, experiences associated with the sign (word). The comparative study of the concepts and categories of native and foreign languages is justified and relevant, since it is the comparison of the concept of the native language with its analogue in a foreign language that explicates the features of the language picture of the world that will promote mutual understanding and success in intercultural communication.