The use of cultural aspects of advertising texts for the formation of intercultural competence among higher education students

Статья принята к публикации: 05.04.2023.

In the constantly changing political, economic and socio-cultural conditions of the international labor market development, considerable changes in the requirements to the quality of education for professionals in various fields, including the tourism sector, are taking place.

At the Russian State University of Tourism and Service advertising, as a separate field of activity, is studied exclusively in Russian, while often graduates are faced with the task of advertising activities in the field of tourism, focusing on a foreign audience.

Thus, the role of foreign language training of future bachelors in the field of advertising in tourism acquires a special role. In turn, among other aspects of learning a foreign language, the importance of inter-cultural aspect stands out. In particular, the intercul-tural aspect directly affects the ability of the future specialist in the field of tourism to show the necessary qualities for successful advertising campaigns to promote domestic tourist products abroad. Intercultural communicative competence becomes the most important component of professional training for such students.

In contemporary linguistic science, the problem of transcultural professional competence of students of non-linguistic universities is being developed quite thoroughly.

Notwithstanding the plethora of different educational approaches to study the competence aspect of the quality of intercultural professional training of various graduates of non-linguistic universities, there are obvious gaps, especially with regard to the problem of such training of professionals in the tourism sector. The implication of this condition in the area of language training theory and practice is the shortage of appropriately elaborated competences to guarantee the effectiveness of the cross-cultural interplay of vocational professionals in the field of business interaction.

It is problematic for students to imagine a foreign-language advertising text as a component of another culture; it is incompatible to separate the characteristics of foreign-language advertising material from native advertising texts. Students often demonstrate a gap in comprehension of the specific cultural features of advertising language in the context of comparing two cultures: their own and foreign [4].

As the longitudinal analysis shows, it was not until the 1990s that global changes in the world started to make a significant contribution to the development and design of a new educational paradigm aimed at educating not a "man for production" but a "man among men," i.e., a human being capable of functioning smoothly in a precariously multicultural world [5].

To achieve this, in turn, it is necessary to reinforce the socio-humanistic, value-based education by broadening the context of the society and culture. In the following years, the ideas generated at that time underwent a rapid development that continues to this day, entering the stage of their final methodological justification. In fact, the question of interaction and mutual influence of language and culture emerged as the crucial issue for reconsideration concerning the teaching methods of foreign and second languages generally, and of foreign language teaching in non-linguistic universities in particular.

In the methodology of teaching foreign languages there are various linguo-didactic concepts that define the problem of inseparable learning a foreign language and culture as dominant. Currently, the idea is widespread, according to which students should have the ability to participate in intercultural communication. It is this idea that forms the basis of the inter-cultural approach.

The main meaning of this idea is that the participants of intercultural communication, using their cultural and linguistic experience, their national and cultural traditions, customs, habits, trying to take into account other traditions, customs, norms of behavior, while being aware of the fact of their "otherness". It should be emphasized that such awareness occurs only as a result of comparing their own and other perceptions, norms and notions of the surrounding reality.

The transcultural approach aims to offer guidelines to the foreign language learning process so as to define cultural values, prejudices and ethnic xeno-types, and to enhance the efficiency of intercultural communication by acquiring the effects of tolerance,

acceptance, adaptation and integration, effectively addressing the insecurity and fear that typically characterize communicators in the presence of intercultural barriers [2].

Thus, taking an intercultural approach is predicated on examining the way in which the characteristics of native speakers of various cultures, identified in intercultural and socio-cultural studies, affect the interaction of individuals as transmitters of these cultures. It should be noted that the dynamics of development of intercultural direction in linguo-didactics is quite natural, it is due to increased intercultural and international relations of modern professionals in all areas of their professional activities.

The university foreign language course has a professional focus, consequently its functions are to be defined mainly by the particularities of socio-com-municative activity in cross-cultural interaction settings on professional life. Concerning entrepreneurial culture, it is essential that intercultural differences and cultural similarities are taken into account in selecting the communication style, structure and methods of communication in situations of intercultural interaction in business life and, consequently, in the preparation of the prospective professionals [9]. The conclusion may be drawn that the cross-cultural approach may be regarded to be the most suitable approach in teaching foreign languages to students of non-linguistic universities.

Comparison and analysis of the features of cross-cultural speakers, a dominant feature of the intercultural approach, becomes particularly important when teaching non-linguistic learners, since business interactions with colleagues from another culture and language are likely to be the subject of cross-cultural evaluation.

This substantiates the shift of priorities within the vocational language development of today's professionals: that of language and another culture to the image of a dialogue of cultures, a dialogue of professional worldviews. In other words, intercultural competence itself requires to be seen as an integral part of the professional development of the language and communication competence. In other words, intercul-tural competence should be seen as the final objective of teaching a foreign language at a non-linguistic higher education institution.

It is clear that a foreign language learning objective of establishing intercultural competence is capable of reflecting the trends of our time. This is explained by the fact that a person who has mastered intercultural competence - interculturally oriented person can, firstly, cross any "borders" and act as a mediator between two or more cultural identities. The interculturally competent person possesses a number of the following abilities:

• -    the capacity to cultivate and enhance one's own cultural awareness, which implies, firstly, an understanding of the culture of one's own country and, secondly, an appreciation of a foreign culture, yet viewed by a representative of that culture;

• -    the capacity of interacting both "own" and "foreign" culture, namely by being aware of the possible affinities or diversities to which cultures may be subjected. In turn, these are preconditions for cultivating the desire and skill of considering and acknowledging other cultures' distinctive features, without neglecting one's own identity;

• -    being able to possess the ability of some specific communicative skills. In this way, the ability makes it possible to openly address all the potential issues associated with intercultural communication;

• -    empathy. Empathy is the link between the communicative competence, awareness of the environment and an adequate emotional perception of the reality in order to reach an internal understanding among the members of the other respective linguistic cultures [7].

Proceeding from the above, it can be concluded that cross-cultural competence in the field of professional communication of graduates of non-linguistic universities is the ability to formulate multicultural communication with another representative of another culture - in the partner's language, while the implementation of such communication is carried out taking into account both the communicative and cultural particularities of all partners.

Accordingly, the student needs to develop inter-cultural competence, expressed in the ability to recognize and understand the main norms, concepts and ideas of the culture of the target language. Along with this, the fundamental development of linguistic competence (language skills) is naturally required.

Of all language skills (including knowledge of the subject language) as a component of intercultural competence, non-linguistic, professional skills in both the mother tongue and the foreign language are responsible.

It is this perspective of analyzing the intercul-tural approach that is especially important in a nonlanguage university setting. At the same time, intercul-tural orientation requires significant changes from the established system of teaching foreign languages. The need to constantly expand the vocabulary of students is limited by the framework of the professional field and the clichéd features of the advertising culture of the country of the studied language.

Based on the above, to form the ability and readiness for intercultural communication – special importance should be given to the development of the ability to work with written texts on the direction of training. As the material for a comparative intercultural analysis, the authors of the article propose to consider an advertising text. The choice is conditioned by the peculiarities of the advertising text. Namely:

• -    a special communicative task,

• -    a special structural and compositional organization of the text material,

• -    the presence of extra-linguistic components,

• -    a special choice of linguistic means.

It is this characteristic of the advertising text that determines the attraction to the analysis of not only the textual features of advertising, associated with the fixation of information, but also the discursive features that set from the outside the nature and quality of presentation of this information.

It is well known that discourse is a complex communicative phenomenon that contains, in addition to the text, also extra-linguistic factors that condition it. In other words, discourse has not only the linguistic parameters inherent in the text, but also extralinguistic characteristics. These include the participants of communication, their communicative purposes and intentions, pragmatic attitudes, social roles, background knowledge, knowledge about the interlocutor, etc.

Knowledge of these parameters allows us to adequately perceive and interpret the social, psychological and cultural specificity of "out-of-text" reality contained in the texts [6].

In other words, an understanding of discourse aims to make sense of the way in which texts reflect reality or, more precisely, construct its content, and it is from the perspective of this question that both what is said and why it is said are examined.

From the perspective of extra-linguistic discourse, the printed advertising text has a number of specific features:

• -    determination of the purpose of the ad text from the outside (from the advertiser's side),

• -    mandatory nature of the rules of advertising communication,

• -    mostly positive presentation of the promoted product,

• -    unfavorable conditions for the acceptance of advertising messages,

• -    mediocre level of attention, high distrust from the audience

• -    insignificant interest of the advertising recipient.

• -    intermediate communication level

• -    absence of feedback from the beneficiary

of the promotion

• -    the hypothetical presence of the recipient.

The listed parameters of advertising discourse are universal for the advertising market of any country. At the same time, they have a number of noticeable differences due to the peculiarities of social development in a particular linguistic and cultural area. Consequently, some features of advertising discourse will manifest themselves differently in the two cultures under comparison.

Extralinguistic parameters of advertising discourse determine the special characteristics of the linguistic (grammatical structures, lexemes, stylistic techniques) and paralinguistic (non-verbal) components of the advertising text.

The combination of linguistic, extralinguistic and paralinguistic components of an advertising text suggests that an advertising text can serve as a teaching material for implementing the intercultural approach [10]. The focus of the teaching process on the formation of intercultural professional communicative competence, corresponding to this approach, makes the teacher focus not only and not so much on the

knowledge that can be presented in a foreign-language advertising text and mastered by students. The attention is concentrated on the special qualities, abilities of the student's personality, ensuring the efficiency of his/her participation in the intercultural professional dialogue.

Texts serve the formation of these abilities, act as a means of their formation, because they model and display two interacting professional world pictures. Thus, assimilation (memorization) of the information contained in these texts is not an end in itself for the learning process, but only a tool for the formation and development of intercultural professional communicative competence. Thus, we can conclude that the advertising text has an educational function.

The educational function of an advertising text as a means of forming intercultural professional competence consists in acquisition and enrichment of knowledge of a student. From the position of intercul-tural approach this enrichment is connected with appropriation of knowledge about own and other (other linguo-society) professional cultures, with deeper mastering of native culture at the expense of contact with another's and interaction with it.

At the same time, the acquired elements of a different professional picture of the world supplement the previously formed picture of the world of such a professional. As a result, he/she develops a holistic integrated system of knowledge accepted in his/her own and other professional cultures.

Studying the advertising text as an educational phenomenon, as a means of preparing non-linguistic students for intercultural communication, we can conclude that other functions of the advertising text are subordinated to the educational function [4]. To them we refer communicative, adaptive functions and inter-cultural comparison function.

The communicative function of an advertising text is performed in perception and comprehension, and on the other hand, by mediating tasks related to information in an advertising text in a foreign language by a representative of the included foreign language culture. With the help of texts saturated with special information, students will learn to analyze the information they have received, taking into account the already existing knowledge of native and foreign-language advertising cultures.

The function of intercultural comparison of advertising texts allows students to compare the facts of foreign professional culture with the facts of their native culture, to comprehend them on this basis, as well as to reconsider their own professional experience from a new perspective.

Cross-cultural comparison of advertising text allows students to compare facts from a foreign professional culture with people from their own culture, to compare and on this basis understand and grasp their own experience from a new perspective in order to rethink it. The process of intercultural communication does not always run smoothly and usually occurs due to failures characterized by cultural differences. In this context, the adaptation function of an advertising text, which is closely linked to the previous two functions, is still not high enough to be evaluated. This material will help future experts to exclude the possibility of "cultural shock" due to the distinctiveness between advertising texts in native and foreign languages, as well as to better accept linguistic, para- and non-verbal differences in advertising texts of both cultures.

Having established the functional features of advertising texts as a means of forming intercultural professional communication, it is necessary to determine the order and features of the selection and organization of advertising texts as a means of implementing the intercultural approach.

First of all, it makes sense to cite the principles of selecting promotional material. They coincide with the general principles of selecting written authentic materials generally accepted for linguistic science:

• -    the principle of the professional value of an advertising text;

• -    the principle of authenticity of the advertising text;

• -    the principle of heterogeneity or the principle of representativeness of the advertising text, which consists in the selection for training purposes of the most common types of advertising texts (ads, booklets, brochures, inserts, memos, leaflets, notes, articles, advice); in its nature it corresponds to the principle;

• -    thematic principle;

• -    the principle of accessibility.

In accordance with the principle of professional value, it is necessary to select advertising materials in foreign and Russian languages that contain information that is important from the position of preparing the student for intercultural professional communication. Such information should reflect the features of the advertising text (compositional, verbal/nonverbal) characteristic of the native and other professional language societies, conditioned by their cultural traditions, norms, values, beliefs [4]. The principle of authenticity allows us to select advertising texts in the native and foreign languages, keeping in mind the authenticity of both the formal and substantive sides of the advertising text.

The systemic organization of texts has some differences from the system generally accepted in lin-guo-didactics:

• 1.    The principle of thematic uniformity. According to this principle, advertising texts in two languages with common thematic boundaries are grouped into a system.

• 2.    The principle of thematic differentiation. It implies bringing into the system of promotional materials in two languages, the subject matter of which depends on the characteristics of a particular national culture. Thematic boundaries are determined taking into account the requirements of the foreign language course program, programs of special disciplines and cultural features of the country of the studied language.

• 3.    The principle of contradiction allows us to organize advertising texts into a system in two languages with similar thematic fields, but differing in their compositional, verbal and non-verbal characteristics.

When working with a text the main necessary skill is reading. It should be noted that in the process of reading, the main purpose of which is to extract, comprehend, understand and process the professionally significant information contained in a foreign language text, the reader, interpreting the text, commenting and evaluating it in accordance with his associations, agreeing or disagreeing with the course of thought set out in it, adds his knowledge, joins the achievements of historical development of humanity and can generate his text [6].

Thus, it is logical to assume that the reader can penetrate into the meaning, the meaning of the author of the text allows the interpretation of the text. Consequently, the greatest value in terms of working with advertising texts is exploratory reading. It is this reading by its characteristic that implies achieving understanding of a foreign-language text, accompanied by the activity of interpreting what has been read.

Exploratory reading allows the student, through explaining and interpreting verbal and nonverbal means used in foreign-language advertising texts, to understand the information contained in them as accurately as possible, to grasp all available details, to think critically about the cultural information extracted, to relate its meaning to phenomena in their native professional culture and to come to certain conclusions about it.

When reading advertising texts, the following types of cross-cultural interpretation can be distinguished:

• 1)    foreign-cultural interpretation – interpreting an advertising text in a target language;

• 2)    within the framework of cultural interpretation – interpretation of an advertising text in Russian;

• 3)    intercultural translation – translating an advertising text into two languages.

External cultural interpretation provides students with the specific information on the concepts of advertising products belonging to another language, society, typical standards and rules in addition to advertising texts in the target language, which can be referred to when reading for study. Intercultural translation provides information about the concepts, perceptions, norms and rules of the professional field of the mother tongue. The cross-cultural interpretation presents an overview both of the concepts, rules and production standards of native language advertising with those of other professional language cultures that are specific to the production of native language advertising.

Such a comprehensive intercultural interpretation will allow readers to penetrate deeply into the professional culture of another linguo-society, identify its features, compare them with the phenomena in the native culture, evaluate and appropriate them. Taken together, all this will lead to the formation of the necessary level of intercultural professional competence.

Thus, we can conclude that students of non-lan-guage universities in the field of tourism should be taught through exploratory reading such activity as in-tercultural interpretation of foreign-language advertising texts. The knowledge and skills they will gain in this process can be used in practice - in the process of creating advertising texts in their native language.

This process involves the presentation of three stages of working with advertising texts, each of which includes certain techniques and exercises.

As such stages we single out:

• 1)    tentative,

• 2)    analytical,

• 3)    practical.

The first orientation stage lays the groundwork for further interaction with advertising products by making students more aware of national and socially specific advertising texts and their characteristics. In the process of reading, students encounter and learn to interpret advertising texts for the first time, focusing their attention on language norms, inversion constructions, and stylistic techniques characteristic of the linguistic advertising culture of the target language. It helps to strengthen students' familiarity with the characteristics of advertising texts from two professional linguo-cultures; increase students' proficiency in studying the professional worldview of the other linguo-so-ciety and their own professional worldview; promote their professional and analytical thinking on advertising texts in two professional linguo-cultures.

The knowledge that the student assimilates at this stage should be highlighted:

• -    Knowledge of the structural foundations and design composition of advertising texts of the two cultures;

• -    Understanding of lexical combinations and grammatical constructions and rules, typical for advertising texts, differences of stylistic techniques in Russian and a foreign language;

• -    Understanding the social environment and ethnicity to determine the similarities and differences in the use of verbal and nonverbal media in advertising texts, a comparative skill in relation to the advertising culture of the two languages, mother tongue and target language;

• -    Knowing the specifics of the advertising language in two cultural languages. The goal is

achieved with the help of techniques such as debating, showing and analyzing advertising text templates, explaining the characteristics of advertising texts from an intercultural point of view [10].

The second stage of working with advertising texts is the analytical stage. At this stage students are offered to conduct a comparative analysis of the content of advertising texts in the language under study. This leads to the consolidation and development of the knowledge and skills acquired at the first stage. An indepth analysis of contextual norms contributes to a fuller understanding of the cultural specificities of advertising in a foreign language culture.

For this purpose, there is a series of exercises similar to the exercises for analyzing regular texts that students encounter during the traditional study of a foreign language. The main difference between these exercises and the traditional ones is the working material itself: advertising texts have a fixed structure, inversion constructions and a significant number of stylistic techniques. The search and comparative analysis of such constructions and techniques is a part of the interpretation of advertising texts.

The third stage of the work is the applied stage. It is of a practical nature, when students apply the acquired and proven knowledge to create their own advertising texts on a given topic. Problem and research methods are widely used here, along with independent work of students. Important at this stage is the introduction of new, complicated texts, including constructions that students have not encountered in the controlled analysis of linguistic and cultural norms. This contributes to the development of independent interpretation of advertising verbal and non-verbal means.

This technique was applied by the authors on the basis of the Russian State University of Tourism and Service and showed a certain success. As an experiment, the work with advertising texts was offered as an element of classroom lessons to future specialists in the field of tourism during the year. The result of this work was the formation of intercultural competence in students. Students showed an interest in the culture of the studied language, a deeper understanding of this culture. Inversion constructions used in advertising texts were mastered and consolidated with their subsequent application in practice, introduction in language turns. The level of students' motivation increased significantly as a consequence of working with live, real authentic material, the subsequent use of which in the professional sphere is not questioned. The level of professional competence, including comparative analysis of terms and realities of professional activity in a foreign language culture, showed a significant increase.

Thus, we can conclude that the intercultural approach and work with advertising texts can be applied to the training of non-language university students in any field. This will improve the overall level of professional competence of future graduates of the Graduate School and will be a response to the public demand for specialists capable of supporting productive international cooperation in various spheres of the economy.