Вебинар посвящен одной из важных проблем в рамках компетентностной парадигмы обучения лингвистов и переводчиков: В программе вебинара: выбор современных учебных материалов, обеспечивающих формирование всего комплекса общих и специальных компетенций; методические возможности включения политического дискурса - публичных выступлений лидеров Великобритании и США - в учебный процесс иллюстрирует спецкурс "Англоязычный политический дискурс" для студентов 4 курса факультета иностранных языков ПГСГА; материалы курса, построенного на сопоставлении британского и американского политического дискурса, позволяют решать задачи формирования целого ряда компетенций на основе анализа связи языка и культуры, специфики дискурсивных практик двух стран." Для просмотра видео нужно перейти по ссылке: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLYeiJCZDaE

1. “POLITICAL DISCOURSE AS A MEANS
OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF
LINGUISTS AND TRANSLATORS”
LEVENKOVA E.R.

2. Speeches of political leaders of the UK and the
USA are characterized by powerful teaching
potential in developing language students’
general and vocational competences. These
competences are equally vital for students
majoring in foreign languages and in translation
within the Competence-based Approach.
INTEGRATING ANGLO-AMERICAN
POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN ELT IN
TERTIARY SETTING

3. “ANGLO-AMERICAN
POLITICAL DISCOURSE”
“Anglo-American political discourse”
is the elective course for fourth-year
students of the Povolzhskaya State
Academy of Social Sciences and
Humanities which includes 20 hours of
classwork.

4. The aim of the course is to make Anglo-
American political discourse accessible to
University students of EFL, to make it
possible for them to analyze it, but also to go
further: to use it for developing students’
competences in cultural diversity of World
Englishes, for improving the quality of their
linguistic skills as well as those of textual
organization.

5. Educationists claim
that the range of
materials currently
available to the teacher
of English is wide and
varied. However,
speeches of political
leaders of English
speaking countries are
not regarded as an
important source of
linguistic materials and
cultural information.

6. DISADVANTAGES OF
USING POLITICAL
DISCOURSE IN ELT:
• politics (and especially ideology) is now
considered unfashionable;
• political discourse is thought to be too
“difficult” as it is authentic and in no
sense graded;
• political communication is irrelevant to
the “needs” of the learners.

7. BENEFITS OF INCLUDING
POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN THE
RANGE OF TEACHING
OPTIONS:
• convenient authentic materials including the issues of the
day and eternal themes;
• socio-cultural information and values of the British and
the Americans;
• real-life situations and communicatively meaningful
language contexts;
• a variety of genres and idiolects of accomplished orators;
• students’ motivation to communicate due to vital issues of
political rhetoric;
• development of linguistic skills.

8. TASKS THE TEACHER IS ABLE
TO SOLVE INTEGRATING
POLITICAL DISCOURSE INTO
ELT:
• to provide facts, themes and ideas that are socially and
ideologically significant;
• to improve cross-cultural awareness in ELT classroom in
general and cultural diversity of World Englishes in
particular;
• to widen the context of language application as a vital
component in a learner’s capacity to communicate
effectively;
• to develop language and cognitive competences of
students.

9. KEY TERMS OF THE WEBINAR AND
THE COURSE: POLITICAL
DISCOURSE AND COMPETENCE
“Political discourse” is public speaking of
professional politicians, persuasive
communication based on national
rhetorical traditions and practices
(speeches of British Prime-ministers and
American Presidents within the period of
1980-2014).

10. COMPETENCE AS THE DEFINING
CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE
TEACHING
“Linguistic competence” (N.Chomsky) vs
“communicative competence” (Hymes)
Linguistic competence means acquiring
knowledge of linguistic structure
Communicative competence is what a person
“needs to know in order to communicate
effectively in culturally significant situations.”
[Hymes 1974:75]

11. DEVELOPMENT OF GENERAL
AND SPECIFIC
COMPETENCES IN THE
ELECTIVE COURSE
General competences include:
• acquisition of socio-cultural and
cross-cultural skills that are required
for professional interaction (GC-3)
• cognitive competence (GC-7)

12. SPECIFIC COMPETENCES
INCORPORATE:
• improvement of linguistic skills as well as
understanding of different registers (SC-1)
• awareness of different moral norms and
behaviors as well as social situations and
typical scenarios of intercultural interaction
(SC-2)
• understanding of communicative, semantic
and syntactic structure of utterances and texts
(SC-4).

13. Today it’s time to meet
innovative demands and shift
the focus to cultural differences
in the World of Englishes.
These differences hamper and
complicate cross-cultural
communication. British English
and American English as two
basic varieties of World English
reflect substantial differences
in all cultural spheres and a
learner of English – a linguist or
a translator - should be aware
of them.

14. This kind of awareness, however, is not easily
achieved as culture-specific differences of the
British and the Americans can be trickily
concealed behind the idea of World Standard
English [Crystal 1995:111]. The term, in fact, stands
for a cross-cultural discourse of a specific status
which incorporates a number of Standards.

15. The widely-aired quotation by B. Shaw about
America and Britain divided by a common
language gets paradoxical development in
studies which affirm that between America
and Britain “is a Great Philosophical and
Cultural Divide, which is obscured by the
familiar lingo. Americans and Brits cherish
widely different values and aspirations, and
have developed separate habits of mind ”
[Walmsely 1999:8].

16. The study of Anglo-American
political discourse does not
only illustrate how language
and culture are linked, but also
proves that public speaking of
British and American politicians
constitutes the core of cross-
cultural communication.

17. The course, if we don’t touch upon its
theoretical aspect, has 3 main
objectives: 1) to develop cross-cultural
awareness by providing cultural
information and deepening students’
socio-cultural understanding of the
world; 2) to analyze links between
language and culture and their linguistic
manifestations; 3) to practice and
improve important language skills while
focusing on discursive units and textual
organization of speeches.

18. To achieve the objectives we
have developed a method of
inter-variant comparison of
British and American variants
of political discourse.
Parameters for the
comparison of the Anglo-
Saxon world and that of
America include basic
discourse characteristics of
references, concepts,
intertexuality and imagery.

19. A culture is regarded as broken down into
various components. In this country we
assume that these components are
linguistically represented by four categories:
a) direct references, b) imagery and
metaphors, c) associations, and d) evaluative
and emotional connotations
[Dobrosklonskaya 2000:202]. The 4
categories of cultural components in British
and American discourse are studied at two
levels in our course.

20. THE FIRST LEVEL OF INTER-
VARIANT COMPARISON OF
NATIONAL VARIANTS
The first level deals with references to the
people, places, institutions, customs and
traditions of a target community. These
references reflect a fully fledged cultural type
which political discourse faithfully reproduces
as an encyclopedia of life in the 21st century.

21. The references of the first level are
identified and analyzed in each of 4 units
of the course. The units are devoted to
inter-variant comparison of
conceptualization, intertextuality,
cognitive metaphorization and textual
organization in political communication.
The units of the book offer texts which
contain different types of direct
references.

22. The most frequently used references are
those to the places and people; that’s
why they are analyzed at the initial stage
of our work. These words constitute an
integral part of political speech making
and unmistakably point at British or
American national culture.

23. GEOGRAPHICAL
AND PROPER
NAMES IN
POLITICAL
DISCOURSE
For us, they fought and died in
places Concord and
Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe
Sanh [B.Obama, 20.01.2009];

24. .
Concord is a
symbol of
American
Revolution (1774-
1783), a place
where in 1775
first shots of war
were fired and the
first British blood
was spilled
At the battle of
Concord the
redcoats had
suffered 272
casualties, the
patriots had
suffered 93
casualties.

25. Gettysburg is another symbol, that of the
Civil War (1861-1865). In the battle of
Gettysburg (July 4, 1863) Union won a key
victory and Southern troops, though they
displayed unforgettable courage, suffered
almost 4,000 dead and 24,000 missing and
wounded.
The name of Khe Sanh stands for one of
rare victories in the Vietnam War (1969-
1975).

26. We have seen it in the
courage of passengers,
who rushed terrorists to
save others on the
ground, passengers like
an exceptional man
named Todd Beamer
[G.W.Bush, 20.09.2001].
Explaining the
unalienable rights of
men, Jefferson said, “The
God who gave us life,
gave us liberty at the
same time” [R.Reagan
08.03.1983].

27. TASKS HELPFUL
WITH THESE
MATERIALS:
categorizing references and writing
explanatory notes for them;
completing deleted references in speeches.
(name of the 1st President or the greatest
Englishman, names of the Founding
Fathers). As a rule, students are motivated
to participate in these tasks and motivation
is a key factor in successful teaching.

28. THE SECOND LEVEL OF INTER-
VARIANT COMPARISON OF
NATIONAL VARIANTS
At this level students are taught
to evaluate such nationally
relevant elements as metaphors,
nationally specific notions,
and cultural associations of words.
Thus, cultural associations of such
words as ‘Britain’, ‘nation’, ‘Europe’
are linked with positive view in the
world of British politics, for
example:
We British are as much heirs to the legacy of
European culture as any other nation. Our ancestors
– Celts, Saxons, Danes –
came from the Continent
[M.Thatcher 20.09.1988].

29. As the course develops, students
pass on to the analysis of another
cultural component – metaphors.
Discursive realizations of
metaphors in political
communication are, as a rule,
nationally specific.

30. Culture permeates political
discourse through metaphors
American civilization began its life as a branch
of the English oak [M.Thatcher 11.05.1996];
Let us remember that if this financial crisis
taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a
thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers –
in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as
one people [B.Obama 04.11.2008].

31. THE TASKS DESIGNED
FOR THIS MATERIAL ARE:
• compare linguistic units (metaphors,
similes, idioms) in texts devoted to the
same theme in British and American
national variants;
• comment on associations and
evaluative connotations of metaphors (
for example, “Path”) in two national
traditions.

32. Within the second level of comparison the
students identify the so called “national
concepts” [Karasik 2009; Maslova 2004].
These concepts, which constitute a
category of its own, are defined as markers
of nationally specific discourse.
‘British genius’, ‘Englishness’, ‘the British
way of life’;
‘American spirit’, ‘the American promise’,
“the American Dream”.

33. ANALYZING NATIONAL
CONCEPTS
The activity that works well
with concepts is comparing
their definitions. The task
enables students to identify
cultural references in the
descriptions of the national
concept, and answer the
question “What makes this
English?” or “What makes
this American?” An
illustrative example in this
case is the concept of the
American Dream: Traditionally, Americans have sought to realize the
American Dream of success, fame and wealth through
thrift and hard work [W.J.Clinton 22.01.1993].
More Americans are buying and building houses – a
central part of the American Dream. The
homeownership is now 68%, close to the highest ever
[G.W.Bush 07.01.2003].

34. Define national vision of POWER in
British political discourse. Which
metaphor sums it up?
“And the principles of my
reforms are these:
Government giving more
power to Parliament; both
government and Parliamet
giving more power to the
people...” [G.Brown,2007].
“Removing Saddam and
his sons from ower, as
with removing the
Taliban was over with
relative ease” [T.Blair,
2007].

35. Read the fragments. Define national vision of the
concept POWER represented in American political
discourse. Compare metaphors used by politicians in
the USA and in the UK.
1.“Our government has no power
except that granted by the
people”[R.Reagan,1981]; “...for the
first time in history, government was
not our master, it is our servant; it has
only power that which we the people
allow it to have” [R.Reagan, 1985].
2. «Heavenly Father, write on our hearts these words
“Use power to help people”. For we are given power
not to advance our own purposes, nor to make a great
show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just
use of power, and it is to serve peple» [G.H.Bush,
1989].

36. I’d like to conclude with the idea that
political discourse can serve as a Tool for
Building Better Communicative
Competences of language students, as a
type of discourse with practically
unlimited teaching potential. Translators
and linguists can use it to acquire cross-
cultural awareness based on two basic
varieties of World English.

37. Thank you.
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