Midterm on writing for April

THE FORMATION OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE FRAME OF INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS
The process of globalization has been strengthened at the end of 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. Globalization is accompanied by complicated social problems and development of informative technologies. The process has covered economical, political, cultural and international spheres as well. Globalization has left its traces in almost all aspects of modern science: sociology, culture study, politics study, linguistics, etc.

There are two aspects of globalization: 1) following general cultural values and tendency to make objects universal; 2) wide spreading integration of separate forms of social consciousness.

English as an international language in the world becomes like “lingua franca” of the world globalization epoch. Well-known English linguist D. Crystal pointed at the number of English speakers: more than 1 billion 500 million people throughout the world. Approximately a quarter of this number belongs to people whose mother tongue is English. European countries including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, etc. have been communicating with each other via English for many centuries. At the present time English became a language of international communication in the whole world except some African countries with French as a language of communication.

Today almost all international meetings, conferences, documents and contacts are conducted in English. Most of Internet resources preserve information in English. A specialist of international affairs feels embarrassed if he/she has a lack of English because it is considered the main language of globalization process. On the other hand, English, despite of having the top status in international sphere, has less its native speakers after the Chinese language, which is spoken by more than 1, 5 billion native bearers.

English which is spoken by non-native speakers suffers constant changes and simplification, adaptation to native languages and a lot of transformation. The correct literary English is spoken by insignificant number of native speakers.

The English language suffers from different changes made by non-native speakers and their culture. These changes cover the areas of phonetics (changes of pronunciation), spelling (changes in writing the words), lexis (new words and borrowings), grammar (changes in sentence structure, inversion), etc. All these changes appear in the frame of intercultural communication. So, there should be standard norms or formats for non-native speakers in order not to change the system of the English language. The vivid example of such lingual phenomenon is the great difference between British English and American English, which still goes on changing. The English language became one of the top languages of the world, which had accepted the most influences from other language speakers due to social-linguistic processes [1, p. 74]. These changes appear even in speech of native speakers of English. It should be noted that the least changes are notices in the speech of educated English people. Still, even their speech sometimes includes youth’s slang, professionalisms, jargonisms, etc. Besides, there are too many borrowings from Italian, French, German, Spanish and even Chinese. Most of the borrowings are terms and nominations of different objects and events.

Intercultural communication can be maintained on usage of both literary and non-literary words, but is the process takes place in the frame of scientific conference, political meeting, sport completion or cultural festival; literary words are prevailing, of course. If the communication is actualized between representatives of two different lingual cultures in the frame of everyday life, the words of non-literary lexis can be used [2, p. 67].

Today intercultural communication interests linguists because of diversity of slangs, social dialects, neologisms which leave their trace in language system. One cannot stop it – it is a social process.

We should not forget that English in its turn also influences much on other world languages. The first reason of this process is technological revolution. When new objects appear, they demand nomination, i.e. name. As most of such nominations are created in English, so they are accepted into other languages in English too.

What can be done in order to save standard language?

The people who are in the center of public attention should use a language carefully;

The information presented in mass media should be thoroughly checked and corrected, filtered from jargonisms and slangs;

There should be consultative service of the English language;

Classical literature should be popular among people;

Libraries should be enriched by new dictionaries and books on speech culture;

New edition of rules of orthography and punctuation should be printed and distributed.

The formation of cultural competence depends, first of all, on education got in school, college and university or institute. The communication on foreign language is the aim of philological education. Besides it, reading of literary works and newspaper material is helpful in the process of getting cultural competence. The period of studying in institute plays an important role: lectures are taught by professional professors, lessons are given by educated teachers with high level of culture. The language used in this academic process is standard and literary. It means that students use the norms of language and far from deviations. Still we cannot say that teaching foreign language should be done on the material of literary texts, which were written in the last or 19th centuries. Reading just widens a person’s outlook and background knowledge, enriches vocabulary and gives much information about that epoch, way of life and culture. It gives chance not only to estimate the foreign culture but the native one too. That is why teaching foreign languages is directly connected with teaching the literature of the language taught.

One of another factor, which forms cultural competence and good speech, is the language heard from TV and radio or read from newspapers and magazines. One of the recommended TV channels is BBC, because it demonstrates mostly grammatically corrected and accurate speech of political men and statesmen. Such listening will serve as audio material and fulfil double function: improve listening learners’ skills and enrich their speech with speech formulas and effective expressions.

For training competent interpreters there should be organized special courses or seminars, which will define strict rules for conducting effective intercultural communication on high level of etiquette.

The most important factor of cultural competence is the person’s general culture and upbringing. General culture works as a filter for streams of information coming up from Internet and everywhere. People are not born with high level of culture and ethics, but they may become such people if they learn how to be.

A human’s upbringing directly relates to his/her family surrounding. Educated people are therefore estimated since ancient times: their speech, outlook, ethics and behavior are on higher level in comparison with uneducated people. Most of children, fostered in decent and mentally rich families, have correct speech and ethically adequate behavior. Not less important is social environment of a person. If he/she works and communicates with educated, intelligent and decent people, his/her speech acquires grammatical accuracy.

So, all these points are necessary in formation of intercultural communication. Analyzing various points of view upon this statement, we came to conclusion that intercultural communication is an ability to communicate in a foreign language being aware of differences in cultures and stereotypes of thinking. Intercultural communication leads to comprehending native culture and introducing foreign traditions and cultural peculiarities. This process enriches lexical stock and improves pronunciation and grammar.

The list of used literature:

1. Вежбицкая А. Язык. Культура. Познание. – Москва: Академия, 1997. – 416 с.

2. Красных В.В. Этнопсихолингвистика и лингвокультурология: курс лекций. – Москва: ИТДГК Гнозис, 2002. – 284 с.