LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES INTEGRATION INTO SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE COURSE

Abstract

This article reveals the meaning and content of the linguistic and cultural studies integration into social and political science course in the training of future politicians. The article reflects the importance of linguistic and cultural studies for the formation of language competence of students as well as skills of political communication, for understanding the characteristics of the country’s social and political issues. The interdisciplinary approach emphasises the relationship in the study of linguistic, cultural, and political agenda, characterises the interdisciplinary essence of regional studies. The critical discourse analysis (CDA) of political texts was chosen as the key methodological strategy for the efficient development of political communication and problem-solving skills. The authors propose the implementation of a special interdisciplinary course for the first-year students majoring in philology and political studies, focused on the studying the political and cultural features of a language-targeted country by means of CDA. We compared the results of students’ political communication skills development prior and post- course period and we observed the improvement according to the following criteria: perception of the vocabulary and functional language structures (by 17%); analysis of cultural and political agenda from the explicit and implicit language structures (by 23%); text annotation (by 50%); text production, distribution and target audience analysis (by 10%). Moreover, it was observed that CDA implementation facilitated the development of critical thinking skills as well as the skills of texts decoding.