The image of Russia in Russian language textbooks

Abstract

The article presents a study of the relationship between the language and the genre of speech as different types of communication organization which, however, have a common communicative nature. The research hypothesis is that the language offers options for the verbal embodiment of the image of Russia, but the genre (textbook) selects from the options the one that corresponds to the type of communication between the authors of the textbook (addressers) and the students (addressees). The research is based on the subject vocabulary, which has been extracted from didactic text materials of the analyzed Russian language textbooks and has been organized into lexico-semantic groups for more meaningful analysis. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the nouns from the texts has shown that in the Russian language textbook for public Russian schools texts selected for its didactic material reflect the image of the country, created by the authors of works from the «golden» fund of Russian literature. These works highlight the Russian cultural constants which play the role of moral tuning fork in the spiritual upbringing of a person. The textbook of Russian as a foreign language demonstrates a vulgar and pragmatic view on the image of Russia. Russia is represented as a consumerist society. Moreover, such a view reflects the intentions of disparagement of the country which is represented by the authors in those texts. 

Keywords

• russian language textbooks
• the image of russia
• russian cultural constants
• consumerist society