Russia in Russian Language Textbooks for Americans: Lexical Aspect

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the lexis of textbooks of Russian as a foreign language, created by American authors for American students. This lexis is potentially able to participate in creating the image of Russia. Using the methods of continuous sampling, contextual and quantitative analysis, the author of the article examines the vocabulary (lexis) used by the authors of the textbooks to describe the leisure of Russians, their food and meal times to analyze its potential participation in shaping the image of our country in American students. The article shows how at the level of a textbook of Russian as a foreign language a stereotypical image of our country is created in the United States, the image built on stable clichéd ideas about Russia: after analyzing the vocabulary of 50 Russian language textbooks created in the United States from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, the most frequent lexemes were identified, such as «vodka», «beer», «tea», «shchi», «borscht», «caviar», «samovar», «drink vodka».