Anglicisms - the elements of language communication of the russian students of technical universities

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Anglicisms - the elements of language communication of the rusSian students of technical universities

Tsulaya Oleg L., Abrakov Sergey L., MARSTU (MADI),

Abstract

The degree of prevalence of the English borrowings is an indicator of adaptation of the Russian students to many social and economic transformations. It is an indicator of students' reaction to a “cultural trauma” caused both by destructive and constructive changes. That' why, the peculiarities of student's language cultures are able to exert a creative influence on the virtues of the young people, but the content and the form of communication intentionality have a contradictory character. It is being observed, that Anglicisms for students initially have some certain functions, but they try to use every unit for their different communicative forms as well as for the personal interactions. The students themselves choose virtually the language as “a verbal behavior”.

Keywords: Borrowings, sociocultural challenges, conformist, escapism, cultural trauma.

Introduction

This report was conducted in the form of socio- linguistic survey on the results of questionnaire of MADI students (intramural education). It was done in accordance with the tasks of educational and methodological programs and was intended to study the quality of educational process. Firstly, we have to note, that the contemporary higher education in Russia has the following trends: the strengthening of the relationship of the higher school with the vested interests, the life-long education, diversification and democratization, crossimpact of education and academia, internationalization, humanization and humanitarization of technologies. Besides, the tasks of sociolinguistics as a study of language are shaped by social factors.

Therefore, some new sociocultural Russian youths' challenges demand the personality-centered training, individualization of the student's learning and work, as well as the introduction to IT professional foreign-language communications requirements. In this sense it is actual, for students, that the need of modern engineer, the graduate of MADI, isn't only to communicate in English language, but has to make it the working one for his/her profession. This need is consequently governed above all by the professional (engineering and educational) tasks. Though, “on one hand, the analysis of the current state of foreign language teaching in the technical universities of Russia reveals that the engineering education faces a contradiction between the diversification of engineers demand in foreign language during their professional activity.

On the other hand, there is a unified approach to foreign language teaching”. [1]. That's why, the task of our sociolinguistic questionnaire, conducted at 10.05.2017, on a random basis of some 150 MADI respondents, implies the need to show both the cultural constituent of the students' Russian language, as well as the degree of prevalence of Anglicisms using at the following faculties of the University - “Logistics”, “Management”, “Road Construction”, “Traffic Movement”, “Design-Mechanical”, “Motor-Transport” and “Automobile Service”.

Methodology

It is worthwhile saying that the term “socio-linguistics” was first introduced in 1952, by the American sociolinguist H. Curry, who pointed out the inherent relation of sociological and linguistic research categories. There is a well known fact, in the history of Russian Federation, that at 1986 (during the president M. Gorbachov's time), there took place a great Linguistic Turn of the English language learning culture in Russia, which brought to all nations of the former USSR, a lot of English language learning possibilities.

Everybody could train foreign languages at that time, despite their age, professional skills, religious beliefs, general attitudes to languages, mental abilities and so on. In this respect, we've tried to state and explain some sociopolitical, economic, cultural and civil changes of the Russian society, but, at the same time, we've noticed the preservation of some steady, old choices of the students' preferences, left at that time. So, the questionnaire and discussions carried afterwards have showed a great interest of young students' category, especially at the age between 18-20 to the English language learning, and in hardly smaller degrees for the students of 21-23 years age. Besides, the purpose of questionnaire also was to prove not only the student's knowledge of Anglicisms from 2007 sociolinguistic questionnaire, but we expected also the real increasing in the number of new terminology-Anglicisms from 2017.

Anyway, the results of questionnaire showed the right way of research chosen by us. It confirmed the importance of so- ciolinguistic factor in the foreign languages learning process and gave us a possibility to observe a crucial trend of the English language to MADI students, with the support of media spheres of the USA and other countries. But, since we were not only interested in the above results of students' questioning, some attempts also were made to identify what was common in the causes of rooting, spreading, strengthening and the wide use of Anglicisms by students afterwards in Russian language. Here is a list of Anglicisms from 2007.

Now, for the comparison, we offer you 22 new terms-Anglicisms, identified during the last questionnaire of 2017. These ones, like the words from the previous list, have a distinctive etiology, intended the purpose and use, and belong to:

- professional terms: твитить - tweet - to twit; гуглить - google - to google; постить - post - to post; конектить, соединять - to connect; скринить - screen

- to screen; юзить - to use, use; форсить, заставлять - to force, force; чекиться, проверять - check - to check in; вместе, оставаться на ночлег - to camp; фиксить, ремонтировать - to fix; миксить, размешивать - to mix;

- the words of interpersonal discourse: тверкать - to twirl “fifth point” - to twerk; кэмпить - to camp; без- дить, отмечать день рождения - a birthday party;

- social dimension categories: траблить, приводить к проблемам - to trouble; лайкать, нравится - like - to like; фаниться, веселиться - to fun; хейтить, ненавидеть - to hate; юзить, использовать - to use;

- leisure activities of the youth: таймить, обозначать время - to time; хайпить, обманывать, вымогать, ширнуться - to hipe; мансовать, уворачиваться

- to manse; гоу, идти, двигаться - to go;

Results

We've found a serious increasing of number of new Anglicisms in the language of MADI students. The results of questionnaire confirmed our anticipation - that the use of Anglicisms culture of the young people that are responsible for deviation from the former cultural values and subsequently are correspond to the level of student's socialization, are certain language phenomena of all the positive and negative changes of the youth behavioral models. So, from the sociological point of view, the results have showed the comparative affinity of students' preferences from families with high and low incomes. But, the students from the average incomes' families convinced the stable answers of almost 85%, advancing all the variants, preferred by the rest of them. And, their relations to English borrowings and associations, connected with their distribution, have adequately reflected to student's life psychology and confirmed the correlation of social signs with the language preferences. Actually, they got a positive concern to the English language, which made their answers totally 45%. They use actively (about 40%) the borrowing English words for everyday activities. Despite of all that, the relation to English borrowing words for some students remains ambiguous, because, of a group, which hasn't reflected as it was expected - just 24, 5%. The other group marked, their general culture's decrease, down to 38, 3%, and the third has transformed all borrowings into an analogue of an abuse obscene.

Table 1. Anglicisms.

All these changes in the types of MADI student behavior in Russian society showed, that with some already known “conformist” and “innovative” types of the youth there emerged the new ones: the ritualized type (rejection of the traditional goals and values of young people and the promotion of new ones), isolationist type (escapism - the rejection of previous social purposes and means) and rebellious ones, (opposing to the old and supporting new ideals and norms of behavior of young people). Besides, a questionnaire showed that MADI students are sensitive to various socio-economic transformations, as far as the English language has extended boundaries of the world of new sensations. In reality, they began to perceive some certain verbal structures, synonymous with their certain objects.

They deal with them in everyday life and with the same intentionality, but the content and form of Anglicisms very often can have a contradictory (ambivalent) relation to new value orientations. Thus, we've noted the students' reaction to “cultural trauma” under the influence of both destructive and constructive changes of the entire Russian society. In this sense, the attitude towards a foreign language, as well as the various associations, connected with the spread of English borrowings, adequately reflected the psychology of our students' lives and confirmed the correlation of social characteristics with their language preferences. The borrowings used by MADI students in their speech are divided as follows: often - 40%, always - 20%, rarely - 35% and never - from 3% > to 10%.

Besides, we've seen that the percentage of MADI students during the 2017 questionnaire, believe that it's necessary to master different languages - 65%; that it's necessary to have at least a skill to command a language 53% and those, who try to keep up national traditions 42%. But, in general, they are convinced that the integrity of their native language must be fought further on and it should be taken more effective measures to preserve the integrity of the Russian language.

Finally, the remaining part of the students answered that the main reason is in borrowings from other languages - 35%. But, there is a belief that the values, on one hand, and the English language, on the other, were considered by MADI students as of the same importance - the value criteria became subject matter and the language, a form of its existence. Then, there were some values of importance and preferences of students presented in the questionnaire in a decreasing order, namely: health, family, communicability, integrity and self-independence - 32%. Well-being - 65%, intellect, kindness, good job, humor and self-confidence, almost - 38%. According to the results of the questionnaire, we also noted that students consider borrowings to be highly important. As it appeared, they discriminate the words of different etiologies and undertake particular attempts to determine the interrelations and the degree of significance of Anglicisms in Russian language. These new characteristics of Anglicisms, Americanisms, dialectics, professionalisms, Argo, etc., are considered by them from the point of view of the formation and development of the linguistic culture of young students of MADI.

Furthermore, we noted that all new linguistic units associated with billingvism and diglossia phenomena used in the host country language. We observed that Anglicisms initially have had certain functions and students are trying to use each of them for different communicative and personal interactions. In other words, they virtually choose the language and this process of using of various communication forms, later called as the “verbal behavior”. In this respect we believe that another task of the sociolinguistic research should be carried out not only for the analysis of influence of different social developments, but the study of the role of language in the social environment.

We think that generally such processes just contribute the functioning of any society, because the dynamics of environmental parameters of educational systems results in changing of values and goals of youth. These factors eventually evolve into social regulation of mutual influence and interdependence. And regardless to the age, gender, religion, occupation, level of education, knowledge of foreign languages and academic status, students react to the transformation of the society in the absolutely different way. Together with that, we can say that the language socialization of Russian students in a group subculture is not just a passive process within the learning, but is the major influence on its environment as a whole. Actually, when people play roles, the role making itself conformed by others' expectations. This social approach is highly active and selective among students, being as evident as the learning of the roles by themselves. So, in this role making, the individuals construct, interpret and uniquely express their roles, especially when the situations are defined as the real ones.

Initially, we were assured that the realities themselves are the social products, which were created by the human being itself. So, consequently, from all this, namely from the self, mind, society and people's culture, it's emerged from and is dependent on the symbolic interactions. We think that being a major sociological perspective, language places the emphasis on the micro-scale social interaction, which is particularly important in subfields, such as the urban sociology and the social psychology. It was also proved, that people themselves create the meaning during their social interaction to present and construct their self or “identity” and finally, to define the situations of co-presence with different people. One of the perspective's central ideas in our opinion is that people act as they do always, because they define these situations, just because they exist in their life. That's why, the material factor for MADI students becomes a stimulating one for the education receiving, as well as the traced pragmatism, convinced us in their aspiration to achieve not only the material success, but a high social status, particularly among 18-23 years old. They also marked the health, as the first factor of their stability (from 62% to 69%); good and interesting work (24, 4%). So, this is the way, students solve the problems caused by a traumatic situation of the transformed society, according to the chosen life priorities and in particular, by money earning.

In this respect, it should be taken into account a new linguistic aspect of globalization, despite the obvious benefits of the ongoing process, the all-round use of English, which causes a natural wish to “universal” - the mutual understanding, which in its turn leads to the spread of English as a “second native language”. But considering it generally, when we have to study a foreign language in the course of life, in our mind is escalated another problem, as far as the English native speakers will find themselves in a favorable position under the conditions of globalization - i.e. they don't need to learn any other language in advance. Anyway, for the sake of justice, it should be recalled that during the Cold War, a member of the French Parliament, Mr. Toulon, managed to convince the French leaders and all the French people entirely that they shouldn't introduce and use Anglicisms, since the French language is richer and much more expressive than the English one. And, this example of the replacement of Anglicisms for the national equivalents was picked up and developed quite successfully in Israel, Hungary and Japan.

english borrowing socialization culture

Conclusions

The questionnaire findings confirmed that MADI students tend to minimize the risk of their social environment i.e. they are looking out for fundamental values, but not for the short-term factors. Ultimately, when doing something, they try not to avoid risk as to optimize it depending on the situations at hand. We emphasized that the group identity of our students as a social stratum is a specific socio-psychological process which differs from simple labeling of a social category. This process carries a combination of the community values. These values act as a cultural code, as an indicator, which provides the insight to realize a success of cultural identity of the group in so far; whether there is the strengthening or dissolution of group self-awareness of students.

Generally, we should say, that this question was brought up by the present-day linguistic realities of the Russian language culture, characterized by the transition from mono-cultural to polystylistic trend, which means, that a trend has got a fully-pledged character, reflecting the changes of the values of Russian students. In other words, our young persons should be comprehensively learned as a social stratum with their own values, social and cultural dynamism. Therefore, it is believed that a complete pattern of the situation of the youth language could be obtained only by combination of different methodological outlooks, which could make it possible to understand how this process influences (among other things) to develop a new social reality [2].

Obviously, they manage to retain the role of an agent carrier as a unique, inherent culture (subculture). For these reasons a group of self-organized young people wants to resist any forms of mounted linguistic escalation and strengthen their family ties, participate in informal unions and youth movements and various kinds of “get-togethers” is evident. We also found that the general structure of valuable orientations of different age students keep them for a steady orientation to get a prestigious knowledge and the professionalism. Consequently, if we correlate these vital plans of students with their vital strategy, we'd notice an obvious tendency of their orientation to success in life, i.e., the managing of their own business or search for a highly paid work, becoming the leading strategy of the Russian youth on a labor market. It's also obvious, that quality of education analysis reveals the humanization and humanitarization of education depended upon ability to overcome the “cultural shock”, interpreted as the aggregate of problem of identification, the social integration and “reform and modernization” shock. We think that the study of foreign languages, as well as the analysis of borrowings, is directly connected with these processes [3].

It could be considered also, that the exchange of cultural achievements, the information and area of the youth formation as a subject of public reproduction grows out from individual continuous and of group self-coverage of a society, which makes the communicative basis easier for the youth social integration. But the instability of their social status inherent in the becoming subject, acts as the objective basis of risk, i.e. self-organizing becomes the unique mechanism of social regulation. We point out those serious inconsistencies in the system of market relations in the Russian Federation, becoming now the main factors of aggravating the potential conflict among students. For the above reasons, the students are highly discontented with the challenging problems of employment and vocational adjustment, aggravated by the uncertain labor market and the extremely low status of graduates, since the realization of occupational status positions of the young people is associated with numerous risks [4].

But, the long-term creative linguistic experience of MADI students is the European quality, which brings a tangible effect; the reliability of expertise, which provides the benefits in any socioeconomic transformations of society.

To sum up, we should say, that some efforts must be stepped to forge and defuse the tensions, experienced by the Russian youth while moving towards the spread of foreign language skills, to overcome not just the crisis of Russian system of education in society or “the society of partnership” (by G. Crozier). We would add, that the students' youth as the social stratum, with their own valuable orientations and sociocultural language dynamics represent the objects, which should be investigated by more sophisticated research means and efforts, namely, with various methodological prospects to give us a full picture of the sociocultural event in a Moscow student's youth language and to return its positive influence to the construction of social reality.

References

1. Polyakova T.Y., “Diversification of continuous professional training in a foreign language in Engineering education”, monograph / M.: MARSTU, 2010. - pp. 316-321.

2. Weinreich U., “Empirical foundations of a theory of the linguistic change”, 1968. pp. 32-36.

3. Zubok Y.A., “The problem of risk in the sociology of youth”. M.: 2003. pp. 31-36.

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