Economic translation

Published: 06 August 2015

The discipline is read for first-year students of a master course (2nd semester). The total working intensiveness amounts to 108 academic hours including class work (seminars) - 30 hours, self-instruction work – 42 hours, revision before an exam – (36 hours).  ECTS equals 3. While mastering the given discipline students are to take an exam.

The main goal of the discipline is to provide students with the skills necessary to conduct both economic translation and interpretation processes in the course of intercultural communication. Apart from practical skills students acquire profound knowledge in carrying out scientific research on professional level.

While mastering the academic discipline Economic Translation students get to know the basic notions of economic translation as well as the main stages of it. What is more, students are taught to apply the received theoretical knowledge in the course of practical economic translation taking into consideration all significant nuances of contemporary translation process as it is.

Economic translation implies studying types, methods and techniques of translation process in the sphere of economy. Students are taught to be an intermediary between users of two different languages (Russian and English), whose main target is to achieve successful communication results in the field of economy. They learn to meet constantly changing demands and requirements a modern-day translator/interpreter is to correspond to. As a result, students get a good command of translation skills, techniques and methods of economic translation.

The most important issues students are to cover while studying the given discipline are: Translation Process and its Stages, Main Principles of Translation Text Building, Information Sources in the course of Economic Translation, Translation Units, Grammatical and Stylistic Aspects of Economic Translation, Means of Translation, Lexical and Grammatical Transformations in the course of Economic Translation, Theory of Equivalents and Equivalents Levels.  

Discourse

Published: 06 August 2015

A discipline "Discourse" is for first-year students (2 semester) of a master’s program. It is studied for 72 hours (2 credit units). It equals 2 ECTS. While mastering the given discipline students are to take an exam.

Course Description:

Discourse studies draws on the theories and methods of rhetoric, linguistics, cultural studies, and literary studies in investigating the operation of discourse across genres, cultural contexts, modalities, and historical moments. Students in the Discourse Studies course explore the ways in which discourses—the systems of thought and language that shape how people experience and talk about the world—are both displayed and created in actual instances of discourse.

Discourse Studies emphasizes language as a tool for communication and action in professional and social contexts. Discourse Studies takes a “multi-modal” approach, examining how written, spoken and visual modes of communication interact in workplace and academic settings, as well as in the media and social networking.The main area of interest of this master's program is first, to foster research and train experts in the development and application of theories, methods and practices related to the study of language in social communication and learning contexts; and second, to contribute to academic specialization in the various areas of application of discourse studies.

Aims:

The learning goals for this course are:

• Apply the main theories and approaches of discourse studies to the various disciplines of the humanities and social sciences.
• Analyze the units, categories, levels and other grammatical (phonological, syntactic, semantic), pragmatic, rhetorical, semiotic and stylistic structures and superstructures of the main oral, written and multimodal genres of discourse as forms of language use, communication and interaction.
• Interpret the main forms and functions of communication in society and their effects on knowledge, attitudes, ideologies, standards and public values.

Think critically about the role of discourse and communication in the (re)production of different forms of inequality and domination in contemporary society.

Business intercultural communication

Published: 06 August 2015

Business Intercultural Communication is an optional course read at master’s level taught within the course in Linguistics and Intercultural Communication.

The aim of this course is to introduce the fundamental principles and issues of intercultural communication from an interdisciplinary perspective as well as to develop perception and appreciation of different cultural perspectives and values.

Course structure:

The total working intensiveness is 72 academic hours including class work (seminars) - 16 hours, self-instruction work – 56 hours, revision before an exam – (0 hours).  ECTS equals 2. At the end of the course the students are to take a credit course test.

Course description:

The Course helps obtain a broad understanding of  business intercultural communication as a unique area that merges specific knowledge and practical skills, that are highly relevant to the business sphere and help reach a higher level of proficiency in chosen occupation.

When doing this course, the students receive knowledge and skills that will come in handy with text analysis and discourse studies.

While mastering the academic discipline Business Intercultural Communication students get to know the basic notions of ethical and moral standards accepted in a foreign culture, ways of effective intercultural everyday and professional communication.

Students also study and analyze common European framework of reference and learn to use it when creating study programs or study guides.  Besides, the students are taught to describe the way the present day language system is developing which helps them apply the acquired skills to the related spheres in a creative way.

Previous studies required:

To cover this discipline, the students are required to have knowledge and skills, obtained while studying basics of communication, pragmatic linguistics as well as the theory of intercultural communication.

Course outcomes:

On completion of the course the students will be able to

• understand how culture affects communication;
• identify barriers to effective cross cultural communication;
• improve their language speaking skills;
• understand the importance of verbal and non-verbal behaviour when communicating across cultures;
• use their communication skills to engage and interact successfully with representatives of other culture.

Learning methods: IT methods, case studies, cross cultural negotiation and dispute resolution.

Basics of Communication and Pragmatics

Published: 06 August 2015

The discipline is read for first-year students of a master course (1st semester). The total working intensiveness amounts to 72 academic hours including class work (18 lecture hours, 18 seminar hours) - 36 hours, self-instruction work – 36 hours. ECTS equals 2. While mastering the given discipline students are to take a credit.

The main goal of the discipline is to provide students with profound knowledge of Basics of Communication and Pragmatics. The discipline aims to familiarize students with the range of theories in Communication and Pragmatics, Discourse Studies. It also aims to provide practical analytical skills and methodologies for analyzing spoken, written and visual texts of different genres. It aims to cover the major areas in pragmatic theory, to introduce the latest developments in those areas, and to apply the theory to real data.This course considers how meanings are constructed in communication.

The discipline is organized so that it focuses in turn on various components that are central to communication.We focus on topics, such as referring expression and presuppositions, formal language system and the border between semantics/grammar and pragmatics.Relevant frameworks include schema theory, Grice and Relevance Theory. We also focus on speaker’s intention and description of speech acts or pragmatic acts, the interpersonal dynamics of interaction, and politeness and impoliteness theories, the application of pragmatics to cross-cultural situations.The emphasis of the course is on the application of pragmatic theory to 'real' data, and how that application affords insights into both the data and the theory.

The discipline “Basics of Communication and Pragmatics” emphasizes the integration of theory with practical methods.Hands-on practical work with texts is an important element of the course.While mastering this course students are to develop an understanding of the relationship between language and meaning on the word, sentence and utterance level; to learn essential terms of the course and be able to observe pragmatic theories about how language users achieve their goals in verbal interaction with others.

Having completed this course students will be able to apply theoretical knowledge of linguistic description, communication and pragmatics in scientific and experimental work and to carry out self-sufficient scientific research.

The most important issues students are to cover while studying the given discipline are: Intercultural Communication, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Fundamentals of Meaning, Presumptive Meanings, Speech acts, The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature, Semantic Analysis, Criticisms of Pragmatics, Deixis, and Pragmatics of written texts