Publications

Online customer reviews, being an essential factor that determines success or failure in business, namely, in the tourism industry, demand close attention since the investigation of this type of discourse might bear some implications both for language specialists and for hotel managers. This paper is a quantitative and qualitative study of evaluation devices occurring in the corpus of hotel reviews from Booking.com.  The analysis is based on the methods associated with corpus linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday 1994; Eggins 2004), specifically, the Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005) which is applied to a new type of discourse, the discourse of hotel ratings. The study focuses on the categories of Attitude, Graduation and Engagement suggested by Martin and White and investigates inscribed and invoked evaluation. In order to adapt the Attitude dimensions to the corpus under study, new subcategories were created, contributing to theorising evaluation. The practical result of the study is a list of evaluation devices employed in hotel reviews which might be useful for further corpus analyses and for designing systems for automated analysis of customer evaluation. Since online customer reviews are commonly used by hotels as a benchmark of their guests’ satisfaction and a valuable information source of features and services that need to be improved, this study is also likely make an important contribution to the industry.

The chapter aims to investigate the creation of specialised knowledge in different disciplinary contexts, focusing on the interplay between the knowledge of individuals and knowledge as a social phenomenon. Central in the current study is the role of tacit knowledge and its creation when developing disciplinary knowledge. The basics are Polanyi’s (1958, Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. London, Routledge; 1966, The tacit dimension. London, Routledge) idea of personal and tacit knowledge, Nonaka’s (1994, Organization Science 5:14–37) model of knowledge creation cycle, Gollner’s (2006, The anatomy of knowledge. Establishing a useful definition of knowledge and laying out the ways it makes sense to speak of Knowledge management as a practice. Ottawa, Canada) conception of the knowledge dynamic and Aristotelian typology of knowledge (Aristotle 1983, Nikomakhova etika [Nicomachean Ethics]. Sochineniya: v 4-kh t. [Works in 4 vols. Vol. 4]. Moscow, Mysl Publ.; pp. 53–293).

In this chapter, we contribute to the discussion by bringing a cognitive linguistic approach to investigating tacit knowledge in different disciplinary contexts, that is, conceptions and attitudes of university students majoring in Software Engineering, Business Informatics, Economics, Management and Law. The main research findings corroborate the earlier findings obtained in the studies that have examined tacit knowledge within the framework of organisational knowledge creation and cognitive metaphor studies. The results reported here confirm the hypothesis that critical metaphor analysis might allow for (re)construction of knowledge creation in different disciplinary contexts.

Critical metaphor analysis allows us to approach learners’ conceptualisation by analysing metaphors by source domain in the narratives written by Russian EFL learners and non-metaphorical language from the corpus of educational programmes through the procedures of identification, interpretation and explanation. The overall analysis enables us to ascertain the extent to which metaphors are accountable for constructing relations of social domination (ideology) and reveal the convergence and divergence of knowledge creation in the groups of students of different major disciplines.

The chapter is structured as follows: first, it overviews knowledge creation studies; second, it gives the account of employing critical metaphor analysis to approach learners’ conceptualisation. This is followed by analysing metaphors by source domain in the narratives written by Russian EFL learners and non-metaphorical language from the corpus of educational programs through the procedures of identification, interpretation and explanation; finally, the data analysis is complemented by the discussion of the Knowledge creation model constructed in the current study.

Generating and cultivating patriotic sentiments has been universally recognized as being critical for any nation. The originally sacralized Russian patriotism has evolved into an ambiguous concept due to its discrediting in the post-Soviet era. The paper claims that patriotism is an essentially contested concept, frequently employed as a promotional tool in political campaigns, with figurative language serving as a tool for articulating patriotic sentiments. By applying corpus-based methods, the study elicits dominant metaphors employed in the discursive construction of Russian patriotism. It reveals variation, found in a set of preferred metaphors, which reflects diverging metaphorical narratives in the current patriotic discourse. The paper argues that metaphors are effective explanatory and framing tools applied in constructing the Russian national identity.

The main goal of the current study is to examine differences across perfectionists’ profiles regarding implicit theories of intelligence, morality and the world. The sample included 202 Russian students, age-range 18-24 (M = 19.62, SD = 1.15),  40% male. Short Almost Perfect Scale and Implicit Theories of Intelligence, Morality, and the World Questionnaire was used for data collection. Correlation and regression analysis, latent profile analysis, and the Student's t-test were conducted. The study results show that adaptive perfectionists tend to hold the entity theory about the world and the incremental theory of intelligence. The world for them is a structured place with fixed rules in which they can improve their cognitive skills, correct mistakes and grow up in experiences. Maladaptive perfectionists tend to hold only the entity theory of morality, so they believe in rigid moral principles. Non-perfectionists tend to hold the entity theory of intelligence and incremental theory of morality and the world. They believe that intelligence has limits, the world is a chaotic and unexpected place and morality is fluid and unstable. The findings are presented in the context of defining the differences between three types of perfectionists in terms of their views on the ability to modify cognitive capabilities, moral principles, and the world in general.

This book provides an integrated approach to cognitive-linguistic mediation, with aims toward the efficiency of knowledge transfer and acquisition. Problems are approached through the prism of cognitive modelling, and mapped to such fields as intercultural and interdisciplinary communication, and second language teaching. The novelty lies in the synergies between linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, culture, and industry. These fields come together through ontological and metaphorical modelling and the attempts to automate such.

This text provides a theoretical background for research on mediation, covering cognitive and communicative perspectives, metaphoricity of terms, and the ontologization of human knowledge. It includes detailed descriptions of methods for different types of cognitive modelling and is intended for students and researchers concerned with terminology, cognitive linguistics, applied linguistics, pragmatics, computational linguistics, literature studies, morphology, syntaxis, and semantics.

Perfectionism and Imposter Phenomenon are key psychological traits of modern organization’s employees. The purpose of this research is to investigate perfectionism and Impostor Phenomenon as predictors of work engagement and subjective well-being among Russian employees. 359 working employees took part in the study by filling-in questionnaires for the scales of Perfectionism, Impostor Phenomenon, Work Engagement, Subjective Happiness and Satisfaction with Life. Impostor Phenomenon is positively correlated with standards (positive effect of perfectionism) and discrepancy (negative effect of perfectionism). Multiple regression analyses indicate that standards are positive predictors and Impostor Phenomenon and discrepancy are negative predictors for work engagement and subjective well-being. These findings are of practical importance for psychological and organizational counselling.

As of May 2021, more than 14.7 million people have been infected and nearly 409,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Brazil. During the pandemic, there were countless cases of discrimination, racism, prejudice, and violence towards Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian population. Using integrated threat theory (ITT), this study investigates prejudice towards Afro-Brazilians. Specifically, this study (n= 410) examines the extent to which COVID-19 related prejudice towards Afro-Brazilians, who were partially blamed for the spread of the virus, is related to prejudice and fear of COVID-19. Results reveal the following: ethnocentrism is positively related to symbolic and realistic threat and fear of COVID-19 is positively related to symbolic and realistic threat.

This study deals with the analysis of syntactic complexity in professional academic writing and is based on a corpus of so-called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ papers published in leading international journals. We aim at describing the main complexity features of academic discourse and testing the hypothesis that there is considerable disciplinary variation in linguistic complexity. We conclude that, first, clausal complexity strategies are more prevalent in the ‘hard’ sciences, while phrasal-complexity features dominate in the ‘soft’ ones. Second, the data reveal a continuum across subdisciplines within the broad categories of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ genres with respect to the adoption of complexity strategies.

The accelerating pace of social transformations in society brings about higher requirements for qualification of modern specialists, greater flexibility and quicker adaptability. To train such specialists, the modernization of the higher education is essential. The Liberal Arts program is described in the article as a modernization project that is responsible for the formation of the necessary skills in modern graduates for them to be more efficient and competitive in the labor market. The analysis is based on the N.I. Lapin’s modernization theory with an emphasis on the socio-cultural component of modernization. The article discusses the results of a qualitative sociological study conducted in 2018–2019 using the semi-structured interview method. The sample consisted of 10 people – 5 graduates and 5 students of the Perm State National Research University majoring in Arts and Humanities. The challenges of implementing the Liberal Arts project are the following: a. the complexity of combining the traditional form of education with individual curricula; b. an increased number of humanitarian disciplines, leading to a weaker specialization/profile of study; c. students (and later, their employers) are ignorant of the features of liberal education. The existing problems are associated with the inertness of the classical education system at the university, the lack of understanding of the liberal education principles and the formation of its values in the minds of students. The consequences of this approach to the formation of the curriculum cause difficulties with the professional self-determination of students, as well as with employment, since employers lack understanding of the level of knowledge and skills of graduates.

As of July 2021, more than 153 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 globally. Russia has 5.5 million cases with more than 135,000 deaths; while Kyrgyzstan has nearly 132,000 cases and 2000 deaths. While the virus hit the two nations at different times and with different severities, the two nations, as with so many others, both experienced cases of prejudice toward minority groups blamed for the spread of COVID-19. Using integrated threat theory (ITT), this study cross-culturally examines the link between prejudice toward minorities blamed for the spread of COVID-19 in Russia (Asians) and Kyrgyzstan (migrants) and intergroup contact. Results revealed intergroup contact had a positive effect on realistic and symbolic threat. Additionally, results show Kyrgyz respondents had lower levels of symbolic threat than Russian respondents.

The aims of this study were two-fold: 1) to identify the cognitive strategies that the Russian learners of English as a foreign language apply while they are taking a multi-level C-test; 2) to examine the correlation between the level of complexity of a C-test and the frequency of the usage of the cognitive strategies. 20 participants were asked to do a multi-level C-test comprised of three passages with missing parts, matching the difficulty scales of B1 to C2. The Think-Aloud Protocols method was used to explore how the participants approached the gap-filling tasks. Seven cognitive strategies were revealed ('predicting', 'summarizing', 'questioning', 'making connections', 're-reading/using fix-ups', 'identifying a problem' and 'reflecting'), with the frequency of each strategy varying across different levels of the text complexity. The frequency of the strategies ‘summarizing’ and ‘reflecting’ distinguish between reading texts at B1 and B2 levels. C2 text reading is marked by the increase of ‘questioning’ and ‘identifying a problem’ strategies. The results of chi-square tests indicate that texts with different complexity levels can trigger different type of processing used by the test-takers. The findings can have implications for test-taking strategy research and for level-sensitive modifications in the C-test procedure.

The article addresses EFL students’ academic writing competence by fostering and evaluating their writing practices through conceptual metaphors. The research dataset comprised 102 Russian students majoring in economics. The students received the instruction based on the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory during their EAP, ESP and EMI courses in economics. Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam (MIPVU) and the method of metaphoric modeling were used to assess EFL writing competence in economic knowledge domains – knowledge of terms and specific concepts, represented as conceptual metaphors. The statistical analysis did not show significant changes in the writing competence level of students when their EAP and ESP writing was compared. However, statistical differences were revealed in the use of metaphors when the students progressed from their EAP to EMI course and from their ESP to EMI course. The qualitative analysis demonstrated main differences within the conceptual metaphor domains in ESP and EMI writing. On the whole, the results reported here suggest the dynamics of FL writing competence of the Russian students specializing in economics when attending an EAP course, an ESP course and an EMI course in economics at the university.

The book considers the main stages of development of the leading genre of the world and English literature, based on the example of a number of English novelists of the XIX - XXI centuries. The chapters of the monograph, written by scholars of British literature from Moscow, Minsk, Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok, Kazan, Oxford, Saratov, Ufa and Perm, analyze the artistic originality of selected works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugn, Graham Green, Iris Murdock, Hilary Mantel and others. The book demonstrates the functioning of the English novel tradition, creatively and innovatively developed by English novelists over two centuries. The chapters provide an in-depth analysis of a number of works that have played a pivotal role in the dynamism of the English and world novelism. The monograph is intended for literary scholars, students, Master and graduate students as well as for everyone interested in English literature. It can be a teaching aid when reading courses in the history of English literature and the history of the English novel.

Contemporary English literature actively, often innovatively, addresses the problems of comprehending the past, individual and collective memory, the processes of remembering and forgetting, the relationship between the concepts of memory, history and identity, and forms of personal (auto)biographical restoration of the past. In an attempt to trace the genesis of the problem of the past in the English literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, we turn to one of the key English novels of the Second World War - "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh, which will become an important milestone in the development of the English novel as a whole. In almost every subsequent English memory novel, most vividly the time planes of the past, present and future are mutually permeable. In the process of narrativization, the past appears both as the lost past itself, as an acquired present and even as a probable future - which we have conventionally termed as the models of "past-in-the-present", "present-in-the-past" and "future-in-past ". In this case, the past will receive both axiological and ontological priority over the present and the future.

The requirements for university graduates include the possession of research skills, which implies the inclusion of this type of activity in the curriculum. Research work of students is included in both compulsory types of work and those performed at will of the student himself (over and above the curriculum), the latter being associated with a high level of students’ motivation. The article aims to analyze the structure of students’ motivation for carrying out research work at university and to identify its connection with the orientation of young people to building an academic career at university after graduation. The methodology is based on Talcott Parsons’ model of reference variables. It allowed us to describe the motivation of students at the theoretical level. Some of the selected theoretical positions (affective neutrality, self-orientation) were tested using empirical material collected through a survey of students of Perm national research universities (Perm State University, Perm National Research Politechnic University, Higher School of Economics -Perm). Based on the ideas of T.V. Razina and other researchers of motivation, we developed and tested a methodology for identifying the structure of students’ motivation to conducting research work at university. The following were identified as the most pronounced motives of the interviewed students: firstly, they carry out research work for self-development in the broad sense of the word; secondly, the process itself provides them with interest. Cluster analysis made it possible to classify respondents into 4 groups, based on the specifics of their motivation: strategists, enthusiasts, dependents, and and random people. A connection was revealed between the specifics of students’ motivation and their determination to build an academic career at university after graduation. As a result, we were able to identify and describe the group of students who are more determined to devote themselves to research work in the future. The paper proposes a number of recommendations for scientific supervisors and managing personnel of universities, which can be helpful in building the personnel policy of universities.

The present study investigates academic discourse in economics in terms of the accuracy of metadiscourse use in the English written texts produced by Russian students majoring in economics with different competence. The purpose of the research is to identify features of creation of academic text in English by non-English-speaking writers and to define types of disruptions of metadiscursive organization of written communication in English on the example of the essay genre. 

The research was conducted by applying formal error analysis based on Chuang & Nesi’s classification of errors to the metadiscourse use in argumentative essays. This method was instrumental in confirming the hypothesis that a study of metadiscourse use in a written text requires taking into account not only linguistic phenomena and their frequency, but also their correct understanding and use by non-native writers of English. The research dataset comprised 139 essays written by Russian learners of English as a foreign language atthe Perm campus of the National Research University – Higher School of Economics, including 77 essaysin nonprofessionalacademic discourse (NPAD) and 62 essaysin professionalacademic discourse (PAD).

The study specifies the correlation between frequency and correct use of metadiscourse markers in nonprofessional and professional types of academic discourse in economics. The authors revealed that the frequency of erroneous use of discourse markers in the PAD essays is higher than in the NPAD essays. The most commonly used groups of discourse markers, in particular those which introduce new or additional information, point at contrasting with or deviating from the main idea and introduce the author’s evaluation of probability, interrelation of the information and the situation, appear to be the most representative of errors. An analysis of the errors in the linguistic categories which were most commonly found both in the PAD and NPAD essays showed that conjunction errors, determiner errors, lexical misconception errors occur in roughly the same percentage. The difference in the percentage of errors between the two types of discourse can be seen in the use of prepositions (in the PAD) and in the number of spelling errors (in the NPAD).

The conclusion is that in the process of choosing the best organization and creating a clearer content structure for the text of special discourse, non-native writers of English focus on the content aspect of communication, which in part becomes an obstacle to its proper structuring. The authors point to the importance of metadiscourse use in written texts for students of different levels of professional competence in a foreign language.

Distance education is becoming in demand in many universities in the country. At the beginning of 2020, an epidemiological situation arose in Russia and the world, which showed that distance learning is the safest way to get an education. But not all Russian universities were ready to quickly switch to distance learning. This led to some difficulties: the load increased on all actors of the educational process, the technical problems of the university and students became actualized, there was a need for additional time for adaptation of students, teachers, and university administration. As a result, the level of satisfaction with the learning process has changed. The purpose of this publication is to characterize the features of the organization of distance learning and identify its future prospects (using the example of Perm State National Research University). The empirical base of the study is materials of a survey of university students about their satisfaction with online learning. The authors assess three areas: 1) the level of material and technical equipment of students; 2) changes that have occurred in the organization of training (workload, time for completing assignments, mastering educational material, academic performance); 3) prospects of distance learning (limitations and reasons for their occurrence, merits). In practical terms, the study can clarify the need to expand distance learning in all universities in the country. Distance learning can become an effective alternative to classical education if state authorities and local governments finance distance learning, if universities provide trainings on organizing and conducting classes in an online format.

The article focuses onassessing the effectiveness of foreign language teaching in online learning environment compared to traditional face-to-face educational environment. The literature review shows the main directions of modern online teaching in relation to the use of distance education technologies. Among the popular technologies are online courses on digital platforms, a hybrid format of learning and electronic textbooks. The study was conducted in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Perm. The results were based upon empirical data obtained through pre-tests, mid-term tests and post tests of the first-year students of Economics at the age of 18-20 (n=79) who enrolled for an EGAP course. The students of the 2018-2019 academic year formed a control group (n=37). The students of the 2019-2020 academic year formed an experimental group (n=42). In the 2018–2019 academic year the foreign language course was conducted in the traditional format, including contact work (144 hours) and independent work (160 hours). 20% of independent work was organized by using LMS. In the 2019-2020academic year, the first semester was organized in the traditional format, including contact work (60 hours) and independent work (67 hours). Starting from the second semester, the students studied onlinewith contact work (84 hours) and independent work (93 hours).Teaching methods and teaching materials in the second semester of the 2019-2020academic yearwere tailored to the peculiarities of the computer-mediated learning and needs of students in such an environment. The study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of distant teaching the English language with the focus on listening and reading skills. The statistical analysis revealed that the experimental group showed no advantage over the control group. Provided that teaching methods and materials were tailored to the computer-mediated communication between teachers and their students, the learning outcomes of the two educational formats were identical. The study suggests that foreign language listening and reading skills can be effectively developed in both traditional and online foreign language teaching. The results of the research can help to determine the ratio between traditional and online learning in the future.