The concept of "friendship" in educational materials on russian as a foreign language: value aspect

Anthropocentric approach of modern science, as well as the undoubted value potential of textbooks on the Russian as a foreign language, has led to the need to identify the features of the representation of the concept of “friendship” that exist in the textbooks on Russian as a foreign language (RFL), and to analyze them from the axiological point of view. The material for this study are textbooks on Russian as a foreign language by Russian authors published in the period from 2007–2019, with a total volume of more than 2 500 pages, selected in accordance with certain requirements. From the received corpus of educational materials, there were selected dialogues and narrative texts related to the topic “friendship” with the help of a continuous sampling method. The application of an axiological approach to the analysis of the obtained data allowed to identify the cultural features of the representation of the concept of “friendship” that help foreign students to form a certain picture of the world in a foreign student. Lexical and syntactic units were analyzed by using the methods of contextual, comparative and lexic and semantic analysis. Statistical methods of data processing were also used. The value category of “friendship” belongs to one of the most significant in all cultures of the world. Analysis of the specifics of the translation of this concept in educational materials on the Russian as a foreign language allowed to specify, how the picture of friendship, represented to a foreign student, contributes to the adequate formation of the picture of the Russian world in his mind. It is revealed that the topic of friendship in textbooks appears from the elementary level and can also be found in texts about love, work, and leisure. A friend in RFL textbooks is mostly “used” for joint leisure or joint activity (80 % of all cases). The qualitative and quantitative analysis made it possible to specify the evaluative load of adjectives and to identify such valuable component of friendly relations as the long-term friendship. Adjectives that are used to describe a nationality of a friend/girlfriend are also frequently used. It is noted that the duration of friendship mainly appears in friendly relations between males. The frequency analysis of evaluative adjectives also allowed to conclude that RFL textbooks are focused mainly on such important qualities of a friend as kindness and closeness, which generally corresponds to the frequency of word usage in the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The analysis of examples selected from textbooks on Russian as a foreign language also revealed preferences in the translation of the models of friendship from the point of view of the gender distribution of participants. It was revealed that the largest number of examples do not allow to determine the gender of communicants or demonstrate friendly ties in the company of friends of a mixed type. The model of friendly relations between two males takes the second place, which is twice the number of similar examples describing friendship between two females. Friendship between a man and a woman is represented in an absolute minority and often subconsciously represents not a friendly, but a love affair. The model of friendly relations between males, as well as friendship between the actors of opposite sex, is characterized in textbooks on RFL by mutual support, whereas in examples describing friendship between females or between a man and a woman, assistance to a friend mainly appears. In the examples from RFL textbooks describing friendship, along with the positive evaluation components, the negative ones also exist, but their number is much smaller. In general, a positive image of friendship is broadcasted. The analysis showed that, in general, the values related to friendship are correctly represented in textbooks on the Russian as a foreign language, although not always fully. Gender differentiation in certain aspects of friendship is observed. If taking into account the obtained results, it may further allow foreign students to discover what values exist in the world of friendship among Russian people, which will also contribute to a deeper understanding of the peculiarities of Russian culture as a whole.

Russian as a foreign language, RFL textbook, friendship, friend, culture, concept, axiological aspect