The article is about the role of basic values of Russian and Italian linguacultures in teaching Russian as a foreign language. It considers the possibilities of using the results of a comparative study of common human values in teaching intercultural communication. The author describes the methods of studying and describing common human values, presents the data obtained through experimental research of specific values of the Russian and Italian linguacultures, and identifies common and nationally labeled elements.
This paper presents the first part of research on the particularities of Ty-/Vy you/polite You, both 2nd person singular in the Russian and Italian languages. Far from the ambition of presenting the definitive account of the subject matter, the author identifies the main issues related to the investigation of these lexico-grammatical forms functioning in speech. Thus, such investigation of this matter implies researcher's focus on: (1) particularities of Ty-/ Vy-functioning as the means of speech etiquette, specifically, in the functions of addressing, as well as in the concrete speech acts, in which the choice of the pronoun determines the grammatical realization of the statement (for instance, a request), (2) contextual meanings of these forms in cases when they serve as the means of an expressive function and the description of their peculiarities of their use in Russian in rigid phraseological units. At present, a contrastive analysis of concrete speech acts appears promising (and productive) method of interpretation of the national speech etiquette specifics. The paper presents the results of the study on the peculiarities of the use of the Ty-/Vy-forms as the means of speech etiquette in concrete situations of verbal communication. Comparative (contrastive) analysis of Russian and Italian allows to demonstrate the specifics of these two forms in either of the studied linguistic cultures. An additional focus of this paper is the investigation of the recent trends in the use of these forms in contemporary Italian. The study revealed the similarities and differences in Russian and Italian communicative behavior. The findings of the study can be applied in the context of teaching the etiquette of crosscultural communication and Russian-Italian translation.
