Linguodidactic Potential of Metaphor in the Practice of Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language

Metaphors as a linguocognitive mechanism for conceptualizing meanings that form national images of the world is becoming the subject of interdisciplinary research examining the logic of semantic changes within the boundaries of texts. Understanding this process in a teaching and educational context can become an effective tool for language teaching by forming ideas about the peculiarities of culture represented in its structural and content units – concepts. Studying a language by identifying the value-semantic mechanisms of conceptualization allows us to recognize the text’s multi-layered nature and cultural specificity. The process of metaphorization illustrates the dynamics of meaning formation through the interaction of different conceptual domains involved in creating a figurative meaning and the emergence of the result – a valuable fragment of the linguistic image of the world or the author’s version manifested in a literary text. These aspects, reflecting the very mechanism of formation and functioning of the metaphor, can form the basis for lexical and textual work in teaching Russian as a foreign language. The article discusses ways of working with linguistic and textual metaphors, taking into account the analytical plan of meaning formation, manifested in the interaction of original and figurative meanings, and the synthetic plan, realized in the text-forming function of the metaphor, in its ability to create associative-derivative connections within the text and to actualize in the learner’s consciousness a holistic, emotional and semantic conception of the content. The ability to interpret a metaphor and understand its functioning helps learners to perceive the text from the point of view of events and undergo figurative, semantic, and conceptual development. A special role in this process is played by frame analysis, which identifies thematic-content blocks in the text and establishes semantic connections between them. The algorithm for analyzing text metaphors presented in this article can help to optimize students’ receptive activity and the development of their communicative activity. Based on the material of the historical-philosophical essay by N. Ilyina, “The Expulsion of the Normans. The Next Task of Russian Historical Science”, the frame methodology for the analysis of text metaphors is substantiated, and the modeling potential of metaphorical images is shown, which determines the logic of the linguocultural approach to working with texts. It is assumed that the text, which is rich in metaphors, cultural-historical references, and mythopoetic Old Slavic symbolism, will arouse interest because of its content and the research methods used to uncover its linguocultural meaning.

linguistic and textual metaphors, frame analysis of metaphors, linguodidactic potential of metaphors