CULTURAL SEMANTICS IN SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING: A CASE STUDY OF RUSSIAN DRUG AND ENGLISH FRIEND

Numerous semantic studies have shown that most words that at first glance seem to be equivalents and are given as such in dictionaries, at a deeper level are far from being full equivalents (e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]). Almost every word has its cultural semantic components which hinder understanding and create difficulties in communication and translation, therefore they need a careful considering. We suggest that the words that carry information about the 'deep culture' [7:50], i.e. cultural values and attitudes, worldview, socio-cultural relations are of particular importance as they give new knowledge about the target language and culture, and therefore they deserve special attention in SL teaching. In our study we analyse the words dealing with interpersonal relations (friend vs drug and their derivatives) in English and Russian focusing on their similarities and differences. The data were taken from English and Russian bilingual dictionaries, definition dictionaries, British National Corpus (BNC), and Russian National Corpus (RNC). The study implemented contrastive semantic, definitive, context, functional and cultural analyses. The results show that semantics of these words contains cultural components that reflect types of culture and relations between people. The study confirms that language is a 'social semiotic system' (M. Halliday) [8] and it is increasingly important to consider the axiological and social aspects of language in an intercultural perspective both for theoretical and pedagogical purposes. It enables the students to arrive at the conclusion that language and culture are fundamentally interrelated and increase the level of their intercultural communicative competence.