The synergetic potential of ekphrasis in a foreign language educational environment of a specialized university

Iarovikova Yuliya Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-2097-8597 PhD in Philology Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign and Russian Philology at Moscow State University of Psychology and Education 123290, Russia, Moscow, nab. Shelepikhinskaya, 2A, room 508 yuvl@bk.ru Other publications by this author

Problem statement

Currently, the challenges facing Russian education in the 21st century are associated with a change in the core ideas that determine its content. In particular, this manifests itself in a paradigm shift towards fundamentalization, integration, meta- and intersubject. All these trends are clearly visible in the field of higher education related to the in-depth study of foreign languages.

For example, universal and general professional competencies declaring the ability to intercultural interaction (hereinafter referred to as the Criminal Code and the Defense Industry), enshrined in the Federal State Educational Standard for the field of training 45.03.02 Linguistics, involve the introduction and active use of didactic teaching tools that raise the issues of "man and society", "man in time", "man and the culture of society" and at the same time forming a knowledge system in which such qualitative parameters as consistency, dynamism, and the level of generalization play a major role" ^{[15, p. 42]}. In other words, learning tools aimed at developing the ability to perceive the intercultural diversity of society in different contexts should follow the principle of humanitarization and intellectualization of the content of vocational education. In addition, for the successful implementation of interlanguage and intercultural interaction in various forms and spheres of communication, learning tools should contribute to the development and formation of the so-called "global literacy, combining knowledge about different cultures, traditions and values, and the ability to use this knowledge when working with information" ^[11].

In a foreign-language educational environment that appeals not only to linguistic knowledge, but also to interdisciplinary integration, the importance of didactic tools reflecting these and other synergistic relationships increases significantly. Ecphrasis meets all these requirements in one way or another – one of the most effective teaching tools that was widely used by ancient speakers, teachers, and philosophers.

The relevance of the undertaken research is due to the need to expand the boundaries of the use of ecphrasis as a didactic teaching tool that generates synergistic connections as a communicative (information) environment through which a foreign language can be mastered in all its diversity – systematically, functionally, discursively.

The synergetic potential of ecphrasis is seen in the interaction of linguistic and extralinguistic factors contributing to the development of a foreign language based on the development of language skills and discursive skills, strengthening subject and interdisciplinary connections, the formation of various components of the criminal code and the defense industry of the future specialist in accordance with the main trends of modern higher education.

Based on the above, the purpose of this study is to identify the didactic possibilities of ecphrasis and the areas of its application in the foreign-language educational environment of a specialized university on the basis of synergetic relationships that contribute to the formation of appropriate competencies among students of language specialties.

Methodology

The methodological basis consists of competence-based and synergetic approaches. One of the leading competence-based approaches for this study sets a vector that defines a set of relevant competencies, the formation of which is both the goal and the result of teaching a foreign language at a specialized university.

The studied problems are also highlighted based on the conceptual provisions of pedagogical synergetics, which allow to expand the boundaries of the use of ecphrasis for didactic purposes and describe its synergetic potential in the context of learning a foreign language.

The research is based on a set of traditional general scientific, special analytical and special empirical methods. General logical methods of analysis, synthesis, deduction, analogy, comparison, generalization were used as the main general scientific ones. Working with sources involved using special analytical methods, namely, systematic and comparative analysis of scientific data. The problematic field of research is also answered by the use of a number of special empirical methods, including discursive and contextual analysis of linguistic facts, etc.

The source base was fundamental and applied works, periodicals, encyclopedic dictionaries and reference materials in Russian and English in the field of general and professional pedagogy, philosophy, synergetics, philology, literary studies, linguodidactics.

The study includes several successive stages: analytical, comparative, empirical, generalizing. At the initial stages of the study, scientific sources were systematized and analyzed, according to which the theoretical prerequisites for the formation of ecphrasis as a didactic tool were determined, the core paradigmatic foundations of a synergetic approach were identified in relation to the educational process in general and foreign language teaching in particular. The subsequent stages of the study are aimed at summarizing the results, including considering the possibility of using ecphrasis in a foreign-language educational environment of a specialized university, describing the practical experience of its use as didactic material and establishing synergistic links in the subject area "Foreign language", taking into account the main provisions of the competence approach.

The results of the study

The undertaken research actualizes the problem of selecting, organizing and implementing effective means of teaching a foreign language, which express the fundamental trends and requirements for the content of modern vocational education. In this context, it is of particular importance: 1) determination of the didactic possibilities of ecphrasis and the spheres of its application in the foreign-language educational environment of a specialized university; 2) identification of synergistic relationships that emphasize its developing character in the context of the formation of appropriate criminal code and defense industry; 3) justification of the expediency of using ecphrasis in the organization of foreign language teaching. The problems of the research involve an appeal to the basic theoretical premises associated with two key terms for this work – "ecphrasis" and "synergetics" – and a generalization of the experience of introducing ecphrasis into teaching a practical English course at a specialized university.

A diachronic view of the didactic possibilities of ecphrasis

Ecphrasis cannot be called an innovative or innovative learning tool. In ancient rhetoric, to which this concept dates back, ekphrasis was called a special exercise (progymnasm) that forms the skills of retelling. For example, ecphrasis occupied a special place in the school education of Ancient Greece. "At that time, it served as a way to convey in detail the characteristic features of an object through a written description. In an oral rhetorical exercise, the object was examined in detail and described in all details, so that it "stood before the eyes" in all its evidence. Examples of the oral use of ecphrasis belong to the same period as written ones – I-V centuries AD." ^[7]. Among the rhetorical progymnasms there are descriptions of sunrise and sunset, stormy or calm sea, groves and houses, temples and paintings or statues, festivities or shipwrecks ^[3].

Later, when description becomes an integral part of oratorical speech, ecphrasis, being identified with eloquence, vivid, lively, sublime speech, gradually loses the didactic status of progymnasm and moves into the field of literature ^[18]. As is obvious from the above, early ecphrasis was widely used precisely as an effective means of teaching, allowing at the initial stage to hone the skills of public speaking. Having mastered the ability of accurate, formal, detailed description, students moved to a higher level – the compilation of expressive oratorical speeches, which are more based on a pictorial description.

Currently, any description of a work of art is called an ekphrasis. It has received the greatest representativeness as an independent genre and/or artistic technique in literature. In linguodidactics, ecphrasis is understood as an artistic text as a means of teaching, which allows, from the point of view of its linguistic and extra-linguistic content, to study a foreign language in all its diversity. As the analysis of the source base shows, the didactic possibilities of ecphrasis, its role and place in the development of communication skills are emphasized mainly by foreign researchers ^{[21, 25, 28, 34, 35]}.

It seems that today ecphrasis as a didactic teaching tool has been unfairly withdrawn from the focus of the research interest of theorists and practitioners in the field of Russian linguodidactics. Aristotle also developed the idea that cognition can be carried out not only in the course of teaching, but also in the process of perceiving works of imitative arts: "people look at images with pleasure, because by looking at them they can learn and reason" ^{[2, p. 27]}. This thesis is quite correlated with the modern position that "learning tools are likened to assimilated knowledge; the acquired knowledge is further used to solve more complex tasks, i.e. they begin to perform a new function of teaching tools for them" ^{[14, p. 173]}. In this regard, one cannot disagree with V. A. Ignatova, who emphasizes the acute the need to update teaching tools that would meet all the principles of modern education: "Today, a conceptually new structure of the content of textbooks and textbooks is needed, in which the ideas of unity, consistency and self-organization would become core, around which diverse knowledge is grouped" ^[5].

In relation to ecphrasis, in particular, these ideas are reflected in the textbook "World Literature and other types of art: Ecphrastic poetry" ^[12], presented by the Perm school of Ecphrasists under the leadership of N. S. Bochkareva. The educational resource introduces the features of this genre and its modifications in different languages. The methodological value of the manual is due to the consideration of linguistic and extralinguistic in the selection and organization of educational material, as a result of which a synergetic effect is created, which consists in expanding the boundaries of knowledge of this linguistic fact to other areas. That is why the manual is intended for a wide range of readers – students and undergraduates of humanities, teachers of theory and history of literature, theory and history of art, history of world artistic culture, cultural studies, etc.

Ecphrasis as a means of learning is aimed primarily at the formation of speech skills that are "universal, have a suprasubject character and, being formed within the framework of one discipline, can be transferred to other subjects and other types of activities" ^[11]. The interaction of subject knowledge (intra- and interlanguage pragmatics, among others) with intersubject knowledge ensures the development of their consistency, systematicity and generality – what, from the standpoint of a competence-based approach, determines the professional readiness of a future specialist.

Synergetics in science and education

Review of the scientific literature on the topic ^{[9, 10, 16, 23, 30, 31]} This suggests that there is currently no unity in the designation of this interdisciplinary direction. Synergetics (from the Greek. synergia – interaction, cooperation) is often interpreted as a new scientific paradigm, methodology, a new way of thinking, a general scientific picture of the world, a general theory of development, etc. Regardless of the designation, it should be remembered that synergetics goes back to a scientific discipline, the subject of which is "a certain class of nonlinear equations used for modeling purposes" ^{[6, p. 228]}. The founder of synergetics is considered to be the German physicist Hermann Haken, who formulated as its first and main position the idea that "systems consist of identical or heterogeneous parts that interact with each other" [Ibid.]. Later, his ideas formed the basis of the generally accepted definition of synergetics as a theory of self-organization of complex systems.

In this regard, an aspect related to the possibility of projecting the principles of synergetics onto the humanities is of particular relevance. Here, according to V. G. Budanov, one should proceed from the metaphorical rather than literal use of strict synergetic methodology in the interdisciplinary space. Indeed, in the humanitarian application, terms such as "attractor", "fractal", "bifurcation", "fluctuation", "dissipation", etc. sound like neologisms and need metaphorization. In this issue, V. G. Budanov uses the concept of "soft" or "metaphorical" synergetics, the terms of which "root authentic synergetics in the mass consciousness" and serve as "the language of interdisciplinary contacts" ^{[4, p. 22]}.

Focusing, in particular, on linguodidactics, teaching foreign languages in a synergetic aspect presupposes the dialectical unity of two goals – general education and practical. This is indicated by S. A. Lamzin, who compares communicative and synergetic approaches in his dissertation research. He sees the advantage of the latter in the fact that teaching foreign languages takes place within the framework of general development, which implies, along with the formation of foreign language competence, the parallel development of fantasy, creative and linguistic thinking ^[10].

According to another point of view, in teaching foreign languages, the synergetic approach is reflected in the interaction of various components of communicative competence ^{[17, 24, 26, 27]}, which ensures the formation of a "secondary linguistic personality, not just possessing knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, stylistics, etc., but implementing it all in speech at a certain level socio-cultural background" ^[8]. Some researchers ^{[22, 29, 32, 33]} in this case, focusing on "the need to study in the process of teaching a foreign language exactly how the spiritual culture and mentality of representatives of the country of the studied language are reflected in linguistic facts", turn to the so-called "culture-like" approach, built according to the synergistic formula "linguistic approach + cultural approach" ^[16].

Considering the above, when determining synergetics in the framework of this study, the original meaning of this word is taken into account. By synergetics, therefore, we will understand an increase in the effectiveness of activities as a result of the interaction of a set of factors and/ or a combination of their elements.

Didactic possibilities of ecphrasis and the scope of its application in the foreign language educational environment of a specialized university

As an illustration of the synergetic potential of ecphrasis, we will give some examples from the experience of its application in classes on a practical English course. In particular, we will consider how specific authentic texts for home reading can become effective didactic material that promotes interpenetration into related academic disciplines.

Let's turn to a text fragment from F. Burnett's popular novel "The Mysterious Garden", describing an episode in which the nine-year-old heroine Mary Lennox inspects a large portrait gallery in her uncle's mansion: "There were doors and doors, and there were pictures on the walls. Sometimes they were pictures of dark, curious landscapes, but oftenest they were portraits of men and women in queer, grand costumes made of satin and velvet”. <…> “Some were pictures of children – little girls in thick satin frocks which reached to their feet and stood out about them, and boys with puffed sleeves and lace collars and long hair, or with big ruffs around their necks” ^{[19, p. 58]}.

This example is a vivid illustration of an ecphrastic description that implements both cultural, historical and informational functions. The first captures the experience of various epochs and peoples; the second promotes the personal appropriation of this experience in an authentic information environment provided by ekphrasis.

Recall that "the process of learning and mastering a foreign language occurs through interaction with the information environment, which includes not only theoretical information presented in some symbolic form, but also information on a sensory-figurative level" ^[10]. The above ecphrasis is highly informative – it encodes information about the socio-cultural features of the era in which the ancestors of the main character lived. In particular, a detailed description of the clothes of the depicted people indicates their high origin (“grand costumes made of satin and velvet”) and emphasizes the gender aspect of the English wardrobe: women's dresses were made of satin (“satin frocks”), men's suits were distinguished by such elements as a tightly starched ruff collar or a milling cutter (“big ruff”), lace collar (“lace collar"), lantern sleeves (“puffed sleeves").

Thus, in a foreign-language educational environment, ecphrasis, which is a unity of linguistic and extralinguistic content, becomes the object of discursive analysis, which plays a significant role in decoding, perception and appropriation of information in the learning process. According to N. F. Alefirenko, it is by studying language as a cultural phenomenon that the most effective formation and improvement of skills and abilities of intercultural communication is possible. The linguistic and cultural approach in this case is based on the "synergetic coding of cultural and historical experience by the language system and the thinking system" ^{[1, p. 24]}.

Obtaining information related to the history, culture, traditions and values of the countries of the studied language can occur not only in the process of reading authentic ecphrastic descriptions, i.e. passively, but also actively – with the practical application of language skills and linguistic knowledge – as a result of which the corresponding general professional competence (OPK-1) is formed, related to with the ability to apply a system of linguistic knowledge about the basic phonetic, lexical, grammatical, word-formation phenomena, about the patterns of functioning of the studied foreign language and its functional varieties. Below we will consider examples of how the synergetic potential of ecphrasis is revealed in the simultaneous dialogization of three academic disciplines ("Home reading", "Lexicology", "Linguoculturology"), contributing to the creation of conditions for the intensification of the educational process.

T. Chevalier's novel "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" presents a rich ecphrastic palette, expressed by color meanings, the structural features of which can be considered at seminars on lexicology within the framework of the topic "Word formation". In the course of such interpenetration, reading as a passive type of speech activity comes into contact with a number of general scientific and special methods of analyzing lexical units, in terms of their morphemic composition, derivational potential, compatibility with producing bases, etc., as well as the patterns of their formation.

From a didactic point of view, an example deserves special attention in which color meanings, regardless of their structural features, transmit additional extralinguistic information while simultaneously performing historical and epistemological functions.

“The colors he asked me to mix gave no clues as to what he was doing. Black, ocher, lead white, lead-tin yellow, ultramarine, red lake – they were all colors I had worked with before, and they could as easily have been used for the concert painting” ^{[20, p. 155]}.

In particular, some color names give students an idea of what natural materials and minerals paints were made from at the turn of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ochre, a natural yellow or red paint (ocher), lead whitewash, a white mineral paint based on lead (lead white), lead–yellow mineral pigment (lead–tin yellow), red varnish obtained by boiling red wood (red lake), were widely used by painters of that time. This ecphrasis is a vivid example of the reflection of socio–historical processes by linguistic means, contributing to a kind of reconstruction of historical events and enrichment with socio-cultural knowledge. On the other hand, the synergy of ecphrasis as a teaching tool is manifested in the ability of a future specialist to recognize and decode these linguistic and non-linguistic facts and, as a result, to form appropriate competencies.

As follows from the above, from the standpoint of the synergetic approach, ecphrasis is not an external factor, but a full-fledged participant in the communicative process in which the acquisition of a foreign language occurs through interaction with an authentic information environment. Regardless of the type of this interaction – passive, including the ability to extract the necessary information in the process of reading, or active, implying the use of language skills and discursive skills to decode and perceive this information – ecphrasis is developmental in nature. This is to some extent facilitated by interdisciplinary integration, orientation to the principle of fundamentalization, according to which "the development of special knowledge and the acquisition of practical skills should coincide, and in their content they should be consistent with theoretical training" ^{[13, p. 103]}.

Graphically, the results of the study can be summarized as follows:

Fig. 1. Synergies in teaching foreign languages

Conclusion

A foreign-language educational environment involves creating the necessary conditions for solving a number of (practical, research, creative, etc.) tasks in a foreign language. One of these conditions is the selection, organization and implementation of learning tools, which should reflect the fundamental trends and requirements for the content of modern vocational education. As it was shown above, depending on what goals are set for all participants in the educational process, the synergetic potential of ecphrasis as a didactic means increases.

Ecphrasis is not just a linguistic fact, but a carrier of various kinds of information (social, cultural, historical, etc.). Appealing to the acquired linguistic knowledge, it serves as a fertile background for familiarization with another culture, expanding general horizons, and the formation of global literacy. Being a verbalized fragment of culture, history, and social reality, in a foreign-language educational environment, ecphrasis becomes the object of discursive analysis, requiring future specialists not only sufficient theoretical training, but also appropriate academic skills associated with an empirical level of knowledge.

Aimed at the formation of certain professional qualities in students on the basis of interdisciplinary exchange, ecphrasis as a didactic tool allows learning a language not from contradictory but complementary points of view – as a system, social practice, cultural phenomenon, etc. In turn, the competence formed to a certain level, manifested in the ability to work not only with ready-made descriptions, but also to create their own experiences based on perceived and processed visual information, is the optimal condition for the development of creative abilities of a person. Such dialogization, based on intersubjectivity, integration, problemativeness, creativity, organically complements the content of professional education, contributing to the intellectual, speech and general cultural development of the future specialist. All this allows us to conclude that ecphrasis is one of the learning tools with high synergistic potential.

In the conditions of a foreign-language educational environment of a specialized university, the expediency of using ecphrasis is determined by the synergy of general educational and practical goals aimed at consolidating linguistic knowledge, expanding general horizons, and forming global literacy within the framework of an interdisciplinary dialogue that contributes to the intensification of the educational process, and in accordance with the basic principles that determine the content of modern higher education.