SOCIO-LINGUISTIC POTENTIAL OF GERMAN-SPEAKING ADVERTISING IN THE PROCESS OF FORMATION OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE COMPETENCE

Abstract

The article considers the educational possibilities of German-language advertising in the context of its socio-linguistic potential. The method of analysis and synthesis highlights the social information in the advertising content. Advertising is regarded in its close connection to the representation of cultural values as the strengths and advantages of a separate nation. Also, advertising is identified as a powerful socio-linguistic tool that makes it possible to follow both the constant changes in the lexical content of the language, and its cultural and regional features.

In the comparative aspect, significant differences in the advertising lexical content of various German-speaking countries are revealed. Linguistic differences are observed in different spheres of human life, but are especially distinguished and traced in the food industry, which requires special attention from the teacher during the educational process. The growing role of neologisms in advertising, mostly words of international use of British and American origin, is considered to be a sign of the current level of development of the German language and is a consequence of the processes of globalization in the global society. Special attention has been paid to the diversity of lexical content in advertising with its aim to attract consumers’ attention, in particular the usage of phraseological units, rhetorical questions, lexical and phonetic repetitions, contrast words, etc. Being important for the teaching process advertising style reveals connections with separate grammatical themes (present tense ‘Prἃsens’ in the sense of future tense, imperative mood, interrogative sentences ‘Fragesἃtze’). These features of German-language advertising allow us to consider it as a multifunctional language content, which combines the latest language trends (neologisms) and long-known lexical constructions (phraseological units), as well as a powerful socio-cultural potential. The latter is predetermined by the need to support advertising content with the historical achievements and facts. In view of the above mentioned we have come to the conclusion as for the wide educational opportunities of advertising in the process of mastering the German language and as for the need to include it in educational materials during practical classes and some special socio-linguistics training courses. In order to confirm this assumption, we conducted a pedagogical experiment in two student groups: in the control group, where the course on socio-linguistics of German-speaking countries was taught traditionally, and in the experimental group, where specially selected German-language advertising content was used. Special final testing at the end of the experiment revealed effectiveness and greater practical value in the innovative approach.