ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКАЯ ПРЕЗУМПЦИЯ КАК ОЦЕНКА ДОСТАТОЧНОСТИ ЯЗЫКОВЫХ НАВЫКОВ МИГРАНТОВ

The migrants’ human capital adjusted by social presumptions of the host society shall meet the linguistic presumption requirements, which assesses the adequacy of individual language skills.

The authors of this study introduce the term “linguistic presumption” when “evaluating the quality of individual language skills and modeling his or her individual verbal behavior. The concept of linguistic presumption correlates with linguistic concepts of semantic presumption, pragmatic presumption, and the presumption of textuality. The concept of presumption allows for general description of the sentence adequacy requirements without giving an unambiguous definition of its adequacy. The presumption of textuality shall be understood as the readiness, need of a speaker to imagine something understood as a statement, a direct and observable phenomenon” [3]; [4]; [7]; [1].

Linguistic presumption assessing the adequacy of migrants’ language skills assumes the following: 1) ability to see implicit components in the word meaning, syntactic structures and linear intonation structures; 2) skills to correlate meanings in a certain text, and with each other in this text; 3) skills to identify semantically adequate sentences; 4) ability to choose syntactic and grammatical structures to ensure the correlation of different communicative and information environments.

“Linguistic presumption is a universal regulation tool fixed in the human linguistic consciousness on its upper level to correlate with real communications and based on the human capital – language skills – of an individual. Linguistic presumptions make the basis of social behavior when using a second language; they are the foundation to build representation schemes of a social subject on” [3].

Modern society is now experiencing the transformation of “human capitals” in the information flow environment. The dichotomy of linguistic performance and linguistic competence, or the language used and language potential is gradually losing its relevance since the opposition of native – foreign language becomes less relevant since replaced with the dichotomy of native language – linguistic skills. In this regard, the problem of human capital validity and the vitality of cultural semantics become relevant. Thus, the validity of human capital and ethnic vitality go under the concept of linguistic presumption.

The dialog-based sign systems, which are the tests for migrants, provide for the linguistic presumption assessment.

The major process in the information society is the process of encoding / decoding information messages. The decoding process is also a way of individual adaptation in the society and the institutionalization of the society itself. In this regard, such traditional linguistic questions as knowledge transmission and storing by means of natural human languages become relevant. National language here appears as a semiotic object, and the knowledge of rules for its usage gives the access to the meanings and concepts to ensure the integrity of its speakers’ mentality, so-called “spiritual bonds”. This knowledge, being a result of the intuitive comprehension of the things essence, can be called ethical knowledge [5].

High linguistic competence of the society members becomes important in this context, as well as language teaching methods and learning outcomes testing.

Since the beginning of 2015, all migrants in Russia must pass an exam, including the Russian language test. We suppose that the test, a sample of which is publicly available in the Internet, being an assessing tool for linguistic qualification, considers concepts relevant to modern Russian society, the image of immigrants and their place in semantic environment of modern Russian society.

As we believe, the achievements of knowledge management method could help us in the explication of this information, since it is focused on the linguistic aspect of knowledge extraction.

The structure of knowledge (information) contained in texts offered to migrants during the test, can be discovered by means of linguistic engineering [3], which is a process of building anthology of a subject area where the anthology is represented by a hierarchically arranged set of terms marking concepts and their assemblies relevant to the society.

Built anthology makes it possible to form the following understanding of a migrant linguistic presumption: a) required degree of the language skills adequacy of a migrant as an economics discourse agent; b) suggested degree of the human capital validity implemented by a migrant’s communication behavior in the cultural semantics.

In this study we analyze a text taken from a complex test developed for migrants to obtain Russian citizenship. We aim at discovering concepts (or knowledge) relevant to modern Russian society, which shall be acquired by migrants to successfully integrate into the society system. In this case the human capital is identified with the system of concepts (or knowledge) operated by an individual going through the test.

Our method to work with the text includes several stages [3].

At the first stage of ontology building, we analyze the text for the frequency of its lexical units use. We suppose that the most frequently used lexical units mark the multiplicities in the text outlines, and indicate greater importance of some concepts compared to other concepts implemented in lexical units. Thus, our study is focused on the meaning (concept), and considers not the wordforms, but lexemes (table 1).

Table 1. Most frequently used wordforms in the text.

Lexical units given in the table represent the node elements of semantic space found in the text offered to migrants during the test. Lexical units are used in the next stages of anthology building. At the same time, each of these units is a carrier of meaning important when adopting the examinee into new information environment. It is interesting that there are no such units among listed in the table above pointing to the examinee. On the one hand, it could happen because the examinee (subject) is not yet integrated into the new semantic environment and cultural semantics, and on the other hand, it could signify the absence of opportunity to integrate different cultural semantics of the host country and the integration subject.

At the next stage of the study, we defined and compared the concepts (dictionary and contextual definitions) of the most frequent lexical units. We grouped lexical units as shown below basing on the identity of semes included in the lexical meaning and their correlation with the same proposition:

1. Lexemes describing examination: test, answer, checklist, task, date, name, surname.

2. Lexemes describing job: work, employer, perform.

3. Lexemes describing the time: date, day, minute, time.

4. Lexemes describing space: place.

5. Lexemes describing the country / state: country, Russia, USSR.

6. Lexemes describing messages in a natural language: advertisement, topic.

Separate groups include lexemes can (describes the situation of availability or choice), and appropriate (describes a situation or its part as subjected to an established order).

First two stages of the study allow discovering the most frequent lexical units, carrying concepts important to Russian society and grouping them in larger units, which makes it possible to talk about complete systems of concepts connected with propositions that represent real situations built in semantic space of the text.

The first stages of forming the linguistic presumption in migrants’ human capital define the skills to discover implicit components in the word meaning, syntactic structures, and skills to correlate concepts with a certain text and with each other in this text.

Then comes checking the ability to differentiate semantically adequate sentences and skills to choose syntactic and grammatical structures that insure the correlation of different communication and information environments.

At the next stage, we set relations between units that make the semantic nodes of ontology we build. The connection between units is provided by the general context. Thus, for example, if the units work and appropriate appear together only in one context, their connection strength is equal to unity. Connections between the units are graphically illustrated. It allows demonstrating the topological correlation of a unit with other units in the ontology, and the importance of units to the system as a whole.

The results achieved are given in pics. ## 1 and 2.

Pic. 1. The ontology of a text offered to migrants during the test: correlation between the units.

Pic. 2. The ontology of a text offered to migrants during the test: correlation between semantic groups.

At the interpretation stage of ontology formed, we consider it necessary to point the following parameters. First, what semantic groups the lexical units of ontology are arranged in. Second, the number of lexical units in one semantic group: we suppose that the more important a fragment of the semantic space is, the more different units are used to describe it. Third, the strength of connections between semantic groups.

We have 7 semantic groups in the texts developed for migrants. The most detailed of them, multiple in lexical units included, is a group related to the test situation. The test developers are focused on the addressee (examinee), aiming to ensure a maximum degree of understanding the questions. It explains the presence of examinee in the text, despite the fact that we find no lexical units in the text directly or indirectly pointing the examinee. This is the only semantic group, which has connections with all other groups. At the same time, the text fragments formed by the units of this group can be factored out as a metatext element being a guideline to enter the main text semantics. It is worth to note that this is the only group, which lexeme appropriate has its single connection with, meaning that the concept of appropriate is understood here as the degree of compliance with the guidelines and rules declared in the metatext.

The second large group includes lexemes describing time. Together with the group describing place, they set the main coordinate axis, which are the time and space. The concept of time is represented by more units (day, century, minute), rather than space, which is limited by the trinity of lexemes Country – USSR – Russia. In addition to this, semantic group describing place has connections with the group work, actualizing the meaning of a work place, a place of work.

The requirements for linguistic competence of examinees are explicated in the lexemes group describing messages in natural language. This group includes two lexical units: topic and advertisement. Linguistic skills of a migrant in this way are assessed by the ability to code and decode short information messages related to advertisements.

The knowledge of foreign languages (including Russian as foreign) is one of conditions for successful professional socialization in the market economy conditions [2]. Russian Federation as a customer in the market paradigm has the right to set requirements to people applying for its citizenship. The compulsory examination in Russian, history and legislation allows, on the one hand, assessing the competitiveness of new citizens in the labor market, and on the other hand, makes it possible to socialize them in existing semantic environment.

The analysis of this semantic environment, studying it by means of ontological engineering methods, made it possible to assess the place of citizenship candidates in the environment. Becoming a citizen of the Russian Federation, which is the successor of traditions and values of the Russian Empire and USSR, immigrants get employment opportunities. Along with this, the requirements to linguistic competence of examinees are not that high and limited by the ability to understand advertisements. Thus, declaring its need in highly skilled labor force, the Russian Federation encourages the inflow of immigrants with low level of the Russian language proficiency, who are not able to compete in the labor market. At the same time, no successful integration into the semantic environment of modern Russian society is guaranteed to them; the success depends on appropriate usage of examinees’ intellectual resources.

Thus, in modern conditions, when the economic development is defined not only by the character of economic interactions, but also by the communication quality, it is reasonable to assume that N. Chomsky’s dichotomy of linguistic competence and linguistic performance, relevant in assessing communication processes, becomes invalid. The category of linguistic presumption becomes more relevant when describing modern environment of cultural and economic communications. The category represents, on the one hand, the adequacy of language skills of the economics discourse agents, and on the other hand, it demonstrates the validity of human capital, including cultural semantics represented in the communication behavior of migrants.