Research Of Value Orientations Of Engineering Students In The Context Of Globalization

Abstract

Research of the life values of Russian students at an engineering university was conducted in order to determine their life attitudes and orientation towards the future. The survey was divided into 2 groups with 101 respondents. The value component was noted in the speech markers of social value expressed by the respondents in their discourse and set semantic speech units (phraseology and aphoristics). The discourse as a social process shows the results of mental analysis at the personal and cultural level of social interaction, while the cognitive apparatus of a person generates phraseology and aphoristics as verbal and cultural axiological codes reflecting the value picture of a particular native speaker. The subject of the research is the identity and life attitudes of Russian student youth, seen as a subcultural association. Targets have been set to identify which values are dominant among Russians in comparison with the foreigners, whether the value picture among Russian respondents is stable or changing due to world globalization processes and the active participation of youth at international cultural associations with youth subcultures tendencies. We tried to reveal, using phraseological units and aphorisms, whether the value picture has been enhanced due to foreign borrowings, or do we have the displacement of national speech markers of other value connotations? The stability of the value picture, the dominance of basic moral values, attitudes towards study and work, active melioration of aphoristics through borrowings that do not contradict the moral values of the national picture of the world are revealed.

Keywords: Aphoristics, discourse, professional identity, phraseology, value picture of the world, youth subculture

Introduction

In modern scientific discourse, the issue of a person as a subject of professional self-development is actively discussed, i.e. it is said about a person who designs his own way in the profession and determines the vector of his professional experience, starting with professional self-determination (Cook et al., 2015; Savickas, 2009; Wehmeyer, 2005). In this case, professional activity becomes a special individual value, being the basis for self-realization, meeting the needs for social recognition, support and expansion of social relations and contacts (Bentley et al., 2019). Accordingly, a person is actively realized in the profession through continuous learning, expanding his professional functions, mastering several professions.

Personal integrity with the variety of its identifications (professional, ethno-cultural, gender, etc.) is achieved through the interiorization of the inherent values in these identifications, the formation and objectification of personal meaning, which acts as a psychological mechanism for the development of the personality. An active transformative position and critical thinking of the individual allow constructing an internal basis of identity and socialization in a transitive society (Roca & Gagne, 2008). Modern approaches to the problem of professional and personal self-realization make it possible to link a person's aspirations for career progress, rooting in a particular social and professional group, and maintaining style of activity and communication in order to achieve the most complete self-realization (Roca & Gagne, 2008; Pavlenko & Yakushenkov, 2019; Wehmeyer, 2005) Thus, the study of the values of modern young professionals and students helps young people to build the trajectory of the professional path, to identify the main problem points of professionalization, and also correct the professional path.

We study the professional identity of young people, placed into groups according to their professional orientation – in this case, aspiring engineers. In other words, the subculture of the younger generation is viewed within a social association officially recognized at the state level - the university as a social institution responsible for personnel policy. But outside of Russia, youth identity is usually considered as part of the delinquent (hostile to the main culture) subcultural youth associations. Youth subcultures appear as a phenomenon for the struggle of the young generation’s rights (political, economic, as well as religious or national and cultural, if we are talking about national minorities). It is connected to age factors: the need to challenge, justify and defend one’s choices, allowing one to construct the reality of the future. The youth, who have entered subcultural associations, receive the positive reinforcement that allows them to achieve self-esteem, raise their social status, and activate their attitude towards national differences. Within the subculture, its own heroism and its own theme of creativity are developed. The latter makes it possible to detect subcultures materially expressing themselves through graffiti, preferred clothing, dance, music, song, the creation and use of slang. Belonging to a subculture weakens the desire to get an education..

Problem Statement

The values of a particular community (professional, gender, ethno-cultural, etc.) can be studied through the analysis of the everyday discourse of the individuals who form this community. We consider discourse as a cognitive social process, reflecting the results of mental analysis at the personal and cultural level of interaction, correlated with the social community and a specific historical period (Alefirenko, 2009; Gorbunov, 2013; Figgou et al., 2019; Kravchenko, 2012; Khairullina, 2016). The cognitive apparatus of a person generates phraseology, aphoristics as "verbal-cultural axiological codes", "ethno-specific discursive formations" (Buyanova, 2019), allowing, to a greater extent than other speech units, to assess their position. In this regard, researchers distinguish "phraseological discourse" and "phraseological picture of the world" (Buyanova, 2019). By “linguocultural value dominants”, following the researcher Karasik, we imply “the meanings that are the most essential for a given culture, their combination forms a certain cultural type, supported and preserved in the language” (Karasik, 2002), by replication we imply “data copying” from one source into another. Judgments about the world represent cognitization - the ordering of certain categories in the human mind, which allows (for the) storage and replenishment of information. This process takes place within the sphere of concept - “organized units of the people's thinking” (Popova, 2007, p. 104) and reveals “the mental signs of any phenomenon, which are reflected in the consciousness of the people at the stage of its development” (Popova, 2007, p. 104). Thus, the sphere of concept is capable of evolving with new value dominants.

Research Questions

The object of the research is the discourse of the first year students, typical representatives of the general population of individuals (youth and students of the first quarter of the 21st century).

The subject of the research is the student youth identity in relation to life attitudes and the internal basis of identity (Roca & Gagne, 2008), represented in subcultural groups.

Youth identity is a topic actively raised in scientific publications in most countries of the world. But outside of Russia, youth identity is usually considered within youth self-organizations of a subcultural type. Foreign researchers present youth subcultures as a phenomenon of the struggle for the rights of the young generation (political, economic, as well as religious or national-cultural, if we are talking about national minorities). This, as they found out, is associated with age factors: the need to challenge, justify and defend their choice, which allows them to construct the reality of the future (Hodkinson & Garland, 2016; Johansson, 2017), or, on the contrary, to admit their helplessness and adopt pessimistic attitudes (Tan & Cheng, 2020).

Young people who have entered subcultural group associations receive the psycho-physiological positive reinforcement that allows them to raise their self-esteem, their social status, and gain popularity (Crowe & Hoskins, 2019; Goldstein & Golan-Cook, 2017; Savickas, 2009) to activate the attitude towards national differences (Tapia, 2019; Figgou et al, 2019). Within the subculture, its own heroism and its own theme of creativity are developed. The latter makes it possible to detect subcultures that materially express themselves through sports (Ding, 2019), graffiti (Jacobson, 2020), in preferred Fantasy (Rutherford et al., 2016), clothing, dance, music (Gbogi, 2016; Rowe, 2017; Trainer, 2017; Wang, 2019) and song (Simões & Campos, 2014), mostly demonstrating racial identity. And also, it expresses through the creation and use of slang (Wang, 2019), in the deviant orientation of the youth subculture (De Backer, 2019; Liu & Xie, 2017; Pollard, 2016), in weakening the desire to get an education.

Russian researchers, unlike their foreign colleagues, are actively studying the subcultural relations developing within the structures of additional youth education (Kolesnik et al., 2020); they keep in sight mainly state-supported organizations associations: students, schoolchildren, and development-training groups. The otherness of such youth is manifested in the desire for creativity, for the good, which is understood as the process of constructing the desired social reality in terms of self-creation (self-training) of a cultural nature, suitable for the constructed creative reality, in building a model of altruism, creative education and self-determination (Lukyanov et al., 2016). Also, elective courses, sports sections are under review (Kolesnik et al, 2020). Russian researchers have proven that the creative youth subcultures can be the place where human personality and willpower are formed and the greatest value is the ability to challenge oneself, organize a self-test for strength, which can be represented as an exam or a difficult test associated with an altruistic idea of the usefulness of the performed activity. Music and its emotional and intellectual aspects, the aesthetic pleasure obtained from a piece of music (Veselska, 2016) and the beginning of collective sports dance (Khestanov, 2016) can be a unifying means of the youth subculture in Russia. At the same time, there is a destructive ideology of street subcultures in cities and especially in social networks (Ivanov et al., 2019).

• Russian and foreign researchers (Pavlenko & Yakushenkov, 2019) agree on a positive assessment of the focus of youth subcultures on the development of the digital space, since it culturally unites peoples (Sugihartati, 2019).
• All of this allows us to formulate two hypotheses from the research: 1) if the Russian youth discourse really develops intercultural communication in a globalizing world, then there will be a certain amount of borrowings in slang, youth active phraseological units and catchphrases; 2) if the observations of previous researchers are correct, the identity of Russian youth (student) organizational associations will be based on the value choice of professional attitudes and the desire to study.
• If there are original Russian phraseological units and aphorisms in the answers of the respondents, as well as borrowings that have long been mastered by the Russian language, then we can talk about the stability of the value picture of the world of this group. If a significant number of borrowings of recent years from other languages was recorded in this group, it means the world linguistic picture is changing; at the same time, if new borrowings fit into the original national value picture of the world, it means that the borrowings have been adapted to the Russian language and have expanded its pictorial and expressive capabilities, values are enhanced, while the value picture of the world remains the same; if such a phenomena is absent, then values are displaced and replaced.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to fix the students' judgments about their life values, which is expressed in speech markers of social value presented as stable semantic units of speech (phraseology and aphoristics).

Research objectives: 1) to conduct a survey of student group of one university on the use of speech markers of social value (phraseology and aphoristics) judgments;

2) to identify basic values and their speech markers in the opinions of judgments of young people;

3) to analyze student discourse in quantitative and thematic terms;

4) to explore the subject's worldview by analyzing the use of speech markers of social value judgments presented by stable semantic units of speech (phraseology and aphoristics);

5) to reveal the stability / instability of the value picture of the world of subcultural student associations due to whether Russian or foreign phraseology and aphoristics dominate the discourse, and how the identified borrowings are mastered by the Russian language;

6) to identify whether new borrowings fit into the original national value picture of the world, whether they are adapted to the Russian language, whether they have expanded its pictorial and expressive possibilities;

7) to determine whether the value picture of the world is improved due to borrowings, or this picture remains the same, or national speech markers of social values are being squeezed out due to the introduction of other value borrowings.

The research was carried out on the basis of the pedagogical platform of the Institute of Fundamental Sciences of the Kuban State Technological University. The experiment involved 101 respondents – the first year students (54 boys and 47 girls) with average age of 18; 45 respondents were technical college students with an average age of 16.5 (35 boys and 15 girls). Some of the results of this sociological study (the linguodidactic aspect) were covered by us earlier (Shaposhnikova et al., 2019).

Research Methods

The following methods were used to achieve the set objectives of the study:

a) a functional method, which is a way of studying the mental representation of a culturally determined value expressed by a respondent in a discourse on the basis of existing social experience;

b) sociolinguistic experiment;

c) categorical analysis as a way of distributing the obtained empirical data according to semantic categories, axio-conceptions, which made it possible to identify the signs and specifics of values;

d) conceptual axiological analysis used to classify the cultural values identified by the respondents.

The research tool was written survey. The respondents were asked to answer the question: "What is my perspective on life?" It was necessary to quote any citation, slogan, phraseological unit, write down one’s own thoughts; to indicate preference in numerical order if there were several answers. The respondents did not make a selection from the options offered to them, but they generated a statement and wrote it down, so we are talking about discourse, not about analysis of printed materials.

The survey was anonymous in order to elicit honest responses during the course of its conduction. Some respondents did not give an answer to the above question, and some gave several answers at once and numbered them according to the order of personal importance. If the respondents could not recall a certain quote, but really wanted to rewrite it accurately, they were allowed to use a cell phone and enter a phrase from the required quote into an internet search engine. This desire of the respondents revealed the strategy of selecting the most significant information in the discourse. It explains the fact that some of the aphorisms given by the respondents consist of several sentences.

Findings

We analyzed the linguistic identity of students only on the basis of stable semantic axiologically significant units which were generated by the respondents during the survey, expressing judgments about life values, and due to their typicality, the unity and stability of the value picture of the world of the young generation was confirmed. We divided value judgments into thematic groups (axio-concepts), identified native Russian expressions, borrowings, we paid attention to their exact or descriptive display by the respondents.

The origin of phraseological units, aphorisms, quotations, their literary or slang form were determined, which made it possible to track changes in the linguistic picture of the world at the level of original elements and the expansion of borrowings by the young Russian generation. In this regard, the materials are presented in tables, the right column contains detailed address information on the language unit.

1. Overcoming life's challenges. A rather large thematic group consists of phraseological units and quotes connected by a common attitude towards overcoming life's difficulties.

Conclusion

The conducted sociolinguistic research allowed to continue the development of ideas that the value picture of the world, which is reflected in the deep consciousness of native speakers in basic linguistic units (especially in phraseology and aphoristics), expressing the terminal values of society, can be analyzed according to the presented value categories. We have identified the following axiological concepts as the main ones for student discourse: overcoming life's challenges, basic moral values, attitudes associated with study and work. We noted the general dominance of student discourse as a speech marker showing the subject's attitude. It manifested itself especially clearly in the borrowings involved in speech; and this, possibly, will have an affect on the future accumulative process of the formation (in the Russian language) of a new linguocultural value dominant, associated with a major outlook on life. This fact also shows the replication of semantic units from other national cultures that do not contradict the national conceptual sphere and are capable of expanding and enhancing it. The active process of borrowing is characteristic precisely for the youth environment.

The factor of self-understanding of the future as a value, the realization of this value in study and work are revealed. The comparison of value attitudes in Russian and foreign subcultural associations is carried out. It was revealed that the trajectory of the professional path is not traced in spontaneously formed youth communities; identification is aimed at social protest. At the same time, intelligent youth associations purposefully organized at the state level allow their members to professionally define themselves.

Replication was also noted at the level of speech generation, which manifested itself in the wide use of interpretations when respondents expressed their thoughts, if it was based on phraseological units and aphorisms, national and borrowed. This highlights the process of mastering the expressive capabilities of the language by the young generation.

The linguistic identity of youth is stated, expressed in the unity of the moral and ethical attitudes of the respondents (students of different specialties, boys and girls) that manifested themselves in the youth discourse. This indicates that the obtained experimental empirical data reflects the real situation of the presence of set national linguo-cultural value dominants in the linguistic picture of the world of the young generation and also it reflects the processes of forming new dominants which do not contradict the existing ones.

Russian youth discourse reflected the process of active development of cross-cultural relations in the globalizing world, which manifested itself in the advancement and enrichment of axiological concepts, in the using of borrowings.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) for the grant support of our project No. 19-413-235002 "Self-understanding of the professional identity of youth in the context of ideas about the future (using the engineering profession as an example)".

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