Аnalysis of language manipulations in the Western media sphere in foreign language classes at a university in the perspective of transformation of the concept of “communicative competence” under the impact of media ecology

the hypothesis of the article is that the inclusion of tasks on linguistic analysis of Western media texts for the identification of linguistic manipulations can contribute to the formation of information literacy of students, and the training of a number of well-educated young people who understand the features of disinformation and discreditation will improve media ecology of society as a whole. Information literacy is considered to be the most important component of communicative competence of modern Russian people in connection with the increasing toxicity of information flow. The author also points out a number of advantages of the university discipline “foreign language” for the development of expertise in media text quality assessment, such as the variety of topics studied, the linguistic focus of the subject, the opportunity to familiarize oneself with the content of Western media in the original and so on. Although it is recognized that for the productive reinforcement immunity to media attacks, foreign language classes should not be the only context for the development of proper orientation strategies in the crisis information environment, the scientist claims that the practice of studying foreign publications and newscasts has been well established in this discipline since the Soviet times and can be successfully adapted to the challenges of the modern society.

foreign languages, media ecology, language manipulation, communicative competence, information literacy, fakes, Western media