La pubblicità a lezione di RKI. Risorse per lo sviluppo delle competenze traduttive e interculturali per la mediazione russo-italiano

The mediation scales presented in the Companion Volume with new Descriptors (Council of Europe, 2018) stress the central role of para- and extra-linguistic skills in achieving plurilingual interaction competence. At the same time, they reaffirm the importance of making a careful selection of teaching materials in order to develop, together with general and communicative language preparation, both the assimilation of cultural contents embedded within a foreign language, necessary in order to decode the original texts, and a conscious reflection on the cultural symmetries and asymmetries between the social and historical-cultural context of the mother tongue and the foreign language. These two elements constitute the basis of the pluricultural competences which are a necessary preparation for the work of mediation. As is well known, the various forms of the advertising message figure prominently amongst the materials that best exemplify epistemic models, axiological systems and socio-cultural scenarios. Russian advertising, in its historical evolution and in its verbal and iconic elements, has received considerable attention in Italy, with a number of interesting descriptive and rhetorical-linguistic analyses. The present survey aims to combine these results with an in-depth study of the culture-specific value of images and words used in Russian press advertisements, showing their potential in the development of skills useful for the mediation of texts and concepts in courses of Russian as a foreign language aimed at Italian learners. We have identified three types of promotional posters that can be profitably used in a Russian as a Foreign Language (RKI - Russkij kak inostrannyj) lesson: advertisements using sayings or idioms; advertisements using Soviet slogans or images; and advertisements using folkloric-popular elements.