content in the process of communication is not only transmitted, but also created as a
result of speech and intellectual activity.
Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, which proceeds from the
inseparability of meaning and form in the study of language and considers language as
a reflection of cognitive, and not only mental activity, exploring mechanisms of human
consciousness through language phenomena, language is a powerful means of
cognition. According to the outstanding Ukrainian scholar O. Potebnia, "language
refers to all other means of progress, as the first and the main" [Potebnia, 1976, p. 211].
Language is also the main tool of cognition: in the process of learning the
language a person masters the basic forms and laws of thought. The special significance
of language in the processes of cognition was emphasized by the prominent German
linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, who associated the study of a new language with the
acquisition of a new look at the previous worldview. People, who speak different
languages, see the world in different ways, because each language divides the world
around you in its own way, and ultimately it is a kind of grid that pours into a
recognizable world [
Kocherghan
, 2003, p. 191].
The creative nature of the language (according to W. Humboldt, language ΜΆ is the
organ that forms the thought) determines the specifics of human activity, directs
professional interaction to the desired plane of effective communication.
Formation of the competence of effective professional communication in
professionally oriented foreign language classes develops the conceptual thinking of
students, saturating their background knowledge with the images of another culture,
expanding associative boundaries, and improving the basic forms and laws of thought.
Conceptual thinking, which reflects the general essential properties of objects and
phenomena of objective reality, the general interconnections between them in the form
of a holistic system of features, is an integral form of mental activity of man. In the
formation of concepts there are involved all mental functions and cognitive experience
of man, including his figurative, sensory images, which according to psychologist M.
Kholodnaja, in the conceptual thinking have specific functions:
-
images enable combining the knowledge acquired by a person from the outside,
through the system of verbal signs, with its own individual experience, which is
acquired in the process of the interaction with the outside world;
-
the availability of figurative components in thinking dramatically accelerates its
course;
-
due to the images conceptual thinking is saturated with emotions and feelings;
-
images help to make unexpected generalizations, cause original associations,
which in general adds creativity to thinking [
Skrypchenko, Dolynsjka,
&
Oghorodnijchuk, 2007,
pp. 229-240]
.
- 370 -