Mira B.Bergelson, Moscow State University
Communication as interaction has become central for understanding processes in modern society. Efficiency of communication within a society more and more determines both successes and failures of social development. In modern Russia developing communication and re-engineering communication flow is especially important in overcoming traditional mistrust and suspicion between the state and society. Actually, this is the way of shaping isolated and uncoordinated social groups into civil society. Also, one can not overestimate the importance of effective communication for the business world. The whole concept of quality management builds on a presumption that every acting participant has access to all the relevant information and communication flows. Successful communication between participants allows for effective decision making, conflict management, negotiations, and team work (Bergelson 1998).
At the same time the processes and instances of communication are more and more introduced into the academic context for detailed analysis in various research projects. There are two reasons to explain this type of development. First, though communicative skills naturally evolve in the processes of primary socialization of an individual leading to acquisition of culturally determined communicative competence, efficiency of communication still depends very much on intended, planned and structured actions of qualified participants of communicative events. Second, the society eventually develops natural appetite for learning and studying the rules determining success of these actions. Communication studies as a new academic field in Russia is a logical development of the processes of accumulating relevant data, organizing and structuring it for translation within educational systems and research in a variety of contexts
The importance of communication to the public and the society explains high demand for the profession and the steadily rising numbers of undergraduate and graduate communication degrees. In the USA number of university graduates with degree in communication has risen three times since mid-seventies reaching sixty thousand B.A., six thousand M.A., and 500 Ph.D. degrees per year by mid-nineties of the last century (Morreale Sh.P. 1998).
In Russia accreditation of Communication or Communication studies university degree programs at the Ministry of Education is still a matter of future effort. Meanwhile there is a huge public demand for the profession, especially its applied versions – advertising, public relations, campaigns, mass-media professions, and business communication.
The first steps in the direction of shaping communication studies into a full-fledged academic discipline serving as an intellectual and institutional foundation for the profession, and thus legitimizing it, have been made. But as any enterprise of such kind this process builds upon an already existing Russian tradition of social studies and humanities. The good part of it is bringing in and relying upon the rich humanitarian, mostly philological, knowledge, expertise, and approaches because many of the scholars come from this field. The core of this field – as understood in Russian tradition – is foreign languages (both teaching and research), which partly explains why intercultural communication became the first accredited degree program in the field of communication. Until recently in Russia there was significantly less interest to the sociological aspects of communication studies except for in the mass-media studies. The latter is quite understandable due to the tremendous changes and pace of development of Russian mass-media.
At the same time communication research often lacks experimental approaches to data gathering, formal – not just proclaimed as such – methods of data selection, analysis, and presentation of the results, corpus-based approaches. There is no one accepted format for presentation of the findings so that they could be verified. This is true not only of the newly emerging discipline of communication studies, but also of the Russian research tradition in social studies and humanities as a whole. (Sociology and computer-related research are exceptions). Both the strong and the weaker sides of the research tradition are transferred to and reflected in the education.
Due to successful development of degree programs titled ‘Linguistics and intercultural communication’ a few communication courses were introduced as part of the new curriculum. Still it can not compensate for lack of a full-fledged degree program in communication. Undoubtedly, such a program has to be developed and certified through the Russian Ministry of education, which will lead to new curriculum in Russian universities, will support development of academic research and applied studies, the latter being in such a demand with the public.
It would be a long due step in the right direction reflecting the overall tendency. In the last two years the amount of papers, collections, and monographs published in the field has soared. There are first text books on communication-related subjects published in Russian that are not just mere translations from English. (Grishaeva: 2003), (Gudkov: 2003), (Leontovich: 2003), (Mjasojedov: 2003), (Persikova: 2002). A reference book on various aspects of communication studies includes 3400 items published between 1991 –2001 -(Basharatjan: 2002). At least once a month there comes information about yet another conference whose name includes the word ‘communication’. The European Communication Congress has been shaped as an influential international body. In 2002 Russian Communication Association – RCA started to function yet in 2000 – has been formally established as national professional association. Since 2002 RCA became quite visible as a professional organization – especially in Internet.
The following universities and cities are among the key players in building RCA as virtual professional community for communication studies – St. Petersburg State University, Rostov-na-Donu, Volgograd, Pjatigorsk, Nizhni Novgrod, Moscow Linguistic University and others. I have skipped my own Department of Foreign Languages at MSU, Journalism department, MSU, and Moscow State Institute for Foreign Relations who in the last 5-7 years have been positioning themselves as centers for applied communication studies, respectively, foreign languages in intercultural communication and interlanguage pragmatics, mass-media, and public relations.
As an example of the development in this area I would like to mention International School of Communication Studies to be organized at the Foreign languages department, Moscow State University – a structure to serve as an experimental ground for new communication courses, new communication studies curriculum, and continuing education programs in communication. It is targeted at complementing two main specializations of the department – intercultural communication and regional studies. The former deals with foreign languages within a broad context of world cultures based on thorough knowledge of one’s own culture; the latter means studies of specific regions of the world on the basis of their cultural and social history. Both studies have the same three corner stones and can not be pursued without due attention to Language – Culture – Communication triangle. The first two concepts are related to the now existing specializations at the department; for the last one such a relation has yet to be established.
Now, looking at the problem of communication curriculum from the purely pragmatic positions – high public demand for certain applied communications professions – will also mean bringing together the expertise of various communication specialists. For the MSU Foreign Languages Department it means that every applied communication course being taught and every communication skill acquired has an intercultural communication twist and requires deep knowledge of foreign languages and cultures.
It is only logical that developing a field like communication studies which in many aspects comes from abroad and is based on the traditions of a different culture, would crave for a cross-cultural, intercultural perspective to adjust it to the realities of Russian tradition and civilization as a whole. Such “translation” of foreign experience is an extremely provocative task in itself: it makes people look inside their own experiences and feel themselves as representatives of their culture. Questions are being asked and issues raised.
Adjustment is needed not only in the way the main concepts of the discipline are understood, but also in practical work of introducing new curriculum and new educational techniques. Our experience in having since 1993 a joint educational program with University of Colorado at Denver is an example of such adjustment. The program of so called International College allowed international students to get a B.A. degree in communication and languages from UCD, while all the courses were taught in Moscow on the basis of Foreign Languages Department by Russian and American faculty. Thus, the program has operated within the provisions of two different educational systems revealing both their commonalities and their differences, their strong and weak sides. Because of the curriculum demands, FLD faculty had to develop various courses in communication. Besides that, the program served also as a training ground for organizational communication in intercultural context and comparative studies of American organizational culture (Programs: 1999).
The next step in developing communication studies in the intercultural and international context is creation and expansion of our own brand programs in global and intercultural communication, regional studies, cultural linguistics. The experience and expertise of ten years of international cooperation with UCD is extremely valuable. It comes in handy as a potential model for the International School of Communication Studies at FLD (ISCS) which can serve as an “umbrella” for a variety of communication studies programs of various length and depth for second and continuing education while getting ready for the time when a degree program in communication can be certified by the state. The ISCS will make it much easier for the department to engage into various types of partnerships within the Bologna process because during the transition period it provides flexibility needed for transferring credit hours in differing educational systems and promotes faculty cooperation in building new curriculum.
One last point to add is that the central issue of this model of cooperation is mutually responsible participation of international scholars in research projects, focus on enhancing the quality of research and its conformity with the international standards. Of the abovementioned aspects of joint research writing of a paper comes normally as the last but not the least important stage of the project. It is well known that academic styles differ significantly in Russian and American scholarly traditions. Thus, it creates a lot of problems but also provides communication scholars with abundant data for research on the written communication in academy. Besides academic interest this kind of research has significant practical applications.