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The Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages
Moscow State Linguistic University

Schools of Academic Thought

MSLU academics have laid important theoretical groundwork for such key areas of research as:

Since its foundation, MSLU has been home to eminent researchers who have always combined theoretical linguistics with applie language research with respect to specific languages (language pairs). Their numerous followers continue to pursue these scholarly traditions that have resulted in a wide range of schools of academic thought.


School of Stylistics (Professor Ilya Galperin) 
Since its foundation, MSLU has been home to eminent researchers who have always combined theoretical linguistics with applie language research with respect to specific languages (language pairs). Their numerous followers continue to pursue these scholarly traditions that have resulted in a wide range of schools of academic thought. 


School of English Grammar (Professor Leonid Barkhudarov)
Formulated in the 1960s and 1970s, the theory laid the foundation for new directions in research of English grammar, including the syntax of simple and complex sentences, transformational-generative grammar, semantic syntax, the theory of grammatical valency and grammatical homonymy and synonymy. 


School of English Phonetics (Professors Antonina Antipova, Julietta Shakhbagova, Tatyana Shevchenko and others)
The school builds upon the scholarly traditions of Dr. Georgy Torsuev, a prominent Russian linguist and founder of the Department of English Phonetics at MSLU.


School of English Phraseology (Professor Alexander Kunin)
Dr. Kunin, a renowned linguist and author of the English-Russian Dictionary of Phraseology, is rightly considered one of the founding fathers of both English and General Phraseology as independent branches of linguistics. 


School of English Lexicology (Professors Galina Knyazeva, Zoya Semeryakova, Elena Belyaevskaya and others)
The research area develops the scholarly traditions of the renowned Russian anglicist Alexander Smirnitsky. 


School of German Phraseology (Professor Irina  Chernysheva)
Professor Chernysheva's concept of phraseological derivation and classification of phraseological units is widely acknowledged among researchers and often cited by German and Swiss linguists. The school can boast a rich scholarly tradition with 60 doctoral and three post-doctoral dissertations and numerous collected works and monographs. 


School of German Grammar and Text Grammar (Professor Olga Moskalskaya)
The scholarly tradition has been elaborated in 42 doctoral and 12 post-doctoral dissertations.


School of Functional Stylistics of the German Language (Professor Eliza Riezel)

Professor Riezel's model of text processing incorporates concepts of micro- and macrostructure, the text being a syntagmatic construction of the paradigmatic language system. The school has an impressive scholarly following of more than 50 doctoral and several post-doctoral dissertations. 

In 1963, Dr. Riezel was awarded the Franz Carl Weiskopf Prize for her contribution to the preservation of the German language. 


School of Stylistic Grammar (Professor Yevgenia Shendels)
This scholarly tradition is based on the concept of structural semantic and functional communicative approaches to language.


School of French Phonetics (Professors Kira Barishnikova and Natalia Portnova) 
Key areas of research include communicative phonetics and phonology, speech culture, social phonetics and phonostylistics of the French language.


School of Verbal and Non-verbal Communication (Professor Margarita  Gorodnikova)
Key areas of research include social and cultural interaction in text generation, verbal and non-verbal equivalents of concepts embedded in cognitive structures.


School of the Linguistic Theory of Translation (Professors Leonid Barkhudarov, Sergey Goncharenko, Vilen Komissarov, Victor Rozentsveig, Ghelly Chernov,  Alexander Shveitser)
This school has become a research paradigm widely acknowledged both in Russia and other countries.


School of Applied and Experimental Linguistics (Professors Rodmonga Potapova, Yuriy Marchuk, Eduard  Korolev)
This interdisciplinary area of research requires both profound linguistic knowledge and a solid background in cutting-edge information technologies, software, database management and computer-assisted technologies, including voice recognition technology. 


School of Linguistic Semantics (Professor Boris  Gorodetskiy)
This research area deals extensively with building semantic metalanguages, new types of dictionaries, thesauri, semantic algorithms, communication models and with the identification of semantic universals.


School of the History and Historiography of Linguistics and Comparative Linguistics (Professors Eduard Makaev, Tamara Amirova, Georgy Klychkov, Elena Kubryakova, Mikhail Makovskiy and others)


School of Text Theory and Communicative Linguistics (Professors Gennadiy Kolshanskiy, Ilya Galperin, Olga Moskalskaya , Yevgenia Shendels, Sofia Kannonich, Olga Kamenskaya, Tatyana Dridze)
This area of research explores the text as a discrete unit of communication, studies cohesion and coherence as text properties, describes rules for of creating texts and text functioning. 


School of Psycholinguistics (Professors Evgeniy Tarasov, Yuriy Sorokin, Revekka Frumkina, Alexander Shakhnarovich)
Key areas of research include speech generation and perception, acquisition and use of language, psycholinguistic aspects of L2 acquisition, image schemata as mental representations in intercultural communication).


School of Foreign Language Instruction at Secondary Schools and Non-linguistic Universities (Professors Galina Frolova, Nadezhda Gez, Nina Yelukhina, Irina Pavlova and others)
The rich and extensive tradition in this area of research has resulted in hundreds of FL teachers and professors trained for CIS and other countries as well as a whole library of key English, German and French language coursebooks created for schools with intensive FL programmes, and technical universities.


School of Methodology of Intensive FL Instruction for Adults (Professor Svetlana Melnik)
The school has developed a wide range of intensive exposure methods in FL instruction for adults and can boast a long list of doctoral research papers representing this scholarly tradition.


The School of Androgogy and Pedagogical Anthropology (Professors Nikolay Nechaev, Alexei Bulkin, Sergei Zmeev, Andrey Verbitskiy, Tamara Khmel, P. Boug and others)
Key areas of research include the pedagogical training of students specialising in linguistics, content- and context based teaching, models of professional development appropriate to adult education, key trends in higher education abroad. This academic tradition has been pursued in depth in dozens of doctoral and several post-doctoral dissertations.


School of Methodology of Foreign Language Instruction) (Professors Irina Khaleeva, Boris Lapidus, Alexander Mirolubov)

This research area promotes the development of intercultural awareness and the competence of future FL teachers as well as translators and interpreters. 

This academic tradition has been pursued in depth in dozens of doctoral and several post-doctoral dissertations.


The School of the Modern Russian Literary Language and Language Use (Professors Alla Bragina and Galina Ivanova) 
The school can boast a rich scholarly following of dozens of doctoral dissertations within Russia and beyond.


School of Greek And Roman Literature and Culture (Professor Victor Yarkho)
The school can boast a rich scholarly following of dozens of doctoral and post-doctoral dissertations and numerous collected works and monographs. Dr. Yarkho, an outstanding Classical scholar and an author of more than 290 publications together with his followers have designed an extensive course of Latin targeted at future linguists.