Professional activity nominations in Russian and German employment discourses

The article examines the employment discourse features on the example of vacancies on Internet sites, namely professional activity nominations, in a comparative aspect of Russian and German linguistic cultures. The relevance of the research is due to the significance and popularity of vacancy texts within the employment discourse, as well as its development and modification in connection with the transition to an online format. The comparative approach allows us to consider the specifics of vacancy texts, both in sociolinguistic and linguacultural aspects. The aim of the study is to identify sociolinguistic and linguacultural features of professional activity nominations in vacancy announcements in the Russian and German employment discourse. The research material is presented by Russian and German job advertisements, namely, professional activity nominations, collected by a continuous sampling method in the amount of 500 texts. The methodological basis of the study is also cognitive-discursive and comparative analyses. The authors find that even at the level of professional activity titles, the German employment discourse is closer to the institutional discourse, where the gender component is represented as a sociolinguistic and linguacultural feature. The Russian discourse of employment is closer to everyday discourse, which is manifested in the designation of professional activity directly by the compilers of advertisements. By sociolinguistic features, the authors of the article understand the statistics of the most popular professions and activities, taking into account such aspects as the applicant’s education, gender, and other socially significant characteristics and skills. Linguistically, the authors systematize the communicative features of the nominations in terms of linguistic means at different levels, implementing the employment discourse tactics, obeying the social and linguistic norms of national culture. The most expressive and popular language tools in Russian linguaculture, especially in the field of naming the types of proposed activities, include occasional job nominations and borrowings. The reasons for this type of nominations are discussed in detail by the authors in the article.