Developing Communicative Skills through Fiction Dialogue in RFL Digital Environment: Lingua-Pragmatic and Didactic Perspectives

Fiction dialogues offer an effective tool for developing the pragmatic and sociocultural components of communicative skills in learners of Russian as a foreign language (RFL). Dialogues from Russian literature may be used to teach RFL students to interpret implicit meanings, recognize communicative strategies, and select appropriate linguistic resources in contemporary intercultural communication, including digitally mediated and virtual contexts. The method was tested on Y. V. Trifonov’s novella The Exchange, which is rich in authentic cultural patterns of interpersonal interaction. By analyzing the communicative strategies realized in these dialogues, the authors substantiated the use of fiction dialogue as a reliable model for developing pragmatic competence in RFL learners. The stylistic, pragmatic, and discourse methods included elements of comparative analysis and situational modeling. Evasion, rational persuasion, and emotional pressure proved to be the dominant strategies of interpersonal interaction in the novella. Their specific linguistic and pragmatic markers correlated with the social roles and psychological orientations of the characters. The text analysis served as material for developing communicative skills of interpreting implicit meanings and making strategic choices of linguistic means. These skills are relevant for face-to-face and virtual communication with its asynchronicity and reduced non-verbal cues. The article introduces a stage-based methodological model for working with fiction dialogue aimed at developing pragmatic and sociocultural competence in B2–C1 RFL learners. The dialogues are not meant for reciting: they show RFL learners how to make strategic choices in dialogical communication, where each utterance is interpreted in relation to both speech norms and communicative intention. In addition, the model prepares RFL learners for digital intercultural communication.