La Pologne, son destin et sa vocation particulière aux yeux des écrivains français du XIXe siècle

Author(s): Wiesław Mateusz Malinowski / Language(s): French Issue: 34/2023

The author of the paper propounds a hollistic outlook on how French writers of the 19th century perceived the fate of Poland in the most dramatic moment of its history, when it was fighting a fierce, and almost hopeless battle for its independence, having disappeared from the map of Europe. In textes of many poets, publicists and men of letters in France one can find a unique set of motifs that not only reveal a highly consistent way of thinking with respect to the situation Poland was in at the time, but also build a parallel vision of its future, and even hold a belief that Poland was to play a special role among European countries. In this paper the author identifies and discusses six such motifs.

Диалектиката на „хипер“. От модернизъм към постмодернизъм

Author(s): Michael Epstein / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 29/2022

The text is an attempt to analyze „the modernist premises of postmodernism in light of postmodern perspectives on modernism” or, put more simply, the interdependence of these two historical phenomena. The argument focuses on a variety of modernist approaches: in physics (quantum mechanics), in literary theory (new criticism), in philosophy (existentialism), across psychoanalytic theories and practices (sexual revolution), and across Soviet social and intellectual trends, such as “collectivism” and “materialism.” All these trends manifest the phenomenon of “hyper” in its first stage, which is constituted by the revolutionary overthrow of the “classic” paradigm and an assertion of a “true, essential reality,” or “superreality.” In the second stage, the same phenomena are realized and exposed as “pseudo-realities” thus marking the transformation of “hyper” itself, its inevitable transition from the modernist to the postmodernist stage, from “super” to “pseudo.” The author argues that the development of the twentieth-century cultural paradigm depends on a necessary connection between these two stages of the “super” and the “pseudo.” The concept of “hyper” highlights not only the lines of continuity between modernism and postmodernism, but also the parallel developments in Russian and Western postmodernisms as reactions to and revisions of a common “revolutionary” legacy.

Приносът на жените в българската хърватистика

Author(s): Liudmila Mindova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 29/2022

Women have a very important role in the contemporary Croatian studies in Bulgaria and we can assert that without their leader partnership it is not possible to imagine the formation of that academic subject from 1991 to now. In that period the works of Roumiana Bozhilova is of prime significance. Thanks to her activity nowadays we have numerous bilateral academic projects, conference and research collections. She is the mastermind who assemble Croatian and Bulgarian researchers and inspires them to develop our knowledge in the Bulgarian-Croatian relationships and Croatian history, science of art, culturology, linguistic, literature etc. Yoanna Spisarevska, Ekaterina Vecheva, Nayda Ivanova, Tatyana Dunkova, Nadezhda Dragova, Liliya Kirova, Ina Hristova, Katya Yordanova, Elena Daradanova, Antoaneta Balcheva, Milena Georgieva etc. are the leading researchers in that field of study and the article shows the central topics of their interests.

Невъзможният разказ. (Опит за рефлексия върху живота в несправедливи институции)

Author(s): Aleksander Kiossev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/1998

Język sakralny wobec polskiego języka narodowego. Łacina

Author(s): Joanna Sobczykowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 11/2023

Joanna Sobczykowa’s article deals with Latin as a sacred language in the Polish cultural area in history and today. Sobczykowa outlines the situation in other areas of culture, Semitic or Slavic. She examines the status and functions of liturgical Latin in history and today, by looking at opinions of speakers, theologians, linguists, and philosophers of religion. She also looks at documents in the form of Latin works by medieval Polish preachers and their concern for the understanding of the Latin liturgy by the people. Finally, she shows and stresses the difference between verbal and spiritual understanding present in meditation and that between the tendencies towards sacralization and desacralization.

Responding to Omicron: Speaker Commitment and Legitimisation in COVID-related Press Conferences

Author(s): Magdalena Szczyrbak,Anna Tereszkiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

This paper examines the ways in which New Zealand and Polish government officials communicated the easing of COVID restrictions to the general public. The study aimed to identify legitimising strategies used to justify the lifting of restrictions and related measures, and to establish how agency and responsibility were discursively constructed in the subgenre of political press conference in two different socio-political settings. Informed by the notions of legitimisation (Chilton 2004), speaker commitment and stance (Marín Arrese 2011, 2015, 2021), the research looked into the linguistic marking of effective stance (deonticity, assessments, attitudinals and directives) and epistemic stance (epistemic modality, truth-factual validity as well as experiential, cognitive and communicative stance), considering both the subjectivity/intersubjectivity dimension and the explicitness/implicitness of the speaker’s role. In addition, the study considered the key discursive strategies used to (de)construct agency in the discourses of NZ and Polish policymakers seen as proponents of divergent public health policies. As the findings indicate, the Polish officials conveyed chiefly experiential stance and projected less involvement, whereas the NZ Prime Minister favoured cognitive stance and deonticity as well as direct appeals to the audience. The analysis shows that the speaker’s (dis)identification with the respective policy finds reflection in the varying degrees of speaker commitment and the (de)construction of agency.

“Quodam frater hungarus ordinis minorum de observantia”. Osualdus de Lasko’s Identity as a Preacher and Author of Sermons

Author(s): Paula Cotoi / Language(s): English Issue: 1 (66)/2023

Osualdus de Lasko (OFM Obs, ca. 1450–1511) composed two sermon collections, which were published in print at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. However, the readers of his books did not know the name of the author, who was only introduced as “quodam frater hungarus ordinis minorum de observantia”. This paper considers this option for anonymity as a premise for further investigating Osualdus’ identity as an author of sermons and as a preacher, intending to answer questions such as: How is Osualdus presenting or representing himself as an author/preacher? For what reasons and purpose did he compile these sermon collections? How were his homiletic works related to real preaching? Which was his ideal of a preacher? How relevant are the Franciscan affiliation and Hungarian origins for his identity? Grounded on the idea that the author is embedded in his text, this essay explores the prologues of Osualdus’ works and three of his sermons that discuss precisely about preaching’s agents, role, and beneficiaries. The analysis emphasizes that Osvalus’ vision of the ideal preacher and self-representation as author of sermons is shaped by Franciscan concepts of humility, renunciation and imitatio Christi.Anonymity is also presented as a possible sign of humbleness, in the spirit of Franciscan values. Similarly, his understanding of the goal of spreading the Word of God follows the mission of the Friars Minor in general, and their actions in Hungary in particular: fighting heterodox beliefs, converting heretics and schismatic, defending and strengthening faith at the margins of Christendom. Osualdus’ concern for the catechization of simple people might have also been a consequence of the local experience of Franciscans and their contact with the peasantry in their rural convents. The paper concludes that in Osualdus’ case anonymity is not intended to hide or disguise his identity, which is clearly defined around the two elements used as a signature: the Hungarian origins and the Franciscan affiliation. His authority as a preacher and author of sermons resided in his special commission as a member of the Order of Friars Minor and his messages were mainly intended for the local public and for the safeguard of his homeland. The name of the author/preacher was most probably known to his primary audience. Only for the distant readers of his texts the author became anonymous, but they were made aware of the essential components of its identity, representative for the content as well.

The Role of Language Technologies in Digital Humanities (The Case of Parliamentary Debates)

Author(s): Petya Osenova / Language(s): English Issue: XIII/2023

The paper focuses on the use case of parliamentary debates as part of Digital Humanities. First, the ParlaMint project is outlined as a flagship initiative of CLARIN ERIC infrastructure. The project makes content from the national and regional parliaments visible, comparable and accessible for policy making and research. Then, the approaches are considered that have been applied in the creation of 31 corpora from national and regional parliaments. Last but not least, the utility of the multilingual resource is discussed.

The Case Study of the Serbian Copyist Ioan. On the Development of a Scientific Method for South Slavonic Palaeography

Author(s): Marta Riparante,Milena Davidović / Language(s): English Issue: XIII/2023

The present research aims to address the case study about the Serbian copyist anagnost Ioan through the use of the web-based repository. The same scribe's signature is observed in the manuscripts Dečani № 127 and № 119, which are also connected by the typology and a similar dating. The goal is to compare the distinctive features of both manuscripts and the handwriting of the 14th century scribes who contributed to the copying. In conducting this research, we will use a new descriptive scientific model, created and tested by the research project team.

Interactive metadiscourse in dentistry research articles: Iranian vs non-Iranian academic writers

Author(s): Mohsen Khedri,Elham Basirat / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Linguistically, interactive metadiscourse devices are responsible for creating an unfolding and persuasive piece of writing. They help writers come up with a cohesive and reader- friendly text and highlight how they control the interactive meaning. This corpus-driven study is an attempt to explore the use of interactive metadiscourse markers in English dentistry research articles published in International ISI-indexed and Iranian local research-based journals. The aim was to see if interactive resources, as realized by rhetorical options, such as transitions, code glosses, endophoric markers, evidentials, and frame markers, are predisposed to discipline-specific rhetorical conventions. To this end, fourty dentistry research articles were analyzed using Hyland’s (2005) Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse. The results disclosed similarities and differences in both the frequency and use of interactive resources between the two sets of research articles. The present results are expected to extend our understanding of authorial preferences for the use of metadiscourse markers in tandem with discourse functions in research articles in the selected discipline. The results of such studies may also improve different features of language pedagogy, such as teaching and learning academic writing, namely research articles.

The function of scare quotes in hard news: metadiscoursal and generic perspectives

Author(s): Zuzana Nádraská / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This paper is concerned with the issue of scare quoting in British hard news reports. It examines two types of scare quotes distinguished by voice origin – scare quotes originating with the internal voice and scare quotes attributed to an external voice (Dillon 1988, Schneider 2002, Predelli 2003, Bednarek 2006, Meibauer 2015, Nacey 2012). Scare quotes originating with the internal voice are comparable to code glosses (Hyland 2005, 2007) and they reflect the writer’s assumptions about the reader’s expectations regarding various aspects of the enclosed words, including meaning, register and style. Such scare quotes tend to co-occur with explicit verbal metadiscourse, partial quotes and contextualising authorial discourse with which they create functionally homogenous sections. Scare quotes attributed to an external voice overlap with partial direct quotes but the former are overlayed with an authorial attitude towards the enclosed words or the reported speaker; attitude is induced by the interaction between scare quotes and context, especially generic/discourse patterns such as contrast and repetition. The authorial comment signalled by code glossing and attitudinal quotation marks is implicit and thus in line with hard news generic conventions. The functions of scare quotes bear relevance to the novelty and negativity of reported events and are also reflected in the distribution across the generic structure (Urbanová 2013).

Request strategies and modification devices as performed by Czech EFL learners: a focus on borrowing objects

Author(s): Věra Sládková,Marie Lahodová Vališová / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This study presents an analysis of informal written requests from the national school-leaving exam and simulated spoken requests collected via Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT) to describe pragmalinguistic features used by Czech EFL learners in requests for borrowing objects. In both types of data, the findings reveal strong preference for conventionally indirect strategies and external modification, but considerable underuse of softeners within head acts. The written requests show significant reiteration with a great deal of modification devices outside head acts and a higher proportion of face-threatening features, such as expectations and direct strategies realized by want statements and imperatives. The WDCT requests tend to employ more face-saving strategies but show less variability in request realization. Consequently, awareness raising activities, helping Czech EFL learners fully understand the face-threatening nature of requests, as well as explicit metapragmatic treatment, focusing on strategic use of requests constituents, are recommended.

Изгубената памет, изгубеното по пътя: антихуманистичният скептицизъм в романа „Везни“ на Павел Вежинов

Author(s): Plamen Antov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2023

The article examines the last novel of Pavel Vezhinov–Libra (1982), which in a narrower sense also culminates the last, clearly separated period/section in the writer’s work–the philosophical-scientific one (after the novel The Barrier, 1976). Here, the novel’s fiction masks in a highly stripped-down fashion a central scientific theory, both civilizational and biological–of human evolution as devolution. Part of a larger study, the article discusses the P. Vezhinov’s radical anti-humanist criticism in the broad context of late modern philosophical skepticism (Heidegger, Deep Ecology) and its autochthonous reflections in Bulgarian literature during the second half of the twentieth century.

„Бялата стая“: отвъд текста и контекста

Author(s): Tatyana Batuleva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2023

The essay is dedicated to Bogomil Raynov's story Roads to Nowhere and the script of the film “The White Room” based on it. Through parallels with examples of existentialist literature and authors such as J.-P. Sartre and A. Camus, it is shown that the work bears the marks of a literary work created with the pathos of existentialism, which encodes the main stages and dimensions of rebellion (metaphysical, political, artistic). The role of the color white, internal monologue, movement, detail, and the convergent-divergent effect obtained from the use of the second person in the narrative is emphasized. The external signs of chaos and awareness of the absurd are sought. The thesis is defended that with the story Raynov in his way reaches the idea of the conscious choice of responsibility and human solidarity of Je me révolte, donc nous sommes (I rebel, therefore we are!) of Camus.

Bulgarisch kukurùz „Mais“ und Bulgarisch čùška „Paprikaschote“ in ihrem mediterranen Kontext

Author(s): Corinna Leschber / Language(s): German Issue: 1-2/2023

Bulgarian words and their history have been considered from different viewpoints; the Bulgarian language as a Slavic language, that is in interdependence with its south–eastern European neighbors, the Bulgarian language under the influence of the Turkish language and the oriental languages, and even Bulgarian as a European language in typological terms (HSK Haspelmath 2001, Leschber 2005), and against a general background of the European Union (Schaller 2018). However, the fact that Bulgarian is a southern European language in the extended Mediterranean area has seldom been considered. In the following it will be shown that this approach brings advantages for the solution of long–discussed etymological problems. While bg. kukurùz “corn” is solely a regionally used word along with the common Bulgarian word càrevica “corn”, the Bulgarian čùška “bell pepper, pod” is a Bulgarian vegetable that literally creates an identity, and which is seen as belonging to the “essence of Bulgarianness”. Indeed, this is epitomized by a curiosity like the čùškopèk, “a device for baking bell pepper”, which is exclusively in use in Bulgaria. It is often emphasized that only Bulgarians know what a čùškopèk is and what it is used for. The Bulgarian čùška thus ranks as a key cultural term. Here it is shown that Bulgarian cultural key terms, as already indicated in the paper on Bulgarian kùker, a “figure masked with fur in winter customs” (Leschber 2009, Bengtson & Leschber 2019: 17) are related to their environment and are part of a larger cultural network, in this case, of a Mediterranean network. An important fact is that both vegetables are not native to Europe, but were introduced to Europe very late, at the time of Columbus (1492). In Europe, the renaming of these foreign vegetables was done by substituting native designations, whose history stretches far back into the continent's past.

Engagement in initiation, response and feedback in l2 classroom interactions

Author(s): Masoomeh Estaji,Meisam Mirzaei Shojakhanlou / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Engagement in the L2 classroom is consequential for enhancing the quality of L2 learning experiences; however, the exploration of engagement in the Initiation, Response, and Feedback (IRF) cycles has received scant attention in L2 pedagogy. This study reports on research, examining engagement in Initiation, Response, and Feedback moves in the IRF cycles. Video recordings and questionnaires were used to collect data from ten EFL classes, being directed by eight teachers, with 73 learners. Using a post-interaction questionnaire and conversation analysis of classroom interactions, the analysis of the data revealed 784 triadic cycles out of which 493 moves embodied engagement. The data showed that not only do the Response and Feedback stages afford L2 learners the opportunity to deliberate on Form-focused language-related episodes (F-LREs), Lexis-focused LREs (L-LREs), and Mechanical LREs (M-LREs), but they also promote social and affective engagement. The comments on the questionnaire also revealed a deeper understanding of the participants’ affective engagement. The findings revealed that certain features of the IRF cycles and peers’ contributions encourage engagement during the IRF cycles. The results also demonstrated that scaffolding, mutuality, reciprocity, back-channeling, and commenting on preceding contributions made L2 learners socially engaged. The analysis suggests that the IRF cycles can create ad-hoc chances for engagement in L2 classroom interactions.

What is in the paragraphs of various sections of research articles?

Author(s): Renata Pípalová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

This paper strives to uncover the leading paragraph build-up patterns in academic writing. It employs the framework pioneered by Mathesius (1942/1982) and Daneš (1994, 1995), and elaborated on by Pípalová (2005, 2008a, 2008b, 2014). The corpus assembled for the study involves three distinct sections of Research Articles, viz. Abstracts, Introductions and Conclusions. The research confirms the general prevalence of Broad P-theme paragraphs, especially the Content Frame categories. It also demonstrates that non-canonical (i.e. transitional and peripheral) forms of paragraph build-up tend to prevail and identifies a number of factors at play. The paper also shows that the distribution of paragraph patterns is not homogeneous and appears to change across the space of the Research Articles.

“Where got i that truth?” an analysis of external sources in English and Persian news reports on Syria

Author(s): Abbas A. Rezaee,Mohammad Mozaffari / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

While there has been a plethora of inquiries into reported speech, a cross-linguistic analysis of the source segments in political news reports is still a rarity. This study aims at a three-fold investigation: first, tracking the frequency, transparency, and types of the sources; second, identifying the strategies employed to introduce these sources in text, and third, interrogating the contextual elements. To this end, a bottom-up analysis of 120 news reports from four quality newspapers (Kayhan and Jomhouri-e Eslami from Iran and The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal from the U.S.), mainly informed by van Leeuwen’s (1996) model of social actors, was carried out. The findings suggest a heavy reliance of both sets of newspapers on external sources to fulfill their vested interests, although they varied significantly with respect to frequency, transparency, and type.

Review

Author(s): Helena Worthington / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Review of: Locher, M. A. and Jucker, A. H. (2021) The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 275 pp.

Spojrzenie „bez podmiotu”. [Recenzja książki Aleksandry Ubertowskiej „Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą”. Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, 2020]

Author(s): Katarzyna Koza / Language(s): Polish Issue: 11/2023

The text is a review of Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book, Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą [Biotic histories. Between aesthetics and geotrauma]. The starting point becomes the biocentric lens applied by the researcher and the geo-story behind it. Equally interesting and important are the possibilities of ecocritical theories in interpretation and their application in the Polish ground.