Стендъп представлението - структура и общуване между комедиант и публика

Author(s): Zhivko Slavov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2016

This article looks into the stand-up comedy routine while paying closer attention to its similarities with dialogue structure as opposed to a monologue. The ways in which closeness between comedian and audience is achieved, its rationale and the role of the audience are examined as well. Closer attention is paid to the specific framework of a stand-up show. The comedian’s job is not only to make people laugh but to make them feel like they are part of the act. Stand-up routine is analysed as a technique that makes it easier for the comedian to keep the audience constantly involved throughout the show.

Understanding of comical texts in people with different types of attitudes towards humour:

Author(s): Daniil Rivin,Olga Shcherbakova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

This study aimed to test a hypothesis about the correlation between levels of gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism and understanding of Internet memes as a specific form of humour. Participants were 45 native speakers of Russian (aged 18 –30; 73,3 % female). The levels of Internet memes understanding were assessed independently by two judges with the use of criteria based on the results of a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews. Gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism were assessed with PhoPhiKat <30> questionnaire. J. Raven’s “Standard Progressive Matrices” test was used to control the level of psychometric intelligence. Concordance of judges’ scores for the understanding of memes was assessed with Kendall’s W and ranged from 0.71 to 0.84. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used to test the main hypothesis. We found no correlation between the scores for gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism and understanding of Internet memes. Presumably, the type of attitude towards humour does not play a significant role in the understanding of comical texts. The qualitative content analysis of the interview protocols revealed some specific features of cognitive mechanisms of Internet memes understanding. Namely, successful participants with higher levels of understanding of Internet memes reflected more on their thinking process than those with lower levels of understanding of Internet memes, easily switched from an abstract level of reasoning to a concrete one, and tended to consistently develop detailed mental representations of the memes.

Gelotophobia, attitudes to illness and selfstigmatisation in patients with non-psychotic mental disorders and brain injuries

Author(s): Denis Shunenkov,Victoria Vorontsova,Alyona Ivanova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Gelotophobia, or the fear of being laughed at, has been described as an inability to enjoy humour and laughter in social interaction. A number of studies have shown its increased levels under various mental disorders. Gelotophobia in psychiatric patients may appear either as a primary syndrome, or as a secondary disorder connected to the patient’s reaction to their social position (self-stigmatisation). In turn, self-stigmatisation is closely related to the personality of the patient and, in particular, to their attitudes to illness. Since the fear of being laughed at has been studied within both the clinical concept and the continual model of individual differences, the question of differentiation between normal and pathological fear of being laughed at is topical, while borderline groups are of particular interest. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between gelotophobia, attitudes to illness, and self-stigmatisation in patients with minor, non-psychotic mental disorders, as well as those with brain injuries, who also had mild mental disorders, without having the status of psychiatric patients. The sample consisted of 73 patients with non-psychotic mental disorders, and 30 patients with brain injuries. The methods used included PhoPhiKat-30, ISMI-9 (Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness Inventory), and TOBOL (Types of the Attitudes to Disease). The results revealed at least a slight level of gelotophobia in 31% patients with non-psychotic mental disorders, and 20% in those with brain injuries. Gelotophobia correlated with certain types of attitude to illness in each group. Subjects displaying high levels of gelotophobia were in general characterised by disadvantageous attitudes to illness. In the group of psychiatric patients, gelotophobia was associated with self-stigmatisation, whereas in the group of neurological patients it was not. Thus, in this study gelotophobia was examined for the first time in patients with non-psychotic mental disorders, as well as in those with brain injuries. Differentmechanisms of gelotophobia development were suggested for the two groups.

Book review

Author(s): Alberto Dionigi / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Book review

Author(s): Carla Canestrari / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Easy-to-read in Romania: current status and future perspectives in a European context

Author(s): Marcela Fărcaşiu,Daniel Dejica,Simona Şimon,Annamaria Kilyeni / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

As the European Union’s Strategy for people with disabilities has been extended to 2030, emphasising the need for these people’s social inclusion, which also comprises accessibility to different information and documents, Romania has to align its legislation and best practices in order to solve its problems concerning this topic. Therefore, this paper focuses on an important aspect of social inclusion, namely Easy-to-Read (E2R) language, which is paramount for the disabled people’s access to information, culture and education. It starts by presenting the concept of Easy-to-Read across Europe, its perception and implementation by various countries, to finally delve into the current situation of Easy-to-Read in Romania. By looking at the analysis and reports on the previous governmental strategies regarding people with disabilities (and especially reading disabilities, for the purpose of this paper), it can be said that Romania still faces challenges in this respect and needs to work on making documents and information accessible by first creating E2R guidelines and then implementing them in printed documents (e.g. adapted textbooks, healthcare leaflets) as well as in the electronic information (e.g. government websites). The paper also traces some future perspectives concerning Easy-to-Read in Romania, namely the Train2Validate “Professional training for Easy-to-Read facilitators and validators” (T2V) project, an Erasmus+ programme, a collaboration between various European countries, that Romania is part of, which goes one step further into helping people with reading disabilities and creating professional roles for them, i.e. facilitators and validators, in order to integrate them on the employment market. Moreover, this research will hopefully raise awareness of the importance of conducting other studies on creating Easy-to-Read guidelines and on simplifying the text according to the different target groups of people with reading disabilities or difficulties and to different text types.

Intellectual Reception of G. Lozanov’s Theory on Suggestopedia in the Pedagogical Discourse of Ukraine

Author(s): Olha Soroka,Olena Klymentova / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

The paper is aimed at studying the results of Ukrainian scientists who developed the theory and practice of suggestopedia.The ideas of the outstanding Bulgarian scholar G. Lozanov serve as the foundation of modern linguistics, including the directions of suggestive language didactics, linguistics of influence, psychological and neurological and marketing linguistics. Thanks to Lozanov's contribution, researchers have learned to find suggestive components in political messages, analyze strategic narratives, find hidden aspects in religious texts, better understand the applied nature of some folk genres and more. The special anthropological value of Lozanov's approaches is objectified by the development of neuroscience, where a person is often positioned as a functionary with electronic chips. Instead, Lozanov's man is a free, conscious and loving man. Although research on suggestion is growing in the scientific literature, there is still a significant gap in this topic, in particular on theoretical and empirical developments on the impact of suggestion on various aspects of communication. A review of recent publications on suggestopedic topics shows that the interest in G. Lozanov’s approaches does not fade and is nourished by the pedagogical search for educational paradigms which are adequate to the real needs of life and capable of combining tradition with innovation. The article presents different approaches to Lozanov's discoveries and aims to encourage new discourses into the area of the linguistic programming of personality.

Book review

Author(s): Dafina Genova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Humour and belonging:

Author(s): Reza Arab,Jessica Milner Davis / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Serving as introduction to this Special Issue, this article presents a thematic review of topics involved in studies on humour and belonging. It briefly elaborates on the intricacies of concepts such as humour, sense of humour and belonging and their relationships. It then provides a selective review of some major relevant studies. Finally, the themes and contents of the Special Issue are introduced.

Laughter, bonding and biological evolution

Author(s): Cliff Goddard,David Lambert / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This paper combines perspectives from evolutionary biology and linguistics to discuss the earlyevolution of laughter and the possible role of laughter-like vocalisation as a bonding mechanismin hominins and early human species. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, we hereemphasise several things: the role of exaptation, the typically very slow pace of evolutionarychange, and the danger of projecting backwards from the current utilities of laughter to inferits earlier function, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years ago. From the perspectiveof linguistics, we examine both the semantics of the word ‘laugh’ and the vocal mechanics ofhuman laughter production, arguing that greater terminological care is needed in talking aboutthe precursors of laughter in the ancient evolutionary past. Finally, we turn to hypotheses abouthow laughter-like vocalisations may have arisen, long before articulate language as we know ittoday. We focus in particular on Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis that laughter-like vocalisation,which stimulated endorphin production, might have functioned as a bonding mechanism (a kindof “vocal grooming”) among hominins and early human species.The paper contributes to the special issue theme (Humour and Belonging) by casting a longlook backwards in time to laughter-like vocalisation as a distant evolutionary precursor ofhumour, and to bonding as an evolutionary precursor to cognitively and socially modern formsof “belonging”. At the same time, it cautions against casual theorising about the evolutionaryorigins of laughter.

The role of laughter in establishing solidarity and status

Author(s): Angus McLachlan / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Drawing on a range of American, Australian, British and Scandinavian research into laughter,the current paper will use the form of pragmatic analysis typically found in qualitative researchand apply it to data produced by the quantitative methodology common in the author’s owndiscipline of psychology. Laughter will be examined as an indexical that serves both a discoursedeictic function, designating the utterance in which it occurs as non-serious, and a social deicticfunction, marking the laughing person’s preference for social proximity with fellowinterlocutors. The paper will then analyse examples and data pertaining to three types oflaughter bout derived from taking laughter as an indexical. First, solitary listener laughter willbe argued to signify a deferential acknowledgement of continued solidarity with the speaker.Second, solitary speaker laughter will be suggested to mark a simple preference for solidarity.Third, joint laughter will be accepted as a signifier of actual solidarity that may also be used tomark status depending on which party typically initiates the joint laughter. Joint laughter thusacts in a manner closely analogous to the exchange of another set of indexicals, the T and Vversions of second person pronouns in European languages. Finally, the paper will concludeby examining the problematic case of laughing at another interlocutor, before brieflyconsidering the implications of this pragmatic perspective for traditional accounts of laughteras well as for future research.

140 пословици и поговорки от Голо Бърдо, Албания (по материали от с. Требища)

Author(s): Gergana Coneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 8/2014

Родствена структура и роднинска терминология (с. Требища, обл. Голо Бърдо, Албания

Author(s): Gergana Coneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 8/2014

Book review

Author(s): Alberto Dionigi / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2022

Performance of a picture description by ten-year-olds with fetal alcohol syndrome / Realizacja opisu obrazka przez dziesięciolatki z płodowym zespołem alkoholowym

Author(s): Marta Krakowiak / Language(s): English,Polish Issue: 11/2022

Alcohol consumption by a woman during pregnancy may result in a number of developmental disorders in her offspring, known as (fetal alcohol syndrome – FAS). They relate to, among others, acquisition of language and communication competence problems, manifested, among others, by incorrect articulation, deficits in inflection and syntax, and irregularities in creating narrative forms of expression. The subject of this paper is describing of a picture by ten-year-olds with fetal alcohol syndrome and their peers from a control group. Findings indicate that children with FAS have difficulty using the following procedures: generalization of events, spatiality of description, presentability of events, and characterization of elements of reality. These people, while creating descriptions of pictures, usually do not use formulas that allow to begin a statement and present the content of the described events, introduce individual space plans in a disorderly manner, do not use the right wording, omit many important details related to the characteristics of individual elements of reality and the relationships that occur between them. The abnormalities mentioned above are related to the poverty of content and the abnormal structure of texts constructed by ten-year-olds with FAS.

Изследване на синтактичната компетентност при деца с езиково нарушение на развитието

Author(s): Denitsa Krasteva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The article presents a study of syntactic competence in primary language pathology, comprising 170 children mastering Bulgarian language. Recruited respondents from the experimental and control groups are divided into three age groups, respectively 35 children between 4 and 5 years, 30 between 5 and 6 years and 20 children in preschool age (6 - 7 years). The first section examines the identified issues from theoretical perspectives. The methodology and objectives of the study are then described step by step and the results are analysed. In the conclusion, in addition to the summary, an attempt is made to outline the main aspects for the design of a future study, which would rely not so much on quantitative data, but on the classical tradition of longitudinal studies, allowing direct qualitative observations on the norm and specific language disorder.

Създаване на жестов речник за подпомагане на комуникацията с глухите хора в кризисни ситуации

Author(s): Slavina Lozanova,Ivelina Stoyanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The purpose of the article is to present a methodology for developing a Bulgarian sign dictionary for communication during crisis situations. Linguistic data are extracted according to basic lexicographical principles for creation of sign dictionaries relying on observations on real-life usage of the signs. In specially organized seminars with deaf moderators, carried out in the form of free discussion on the Zoom communication platform, deaf people and users of the Bulgarian sign language are provided with the opportunity to communicate without interference from the Bulgarian verbal language. The extracted data are processed manually on the specialized program ELAN to describe all usage variants of the signs on different topics important for the crisis communication. In its final version, the dictionary contains 600 units and it clearly demonstrates that there is no complete correspondence between the vocabulary units of the Bulgarian verbal and the Bulgarian sign language. There are many key concepts related to crisis communication that have no corresponding signs.

Женскостта и майчинството в бившите социалистически страни: литературни и идеологически аспекти

Author(s): Polina Penkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 30/2023

The text is focused on the problems of womanhood and motherhood in the literature, written by women in the former socialist states. It aims to explore the implications of the Soviet ideology and propaganda in the contemporary perceptions of gender and family roles and to answer the question about the importance of the remaining conservative traditional family values in the region. By exploring novels by female authors, the study tries to show the methods and tendencies in which women try to apply change through art. The main objects of analyses are the novels “Mrs. G.” by Emilia Dvoryanova and “Primeval and Other Times” by Olga Tokarczuk.

THE LINGUISTIC TABOO IN ROMANIAN POETRY. SEXUALITY AND FEMINISM

Author(s): Alina Neculachi / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 31/2022

This paper aims to analyze the portrayal of two major themes in the Romanian contemporary poetry, namely sexuality and feminism, which are still regarded as being taboo.

TRANSLINGUISME – THE WRITER BETWEEN TWO OR MORE LANGUAGES

Author(s): Laura-Mariana Lungu / Language(s): French Issue: 33/2023

Literary practice in one or more foreign languages has been experienced by an impressive number of authors over the centuries. Translingual writers are writers who have practiced literature, exclusively or not, in a second language or in several. Many French-speaking writers have the tendency to produce a reflection on languages and language, and often even to make language one the main subjects of their writing. The change of language and its consequences in the life of exiles also occupy a prominent place in autobiographical accounts, novels and essays.