Big Data : el crítico frente al algoritmo (Lectura distante de la narrativa española editada en el año 2019)

Author(s): Adolfo R. POSADA / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 10/2019

Resumen: El modelo teórico de Franco Moretti fundamentado en la distant reading no es solo útil para reflexionar acerca del papel desempeñado por el crítico en la era de los algoritmos y el futuro de la investigación filológica con el auge del posthumanismo, sino además para gestionar la información recabada y realizar un análisis acelerado y sintético del fenómeno literario por medio de la abstracción de datos de alto volumen (big data). Así pues, sobre la base de los planteamientos de Moretti, se propone en este trabajo una lectura distante del panorama de edición de la narrativa española en el año 2019 a través de las gráficas elaboradas ex profeso con los datos obtenidos durante la pesquisa, a fin de ofrecer una visión general de su estado actual en términos de volumen de edición, programación anual de las publicaciones y distribución de los autores según el lugar y año de nacimiento, así como su género. Abstract: Franco Moretti’s theoretical model based on the distant reading not only is useful to think about the role played by the critic in the age of the algorithms and the future of the philological research with the rise of the Post-humanism, but also to manage the collected information and carry out an accelerated and synthetic analysis about the literary phenomenon by means of the massive data sets abstraction (big data). Consequently, in the light of Moretti’s approach, in this work we address a distant reading of the Spanish narrative’s edition panorama in the year 2019. Through the graphs generated ex professo from the data gathered during the inquiry, this article aims to bring out a general vision upon the current situation of the Spanish narrative in terms of the number of literary works edited in 2019, the yearly publishing plan and the authors distribution according to the place and the year of birth, as well as their gender.

Affect philosophy meets incongruity:

Author(s): Mark Weeks / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The emergence of philosophical affect theory, sourced substantially in Continental philosophy, has intensified scholarly attention around affective potentials in laughter. However, the relationship between laughter’s affect and the comic remains a complicated one for researchers, with some maintaining that the two should be approached separately (Emmerson 2019, Parvulescu 2010). While there is a credible academic rationale for drawing precise distinctions, the present article takes an integrative approach to laughter and the comic. It analyses, then synthesises, points of convergence between key texts in affect philosophy and certain elements of incongruity-based humour theory. Specifically, the article seeks to demonstrate that some integration can bring insight and clarity to discussion of transformative potentials sometimes attributed to forms of comic laughter, especially within cultural studies and social science following the philosophy of Deleuze. This approach may also usefully complicate the concept of incongruity itself.

Humour as a threat-coding mechanism

Author(s): Edward Greenberg / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The integration of humour’s classical theories such as relief, superiority, and incongruity suggest that the differences and patterns in what we find funny are largely dependent on attaching an “explicably safe” meaning to novel entities. It is argued that humour is a substantial organising influence in human socialisation and personal threat perception. Built on such work as Caleb Warren and A. Peter McGraw’s notion of humour in explicated ambiguity, Tom Veatch’s paradox of humour as a “normal” violation, and V.S. Ramachandran’s False Alarm Theory of humour, an integrational theory is developed and tested against a variety of hypotheses associated with the core findings of classical humour research.

Фабрика ,,Адроке & Алсаит“ – основоположник на пасмантерийната индустрия в България

Author(s): Yordanka Krivoshieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2021

History of Passemanterie industry in Bulgaria is little-known yet. This kind of industry has not a big influence in Bulgarian branch economy. Nor it is of vital importance in individual and social life as well. These are the reasons for comparatively lack of researches in the specified sphere. This article is aiming to deny some commonly adopted views about this kind of industry, including it’s subject activity, investment amount and economic significance.

Holocaust Testimony, Autobiography, and the Effaced Self.

Author(s): Janine Holc / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Autobiography is often writing about how a “self” forms over time as it is affected by the conditions it encounters. This definition can be problematic for Holocaust autobiography, because hiding one’s self from others and repressing one’s desires and impulses became crucial to survival. This essay traces the processes by which a “self” emerges for one Holocaust writer and survivor, Helen S., through archival documents, testimonies and memoirs over time. Helen S.’s example demonstrates how an effaced self can have a textual presence before the writer can allow herself to fully inhabit a traumatic personal history.

Letters to the JDC as Autobiographical Sources of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

Author(s): Joanna Śliwa / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

After the Holocaust, Jewish survivors in Poland relied on external help, including that of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint, JDC). They wrote letters to JDC both to request and to thank the American-based Jewish organization for i.a. food, clothes, medicine, and assistance with emigration from Poland. Many of those letters also contain autobiographical information about the authors, themselves Holocaust survivors and their families. The descriptions of wartime experiences and survival strategies as well as of immediate postwar life (1945–1949) entail details and snippets of historical and genealogical value. Therefore, the letters examined in this article offer both individual histories and a collective portrait of the Jewish population in postwar Poland. The epistolary material also captures JDC’s activities and their importance for reviving and sustaining Jewish life after the Holocaust.

Shimon Samet and the Gap in the Story

Author(s): Yehoshua (Shuki) Ecker / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This article offers a close reading of personal memoirs about coming of age in Żółkiew in Eastern Galicia and about transitions on the way to immigration to Mandatory Palestine before WWII. It focuses on gaps in the fragmentary autobiographical texts written by Shimon Samet, a native of the town, who became an accomplished professional journalist in Israel, and reconstructs missing pieces of narrative about Samet’s brother and about the Zionist micro universe of transition and training sites in Galicia of the early 1920’s. It points to significant explanatory possibilities gained by identifying such gaps in personal and commemorative narratives.

A People’s Biography: Ada El’evna Raichonak and Her Hermanavichy

Author(s): Anika Walke / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The article advances an approach to studying 20th century Jewish experience in the former Pale of Jewish Settlement that foregrounds individual biographies and places them in a larger cultural and historical context. Drawing on interviews and various other sources, this approach reveals, among others, how individuals challenge familiar categories of identification and thereby appeal to flexible research agendas.

Jan Tomasz Gross – biografia symboliczna. (Uwagi na marginesie …bardzo dawno temu, mniej więcej w zeszły piątek…)

Author(s): Michał Kopczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

The article focuses on the self-creation dimension of the autobiographic narrative by Jan Tomasz Gross contained in his book …Long, Long Time Ago, More or Less Last Friday… (an example of talk literature). In his analysis, Kopczyk brings out the biographic models into which the authorprotagonist inscribes his life, paying attention to their relation with the Polish patriotic tradition, and romantic tradition in particular. In the fate of the protagonist, he perceives elements of “a typical romantic biography,” including the motif of mission and pilgrimage (for one’s homeland). The conclusion of the article suggests a relationship between Gross’s self-creation project and his work as a historian revealing the truth about the fates of Polish Jews during World War 2 and afterwards. Inscribing his own biography into “good models” alleviates what Gross perceives as personal consequences of disturbing the social taboo related to Polish people’s participation in the extermination of the Jewish minority.

Bunt i melancholia. Obraz życia anarchisty w Memuarn fun Lejbn

Author(s): Piotr Laskowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

The subject of the paper is a unique autobiographical text written in interwar Poland by a Jewish anarchist. A small booklet in Yiddish, Memuarn oder shpliters fun a lebn fun Leybn (also known as Memuarn fun Leybn) was published in 1933 in Łódź; the Polish translation appeared in 2017 under the title Memuary albo okruchy z życia Lejba. In the first part of the paper the author of the text, Leyb Berkenvald, known as “Leyb the Anarchist,” is identified and described, with a focus on the social milieu to which he belonged, and his position on the map of interwar anarchism. In the second part, Leyb’s autobiography is analyzed from the perspective of the microhistory of affects to reveal an alternative form of male subjectivity emerging from the text, which countered the dominant, heteronormative model of masculinity. This specific form of subjectivity is interpreted – both in its hopes and disappointments – in the context of an unattainable messianic community which Leyb strove to conceive.

Matka-aktywistka: międzywojenna autobiografia Sofii Dubnow-Erlich

Author(s): Magdalena Kozłowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

The subject of this article is a case study based on analysis of Sofia Dubnow-Erlich’s autobiography fragments concerning the interwar period. A closer look at the autobiographical texts written by the activist and writer associated with the Bund allows to trace her approach to her own life plans. It also gives a broader look at the Jewish history of activism, and intellectual and political activity in the Second Polish Republic. Reading the memoirs allows us to capture the gender perspective and shows whether and to what extent the gender influenced the actions taken by the author.

Gender, emocje i praktyki życia codziennego Żydów na Dolnym Śląsku w latach 1945–1972. Narracja biograficzna Aliny M.

Author(s): Agnieszka Ilwicka-Karuna / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

In this article we analyze one interview that is part of an oral history project about Jewish settlement in Lower Silesia entitled “Love in the ruins: the history of Jewish settlement in Lower Silesia 1945–1972.” All the interviews, including the one that is presented here, are focused on everyday life, growing up, emotions, and relationships of Polish Jews in Lower Silesia after World War II. The gender of the narrator plays a significant role in this project. Oral history is a medium in which we can acknowledge the experiences of the Jewish community that are not described in other sources, such as documents created by the Jewish Committee, reports from Jewish clubs, or even in written memoirs.

Актуaлни въпpocи нa двуезичнaтa унгapcкo-бългapcкa лекcикoгpaфия

Author(s): Lilyana LESNICHKOVA / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2021

The article focuses on the presentation of the Hungarian-Bulgarian valence dictionary, which is currently in preparation, against the background of an extremely actual task – the creation of an academic English-Bulgarian dictionary, adequately reflecting the current state of vocabulary in both languages. The author substantiates the need for such a dictionary, given the lack of general and specialized Hungarian-Bulgarian dictionaries, based on the theoretical foundations and principles of modern lexicography. Outlined are the main features of the dictionary, the specificities and approaches in the work of its compilation. The selection of material and the methods of its presentation are in accordance with the practical needs of learners of Hungarian as a foreign language.

Мотивации и затруднения на съвременните ученици при изучаването на чужд език

Author(s): Georgi Dzhumayov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2021

The present study aims to test students’ motivation in foreign language classes. The survey also aims to gather information which area of learning English or Spanish contemporary students consider most difficult to acquire – reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, vocabulary, and why they have decided to learn the relevant foreign language.

Език, власт, медия

Author(s): Mariana Georgieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2021

Media language is a prototype of the public consent for the media to be defined through compromise as a fourth position in the paradigm of power as a philosophical category, whose explications before the media are legislative, executive, judicial. The linguistic norm and the cognitive-rhetorical characteristic of the media discourse are the prototype of the metaphor of the "fourth power". The formation of the information-language culture and the preservation of the language norm is the high social responsibility of the media discourse. The media is a prototype of public consciousness, a “picture” of national identity – a unit of political and socio-economic information and cultural “taste” (a sample of art and its list).

Disparagement humour and anti-obesity attitudes

Author(s): Jacob Burmeister,Robert Carels / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

People with obesity are often the target of disparaging humour. The typical derision of obesity found in everyday life also extends into the realm of the media. Many assumptions have been made about the effects this type of humour may have on the public’s attitudes toward people with obesity, but little empirical research exists. In the present research, two studies sought to uncover whether jokes and humorous media depictions of people with obesity affect individuals’ attitudes. In Study 1, participants (N = 271) either read a list of derogatory jokes about obesity, read a list of derogatory comments about obesity, or read a list of jokes that were unrelated to obesity. All participants were then asked to report their 1) attitudes toward people with obesity in several domains, 2) level of belief in stereotypes about obesity and 3) judgement of the social acceptability of jokes about obesity. Participants’ scores on these dependent measures did not differ across groups suggesting obesity jokes do not have an immediate impact on attitudes. In Study 2, participants (N = 146) were shown video clips from film and television programmes that featured derogatory humour targeting obese characters. Again, participants’ scores on dependent measures did not differ across groups. The results of these studies suggest that brief exposure to derogatory weight-related humour may not affect individuals’ attitudes toward people with obesity as might be assumed. Longer exposure to disparaging humour may be required to shift individuals’ attitudes about people with obesity.

Sharing humour digitally in family communication

Author(s): Anastasiya Fiadotava / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This paper offers a folkloristic perspective on the features and dynamics of sharing humorous content digitally within a family in the context of daily communication. The data, collected from 60 Belarusian families via oral interviews and an online survey (175 respondents), were subjected to quantitative and qualitative content and context analysis. The results suggest that sharing humour digitally within a family can take various forms, some of which parallel oral face-to-face interactions, while others complement them. The most preferable ways of sharing are those that ensure the privacy of conversation, thus providing family members with an opportunity to follow the customary patterns of communication while adapting them to the new spatiotemporal circumstances. Even though the process of selecting humorous content to share with one’s family does not necessarily involve conscious reflection on the sharer’s part, some tendencies clearly transpire from the data. For example, visual and generic forms of humour are more popular than textual and personal ones. Sharing such humour presupposes certain considerations about its recipients, thus making the fact that one’s audience is their family an important consideration in the practice of digital sharing.

Book review

Author(s): Alyona Ivanova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Book review

Author(s): Jay Friesen / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Development of Colour Perception and Colour Combination Skills of Preschool Children through Studying Artworks of Impressionist Artists

Author(s): Gabriela Nikolova / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

This article studies the development of painting skills in preschool children by studying the works of impressionist artists. Artistic perception is an important part of visual arts education that creates prerequisites for the formation of aesthetic personal qualities and creativity. The study offers methodological ideas for developing a sense of colour and colour ombination by studying the artworks of the Impressionists