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THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION IN WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES

Author(s): Flaka POLLOZHANI ZIBA,Vlona Pollozhani Shehu / Language(s): English / Issue: 19-20/2023

Keywords: self-determination; human rights; sovereignty; territorial integrity; Western Balkans

The right to self-determination is the collective right of a nation to freely determine its political status and freely pursue its economic, social and cultural development. This right has a central position in international law as a fundamental principle in the creation and destruction of states. In Article 1 of the Charter of the UN (1945) it is counted as one of the goals of the organization, and it was listed as the first right in both International Conventions in 1966 (ICCPR and ICESCR).Although it is a principle in evolution, whose origin is seen in the Declaration of Independence of the USA back in 1766, this right remains an important and current topic for the countries of the Western Balkans, especially after the breakup of Yugoslavia for the countries that made up this federation. The Prespa agreement between Macedonia and Greece, as well as the fragile relations between Kosovo and Serbia and the current border change negotiations, return the attention to the notion of the right to self-determination and its meaning today.This paper aims to analyze the evolution of this right in international law, to better understand the border/relationship between the right to self-determination and the sovereignty of states in a regional context for the countries of the Western Balkans.

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MURDERS - "SUICIDES" OF ALBANIAN SOLDIERS IN THE YUGOSLAV ARMY DURING 19

Author(s): Florim SALIHU / Language(s): English / Issue: 19-20/2023

Keywords: Murder; suicide; secret service; state terror; army; phenomenon; enigma; staging; punishment; politics; genocide

The phenomenon of killings of Albanian soldiers during their military service in the People's Army of the former Yugoslavia, described as "suicide" and military trials with ethno-political motivation will be addressed in this paper. In the period 1981-1991 in the People's Army of the SFRY, in enigmatic circumstances many young Albanians lost their lives. There are several characteristics that identify the state terror of the Military Secret Service (KOS) and the State Security Service (UDB) of the former Yugoslavia against Albanian soldiers while performing military service. First, all murders have been described as "suicide", or accidents of various natures, and here the real perpetrators of these crimes have never been punished. Presence of the phenomenon of setups and convictions with lawsuits against Albanian soldiers, hastened and motivated by politics and ethnicity. One of its characteristics of state terror has been the staging of cases with the right to incite and inter-ethnic violence. The mosaic of state violence against Albanian soldiers during the years "81- 99" is characterized by interference and political influence in the crimes and processes carried out against Albanian soldiers in the People's Army of the former Yugoslavia.

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Image Pole and Object Pole. Cognitive Grammar Applied to Mediated Visual Experience

Author(s): Mircea Valeriu Deaca / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

Keywords: Cognitive grammar; film analysis; conceptualization; categorization; construal; cinematic conceptual construction; simulation; cinema;

The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar, and Dynamic systems theory to film analysis. Seeing a perceptual object, attending a visual target and constructing an image are dynamic conceptualizations. Between the expressive channel and the content channel of the conceptualization a circular loop is engaged. Expressive perceptual cues are causes and effects of content conceptualizations. Cinematic viewer can attend to the object depicted by an image or can focus on the features of the image as artifact. The viewer applies the attentional schema (similar to the body schema) in order to apprehend the viewing action underlying image conception. This distinction is further enriched by the type of constituent construal: modifier or complement construction (or “process internal modifier”). The viewer can focus his attention to the objective properties of the conceptual target attended – how things are - (the referent of the image or the image) or the appearance of the target – how things look like -, i.e. qualia as appearances consciously experienced. Four main types of image understanding construals are described.

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Building Suspense in The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn

Author(s): Irina-Ana Drobot / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

Keywords: story; plot; crime; short sentences; problem solving;

The main ingredient of the story is the mystery, as the novel is always making the reader ask what is going on, as the narrator is unreliable. “What caused the woman narrator her agoraphobia”? and “Who did the crime, if there was ever one?” are the main questions prompting us to go forwards and forwards, deeper into the story. Existent research about the staccato style short sentences at the beginning of the novel which then change to longer sentences as the action becomes more problematic and turns toward detective fiction can be applied in order to explain how the story allows the reader to go fast through it, although it is a quite large novel, of hundreds of pages. The novel can be included in the category of problem-solving novels, as the reader tries to make sense of what is going on and who is the guilty character.

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Henry James’s “Washington Square” The Book and the Movie(s1) – From Convergence to Portability

Author(s): Rodica-Roxana Anghel / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: Convergence; cultural studies; media literacy; movie; novel; text;

Literature and film, the book or the movie ? In order to enjoy the story, do we have to choose one or the other? Is there a better, a more fortunate approach of the two fields – literature and film ? Which is the best or the fairest in terms of the audience, or in terms of the reader or of the film viewer, when it comes to conveying the meaning? Has literatureirrespective of support i.e. books on paper or e-books, irrespective of gender, the classical novel, literature for children, science fiction, novels that mix fiction and history, come back to life or does it sell better since so many feature films, TV series based on literature books are available via linear media services (the classical TV broadcasting programs) or on non-linear audiovisual media services television (i.e. on-demand audiovisual media services)?. Does the audiovisual – i.e. moving images and sounds under editorial responsibility of the broadcaster - sell text books better, do things happen the other way round, does it really mater which of the two plays the role of the locomotive ? Yes, it makes a world of a difference from so many points of view of the audience, as we shall see further on....Just a few examples: the Harry Potter series of fantasy novels and the film series based on the novels, the TV Turkish series broadcast round the world, Suleiman the Magnificent and the novel by André Clot or by Harold Lamb or by Erhan Afyoncu, Catch 22 by Joshph Heller and the movie, a 1970 American black comedy war film adapted from the same name novel, the Agatha Christie famous detective novels and films based on these novels with great detectives Hercule Poirot and Ms. Marple. The Midsummer Murder series based on Caroline Graham’s novels and so many others...

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Accessing Popular Science through Translation

Author(s): Roxana Bîrsanu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: popular science; scientific writing; translation; functionalist approaches;

Nowadays, science has acquired unprecedented dimensions; scientific discoveries and technological progress influence almost every aspect of human life and activity. As they are aware of the huge impact of scientific advances on their existence, people become increasingly interested in the mechanisms, procedures and means that make science a constant presence in their life. The main problem that arises is the cumbersome communication between scientists and laypersons stemming from the traditional divide between the scientific community and mass beneficiaries of their findings. The role of popular science is precisely to narrow this gap and help the public with basic to ordinary knowledge of science understand the complexities of scientific results. This paper looks into a number of features of popular science (or pop-science, as is often called) and shares a series of observations on the translation of these non-specialist reader-oriented texts.

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Enhancing Students’ Communicative Competence in English for Professional Roles

Author(s): Mariana Coancă / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: language skill; communicative competence; interchange; profession; receptionist;

The article focuses on the four components of communicative competence which language teachers can implement in their teaching practices, through Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) scenarios, described thoroughly in a course tailored for intermediate and upper-intermediate students who wish to work in the hospitality sector as receptionists. Students’ feedback was positive mainly because they enhanced their knowledge of English by using it appropriately in a given social context. The role-play proved to be challenging but after a few rehearsals of pitch, tone, and intonation they felt they improved the communication skills to meet the requirements for the field of reception.

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The Mechanical and the Spiritual Body – The Age of Resurrectionists

Author(s): Roxana Elena Doncu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: anatomy; dissection; body-snatchers; Robert Louis Stevenson;

In the 18th and 19th century, when modern medicine was undergoing rapid development and institutionalization, there was a 'shortage' of anatomical subjects for dissection. Although in 1752 the British Parliament passed The Murder Act, which allowed judges to replace the public display of executed criminals with dissection, the number of executed criminals was small in comparison with the rising learning needs of medical schools, so many anatomists and medical students resorted to body snatching. Popular rage made them soon leave the job to professional 'body-snatchers' and 'resurrectionists', who were paid in order to procure bodies for dissection. A scandal broke out with the discovery, in Edinburgh, that William Burke and William Hare had murdered 16 people in order to sell their bodies to the famous anatomist Robert Knox. The paper discusses clashing attitudes to dissection (those of the anatomists, surgeons, medical students, on one side, and of the ordinary masses, on the other side) that were reflected both in popular culture and in literature (in particular in Robert Louis Stevenson's story "The Body Snatcher").

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Pragmatics and Psychology

Author(s): Irina-Ana Drobot / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: gestures; speech acts; intonation; politeness; speaker intention;

The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between Pragmatics and Psychology, focusing on Speech Acts Theory and intonation, as well as the language of gestures, which give clues about the intention of the speaker to the hearer. In today’s world, we are told that image counts, that personal image is a brand. The field of dealing with working with the public in a polite way is also expanding. Therefore, pragmatic competence matters, as we live in the culture of communication, and psychology is a field that can help in understanding context of communication in various social relations.

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Mothers and Daughters in Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane

Author(s): Alexandra Roxana MĂRGINEAN / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: motherhood; femininity; identity; psychology; trauma;

This paper sets out to investigate the female characters of Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane, focusing on the roles of mother and daughter played by them, the types that may be considered to arise according to their behaviors, the triggers that get pulled, when it comes to both motherhood and daughterhood, in their relationships – for character formation and further interactions in their lives – as well as the way in which concepts such as femininity or role models emerge in changing colors in context. Also, we will look at the way trauma either dictates or influences one’s adult behavior, long after it has been enacted, thus functioning as an underlying layer that either conditions or heavily impacts one’s life choices and interactions. Last but not least, we also take into account the way femininity, motherhood and womanhood in general are modelled by the social specificity of the decades that provide their background, especially the sixties and the seventies. The analysis, performed from the standpoint of cultural studies, also relies, to a great extent, on aspects of child and adult psychology. Wherever we consider it to be the case, we will also draw on the linguistic content that is resorted to as illustration of character and sociocultural context.

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Man, Machine and the Common Algorithm

Author(s): Gigi Mihăiţă / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: transdisciplinarity; tense; algorithm; time; meaning;

Language is a space in itself establishing a bridge between at least two other spaces, us and the other one. The paper focuses on the interaction between our outer reality and our inner reality through language and what processes are involved, on how outer objects (events, situations, etc.) become inner objects (representations, concepts, etc.). We narrowed our interest to the verbal tense forms and the most elusive quantitative dimension, time. Our approach establishes a bridge between the “machine” and us through a common algorithm of defining objects in time.

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Decoding Legal Texts: A Look at Some Syntactic Features of Legal Texts

Author(s): Marina-Cristiana Rotaru / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Keywords: legal literacy; legal English; legal sentence construction;

Characterised by an intricate structure, legal texts often challenge the non-specialist’s power of comprehension and frustrates the untrained reader. The convoluted sentence construction of legal texts renders them opaque to the lay reader and frequently turns into an obstacle between the nonprofessional people and their legal needs. In our contentious society, legal awareness has become a necessary skill that individuals should be trained to develop in order to understand and respect their rights and responsibilities as members of a community. Legal awareness may be approached from various angles, including the linguistic one. Be it part of a law article, a paragraph in a contract or a paragraph in a court decision, the sentence of a legal text is the first step taken by a nonprofessional reader in trying to understand a legal document. Knowledge and understanding of the structure of a legal sentence help the untrained individual follow that text from the very beginning to the very end without feeling as if he or she were lost in a maze. The literature offers suggestions for “slicing up” a legal text in order to reveal the logic behind its elaborate sentence structure.

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Language at Work to Serve the Right to Defence

Author(s): Rodica-Roxana Anghel / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: Court of law; penal code; defense; fair; foreign; human right; interpreter; skills; language; sworn translator; trial;

It has been under the United Nations auspices that important international documents were created and brought to public knowledge as far as human rights are concerned. Nowadays, human rights issues continue to be on top of political life agenda, public debates in international organizations and meetings, under the main law systems of protecting human rights and liberties: the European system, the American system and the African one. Thus, under the European system, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is stated in art.11, section 1 that: “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilt, according to law in a public trial at which he or she has had all guarantees necessary for defence”. In the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights it is also stated that among other guarantees to a correct defence, “everyone....shall be entitled to: “(f) To have the free assistance of an interpreter if he or she cannot understand or speak the language used in Court”. These provisions have been further on consolidated by the European Convention on Human Rights, Protocol 11, art.6, section 3(e), as well as by the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the European Union. The American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights stipulate similar guarantees. Beyond this wonderful human right, for states to provide for “persons under law scrutiny” with translation and interpretation services as well as with legal support for those who cannot afford to pay for a defender/lawyer, lies an ocean of aspects to be taken into account such as: the offer of translation and interpretation services in each market of the member states and World Wide,the training and awareness of translators/interpreters regarding their obligations and their rights when they provide their services in Courts of Justice, Police Departments, Lawyers’ offices, Notaries’ offices.

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Cognitive Grammar Applied to Cinematic Movement

Author(s): Mircea Valeriu Deaca / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: Cognitive grammar; film analysis; camera movement; categorization; construal; cinematic conceptual construction; schematization; simulation;

The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar advocated by Ronald W. Langacker to film analysis. Cinematic conceptualizations are constructed in a scaffolding manner. The constructions contain bindings between schematic subcomponents (elaboration site, i.e. e-site) and more fined grained elaborations (instantiations). The e-sites are ad-hoc goal derived categories or abstract summaries of conceptual content that is further elaborated in cinematic discourse unfolding. The schematic element and its instantiation have a conceptual commonality (one is schematic and the other an elaboration of an inherent conceptual content) and exhibit similar connections with external elements, i.e. play analogous roles in processual (head – complement) and non-processual (head – modifier) groupings. Specifically, character movement and camera movement can be described with this conceptual apparatus.

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Why and How Are Women Recruited for Rugby? The Case in Japan

Author(s): Eiko Hara / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: women’s sport; women’s rugby; gender in sports;

When a woman says that she likes to play sports, what kind of sports do people think of? Tennis? Archery? Considering sports, we recognize that there is discrimination in what we expect between men’s sports and women’s sports. Rugby football is supposed to be exclusively played by men. However, in fact men and women play rugby. Why do we connect rugby with men only? I argue that rugby football games have developed among public schools in England. In that setting, football was played by boys. The Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 changed this image since they adopted men’s and women’s rugby football games. Therefore, many women’s rugby teams were established for Olympic Games in Japan. I interviewed several women rugby football teams and I realized many teams have the same problems. The biggest one is that it is not so easy to gather female members to make a women’s rugby team. In this situation, Nomi-Koma rugby school (primary school children) has succeeded in gathering female members at Komatsu city, Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan. They said half of the members were girls. Why and how can they recruit girls for members? I recognize this case also concerns why and how a girl begins to play rugby in Japan. I will report on the results of this research and discuss the cases of female rugby players in Japan.

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Transgressing Time in Precarious Space: (Re)constructing the City in Peter Ackroyd’s The Plato Papers

Author(s): Fabian Ivanovici / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: urban studies; postmodernism; memory; space; time;

Elemental axes in the workings of a novel, time and space provide fruitful arenas for discussion, shedding light not only on narratological underpinnings, but on the ways in which these underpinnings influence and alter each-other. The point of convergence, though it may prove elusive, is where the novel exists. The Ackroydian novel constructs a fluid nexus in which time and space are syntagmatically contingent: this nexus is the city of London, examined through the ages, expounded upon and experienced as a living body. The effacement of static life is embodied in the urban palimpsest, and it is Plato, London's own philosopher, who traces the process of rewriting and reconstruction: never stable or predictable, the city's history is where change is inscribed, both temporally and spatially. I intend to break down these dimensions and to look at their interplay, and thus render an analysis that highlights both continuity and interstice.

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The Literature of the English Reformation. Historical Background

Author(s): Gyongyver Măduța / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: king; promulgation; policy; dissemination; monastic; cathedral; religious communities; abbey; culture; clerical; reinforcement; ecclesiastical policies;

The English Reformation was alternately initiated, delayed, fostered, reversed, and reshaped by four Tudor monarchs and their ministers. It began with violent severance and ended with an uneasy compromise. When Henry VIII appointed Thomas Cranmer to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1532 he promoted a man known to be sympathetic to reform. Cranmer was to become the chief instrument of the King’s policy for the removal of papal supremacy in England. When the Pope’s long sought sanction for the King’s divorce was denied, it was Cranmer who annulled Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and he who crowned Anne Boleyn in her stead in 1533. It was Cranmer who was chiefly responsible for the promulgation of the ‘’Ten Articles’’ in 1536, the first statement of faith issued by the independent English church, and he who took responsibility for the first official dissemination of the Bible in the English language.

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Approaching Literary Texts with the Aim of Acquiring Emotional Literacy Skills

Author(s): Raluca-Ștefania Pelin / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Keywords: reading literacy; reader-response; emotions; emotional intelligence; emotional literacy skill;

Literacy is the ability one should possess so as to understand all forms of communication and to use the acquired knowledge for further tasks. Reading literacy is a current issue in education, as it refers to the skills students should have in order to be able to read, decode meaning, make inferences, analyse critically, and synthesize information. Emotional literacy is an inherent part of this general skill which readers should master in order to access information, understand messages in their context and be able to contribute to their own shaping of knowledge and character as a natural consequence of their encounter with literature. By linking the knowledge from the field of psychology on emotional intelligence and emotional literacy with that from the field of readers’ response to literature, the act of approaching literary texts should be one of discovering oneself and the others and of finding constructive ways of interaction.

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Creating Learning Opportunities for Language Learners

Author(s): Mariana Coancă / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

Keywords: English; constructivist instruction; digital resources;

The paper discusses the principles and components of constructivist pedagogy and its implications in language teaching and learning, and highlights the student-centred learning approach which is considered a genuine and meaningful learning where tasks are relevant to real-world contexts. The key components of student-centred learning are project work, group work, problem solving, reflective thought and variation in language learning tasks. The second section of our paper focuses on the role of the language instructor as a facilitator who encourages students to work independently and interdependently, provides supportive ICT resources and creates thinking opportunities for students to extend their understanding of the languages for specific purposes. The third section addresses the barriers to the implementation of constructivist instruction and proposes a stakeholder framework which favours the development of a platform for learning and inclusion to align pedagogy with technology in order to foster students' motivation and engagement. The paper concludes that technology access is an important resource for today's constructivist pedagogy of language learning and teaching. Students need to learn and produce cooperatively (Pitler et al., 2007) in an ecosystem based on inclusive teaching strategies which support and incentivize them to think outside of the box. If motivated intrinsically students are more likely to use more logical information-gathering and decision-making strategies, while the use of ICT allows them to explore various real-life issues and become more autonomous learners. Many researchers assert that ICT usage encourages practices that promote deeper cognitive opportunities and engage the learner in intellectual activities with some control over learning. However, the role of the teacher is critical in scaffolding, mentoring, guiding the learners and facilitating the outcome of the language learning tasks (McKenna et al., 2013).

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Learning by Seeing: The Art of Anatomic Illustration

Author(s): Roxana Elena Doncu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

Keywords: anatomical illustration; history of science; didactics;

Although medical illustrations are generally understood as visual models for the transmission of knowledge, the history of anatomical illustration brings to light all the interconnections and interrelations that have worked to establish its status as an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the human body. By using aesthetics as a didactic way to knowledge, anatomical illustration merged scientific with aesthetic theories, developing specific ‘period’ styles. From the early demonstrations of Leonardo da Vinci to modern schools of medical illustration, the history of this interdisciplinary enterprise shows a remarkable capacity of changing with the advent of new paradigms in science.

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