Keywords: Russia; media; television; humour; Perviy kanal; politics; Kremlin; communication; audience;
This case study looks at how Russian television uses humour as a support mechanism for strategic communications with its audience, specifically on the issue of Western leaders, and endeavours to determine the essence of the core message. To do this, various Russian Perviy Kanal (Первый Канал/ Channel One) entertainment broadcasts specializing in comedy will be analysed.
More...Keywords: anti-missile shield; NATO and Russia;
Romanian-American agreement, announced on 3 May 2011, according to which Romania will host one of the elements of the U.S. antimissile shield, has revived discussions on continental military-strategic balance, this time on the defensive part of it. On the backdrop of Russia’s declared discontent, NATO-Russia Council has reunited immediately in Brussels al level of Head of Major State, during which Russia demanded legal guaran¬tees, especially from Americans, that U.S. antimissile shield will not target strategic nuclear forces of Russia. D. Medvedev also asked B. Obama for legal safeguards; during bilateral in France, which took place in the context of G8 summit in Deauville on 26-27 May. Geographical proximity and functional consequences of the new continental project will have repercussions on Moldova security and further demarches of Moldovan diplomacy require a prior analysis of the entire context.
More...Keywords: penitentiary-reformatory for women; Požarevac; rights; relationship between the staff and prisoners; hygiene; kitchen; food; health service; violence; social and family ties; professional training;
For the past ten years, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia has been monitoring and identifying violations of human rights of marginalized groups accommodated in various institutions, where their fundamental rights have been partially or entirely limited. After several visits to all prisons, during which the HCHRS has, based on a previously established methodology, ascertained the state of affairs, followed by a systemic monitoring of the changes in the execution of criminal sanctions, the new project aims to identify violations of rights of vulnerable groups among the prison population. Having in mind that the prison system is reforming at a slow pace and that many aspects are contingent on changes in the society and in other state sectors, the Monitoring of the Prison System Reform in Serbia 2011 focuses on the most prominent problems which threaten fundamental human rights of persons sentenced to prison or to educational measures, belonging to one or more categories of the so called sensitive groups. For this reason, the comprehensive methodology used in previous reports has given way to observance of existing rights which the abovementioned persons cannot realize fully or to some degree, in spite the pronounced social or individual need for such rights to be engendered in the case of these particular groups.
More...Keywords: Ovid; Tristia; Getae; head nod; ethnic stereotype; Bulgarian behavioral stereotype; Thracian language; Sclaueni
The tenth elegy in the Fifth Book of “Sorrows” (Tristia 5.10), which Ovid wrote in 12th year AD, was repeatedly commented on and translated for historical, ethnic and literary purposes. Particularly, for Tristia 5.10.41—42 it was noted that “the text seems to be dubious” and such translations were offered that did not reflect the essence of that elegiac observation by the Roman poet. In 1975, Friedrich Hauben perceived the meaning and made an ethnographic parallel to point out that only Bulgarians and Greeks had the opposite use of a pan-European gesture system with head nodding expressing consensus or negation. However, the «ethnic stereotype» described by Ovid is characteristic only for the Bulgarians in Europe, and when registering an approving head nod (top-down) or turning it left and right (as a sign of denial) in present Turkey, Macedonia and Albania, we must seek for the ancient substrate (the presence of similar substrates in India also requires further research). The Getaic head nodding as a consensus for now has no other explanation except for the fact that the Getae, like the other Thracian communities, had not “disappeared”, but what is more, made a significant contribution to the evolution of the Bulgarians as an ethnic group. Against the background of the available evidence and futility of the German thesis of Völkertode of the “ancient peoples”, however paradoxical it sounds, there is literally no need to prove that the Getae and the Dacians were the main part of those North Thracian peasant communities, which in the written documents from the end of the 6th century AD on began to be designated in Greek as Σκλάβήνοι or Σκλαύηνοι, while in Latin — Sclaueni, Sclavi, Sclauini.
More...Keywords: Cormac McCarthy; violence; myth; Borderland; revolution
Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, which are set on the southwestern edge of America, are the volumes of the brilliant Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy. Although none of the novels is set in a time of great warfare or revolution, the strong repercussions of a bloody and violent era accompany the protagonists, who try to get to know and understand the South of America and Mexico, stigmatized by the memory of historical events. The Mexican War (1846–1848) and the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) form the narrative background for this prose. Reminiscences of destructive conflicts, which carry with them barbarity, suffering and death, haunt the protagonists, not allowing them to forget the atrocities associated with war and revolution. Some are burdened with the memory of a bloody wartime past, others are affected by the mere recollections of these experiences. McCarthy in the history of Borderland exposes the feelings and emotions of people affected by turbulent historical events, combining a fictional story with history, the past with the present. All the novels go deep into American history, face its facts and myths. McCarthy, in turn, tries to present the history of his country according to historical facts, thus destroying well-functioning myths. The writer’s revisionist approach to the restless and unruly history has turned the most recognizable symbol of America, the Wild West, into an American myth, which is deprived of its own raison d’être.
More...Keywords: mimesis; Iraq; trauma; reportage; violence;
Presenting facts in the most faithful way possible deprives the history of emotions, colours and turns it into a bare report. According to the principles set by New Journalism, a trend that introduced the use of literary techniques in journalistic texts, a press article should evoke in the recipient as strong an experience as possible, thanks to which s/he will be able to feel the events described, even if the price is the loss of their status of “facts”. The aim of the article is an attempt to demonstrate the way in which David Finkel, a war correspondent who witnessed the implementation of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, builds a narration describing difficult, violent events; how he shapes, through appropriate rhetoric, the reactions of readers to the content which they receive. The methodological background of the article has been built with reference to Paul Ricoeur’s triple mimesis concept, and an additional tool for analyzing trauma in literature are the results of research by Richard McNally and Joshua Pedersen. With the aid of the aforementioned theoretical tools it is possible to show the links between the rhetoric used in the narration and the horizon of the contemporary receiver, which stimulate the reader’s experience.
More...Keywords: colonial novel; ethnography; exotic literature; crisis; Aïssaoua; Aline Réveillaud de Lens
The aim of the present paper is to show how the crisis of exotic literature, understood as the first type of literature inspired directly by colonies, contributed to the development of ethnography. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one defines exotic literature and analyses the reasons of its crisis. The second presents the main theories concerning colonial novel coming from the beginning of the 20th century; and the last part shows the example of an ethnographic discourse in one of the colonial novels praised by their theoreticians: "Derrière les vieux murs en ruines" by Aline Réveillaud de Lens (1881-1925).
More...This compendium was created by the consortium members of the CEE Prevent Net initiative. Its development is the result of a robust exchange of good practice methods among various organizations and civil society actors in the areas of youth work and (non-formal) education aimed at preventing intolerance, discrimination, and right-wing populism and extremism in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. Initially, this volume was supposed to present 10 good practices for working with young people directly; however, the CEE Prevent Net network decided to expand this initial enterprise gratuitously. This additional section provides youth workers, educators, and other civic actors with recommendations and advocacy strategies for youth work that fosters tolerance, facilitates dialogue, and prevents discrimination and far right ideologies.
More...Keywords: semantics;semiotics;translation studies;
More...Keywords: words; intercultural; communication; knowledge; teaching
When someone think about learning a foreign language, the concepts that come to mind are grammar, vocabulary, verbs, spelling, and phonetics. It is less common to wonder how others think their language. Galisson proposed the concept of lexiculture. The CEFR emphasizes the ideas of intercultural values and misunderstandings. A typical language course does not give strategies to manage these questions. To address this shortcoming, we propose a double approach. The first is based on the communicative and cultural processes during a conversation between natives. The second is based on understanding how to report knowledge, the construction of knowledge, and discursive grammar. From there, our didactic objective is twofold: (1) to articulate the communicative-cultural processes and the dimensions of the teaching process to focus on the cultural meaning of the words studied in the course; and (2) to give students the tools to manage the approach of the interculturality.
More...The subject of the article is the cycle of twelve lamentations written by an Arian poet andmaintained in a unique collection. In its style and layout (a series of lamentations finished witha gravestone), it refers to a model from Czarnolas, and when it comes to its content, it constitutesa polemics with Kochanowski’s attitude. Gnoiński does not share doubt expressed by the author ofTreny and does not go a long way looking for consolation after his wife’s death. His cycle, reflect‑ing the stages of mourning, closes with a declaration of an unshakeable belief in postmortal salva‑tion, and in his polemics with the Renaissance poet he refers to the Bible, congregation and ancientwriters. Quotations from the Holy Bible form a frame of a dialogue and basis of consolation. Theworldview is dictated by the collection of elegies by Tobiasz Wiszniowski while Ovidius’s Tr is t iareferred to several times determine the nature of emotions close to the author of Łzy smutne… Thetext also contains the phenomena from the area of the low culture: a popular song, rituals accompa‑nying the sites of transition or faith in a prophetic meaning of words. The article includes biographicand bibliographic findings.
More...Keywords: diathesis; stative predicates; passives; middles; anticausatives; reciprocals; optatives
The investigation is intended to provide a clear distinction between the category of grammatical voice in Bulgarian (grammatical diatheses) and lexical diatheses by analyzing grammatical facts and by applying semantic criteria. The category of (grammatical) voice is used to describe a wide range of phenomena. Only the lexical diatheses are presented in more detail: se passives, impersonal passives, middles, anticausatives, lexical reciprocals, optatives, impersonal optatives, property of “oblique” subject. The semantic and grammatical characteristics (arguments and semantic roles, verb aspect, transitivity, and morphological categories of the verb lemma) of the source and derivative diatheses are studied, compared, and described. A large number of the source diatheses affect imperfective verbs that may express activities or states; in such cases, the alternations may lead to one of the following configurations: activity – activity; activity – state; state – state. We trace the correlation between the diathesis type and the eventuality type in the context of the ontological description of the state predicates proposed in this study. The investigation is intended to provide a clear distinction between the category of grammatical voice in Bulgarian (grammatical diatheses) and lexical diatheses by analyzing grammatical facts and by applying semantic criteria. The category of (grammatical) voice is used to describe a wide range of phenomena. Only the lexical diatheses are presented in more detail: se passives, impersonal passives, middles, anticausatives, lexical reciprocals, optatives, impersonal optatives, property of “oblique” subject. The semantic and grammatical characteristics (arguments and semantic roles, verb aspect, transitivity, and morphological categories of the verb lemma) of the source and derivative diatheses are studied, compared, and described. A large number of the source diatheses affect imperfective verbs that may express activities or states; in such cases, the alternations may lead to one of the following configurations: activity – activity; activity – state; state – state. We trace the correlation between the diathesis type and the eventuality type in the context of the ontological description of the state predicates proposed in this study.
More...Keywords: metaphor; inner life; culture and philosophy of culture; polyglot analysis of psalms; translations of psalms
In the article, the author gathers arguments for the central thesis: although the metaphor of the “heart of the inner life” has not appeared anywhere in its linguistic materiality, neither in Polish nor, for example, in the English, “the heart of the inner life”, this metaphor has many linguistic embodiments and linguistic and cultural in biblical and supradenominational contexts. The phrase “culture and the heart of inner life” is thus a one-phrase formulation of this theoretical thesis: the heart in the psalmic Hebrew culture is not identical to the heart of modern times. It symbolizes the romantic-sentimental element of human anthropology. The heart in the psalms should be understood as synonymous with “life”, especially “inner life”, “mental life”, and its cultivation – meditation, thinking transformation. In this sense, the “religion of the heart” of the psalms is far from being sentimental and romanticizing emotions, elation and sublimity based solely on enthusiasm and ecstasy. Psalms are often mixed with modern poetry, in which the dominant function is the expression of emotions. The article may be of interest not only to scholars of psalms and the Bible in the contexts of national, Hebrew, Polish and English-speaking cultures but also to cultural philosophers and theorists of metaphors and rhetorical figures. The author bases his reflections on the main topic: “the culture and heart of the inner life” on a polyglot analysis of the verses of two psalms of the Polish ecumenical translation, Psalm 37 and 119. He confronts Polish and English translations of fragments of these psalms. The contextual work for interpretation of the thesis is “The Inner Land” by Eberhard Arnold. The polyglot analysis of several dozen examples confirms the central thesis of the existence of the metaphor “heart of inner life”.
More...Keywords: metaphor; Haneke;
More...Keywords: expert; discourse; science; legitimacy; trust; pandemic
This chapter aims to provide some elements of the definition of expert discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic from the point of view of the French school of discourse analysis. The expert discourse would be one of the elements in the construction of this media event (Moirand 2007); it would be the one that comes from the legitimate expert or the one that results from the expertise activity. But at the same time, it is subordinated to the conditions of media communication (Charaudeau 2005; Garric, Léglise 2012). The fragments of expert discourse are chosen by the media not to transmit knowledge, but to construct content corresponding to different aims. The figure of expert, whose legitimacy comes from social relations of authority, from the distinction between what is scientific and what is ordinary, as well as his credibility are built in discourse.
More...Keywords: animality; cruelty; dehumanisation; comparison; alterity
The purpose of this paper is to show how Henri Michaux, a poet of Belgian origin, with the eye of a zoologist, or rather of a naturalist, restores man to nature, and thus to a certain animalism that includes Asian and European populations. The paper will analyze stories in which the narrator refers to human animality, establishing liminal zones that allude to or mistakenly recall phases of anthropogenesis and in which unusual forms of cooperation between humans and animals are established. In turn, the discovery of animality in its strangeness allows the author to radicalize and generalize the experience of otherness.
More...Keywords: story; metamorphosis; colors; glance; obsession; secrets;
"Blue Beard" by Amélie Nothomb illustrates from the very beginning certain elements of intertextuality and seeks to enrich the famous story of Charles Perrault through an insolit perspective and innovative style, dynamic dialogues and powerful characters showing extreme passions. One can identify here the phenomenology of the mystery referring to a secret chamber, associated with inexpressible things, whose indiscretion becomes overwhelming. Stepping through the door (“l’entr-ouvert”) - unavoidable and terrifying place, means beyond doubt changing the characters’s lives. Our study mainly refers to a comparative analysis which focuses both on the metamorphosis of the story into a novel and the avatars of the latter one along the process of narration or adaptation from Blue Beard myth in a modern context, in short, the premises of an original writing, surprising and profound at the same time.
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