The Myths of Prometheus and the Black Sea Region. Conflicting Versions, Shifting Paradigms

Author(s): Cleo Protokhristova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2020

The topic of the paper is the interrelation between two ideological constructs: the figure of Prometheus and the so-called Black Sea region. Both of them represent, in specifically transformed versions, primary ideas and realities that lack the additionally attributed coherence of the later concepts currently in use. It aims to explore the key ancient myth of Prometheus in comparative perspective juxtaposing the stable presence it retains in the Western cultural imagination with its life in the Black Sea region, where this myth initially emerged. It focuses specifically on the underestimated political mobilization of the Prometheus myth in the construction of national identities and in the manufacturing of various ideologies. The different, often conflicting versions are analysed in diachronic perspective that provides observability of the potential paradigm shifts in the conceptualizations of the Prometheus figure.

Bulgarian Translations of τύχη: The Case of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

Author(s): Bogdana Paskaleva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2020

The paper is dedicated to the history of translation of Sophocles’ seminal tragedy Oedipus the King in Bulgaria. It studies the different strategies of translation that have been adopted by Bulgarian authors, when rendering the Greek word τύχη in contemporary Bulgarian language. In comparing the various translational versions of a short passage from the 3rd epeisodion, and having in mind the translators’ background and decisions, the paper argues that the instance of Oedipus the King is indicative of the productive power of translation. The comparison shows how displacements and shifting of meaning in the process of translation could bring about new, unexpected effects of meaning. This situation is also brought about by the specific way of reception of Ancient literature in Bulgaria, since not all of the translators have used the original in their work.

За книгата: Francis Claudon. A l’école de Fauriel. Mélanges de littérature comparée. Editions universitaires européennes, 2018.

Author(s): Roumiana L. Stantcheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2020

Book review: Francis Claudon. A l’école de Fauriel. Mélanges de littérature comparée. Editions universitaires européennes, 2018.

Можем ли да погледнем в бъдещето на българския език?

Author(s): Mihail Videnov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The author of the article answers negatively to the question of scientific linguistic prognosis if it is made through conjectures from the point of view of traditional directions, that analyze the tendencies and development of linguistic phenomena without taking into account the social factor. Needed is sociolinguistic methodology. In the manuscript, the problems of forecasting are divided into macrosociolinguistic and microsociolinguistic and the analysis is made mainly in view of macrosociolinguistics. Pointed out is that the observations should be focused mainly on the Sofia capital's speech, where the leading social classes are. The metropolitan practice afterwards becomes nationwide: the metropolitan fashion dictates the future appearance of the language. Indicated are some perspectives in the current language versions.

Синтаксис на метаезика

Author(s): Mariana Georgieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The article presents metalanguage as a cognitive phenomenon with its own syntactic paradigm. The paradigm of syntactic bonds of metalanguage is substantiated by the method of cognitive modelling. The analysis is based on the cognitive reading of the definitive sentence characteristics predicative, modality, intonation completeness and grammatical formation. The principle of cognitive integration between concepts, phenomena is applied.

Burnout Levels of English Language Teachers

Author(s): Suzan Kavanoz,Yasemin Kırkgöz / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

Teachers are among the working populations who are at high risk of being affected by burnout syndrome, an emotional stress condition manifested in emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach, 1976). The goal of this quantitative cross-sectional study is to examine English language teachers’ burnout levels and how the three core components of burnout are related to several teacher background variables such as gender, age, and teaching experience. Data were collected through a demographic form and Maslach Burnout Inventory. The results show that the rate of burnout in EFL teachers is at a medium level in emotional exhaustion and personal achievement dimensions, and low in depersonalization. Our findings also confirmed that gender, age and teaching experience affect EFL teacher burnout.

Modern Approaches to Foreign Language Teaching

Author(s): Danail Danov / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

This article discusses creativity, innovations and interculturalism as key trends in modern Foreign Language Teaching. It argues that in a learning environment strongly dependant on digital technology and extensive communication participatory learning and achivements of high results do not seem visible if the above-mentioned trends are not taken into serious consideration.

„Вътре и между два свята“ (Кадзуо Ишигуро „Бледият изглед към хълмовете” и „Остатъкът от деня“)

Author(s): Magdalena Kostova-Panayotova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The article studies two novels of one of the cross-cultural writers Kazuo Ishiguro – A pale view of hills (1982) and The remains of the day (1989). Way before he received his Nobel prize in 2017, Ishiguro has already been acknowledged internationally and his novels have been translated in many languages all over the world, winning literary awards. His novel The remains of the day (1989) was adapted into an Oscar nominated film with a cast full of well-known stars. The movie was nominated in 8 categories. Important themes in Ishiguro’s works are the return to the past, the memory, the search for signs and personal identity, the discursive crossing of boundaries and cultural narratives. In this space, which is ‘somewhere inside and in-between two worlds’, values and structures are reassessed, the history of the past is restructured and all of this happens from the viewpoint of the alienated narrator. Ishiguro's novels represent a meta-text with respect to Western stereotypes of the East and „Japanese“, which have their roots in Japanese culture itself, but conceive of it ambivalently. Likewise, the novel The remains of the day is a metatext concerned with the phenomenon of „Englishness“ which exists on many levels in the work’s structure, but this recognition of the „English novel” is again in the zone of hybrid mentality.

Полонистиката в чуждестранните университети през погледа на лектора по полски език и литература

Author(s): Magdalena Zakrzewska-Verdugo / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The first part of the paper presents a brief glimpse into the history of teaching Polish as a Foreign Language at universities worldwide. Activities of Bristol Association of Polish and Foreign Teachers of Polish Culture and Polish as a Second Language are also mentioned, as well as its role in offering methodological help for teachers and professors of Polish overseas. The paper offers also a presentation of the current model of teaching Polish abroad coordinated since 2017 by the Polish state agency NAWA. The second part of the paper deals with an overview of university centers teaching Polish in Slovakia. The author focuses mainly on the specifics of Polish education program at the Department of Slavonic Languages, Faculty of Arts at the Comenius University in Bratislava, from the synchronic and diachronic point of view. At the end of the paper, some relevant information about teaching Polish at university centers in Bulgaria is mentioned from the comparative, current perspective.

Към историята на предлога Освен

Author(s): Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The article discusses one of the linguo-didactologic goals oriented to the teaching of Old Bulgarian (Slavonic) as the establishing of systematic relations between diachrony and synchrony. Concrete example are the uses of the preposition except in a translated juridical text from 1262, some of which overlap with the contemporary use of the preposition except in complex conjunctions appropriated to the administrative style. The main conclusion concerns the localization character of except in texts and manuscripts of Southern, or Balkan Slavic origin. The Preslav Literary School plays a definitive role for its imposing in the literary language. The unchangeable prepositional functions prove the continuity between the Medieval and the Modern Bulgarian language.

Лингвистични знания, комуникативна компетентност, функционална грамотност

Author(s): Yovka Tisheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The main aim of the article is to discuss the relationship between the three key areas related to the tasks of Bulgarian language teaching. Linguistic knowledge is the traditional core of teaching Bulgarian at school. The knowledge of language units and rules is the basis upon which the communicative skills to apply them in various situations are developed. Functional literacy is related to the transition from pattern drills and “artificial” textbook’s materials to real cases from different functional areas.

Изследователският подход в обучението по български език: между традиционното и иновативното

Author(s): Velka Popova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The text focuses on the research approach in preparing teachers of Bulgarian language as one of the main ways to solve the controversy between the accumulation of a huge amount of knowledge in university education and the inability of trainees to put it into practice. The focus is on the problems which trainee-teachers of Bulgarian language face in view of the modern teaching requirements.In this context, research competence is seen as one of the most important components of a teacher's professional and pedagogical expertise. Its formation is traced in the process of research activity carried out by future teachers during their studies at the university. An example of a pilot model for classroom and extracurricular work in the foundation discipline Introduction to General Linguistics shows the effect of students conducting research on the formation of the competencies and skills that underlie their development as specialists in Bulgarian, and the development of their professional self-esteem.

Има ли въздействие държавният зрелостен изпит по български език и литература върху граматическата компетентност

Author(s): Ruska Stancheva,Krasimira Aleksova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The report presents the results of a nationally representative sociolinguistic survey of language attitudes in relation to proficiency in 9 grammatical norms. The answers of the respondents are divided into two groups according to the attribute educational activity: students and non-learners. Since the same standards are verified by the National matriculation exam in Bulgarian standard language, it is possible to verify, through the examination of the data, whether this educational practice has an impact on grammatical competence. The analysis shows that National matriculation exam in Bulgarian standard language has a positive influence on the knowledge and application of grammatical norms in dynamics – a feedback that has not been studied so far.

Диалектика и абсурд в „Слава на империята“ на Жан д’Ормесон

Author(s): Latchezar Tomov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

In the present paper, we set our goal to analyze the usage of dialectics in “Glory of the Empire” of Jean D’Ormesson as a weapon against the very idea of Platonic and Hegelian dialectics. Our main thesis is that D’Ormesson projects the dialectics in a formal logical space, which creates artificial contradictions and inconsistencies, which are object to his satire. This is the reason some parts of his critique towards historiography and religion to be inconsistent themselves.

English Mnemonic Lexicon: Constituent Structure and Verbalization Potential

Author(s): Irina Tivyaeva,Olga Syomina / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This paper presents a study of the system of lexical devices used by English speakers to verbalize theirpersonal memory experiences. The approach presented in the paper presupposes inclusion of nonnarrativestructures into the spectrum of language forms conveying mnemonic meanings and extends thelatter so as to encompass the meanings of encoding, storage, retrieval and loss. The research is based onthe hypothesis that lexical units expressing memory-related meanings in English constitute a specificallyorganized system. A variety of communicative contexts representing mnemonic situations are analyzed asto d evelop a t ypology o f m emory v erbalizers i n E nglish, estimate t heir f unctional p otential a nd role i nobjectifying personal memory experiences on the lexical level. The results confirm the original hypothesisand suggest that mnemonic lexicon as a linguistic reflection of the mnemonic faculty is an important andlargely understudied element of the language – memory system.

Creating the Authorial Self in Academic Texts: Evidence From the Expert’s Style of Writing

Author(s): Tatiana Szczygłowska / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This paper reports on an analysis of stance expressions in a 439,490-word corpus of Ken Hyland’s academic prose, encompassing 64 single-authored texts from journals, edited collections and his own monographs. Using WordSmith Tools 6.0, the study aims to find out how this expert academic writer creates his authorial self through stance mechanisms. The results reveal that Hyland’s authorial participation in his discourse is mostly manifested through hedges, somewhat less definitely through boosters, but relatively infrequently by attitude markers and self-mention. The choice of the specific stance devices indicates a preference for detached objectivity when formulating empirically verifiable propositions and a shift towards subjectivity when referring to discourse acts and research methodology. These findings contribute to our understanding of stance-taking expertise in applied linguistics and may thus assist novice writers in the field in a more effective management of their own performance of self inacademic prose.

Адаптацията на чуждестранните студенти медици към нова социокултурна среда

Author(s): Ivelina Angelova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2020

The focus of this report is on the level and the type of adaptation of foreign medical students (studying at Trakia University) to the new sociocultural environment. The study data is interpreted, and the following distribution is obtained according to six scales: adaptability, conformation, interactivity, depression, nostalgia and alienation. Attention is paid to the four phases of the personality adaptation to the new sociocultural environment. The paper considers that the sociocultural (intercultural) adaptation is an adaptation of the foreign students to the conditions of the new sociocultural environment, i.e. to different values, norms of behavior, traditions and rituals. The paper analyzes how the success of adaptation is determined by well-established methods and techniques that help to achieve social and psychological integration in the foreign culture without losing the cultural heritage. There are a number of essential functions of intercultural adaptation which are mentioned by the author. The paper also sets out very important factors determining the pace of adaptation

Радио на сляпо. "Брайл ФМ"

Author(s): Rumi Rafet / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2018

The text is dedicated to one unique radiostation in Bulgaria – BRALLE FM RADIO, web-based only. It is a social type of radiostation that is created, supported, broadcast and managed by visually impaired persons. There follow the history and the origin of the idea of the radio, various programme pieces, team, editorial responsibility and policy to help, to inform and to entertain the audience. To the purpose of easy comprehension of the that problematical topic for visually impaired people the text offers information on specialized education and schools in Bulgaria, as well as some practical details on computer software programs and mobile applications that contribute to the access of journalistic production from different spheres of society and media.

Българистиката в Кьолнския университет

Author(s): Boyan Valchev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 40/2020

Алкалоидите като част от руската празнична култура

Author(s): Irina Georgieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 41/2020

The text analyses extensively the role of alcohol in Russian culture in terms of anthropology and literary history – from the traditional folklore, through 17th century texts, diary entries by Nicholas II of Russia about having champagne with the cavalry, drinking in the times of Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachov, in the youth subculture circles and the alcohol in some key literary texts of those periods.