Semiotic Aspects of Sound and Music in Science-fiction Films

Author(s): Traian Penciuc / Language(s): English Issue: 28/2015

The development of the sound playback technology has changed the way sound is used in the structure of the film. In addition, the public has become more refined and no longer accepts a mechanical sound rendering. Altered by effects, the sound is called to reinforce the fiction proposed by the image, changing the perception of space and movement, but also highlighting subjective points of view. However, it is always claimed that it should have diegetic fidelity. In the case of science-fiction films, this “fidelity” has specific aspects. First, there are unknown sounds of objects or phenomena, which are supposed to be imagined, created. Nevertheless, particularly in science-fiction these sounds must, to some degree, match the scientific description of the phenomenon they represent, or at least, a popular perception of these scientific theories. Thus results a pseudo-iconicity of sound and music in science-fiction films, which this paper will study.

Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Cultural Developments

Author(s): Felix Nicolau / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Romulus Bucur is a renowned writer and literary critic. He is also faculty member at Transylvania University of Braşov, institution well-known for its courses of creative writing and translation studies. “Glosses” is a nimbly written theoretical book wherein many topics are analyzed. One of the most important is the work of Alexandru Muşina, editor, writer, professor, and mentor of the Group of Braşov (a fertile contingent of writers still holding sway in Romanian literature).The second part of the volume is dedicated to the Romanian translations from the classical and contemporary Chinese culture. Mention must be made about the semiotic approach to all literary works glossed about.

Мышь в фольклорной традиции восточных славян

Author(s): Margarita Nadel-Czerwińska / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3/2017

The article discusses the semantics of a number of metasigns (mouse, cat, tomcat, lynx etc.) of the folklore of Eastern Slavs in the mythological context of traditional beliefs and texts. Examples of proverbs, folk fortune telling and fairy tales are given as illustrations.

Не ни е забавно – неуспелият хумор при общуването. Nancy Bell. We Are Not Amused: Failed Humor in Interacton. Munich: De Gruyter Mouton, 2015

Author(s): Dafina Genova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2018

Book review

BERGEROVÁ, Hana, VAŇKOVÁ, Lenka et al.: Lexikalische Ausdrucksmittel der Emotionalität im Deutschen und im Tschechischen. Ostrava: Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě 2015. 262 s. ISBN 978-80-7464-460-3

Author(s): Jana Rakšányiová / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 25-26/2016

Particularități ale limbajului oral la elevii cu dizabilități intelectuale

Author(s): Maria Pop / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2018

This article studies the particularities of spoken language in students with intellectual disabilities and the importance of a complex language assessment in order to structure a personalized intervention program for speech and language therapy. Hereby language is being evaluated in all its aspects: phonetic, phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic.Personalized intervention programs will be structured depending on the results obtained at the tests, the individual particularities of the children and the type and severity of intellectual disability. The personalized intervention program is the basis of speech and language therapy

Ndërrimi i kodeve gjuhësore në shqip në rrjetet sociale

Author(s): Lendita Kryeziu / Language(s): Albanian Issue: 35/2017

If you happen to be an active user of different social networks like: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Viber or Tumblr, you will be able to see that many users use English as a written medium to express their thoughts, wishes, ideas even when their native language is not English.Code-switching is the alternating use of two languages in the same stretch of discourse by a bilingual speaker. In other words, code-switching is used to identify alternations of linguistic varieties within the same conversation.In Kosova, this phenomenon is not new. The lexicon of Albanian language because of many factors such as: many conquests, geographic proximity to other countries and the subsequent globalization has been enriched with loanwords from Ancient and Modern Greek, Latin, Turkish, Italian, the Balkan Slavic languages and later on from English. Not only words were borrowed but frequently speakers of Albanian and other languages in contact used to shift codes from one language to another one. It is a broadly acknowledged fact that in recent years English has become a global language and as such, it is used all around the world by professionals and scholars in international meetings. English is often the official language of international companies, enterprises, Unions and Academic Conferences, and above all, it is the language of the internet.Nowadays, we are witnesses of the widespread use of the above mentioned social networks by the majority of people, specifically young people who spend many hours conversing with their friends and peers. In these conversations, they often switch from one language to another one. Not only this, but there are also cases when they post their statuses or comments using English language. The reasons for doing this might be of different nature: To code- switch into a high prestige language, to be understood only by their circle of friends, for easier expression and for not a specific reason.In this paper the cases of code-switching occurring on these social networks and mostly on Facebook will be researched and analyzed.

Comment s’excuser en français et en polonais : étude pragma-sémantique

Author(s): Francis Grossmann,Anna Krzyżanowska / Language(s): French Issue: 30/2018

This paper focuses on discursive routines used to express apology in email exchange. We adopt a contrastive (French-Polish) and intercultural approach, integrating apology in the politeness theory. We start from the hypothesis of cognitive grammars (see e.g. L a nga cke r 2008a and 2008b) that apology, even if it includes a shared conceptual core in various languages, presents for each language an original configuration that specifically reorganizes semantic constituents. The results of the research previously conducted by Dz ia d k iew icz (2007) show that, in the case of apology, the extent of the polite scale in Polish is not the same as in French. The corpus is composed of interpersonal emails (about 200 mails per language) collected in both languages, in professional or private context.

Структурнo-семантичні особливості українських і польських слів з префіксами не-, без- i nie-, bez-

Author(s): Mirosława Czetyrba-Piszczako / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: V/2000

The Role of Phonotactic Information in the Processing and Production of Inflectional Morphology

Author(s): Strahinja Dimitrijević / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2019

In two separate studies, it was examined to what extent in languages with rich inflectional morphology, such as Serbian, in the tasks of automatic perception and word production we can rely on phonotactic information, i.e. permitted combinations of phonemes/graphemes. In the first study, with the help of support vector machines, word classes discrimination was carried out based on bigrams and trigrams generated at the morphosyntactic category level. In the second study, the production of inflected forms was explored, with the help of memory-based learning, relying on phonotactic information from the last four syllables of lemmas. Maximum discrimination accuracy of inflected word classes was obtained on the basis of bigrams reaching about 93% of accuracy. Similarly, in the task of inflectional production on all inflected word classes taken together, around 92% of the inflected forms were generated correctly. This confirms that phonotactic information in the perception and production of morphologically complex words plays an important role. Therefore, this information should be taken into account when considering the emergence of larger language units and patterns. The results show that functional connections between orthography/phonology and semantics lead to successful lexical learning, but at the same time they call into question the need for positing the existence of mental lexicon in which mental representations of various language characteristics are stored.

It not as We Know it

Author(s): Boris F. Hlebec / Language(s): English Issue: 8/2013

The aim of this article is to provide insight into various uses of the English pronoun it (which is actually not always a pro-noun, i.e. not always used instead of a noun) and to ascertain whether they have any meaning, semantic and/or pragmatic. A number of authors have been reviewed, a lot of examples adduced and, in a new approach, semantic definitions of four sememes of it have been produced. All of the four varieties of it have referential function, the emphatic it has no semantic meaning, the personal and phenomenon it have semantic meaning partly, while the ambient it has a general semantic meaning. The personal, phenomenon and emphatic it have a definable pragmatic use.

RE-FRAMING MASCULINITY IN JAPAN: TOM CRUISE, THE LAST SAMURAI AND THE FLUID METANARRATIVES OF HISTORY

Author(s): Maria Grajdian / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

After its release in 2003, The Last Samurai became a major success at the Japanese (and international) box-office, simultaneously marking a turning point in the illustration of Japan by Western media, and more specifically, by US-American institutions of mass entertainment, such as Hollywood. The Last Samurai has been mostly discussed on the background of the historical realities it depicts (the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the unconditional import of Western artefacts and values, the clash between old and new in Japan by mid-19th century) or from the perspective of the impact it had on the representation of Asian or other non-European cultures by American mainstream mass-media. Based on a 15-year empiric-phenomenological fieldwork in the slippery domain of Japanese mass-media, as well as in-depth literature research on new media, masculinity studies and entertainment industry with specific focus on Japan, this paper argues that the character embodied by Tom Cruise – the typical white male from Japanese perspective – displayed an unexpectedly refreshing insight into the prevalent masculinity ideal in Japan, as subliminally suggested by the Japanese characters. On the one hand, it challenges the image of the samurai, both in its historical idealization (stoic warriors and social elite) and in their contemporary adaptation (carriers of Japan’s post-war recovery). On the other hand, it questions the values incorporated by classical Japanese masculinity and suggests a credible alternative, with emotional flexibility, human warmth and mental vulnerability as potential core attributes.

Specyfika semantyczna czasowników z przyrostkiem -ну-/-ną- w języku rosyjskim i polskim

Author(s): Joanna Woch / Language(s): Polish Issue: XXII/2020

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate semantic similarities and differences between Polish and Russian verbs with suffixes -ну-/-ną-. The analyzed affixes form semantically neutral semelfactive verbs in standard Polish and Russian. The main differ-ence can be observed in the spoken language, in which suffixes -ну-/-ną- form expressive semelfactive verbs. The study shows that the Russian suffix -ну- is more productive as it can be added to almost any durative verb stem and it is part of another suffix -ану-, which does not have an equivalent in Polish. In Polish the expressive character of -ną-verbs can be achieved secondarily as a result of a metaphorization and metonymyzation of semantically neutral verbs.

Obrazowo mówiąc.

Author(s): Bartłomiej Maliszewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2017

Artykuł jest poświęcony komunikatom wizualno-werbalnym na okładkach czasopism publicystycznych. Bogaty w znaczenia komunikat, który łączy elementy ikoniczne i słowne, pozwala analizować relację pomiędzy obydwoma komponentami, a także prześledzić wielopoziomowy charakter odczytywanych treści. W artykule przedstawiono przykłady ikonizacji przekazów werbalnych i ukazano wpływ obrazu na sposób odczytywania słów, a także wpływ języka na sposób interpretowania znaków ikonicznych. // The article deals with visual and verbal messages placed on the covers of weekly magazines. Rich in meanings, the message which combines the iconic and verbal elements makes it possible to analyse the relation between those two components as well as to examine multiple levels of the contents involved. The article presents examples of the iconicity of verbal messages, shows the influence of image on the way words are read, as well as the impact of language on the manner iconic signs are interpreted.

Konsiliencja, czyli o porozumieniu między naukami w trzecim tysiącleciu

Author(s): Elżbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1&2/2016

Konsiliencja (termin wywodzący się z logiki indukcyjnej a „zmodernizowany” w latach 1990-tych przez E. O. Wilsona, twórcę socjobiologii) odnosi się do odwiecznego marzenialudzkości o unifikacji wiedzy z wszelkich dziedzin – od nauk ścisłych, poprzez naukispołeczno-ekonomiczne, aż do humanistyki a nawet sztuk wizualnych. Jest to poszukiwaniewspólnego systemu dla całokształtu wiedzy ludzkiej, oparte na wierze w jedność natury iuporządkowanie świata. We współczesnej nauce znalazło odzwierciedlenie w Ogólnej TeoriiSystemów, naukach hybrydycznych i studiach interdyscyplinarnych. Autorka dowodzi, żemetodologiczne poszukiwania współczesnego językoznawstwa, które zajmuje miejscecentralne w stosunku do wielu nauk, mogą wskazać nam drogę ku konsiliencji poprzezposzukiwanie kategorii o wielkiej ogólności (konieczność kontra przypadkowość, modelmatematyczny kontra model niematematyczny, struktura gry, itp.). Ostatecznie konsiliencjajest pytaniem o możliwość wypracowania wspólnego języka i wspólnej problematyki dlanaukowców w obliczu postępującej wąskiej specjalizacji i szczegółowości w badaniach. // Consilience (the term originating in inductive logic and “modernized” in the 1990s by E. O.Wilson, the creator of sociobiology) refers to the age-long dream of humanity that one day all branches of learning will see their unification – from the sciences, through social and economic studies, to humanities and even visual arts. Thus, consilience is a search for a common system that would underlie the totality of human knowledge, rooted in the belief in the unity of nature and orderliness of our universe. It has found its reflection in the General Systems Theory, hybrid disciplines and interdisciplinary studies. The author argues that the methodological quests of modern linguistics, which occupies a central position in relation to several disciplines, can direct us towards reaching consilience by focusing on categories and concepts of great generality (necessity vs. contingency, mathematical vs. non-mathematical modelling, the structure of game, etc.). Ultimately, consilience raises a question as to the feasibility of working out a common language and a common set of problems for all scholars and scientists despite the progressing narrowness of specialization and minuteness of research.

Book review

Author(s): Aleksandar Takovski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

THE ILLOCUTIONARY ACT AND THE POWER OF THE MESSAGE

Author(s): Ștefan Vlăduțescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This study is circumscribed to the pragmatics of communication. The thesis under investigation is whether the message is a practice of power. It is found that between the communicators there is an inevitable and always denied war for control of communication. The fight to impose meanings is fought on all available channels. Predominantly, the conflagration of communication is one of words. The imposed illocutionary acts contribute to the power of the message. The conclusion reached is that the message is a matter of power: any message aims at the accumulation, preservation and / or imposition of power.

Laughter in the context of urban soundscapes

Author(s): Daria Vasileva / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Fifty people compiled diaries in which they described the sounds of their daily life in cities around the world. Of the 940 hours of observation there were 200 entries that referred to sounds of laughter, both live and recorded. The participants of the research always identified laughter sounds explicitly, unlike other urban sounds. The sound of laughter has a powerful cultural-symbolic superstructure. Learning how we use laughter, what we hear and how we react when someone laughs can help us to understand the key processes taking place in the urban space today. Laughter can at once attract and repel, signal danger and relieve social tension. It can lead equally to social agents’ inclusion and exclusion in the situation of interaction, and can largely determine the form and extent of their inclusion. A citizen’s interpretation of the sound of laughter depends directly on the media technologies which predominate in the urban environment and channel their cultural experience and sonic imagination.

Transkreacja w przekładzie melicznym:

Author(s): Olga Mastela / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

Artykuł prezentuje analizę twórczych tłumaczeń melicznych pióra Wojciecha Młynarskiego przeprowadzoną w celu ukazania transkreacyjnego podejścia tego autora do przekładu wybranych piosenek francuskich wykonywanych oryginalnie przez Charles’a Aznavoura. Młynarski okazuje się być prawdziwym mistrzem transkreacji w rozumieniu tego pojęcia, jakie zaproponowane zostało w latach 60. XX wieku przez brazylijskiego uczonego i tłumacza, Haroldo de Camposa (1929–2003). W niniejszym artykule na przykładzie analizy kontrastywnej wybranych tekstów piosenek w ich wersjach oryginalnych i przekładach pióra Młynarskiego podjęto próbę pokazania, w jaki sposób na kanwie francuskich tekstów oraz muzyki polski poeta i szansonista stworzył nowe teksty często obfitujące w zupełnie inne aluzje kulturowe niż te obecne w wersjach oryginalnych. Zachowując dominantę meliczną piosenek, Młynarski modyfikował warstwę semantyczną w celu dostosowania utworów do odbiorców docelowych, co dowodzi, że był świadomy również wartości marketingowej swych tłumaczeń, a więc cechy branej pod uwagę także w dzisiejszym rozumieniu usługi transkreacyjnej jako celowej adaptacji, uwzględniającej realia społeczno-kulturowe oraz sferę emocjonalną docelowych odbiorców, a także specyfikę rynku docelowego. // The paper is devoted to the phenomenon of transcreations (creative re-writings) of selected French songs, made by the famous Polish songwriter Wojciech Młynarski (1941–2017). The artist seems to have been a true master of transcreation, if we understand the concept in the way suggested in the 1960s by a Brazilian scholar and translator, Haroldo de Campos (1929– 2003). In the present paper, on the example of contrastive analysis of selected lyrics in their original versions (performed by Charles Aznavour) and in Młynarski’s renderings, it is shown how on the basis of original French lyrics and music, the Polish songwriter created new texts often abounding in entirely different cultural allusions. Saving the melic dominant, Młynarski at the same time modified the content semantically in order to adapt the songs to the target audience, which proves that he was aware also of the importance of the translations’ marketability – a feature that is taken into account in the contemporary understanding of transcreation services.

Diverse nature of literacy: The sociocultural perspective

Author(s): Izabela Dąbrowska / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

Considering the pace of the contemporary changes in the world, largely due to global trends and rapid development of media technology, it is commonly accepted that literacy cannot connote reading and writing any more as it did until several years ago. Much broader conceptualisations of what literary practices stand for are needed as people actually use literacy in diverse contexts and for different purposes. These are offered by sociocultural theories and approaches, which, despite being dissimilar with one another, do not undermine the traditional views on literacy and its practices but forward new complex and inclusive ways of understanding the phenomenon.