Journal articles on the topic 'English fiction Dialogue'

Abstract This paper explores both comparable and translation data from the fiction part of the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC) in a new way. Rather than studying fiction as a unified register, we investigate to what extent fiction can be seen to contain (at least) two distinct registers – dialogue and narrative – and to what extent this may have implications for contrastive studies based on a corpus such as the ENPC. Token counts show that, although the texts are predominantly narrative in nature, the Norwegian texts are even more so than the English ones. On the basis of word lists, two items proportionally more frequent in dialogue and that had previously been studied on the basis of the fiction texts in the ENPC were identified and chosen for further scrutiny: there and see. Results from these two case studies uncover some differences in the use of there and see in dialogue vs. narrative, most conspicuously for see where its preferred use in dialogue is the cognition sense and in narrative the perception sense. For there, a noticeable difference is the choice of verb in the Norwegian translations of existential there-clauses in dialogue and narrative. In narrative, verbs other than verbs of existence are sometimes chosen, while this is never the case in dialogue.

The article presents the method of reconstruction of metadiscourse in English narrative, which includes several stages. On the first stage, we determine characteristics that point at the author’s dialogue with the reader. The second stage distinguishes the explicit and the implicit dialogue of the author with the reader. On the third stage, the common space and time for the reader and the writer are fixed. The fourth stage deals with the process of generalization in metadiscourse. The fifth stage studies the use of conceptual metaphors in metadiscourse. The sixth stage reconstructs the position of observer in metadiscourse.

Focusing on Vasily Yanovsky's prose fiction as a specific case study, this article sets modernist narratives informed by exile, dislocation, and migration in dialogue with the evolving theory of transnationalism. By engaging with the hybrid, cross-cultural nature of diaspora writing, this research challenges conventional, mono-national classifications based on the author's language and origin. Yanovsky's key texts transcending a range of boundaries (between Russian and English, fiction and nonfiction, Russian spirituality and western thought, science and fantasy) are brought to bear to demonstrate that language can be a matter of a writer's personal aesthetic choice, rather than a fixed marker of his appurtenance to a national canon. This article also argues for transnational identity as an intellectual and emotional, and thus translatable, affiliation, formed across national fault lines and cultural traditions.

Navigating the journey of decolonization can be daunting, especially without clarity of the processes involved. Hence, literature exploring such processes provides direction for the journey. Additionally, the directions suggested in the literature become more credible whenever a synergistic dialogue arises between diverse authors and different genres of texts. To such effect emerges the compelling conversation between Guyanese Jan Lowe Shinebourne’s 1988 novel The Last English Plantation and Hawaiian Poka Laenui’s essay “Processes of Decolonization.” This paper shows that when read side-by-side, Lowe Shinebourne’s novel set in the 1950s and Laenui’s essay advance the scholarship on how to measure the extent and quality of decolonization that has been accomplished by an entity. To illustrate this, this study observes the arrangement of images of four young women characters as they operate in Lowe Shinebourne’s landscape, and highlights the function of these four characters to the novel’s protagonist. The protagonist is interpreted as the schema – individual or country, through which the four characters derive meaning. These meanings are explored through perceived links between the four characters’ functions and Laenui’s five phases of decolonization, where the characters appear to have the capacity to function as facilitators or representations of the phases. Ultimately, the study finds that Lowe Shinebourne’s fiction strengthens Laenui’s proposal, and in turn his foundational theoretical work illuminates the processes that her novel investigates. Therefore, it can be concluded that if the processes of decolonization largely function in the way that the dialogue between these two texts confirms, Laenui’s template for measuring progress in decolonization can be applied to the understanding of other fictions of decolonization. Further, if this application continues to see consistently agreeable outcomes, it might be concluded that this template may be an effective instrument that can be formally implemented in assessing an individual or country’s progress in decolonization.

Celia de Fréine is a multi-award winning poet, playwright, screenwriter and librettist, who also writes essays and fiction in both English and Irish. She has published eight collections of poetry, including three dual-language editions with Arlen House. Four of her plays have been awarded Duais an Oireachtais for best full-length play, and her biography (in Irish) of Louise Gavan Duffy – Ceannródaí – is due out later this year. This conversation with writer Lia Mills explores the innovative nature of de Fréine's work, in language, form and subject matter. It discusses key poetry volumes, such as her response to the Hepatitis C scandal – Fiacha Fola | Blood Debts – and A Lesson in Can't, which draws on the lives of Irish Travellers. It also considers her commitment to writing for theatre in both Irish and English, and her recent prose. The dialogue sheds light on the complex relationship between Irish and English in de Fréine's work, and her evolving creative practice.

Paul Lomami Tchibamba (1914–85) is often described as the Congo’s first novelist. Previous research in French and English has depicted Tchibamba’s work as a straightforward example of ‘writing back’ to the colonial canon. However, this article advances scholarship on Tchibamba’s work by demonstrating that his later writing responds not only to Henry Morton Stanley’s account of the imperial subjugation of the Congo, but to Joseph Conrad’s questioning of colonialist narratives of ‘progress’. Drawing on recent theoretical work that examines intertextuality in postcolonial fiction, this article demonstrates that while Tchibamba is highly critical of Stanley, he enters into dialogue with Conrad’s exposure of colonial brutality. Bringing together comparative research insights from Congolese and European literatures, this article also employs literary translation. This is the first time that excerpts from two of Tchibamba’s most important responses to colonial authors have been translated into English. Also for the first time, Tchibamba’s novella Ngemena is shown to be a crucial postcolonial Congolese response to Heart of Darkness. Through close textual analysis of Tchibamba’s use of irony and imagery, this article’s key findings are that, while Tchibamba nuances Conrad’s disparaging portrait of a chief, he develops the ironic mode of Conrad’s An Outpost of Progress, and updates the journey upriver into the interior in Heart of Darkness. This article illustrates the complex and nuanced way in which Tchibamba interacts with his European intertexts, deploying close analyses of his responses to Conradian imagery.

The purpose of this paper is to account for the challenging hybridity and in-betweenness that derives from the presence of non-Western traces in contemporary fiction written in a global language. Among the huge and ever-growing group of the so-called "new literatures in English", the focus will be placed on Vikram Chandra's novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995). This Indian author, who lives between Bombay and Washington, is a real master when it comes to fictionalized oral storytelling, echoing the traditional Indian epics -the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is no wonder, then, that Chandra would define himself as a storyteller. The generic shaping of a text tends to voice the ontological conception of literature that an author has, as it is the case with Chandra's transcultural narrative. His work, delineated on the borders between oral rite and written fiction, displays an intersystemic dialogue in which literature becomes a space of intercultural communication, an endless journey.

After approaching A Dialogue of Comfort from the point of view of Utopia, focusing on what is fact and what is fiction, this paper concentrates on More’s knowledge of the facts concerning Hungarian history, with an emphasis on the Battle of Mohacs of 29 August 1526 and its aftermath. Among More’s possible sources, special attention is devoted to the memorials of the Chancellor of Hungary, Bishop István Brodarics, whose historiography written in Latin was published between 18 March and 18 April 1527. A series of extended quotations from this work, made by a Hungarian in Latin and translated out of Latin into French by Martin Fumée, and out of French into English by “R.C.”, serve to illustrate how a chain of events in Hungarian history acts as an objective correlative in order to raise an appropriate intellectual, spiritual and emotional response to a turbulent state of affairs in political and existential matters, which ultimately results in fortitude and comfort.

Abstract Contrastive focus reduplication (CR) is a type of reduplication in English which picks out a prototypical or intensified reading of the reduplicated element and shows contrastive stress on the reduplicant: for instance, speakers may use talk talk to indicate that a ‘real talk’ - as opposed to e.g. ‘just small talk’- took place. The present paper pursues an empirical, corpus-linguistic approach to CR: Based on three mega-corpora of contemporary English, the following aspects in particular are investigated: the importance of the co-text of CR, the possibility of emerging default interpretations for some frequent CRs, and the function(s) CR serves in discourse. In addition, it contains the first analysis of the sociolinguistics of the phenomenon, based on a corpus of blogs. It emerges that contrasts and/or synonyms are commonly employed to clarify the meaning of CR - most frequently in the form of the unreduplicated base (not talk, but talk talk) or an explanatory phrase (talk talk, by which I mean a serious conversation). CR is most frequent in blogs maintained by women and by young speakers. Its presence in blogs shows that CR is not limited to (fictional representations of) spoken dialogue. Though generally rare, it is also found in other genres (such as fiction, news, and even academic prose). Apart from its disambiguating function, CR is also used for creative purposes (as a kind of wordplay) and apparently serves to build rapport between interlocutors (or bloggers and readers) via reference to common ground.

Abstract The Phonetic Representation of Spoken Language in Modern Hebrew Literature – Written language normatively transmits the full graphic pattern of a word without deviating from the spelling rules of a particular language. However, when graphic signs are intended to represent the spoken language used in natural conversation, the question of the phonetic imitation of spoken language in written texts arises. The present article deals with the position of spoken language in Hebrew narrative fiction and drama, and the modes of its representation from 1948 on, including both original Hebrew works and those translated from English into Hebrew. This issue is discussed against the background of such relevant broader issues as: the special situation of Hebrew, which had long been used as a written language only, devoid of the varied functions of spoken language; linguistic-stylistic norms in Hebrew literature from 1948 on and the changes they underwent; Hebrew writers' and translators' awareness of the principles of spoken language in general, and those of the Hebrew vernacular in particular; differences in dialogue formation between various literary sub-systems: drama as distinct from narrative fiction and original literature as distinct from translated literature, including some cross-sections of both. The issues are discussed from both the synchronic and diachronic points of view.

Roy Campbell’s The mamba’s precipice (1953), a novel for children, is his only prose work of fiction. This article examines three aspects of the book, namely its autobigraphical elements; its echoes of Campbell’s friendship with the writers Laurie Lee and Laurens van der Post; and its parallels with other English children’s literature. Campbell based the story on the holidays his family spent on the then Natal South Coast, and he writes evocative descriptions of the sea and the bush. The accounts of feats achieved by the boy protagonist recall Campbell’s self-mythologising memoirs. There are similarities and differences between The mamba’s precipice and the way Van der Post wrote about Natal in The hunter and the whale (1967). Campbell’s novel in some respects resembles nineteenth-century children’s adventure stories set in South Africa, and it also has elements of the humour typical of school stories of the ‘Billy Bunter’ era and the cosy, mundane activities and dialogue common to other mid-century South African and English children’s books.

CONTENTS I. DISCOURSE: THE RESEARCH PROBLEMS OF GENERATION, PERCEPTION AND IMPACTAgnieszka Miksza (Poland). The Politics of Reading and Writing. Jeanette Winterson’s Dialogue with Herself and the Reader... 11Olga Glebova (Poland). Recontextualisation as an Interpretive Strategy in Contemporary Novelistic Discourse ... 19Wojciech Majka (Poland).Understanding as Context for Disclosure ... 30Jurgita Vaičenonienė (Lithuania). Cultural Translation and Linguistic Metaphor: A Case Study of Verbal Metaphor Translation ... 38Regina Koženiauskienė (Lithuania). The Manipulation of Headlines: The Opposition of Text and Context... 50Erika Rimkutė, Neringa Pakalnytė (Lithuania). Topics and Linguistic Features of Social Advertisements...57Dovilė Vengalienė (Lithuania). The Cultural Aspects of Auto-Ironic Blends Referring to Lithuania and America in News Headlines ... 73Solveiga Sušinskienė (Lithuania). Nominalization as a Micro-Structural Item of English Scientific Discourse ...84 II. LITERARY FICTION: INTERPRETATION POSSIBILITIESUgnius Keturakis (Lithuania). Two Ways Leading to Modern National Culture: Vincas Kudirka and Jurgis Baltrušaitis... 93Marek Smoluk (Poland). The English Royal Court through the Eyes of Erasmus ... 105Ingrida Žindžiuvienė (Lithuania). Location and Space in Don Delillo’s Cosmopolis and Antanas Škėma’s Balta drobulė ... 112 III. CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH INTO LITHUANIAN LINGUISTICS: LINGUISTIC AND EXTRALINGUISTIC APPROACHESJonas Andrijauskas, Lina Bačiūnaitė-Lužinienė, Vytas Kriščiūnas (Lithuania). The Employment of New Technologies in Diachronic Toponymy ... 123Saulė Juzelėnienė, Giedrė Baranauskaitė (Lithuania). The Expression of Semantic Group of Movement in the Air in the Lithuanian and English Languages... 135Robertas Kudirka (Lithuania). The Formant Structure of the Accented Long and Short Vowels in the Lithuanian Standard Language... 141Jurga Kerevičienė (Lithuania). Dativus iudicantis in Lithuanian and its Equivalents in English ... 153Daiva Aliūkaitė (Lithuania). Accuracy of Standard Language Images: the Problem of Quasistandard... 160Nijolė Tuomienė (Lithuania). Declension of the ā- and iā Stem nouns in the Peripheral Ramaškonys Subdialect... 188Rima Bacevičiūtė (Lithuania). Tendencies and problems of instrumental analysis of sounds in lithuanian dialectology... 202 IV. SCIENTIFIC LIFE CHRONICLEBirutė Briaukienė (Lithuania). 110 Years to “Lietuviška gramatikėlė”...216Daiva Aliūkaitė, Gabija Bankauskaitė-Sereikienė (Lithuania). Young Linguists of the Lithuanian Language Gathering — a Part of Jubilee Events at VU KHF ...221 V. REQUIREMENTS FOR PUBLICATION... 226VI. OUR AUTHORS... 234

Recent research in audiovisual translation has focussed on the language of both original and translated dialogue, revealing different degrees of alignment between fictional dialogue and spontaneous conversation. In this context, demonstratives deserve special attention as they are major means to highlight segments of the current discourse and extra-linguistic reality in speech and may play a significant role in cinematic language as well. Furthermore, demonstratives are an area of dissimilarity between languages, with their translation being potentially subject to interference from the source to the target text. Through a quantitative corpus-based approach, this study explores to what extent demonstratives occur in the language of Italian dubbing, how similar in this respect dubbed dialogue is to Italian spoken language and what translation operations may account for the observed translation outcomes. Drawing on a small English-Italian parallel corpus of film dialogue, all English demonstrative pronouns have been coded for syntactic role, pragmatic function and translation operation. Results show that demonstratives occur to a lesser extent in dubbed film language vis-à-vis both Italian conversation and the source English dialogues. These findings are discussed in terms of the cross-linguistic contrast between Italian and English as well as the convergence of dubbed dialogue towards the model of original Italian film language.

This article describes differences in the frequency of words/n-grams in television dialogue as compared with a variety of other corpora. It explores frequent lexico-grammatical patterns in the television series Gilmore Girls, in other fictional programmes, and in unscripted spoken and written English. Using ranked frequency lists, the ‘dramedy’ Gilmore Girls is compared both to unscripted language and to a corpus containing dialogue from ten other television series. The results allow us to describe both the specifics of the dialogue of this particular dramedy and the general characteristics of scripted television dialogue as compared to unscripted spoken and written language. The findings also confirm previous assumptions made on the basis of different data that television dialogue is more emotional, but less narrative and vague than naturally occurring conversation.

This article examines two printed pamphlets written at the beginning of the English Restoration (1660–1688). One was published by the influential author Roger L’Estrange. The other appeared anonymously and was written by the Franciscan friar Vincent Canes. Both pamphlets reflect the ongoing controversy about toleration in form of an imaginary dialogue. Focusing on the question of how the two writers tried to influence their audience and the current political debate, the article explores their motives and ingenious rhetorical methods. In England wurden zu Beginn der Restaurationszeit (1660–1688) zwei Pamphlete veröffentlicht, welche die hitzig geführten Diskussionen um Glaubensfreiheit in Form fiktiver Dialoge aufgriffen. Das eine stammt von dem einflussreichen politischen Autor Roger L’Estrange. Das andere erschien anonym und ist dem Franziskanermönch Vincent Canes zuzuschreiben. Im Beitrag wird der Frage nachgegangen, mit welchen Argumenten und rhetorischen Mitteln die beiden Autoren versuchten, die Leser und die aktuelle polische Debatte zu beeinflussen.

AbstractEmphasis is largely associated with the expression of emotional involvement in speech acts in general. In the fictional dialogue, the relevance of emphasis is multiplied due to several considerations. Firstly, the emphatic utterances impact the emotional content of the text and affect its style and reception. Secondly, it is the compromises and the careful linguistic and stylistic choices that authors have to make in order to effectively render the emphasis typical of speech in the written mode. Thirdly, if a work of literature is translated, the emphasis that the dialogue displays is to be equally forceful in its target language version. With these considerations in view, the study sets out to examine the possibility of obtaining a similarly emphatic content of an English source text in translational Romanian by means of lexical items. To this end, a relevant number of emphatic dialogic instances have been depicted for analysis from John Fowles’s novel Mantissa and from its translation into Romanian. The objectives of this study are to identify the level of equivalence in the two versions of the novel and to shed a comparative light on the lexical means that lead to the realization of emphasis in English and Romanian.

Abstract This article is concerned with “speech descriptors”, markers that describe or evaluate the nature of represented speech, such as very modestly in “The Gentlewoman very modestly bade him welcome” (CED, D2FKIT). The form, frequency and function of such features are charted in Early Modern English prose fiction, drawn from A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760, and the results are compared to those of Grund (2017a), which considers speech descriptors in contemporaneous witness depositions. The comparison reveals generic differences and points to the importance of studying speech descriptors for our understanding of the dynamics of speech representation in the history of English.

The article examines the prose of the US writer J. Asher, a popular author of young adult novels, who does not hesitate to bring up issues such as teenage suicides, peer relationships, social networks, etc. Considering Asher’s works in the context of contemporary young adult literature in the English language, N. Zelezinskaya singles out their defining features, such as plasticity of material, realism of descriptions and motivations, the use of multiple interwoven plotlines, experimentations with the form, elements of science fiction (e. g. characters travelling to the future), etc. Along with treatment of highly relevant and even poignant subjects, those are the reasons why Asher remains popular with teenage readers and keeps meeting their expectations with his new work.

Based on the analysis of key words and trigrams, this paper explores characteristics of contemporary American English television dialogue. Using a corpus comprising dialogue from seven fictional series (five different genres) and the spoken part of the American National Corpus, key words and trigrams are compared to previous corpus linguistic studies of such dialogue (Mittmann 2006, Quaglio 2009) and further explored on the basis of concordances, with special emphasis on over-represented key words/trigrams and their potential to indicate informality and emotionality. The results suggest that the expression of emotion is a key defining feature of the language of television, cutting across individual series and different televisual genres.

The present article highlights the main problems related to the functional-communicative study and causal discourse markers. Both markers are widely applied in English textual and communicative discourses. The functional-communicative nature of the markers has been examined with reference to dialogues and monologues in fiction. The latter make it possible to clarify the importance of the adversative and causal discourse markers in the organization of the overall discourse. A number of features typical of both adversative and causal markers are revealed due to the context. In case of heavy dependence on the context, the markers do not perform a wide communicative function, for example in monologues, whereas in dialogues the role of the communicative function is enhanced.

Hacker’s Telefonino is a speculative dialogue between the three figures in the 1782 painting of an erupting Etna by the Italian based, German Neoclassical landscape painter Jacob Philip Hackert. The other two are English, Charles Gore and Richard Payne Knight, grand-tourists who subsequently play significant roles in trans-European networks and the English landscape movement, the emergence of subjective perception: the Picturesque. The text oscillates between the art historical exactitude of its biographi-cal notes, and the fictionality of the pictures subject, and a further fictio-nality manifested by the trans-historical mobile telephone, enigmatically hovering like a techno-Holbein in the pictures foreground.

In October 2017, Luísa Costa Gomes, Portuguese dramatist, created for the stage what she called a ‘genre transformation’ or more accurately, she argues, a ‘transmigration’ of Woolf’s large-spectrum fictional (utopian, fantastical, parodic) biographic narrative, that spans three centuries of English history, while accompanying the extraordinary life trajectory of its protagonist, Orlando. The rich and manifold ambivalence of the text is explored in Luísa Costa Gomes’s ‘transformation’, first of all in terms of its rendering into a dramatic monologue which condenses the original narrative in about forty pages of what she calls a ‘programmatic reconstruction of the source text’, which, she offers, is but a ‘commented and seasoned active reading’, after all the ‘fundamental prerequisite of any reading’. The play aims to capture the essence of Orlando’s fluidity in between genders, in between cultures, and historical moments. It amplifies the inner dialogues of the text with the texts of history and those of the male and female protagonists that embody it, plus the implicit dialogue between the authorial voice and the voice of the dramaturg as that of yet another reader. The new text thus ‘transmigrated’ into Portuguese, resounds as a ‘haunted monologue’ that is, after all, deeply plurivocal and uncannily dialogical.

When an Author Becomes a Translator and a Translator Becomes anAuthor. Nicole Brossard’s Le désert mauve Translated by Susanne deLotbinière-Harwood The article aims to describe the space of translation understood as a spacefor dialogue and mutual influence on the example of a novel by Nicole Brossard, Quebec writer and feminist translator, entitled Le désert mauve (1987), and its English translation (Mauve Desert, 1990), by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood. The first part of Brossard’s novel was written by a fictional writer, while the second part is a translation of the first part, also in French. The “original” and its “translation” are separated by the description of a translation process by a fictional translator, showing primarily how the original is interpreted. Brossard’s novel is a literary illustration of a translation as a creative act that requires invasion to the original.The English translation of the novel by de Lotbinière-Harwood shows in practice the process of interpretation and invasion, as it is based on the idea of re-writing a literary text, so called “re-creation”, very present in the Canadian context.

Abstract In the early novels of the Carvalho detective series by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, set in the years of Spain’s transition to democracy, the negotiation of identities and political stance are paramount characterization resources. Given the role of speech in the construction of identity, translations may vary in the readings they afford beyond the detective aspects. We apply the sociolinguistic concepts of identity work and language style (albeit mediated by fictive orality), and the discourse analysis tools of Appraisal Theory, to analyse two working-class characters in Los mares del sur (1979) and in its English (1986) and Croatian (2007) translations. In Spanish the language style of both characters reflects class allegiance, involvement and tenacity, intense feelings, a direct interpersonal approach and a rejection of altercasting. Their vocabulary and quotations from external sources index their ideology. The English translation is the least aware of identity work through language style and interaction. The characters’ standardized speech shows less involvement, tenacity and intensity. The Croatian translation follows the source text literally; involvement is maintained within a fictive colloquial spoken variety. Both translations maintain directness and a contractive dialogic style, and both make references to class and ideology more explicit.

The current papers presents an attempt of considering the typology of questions in the Russian, English and French. Despite expansive research of interrogative sentences by many linguists at home and abroad, there is still no common opinion about their definition, neither there are uniform principles and criteria for their classification. This study aimed at making an overview of existing approaches and classifications of questions exemplified by dialogues taken from famous fiction. The approach from form to meaning adopted in this study enabled to make a global division of questions into direct and indirect and to summarize their essential functions and variations. It was found that direct questions frequency of occurrence was higher than indirect ones. In the future, it is planned to concentrate on details of meaning by studying questions in larger verbal context.

This paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Conversation Analysis Tool in the context of teaching world literature to senior students majoring in English philology. The authors present their experience of undertaking a three-month online course “Constructive Classroom Conversations: Mastering Language for College and Career Readiness,” hosted by Stanford University, and discuss the benefits of applying this tool at universities. The study describes the basic mechanisms of the Conversation Analysis Tool aimed at developing specific communication skills in students of English for Speakers of Other Languages. The central research question is whether this method is as feasible for teaching literature as it is for language classrooms. The authors demonstrate their takeaways from applying this technique in teaching world literature, namely, analyzing literary dialogues in different classroom activities. The research findings indicate that the Conversation Analysis Tool is an efficient method for the formative assessment of senior students in the world literature classroom. This technique helps students reveal the pragmatic features of fiction dialogues, the writer’s narrative intentions, and the reader’s expected reception. The suggested method also demonstrates students’ progress in the studied topics and identifies possible gaps in mastering the educational content. The significance of the study extends beyond the specified context, as the search for novel instruction techniques targeted at improving communication skills in the 21st-century globalized world is relevant for any educational sphere. Consequently, the research findings of this paper can be applied in different teaching settings.

The article sets out to explore and substantiate the effectiveness of using anti-Utopian and dystopian fiction in teaching intercultural communication. It is based on the lasting experience of teaching Russian and English languages and cultures to students from many European, Asian, and African countries trained as Russian and English philologists at the Kyiv National Linguistic University. Intercultural literacy is one of the conditions sine qua non for successful communications and career in the rapidly globalizing world. Intercultural awareness in the Foreign Language Classroom can be raised by incorporating literary texts written in target languages into the curriculum. In addition to being instrumental for acquiring linguistic prowess, they can also play a substantial part in fostering (inter)cultural competences in non-native speakers. The two texts by contemporary Russian and British writers (Tatiana Tolstaya’s The Slynx and Jeannette Winterson’s The Stone Gods) were selected as case studies due to their artistry in addressing familiar and relevant human concerns, while containing specific cultural codes to be deciphered and understood by the international students. It was established that the success of the teaching/learning process relies on the interactive dialogic qualities inherent in the texts under study and enabling comparative, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural approaches to them, thus contributing to the formation of full-fledged intercultural speakers. As demonstrated by the article, current dystopian fiction may serve as an efficient tool in enhancing intercultural competence in international students.

This article examines the implications of history in Salman Rushdie’s Shame (1983), Caryl Phillips’s Foreigners: Three English Lives (2007), and Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic (2013). History plays an important role in discriminating and distinguishing the proper characteristics of certain nations and people of a specific historical era. The purpose of the current paper is to scrutinize the historical components in the selected novels. These novels incarnate the authors’ visions of the silenced minorities depicted in the fictional plots. They embody the sense of individual sufferings at the time of human devastation and retardation caused by historical events. In essence, my study focuses on the authors’ abstract voices which are uttered through the fictional characters’ dialogic voices. That is, the authors portray the neglected and suppressed voices which need alleviation and freedom. Thus, the authors do not tend to express their authorial voices directly in the novels. Instead, they convey their literary meanings through the characters’ voices. Thus, my analysis will focus on both the authors’ implied voices and their manifestation in the characters’ direct fictional voices. The methodological analysis of the study will concentrate on the way by which the authors present the peculiarities of their fictional characters and discourses.

The article concerns identification of semantic potential of lexical units with a Germanic origin joined into thematic group "English titles of nobility", and actualization of their meanings in the literary texts of the 19 th century. The sources of language material were the works of early Victorian period writers. The undertaken semantic and functional analysis of lexemes earl, knight, lord / lady enabled the author to conclude that when they indicate social status of the character depicted in the work of art or are used as an etiquette form of address, they implement direct meaning. It has been noted that alongside with lord / lady, the French loanwords sir / madame are used as forms of polite address in dialogues between the characters. The lexemes-titles can function in figurative meaning, i.e. knight maybe used to indicate valour as one of the main qualities of a noble person of high social status, Lord is used to denote the Creator, lady – to speak about any woman, as well as a wife, a mistress. The analysis of the data obtained resulted in deduction that in literary texts of the 19 th century the meanings of lexemes-titles, comprising thematic group English Nobility Titles, can express the following: the noble origin in the name of a person, a polite form of address in communication, nomination of a social status as well as some commonly shared character traits inherent to an aristocratic class representative; nomination of people in accordance with a family status or gender.

Abstract This article aims to discuss the importance of pragmatics in translation, paying particular attention to the difficulties posed by two non-clausal units or inserts (Biber et al. 1999). These elements have been classified into nine categories, namely interjections, greetings and farewells, discourse markers, attention signals, response elicitors, response forms, hesitators, polite formulae and expletives. In this article we will discuss two of them, interjections and expletives, both of which express stance. We will consider the possible renderings of these elements in Spanish and Chinese and the difficulties they pose in the translation of fictional dialogue in connection with previous research into this issue in order to identify future lines of enquiry. As regards the translation of expletives, it seems that recent publications point towards a greater presence of swearwords in Spanish dubbed versions than in the past, referred to in this article as a “vulgarization hypothesis”.

The last few years have seen a boom in the publication of teen fiction in Indonesia. Particularly since the publication of the highly successful novel Eiffel ... I’m in love (Arunita 2001), numerous fiction works targeted at a youthful readership have appeared. This genre of popular literature has been so successful in attracting its audience that it currently constitutes the largest growing market in the Indonesian publishing industry (Simamora 2005). One of its striking characteristics is the predominant use of colloquial Indonesian, an informal variety of Indonesian that is closely identified with speakers from the capital Jakarta, particularly young people. Over a decade ago, scholars noted the increasing use of colloquial Indonesian in popular literature (see for example Adelaar and Prentice 1996:678). The implication is that this language variety has spread into domains previously dominated by standard Indonesian, the formal variety used in government administration, formal education, and most printed mass media. Indeed, contemporary Indonesian written literature is largely associated with standard Indonesian, such that the increasing use of colloquial Indonesian in popular literature has invited much criticism from language gatekeepers. Despite such criticism, however, teen fiction continues to flourish. The increasing use of colloquial Indonesian in teen fiction, though noted by scholars, has not been subject to any detailed linguistic study. Linguistic studies of colloquial Indonesian – at least those published in English – have focused so far on its use in speech, or in written texts intended to resemble speech, such as internet chatting and advice columns for young people. Prior to the recent surge in teen fiction, use of colloquial Indonesian in contemporary written literature was largely limited to dialogues. Writers such as Putu Wijaya, for example, are known to incorporate colloquialism to render dialogues more natural (Rafferty 1990:107). Teen fiction writers have extended the use of colloquialism into other parts of fiction such as the description of characters, settings, and inner thoughts. This development makes it interesting to look for a way to describe the increase of colloquialism. A useful approach is to examine the usage patterns of a term or a selection of terms in a number of teen fiction works published over time, with the purpose of observing changes in the patterns, and whether such changes can be shown to represent greater colloquialism. This study is a preliminary attempt in that direction. My purpose here is to demonstrate that in the last two decades during which colloquial Indonesian has been employed in teen fiction, there has been a shift in writing style from one that bears greater resemblance to standard Indonesian towards a style that is more colloquial. The term ‘style’ is commonly employed in sociolinguistics to refer to ways of speaking, which Bell (2001:139) defines in terms of the question ‘Why did the speaker say it this way on this occasion?’ (italics in original). Adapting this definition for teen fiction writing, I use ‘writing style’ here to refer to the characteristic manner in which an author writes fiction. This style is observed here by examining the use of the preposition pada ‘to, towards, on, in, at’ as compared to the use of three other prepositions, namely kepada ‘to, towards’, ke ‘to, towards’, and sama ‘to, towards, by, with’. The development towards increased colloquialism is shown through two indicators: a reduction in the range of prepositional meanings of pada along with the assignment of particular discourse functions to kepada, and an increased use of ke and sama. The data are drawn from ten works of fiction published between 1998 and 2005. Eight of these are written by the same author, Hilman. In four of them, Hilman collaborates with fellow writer Boim Lebon. The other two works are by Laire Siwi Mentari and Marthino Andries. This selection is motivated by the following considerations. Hilman’s works have been highly and consistently popular since his first publication appeared in 1986. They span two decades and therefore provide an appropriate time span for examining shifts in writing style. Laire Siwi Mentari and Marthino Andries are also successful writers; their first novels were published in 2004, followed by their second novels in 2005. This study makes use of their second novels.

This paper is focused on the critical enterprise involved in the translation of Black female authorship from Afro-Caribbean and Latin American contexts into the English language. More specifically, it looks at the circumstances of the translation of the fictional narratives Célanire cou-coupé (2000) by the Guadeloupian Maryse Condé and As mulheres de Tijucopapo (1982) by the Brazilian Marilene Felinto, as well as the publications of the versions in English: Who slashed Celanire’s Throat? (2004) and The Wo­men of Tijucopapo (1994), respectively. We take on a cultural perspective within the field of translation studies and it may be inserted within the theoretical and descriptive branch, being product-process oriented. From general cultural social theories, we draw on the works of Black female intellectuals, Lélia Gonzalez, Patricia Hill-Collins, Denise Carrascosa, and many others, in dialogue with the perspectives of cultural theorists from translation studies, André Lefevere, Lawrence Venuti, and others. Based on the models of descriptive analysis within this field by Gideon Toury and others, we propose a description of the translation (process and product) of Condé’s and Felinto’s novels.

Abstract Previous studies have found discourse markers to be represented with only low frequencies in Early Modern English trial proceedings, especially when compared to other dialogic and fictional text types from the same period. Nevertheless, they comprise certain classes of markers, such as contrastive markers, which operate on different levels of discourse. This study aims to provide further insights into the use of the coordinator but in a sociopragmatically annotated corpus of trial proceedings from the period 1560 to 1760. Drawing on contextual information, the analysis will assess the distribution of but throughout the Early Modern English period and address certain peaks in its use. In addition, the sociopragmatic information included in the corpus will be consulted to discover which trial participants used the form repeatedly in their speech and with which functions. Overall, this study will therefore offer an innovative sociopragmatic profile of but as a contrastive marker in Early Modern English trials.

Islamophobia constitutes a negative action, attitude, and prejudice towards Islam as an ideology and against Muslims as followers of the ideology. It exists in any context and media including fictional works. This article discusses Islamophobia in an (English-translated) French novel entitled The Age of Reinvention written by Karine Tuil. The discussion focuses on how Islam and Muslims are represented in the novel and how the author uses some ironies to convey certain ideology. The author tends to be Islamophobic by describing Muslims as fatalist and immoral, and Islam as an uncivilized religion, barbaric, supportive of terrorism and irrational. Through the characters, narrations, and dialogues, the author also tends to have a sentiment on some issues related to Islam.

Islamophobia constitutes a negative action, attitude, and prejudice towards Islam as an ideology and against Muslims as followers of the ideology. It exists in any context and media including fictional works. This article discusses Islamophobia in an (English-translated) French novel entitled The Age of Reinvention written by Karine Tuil. The discussion focuses on how Islam and Muslims are represented in the novel and how the author uses some ironies to convey certain ideology. The author tends to be Islamophobic by describing Muslims as fatalist and immoral, and Islam as an uncivilized religion, barbaric, supportive of terrorism and irrational. Through the characters, narrations, and dialogues, the author also tends to have a sentiment on some issues related to Islam.

In this article it is suggested that the translation of speech-act report verbs may provide scope for achieving stylistic and pragmatic aims. Analysis of the translation of fictional dialogues from a contemporary English novel reveals considerable diversity in the choice of Spanish verbs used to render ‘said’ in the context of impositive directive speech acts. While the choice of a speech act with similar illocutionary force to “said” may fulfil only stylistic objectives, a pragmatic dimension is introduced by the selection of a speech-act verb with a different force. In the context of impositive directive speech acts such a choice may be viewed as an aspect of “pragmastylistics”, defined in Hickey et al. (1993) as “the area where pragmatic and stylistic considerations converge.”

AbstractWhen Francophone creative artist Assia Djebar decided to write a semi-fictional work on the early years of Islam, she brought to this endeavor her life experience in the context of Algerian history and French colonial influence. Her writing reveals changing attitudes towards Algerian women and Islam, in response to ongoing events.Far from Medina was influenced by the chain of modern biographies of the Prophet Muhammad produced in English, French and Arabic. Early Islamic feminist endeavors also informed her work. Most fascinating is the dialogue that Djebar seems to have carried out with classical Islamic texts, revealed in the format and style of the book.Djebar proposes that the death of Muhammad, and to a greater extent the death of his daughter Fatima six months later, were turning points in women's roles in Islamic society—taking the Muslims "Far From Medina," where women were strong and stood up for their rights.

The issue of voice has received considerable critical attention in second language writing (SLW) in the past decades. This study intends to enrich the research of voice in the Chinese context, which may mirror some issues in EFL environments. The short story writing process of an English-major undergraduate was particularly analyzed in this study, based on Canagarajah’s (2014) analytical framework for voice analysis. After tracking the writing process for five weeks, it could be found that the student could deliver a rather satisfactory voice effect through her text, although she went through some struggle in the dialogic process. The narrative voice, the plot structure and the character were major features that the student focused on to convey her ideas. The study also provides some insights to EFL/ESL teachers about assisting students to express themselves in English writing.

As the Reformation and Counter-Reformation swept Europe in the sixteenth century, penance (or its rejection) became a cornerstone of individual and confessional identities. Extending a post-Tridentine view of sacramental penance as consolation, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata suggests that penance offers a means to recover and even to benefit from the experience of error—and to incorporate romance error into epic action and ethics. Through extensive intertextual dialogue, Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene engages this view to explore the fears produced in some lay people by the English Reformers' rejection of penance. Book 2 interrogates the possibilities for epic heroism in a fictional environment lacking any visible means to recover from error and therefore profoundly skeptical of experience and the errors to which it might lead. Spenser's virtuoso act of cultural translation reforms Tasso's penance-based ethics, exposes the shortcomings of one approach to reformation, and affirms the educational value of human error.

The paper shows that the author of a narrative text might interrupt the course of fictional action to express his view of the situation. The diachronic analysis of English emotive prose proves that the author is always present in the text, be it the 19C, 20C, or the beginning of the 21C. One of the topics of the author’s dialogue with the reader may cover peculiarities of the contemporary world. The problems discussed are very much the same in different time periods. The analysis of English novels shows that authors usually give evaluation of the surrounding world which is far from ideal and which is full of difficulties, obstacles and disappointments. The difference lies in the forms of address of the author to the reader. In the novels of the end of the 18C and the beginning of the 19C the author usually acts as a personage who speaks directly to the reader. That’s why forms of direct address and personal pronouns mark this period. At the end of the 20C – at the beginning of the 21C the author’s comments are more laconic and are usually presented in the form of a maxim. Time shift is characteristic of all time periods discussed.

The article explicates the polemical schema of the novels produced by the British and the Indian writers apropos the historical event of the anticolonial rebellion/ revolution (1857). Grounded in the idea of creating a dialogue between the colonial and counter discursive texts, the research invokes Richard Lane’s bidirectional approach to explain how conflictual political visions trigger the skewed versions of the great defiance. The novelists of both nations have produced prolific fictional yields to represent the epic event. However, keeping in mind the scope of the study, the researchers have delimited their focus upon two of the representative novels, one for each nation: Louis Tracy’s The Red Year: A Story of the Indian Mutiny (1907) for the English version and Basavaraj Naikar’s The Sun behind the Cloud (2001) for the Indian one. Each of the novels voices the sloganized rhetoric of the respective nation while narrating the colossal clash, that is, Tracy portrays the mutiny as nefarious recalcitrance of the Indian rebels to disrupt the civilizational program and Naikar presents it as an auspicious act of defiance against the exploitative encroachment of the usurpers. A comparison has been drawn between the ideology-ridden discursive patterns of both the belligerent narratives and an intriguing concatenation of the diametric contrasts has been identified. The essential argument of the article is entrenched in the postcolonial and the new historicist notions vis-à-vis the chequered nature of the textual narratives and politicized parlance of the discursive records of the historical happenings.

The article deals with the peculiarities of colloquial vocabulary as a deviant element of speech, its naming, separation and methods of translation into target language. The ways of realization of colloquial words have been analyzed in the target text through full and adaptive transcoding. Colloquialisms are used by everybody, and their sphere of communication is comparatively wide. These are informal words that are used in everyday conversational speech by cultivated and uneducated people of all groups. Such elements include slang and dialects. Vast use of informal words is one of the prominent features of 20th century English and American literature. In Modern fiction informal words appear in dialogues as well as in descriptive passages. Such informal words are considered to be a kind of language deviation. The main reasons for the functioning of deviations in fiction are as follows: 1) deviation as the main means of creating the image of the characters and the author's picture of the world; 2) the deviation characterizes only individual characters (this way of deviation functioning is used more often, because it creates the image of the hero; 3) the deviation is used as a specific feature to create a certain coloring of the text. This technique is more often used for certain situations, comic effect, or also a conflict situation between the characters. For example, individual interspersed dialectal elements, which are voiced by a particular character, more often uses stylistically refined language, may sound like jokes about other characters who communicate in dialectal speech. To render stylistic coloring of the text created with the help of colloquialisms is an urgent problem for translators. To realize this task a translator should choose a correct strategy taking into account reasons for what the substandard elements have been used in the text. The given investigation shows that the most adequate ways of rendering colloquialisms used in the source language into target language is transcoding full or adaptive one.

Aim. The article aims at examining Joseph Conrad’s vision of the Malay region and its image building forces in his story «Karain: A Memory» (1897), which articulates the representation of some late 19th-century social and cultural constructs of the Other and becomes a part of literary dialogue between East and West. Methods. An imagological approach and the strategies of cultural studies are applied in the article to highlight how Conrad’s story «Karain: A Memory» is used to assert the Other’s cultural identity, constructing and deconstructing some national stereotypes and cultural prejudices of the period. Results. The idea is that the fictional world of the Malayan Archipelago as reconstructed by Conrad through the narrative of «Karain: A Memory» contributes to the meanings attached to the image of the Malays (that is national characterisation) and serves as a medium in the accumulative Western construction of the East and the cultural Other. Scientific novelty. There has been made an attempt to prove that Conrad’s works demonstrate the complex manner of textual representations in which nineteenth-century cultural assumptions, concerning European civilization and colonial periphery, are simultaneously revived and challenged. The practical significance. The article may serve for the further research of the cultural Other and its representation in the English literature. Key words: cultural Other, national stereotypes, cultural identity, colonial discourse, Joseph Conrad.

Studies on comparative literature have been fragmentary concentrating on one or two aspects of the thematic concerns of novels without emphasizing the concepts of divergent and convergent intertextuality. This paper aims to revisit Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners re-reading it in dialogue with Naipaul’s novel The Mimic Men. The selected novels are controversial. Criticism deployed on all fronts conveys the pluralities and oppositions that are in fact the novels’ hallmarks. Yet, the aspects criticized attest to, and confirm, the authors’ taking of the less trodden track. The comparative analysis within the scope of this paper will show that Naipaul’s and Selvon’s fictional representations of creolized Trinidadian and English societies highlight specific cultural and linguistic aspects and that intertextuality is either convergent or divergent. For instance, the structure of Naipaul’s text takes as much from Caribbean orature and the wake of Caribbean plantation culture. However, Selvon’s novel takes the form of flashbacks. Naipaul innovates and transforms Selvon’s structure to generate a Caribbean context, par excellence. Traces of Selvon’s style are present in Naipaul’s corrosive voice of representing Caribbean identity. Naipaul brings to an apotheosis the creative force already illustrated in the remarkable works of Selvon. This paper aims to track these traces and foreground the idea that texts can speak to each other. More significantly, this paper assesses the main characters’ fates to re-question the status of creoles, a status deliberately put between parentheses, denying them the right to voice their hybrid identities. Above all, the close textual reading of Galahad’s and Singh’s stories is meant to value the trope of intertextuality.

Frederick H. Smith; Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History (Franklin W. Knight)Stephan Palmié; Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (Julie Skurski)Miguel A. De la Torre; The Quest for the Cuban Christ: A Historical Search (Fernando Picó)L. Antonio Curet, Shannon Lee Dawdy & Gabino La Rosa Corzo (eds.); Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology (David M. Pendergast)Jill Lane; Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895 (Arthur Knight)Hal Klepak; Cuba’s Military 1990-2005: Revolutionary Soldiers during Counter-Revolutionary Times (Antoni Kapcia)Lydia Chávez (ed.); Capitalism, God, and a Good Cigar: Cuba Enters the Twenty-First Century (Ann Marie Stock)Diane Accaria-Zavala & Rodolfo Popelnik (eds.); Prospero’s Isles: The Presence of the Caribbean in the American Imaginary (Sean X. Goudie)Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (ed.); The Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries (Danielle D. Smith) David J. Weber; Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (Neil L. Whitehead)Larry Gragg; Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627-1660 (Richard S. Dunn)Jon F. Sensbach; Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Aaron Spencer Fogleman)Jennifer L. Morgan; Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Verene A. Shepherd)Jorge Luis Chinea; Race and Labor in the Hispanic Caribbean: The West Indian Immigrant Worker Experience in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, 1800-1850 (Juan José Baldrich)Constance R. Sutton (ed.); Revisiting Caribbean Labour: Essays in Honour of O. Nigel Bolland (Mary Chamberlain)Gert Oostindie; Paradise Overseas: The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies (Bridget Brereton)Allan Pred; The Past Is Not Dead: Facts, Fictions, and Enduring Racial Stereotypes (Karen Fog Olwig)James C. Riley; Poverty and Life Expectancy: The Jamaica Paradox (Cruz María Nazario)Lucia M. Suárez; The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory (J. Michael Dash)Mary Chamberlain; Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience (Kevin Birth)Joseph Palacio (ed.); The Garifuna: A Nation Across Borders (Grant Jewell Rich)Elizabeth M. DeLoughery, Renée K. Goss on & George B. Handley (eds.); Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture (Bonham C. Richardson)Mary Gallagher (ed.); Ici-Là: Place and Displacement in Caribbean Writing in French (Christina Kullberg)David V. Moskowitz; Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia of Reggae, Mento, Ska, Rock Steady, and Dancehall (Kenneth Bilby)John H. McWhorter; Defining Creole (Bettina M. Migge)Ellen M. Schnepel; In Search of a National Identity: Creole and Politics in Guadeloupe (Paul B. Garrett)

Frederick H. Smith; Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History (Franklin W. Knight)Stephan Palmié; Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (Julie Skurski)Miguel A. De la Torre; The Quest for the Cuban Christ: A Historical Search (Fernando Picó)L. Antonio Curet, Shannon Lee Dawdy & Gabino La Rosa Corzo (eds.); Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology (David M. Pendergast)Jill Lane; Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895 (Arthur Knight)Hal Klepak; Cuba’s Military 1990-2005: Revolutionary Soldiers during Counter-Revolutionary Times (Antoni Kapcia)Lydia Chávez (ed.); Capitalism, God, and a Good Cigar: Cuba Enters the Twenty-First Century (Ann Marie Stock)Diane Accaria-Zavala & Rodolfo Popelnik (eds.); Prospero’s Isles: The Presence of the Caribbean in the American Imaginary (Sean X. Goudie)Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (ed.); The Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries (Danielle D. Smith) David J. Weber; Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (Neil L. Whitehead)Larry Gragg; Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627-1660 (Richard S. Dunn)Jon F. Sensbach; Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Aaron Spencer Fogleman)Jennifer L. Morgan; Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Verene A. Shepherd)Jorge Luis Chinea; Race and Labor in the Hispanic Caribbean: The West Indian Immigrant Worker Experience in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, 1800-1850 (Juan José Baldrich)Constance R. Sutton (ed.); Revisiting Caribbean Labour: Essays in Honour of O. Nigel Bolland (Mary Chamberlain)Gert Oostindie; Paradise Overseas: The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies (Bridget Brereton)Allan Pred; The Past Is Not Dead: Facts, Fictions, and Enduring Racial Stereotypes (Karen Fog Olwig)James C. Riley; Poverty and Life Expectancy: The Jamaica Paradox (Cruz María Nazario)Lucia M. Suárez; The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory (J. Michael Dash)Mary Chamberlain; Family Love in the Diaspora: Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience (Kevin Birth)Joseph Palacio (ed.); The Garifuna: A Nation Across Borders (Grant Jewell Rich)Elizabeth M. DeLoughery, Renée K. Goss on & George B. Handley (eds.); Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture (Bonham C. Richardson)Mary Gallagher (ed.); Ici-Là: Place and Displacement in Caribbean Writing in French (Christina Kullberg)David V. Moskowitz; Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia of Reggae, Mento, Ska, Rock Steady, and Dancehall (Kenneth Bilby)John H. McWhorter; Defining Creole (Bettina M. Migge)Ellen M. Schnepel; In Search of a National Identity: Creole and Politics in Guadeloupe (Paul B. Garrett)

Increasing preoccupations and interest manifested for the Romanian language as a foreign language compose a focused and clear expression in the volume “Romanian as a foreign language. Methodology and cultural applicability”, launched at the Turku University publishing house, Finland (2018). The editors, Paul Nanu (Department of Romanian Language and Culture, University of Turku, Finland) and Emilia Ivancu (Department of Romanian Studies of the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Poland) with this volume, continue a series of activities dedicated to the promotion of the Romanian language and culture outside the country borders. This volume brings together a collection of articles, previously announced and briefly presented at a round table organized by the two Romanian lectors, as a section of the International Conference “Dialogue of cultures between tradition and modernity”, (Philological Research and Multicultural Dialogue Centre, Department of Philology, Faculty of History and Philology, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia). The thirteen authors who sign the articles are teachers of Romanian as a foreign language, either in the country or abroad. The challenge launched by the organisers pointed both at the teaching methods of Romanian as a foreign language – including the authors’ reflections upon the available textbooks (Romanian language textbooks) and the cultural implications of this perspective on the Romanian language. It is probably no accident that the first article of the aforementioned volume – “Particularities of teaching Romanian as a foreign language for the preparatory year. In quest of “the ideal textbook’’ (Cristina Sicoe, University of the West, Timișoara) – brings a strict perspective upon that what should be, from the author’s point of view, “the ideal textbook”. The fact that it does not exist, and has little chances ever to exist, could maybe be explained by the multitude of variables which appear in practice, within the didactic triangle composed by teacher – student – textbook. The character of the variables is the result of particular interactions established between the components of the triad. A concurrent direction is pointed out by the considerations that make the object of the second article, “To a new textbook of Romanian language as a foreign language’’ (Ana-Maria Radu-Pop, University of the West, Timișoara). While the previous article was about an ideal textbook for foreign students in the preparatory year of Romanian, this time, the textbook in question has another target group, namely Erasmus students and students from Centres of foreign languages. Considering that this kind of target group “forms a distinct category”, the author pleads for the necessity of editing adequate textbooks with a part made of themes, vocabulary, grammar and a part made of culture and civilization – the separation into parts belongs to the author – that should consider the needs of this target group, their short stay in Romania (three months to one year) and, last but not least, the students’ poor motivation. These distinctive notes turn the existent RFL textbooks[1] in that which the author calls “level crossings”, which she explains in a humorous manner[2]. Since the ideal manual seems to be in no hurry to appear, the administrative-logistic implications of teaching Romanian as a foreign language (for the preparatory year) should be easier to align with the standards of efficiency. This matter is addressed by Mihaela Badea and Cristina Iridon from the Oil & Gas University of Ploiești, in the article “Administrative/logistic difficulties of teaching RFL. Case study”. Starting from a series of practical experiences, the authors are purposing to suggest “several ideas to improve existent methodologies of admitting foreign students and to review the ARACIS criteria from March 2017, regarding external evaluation of the ‘Romanian as a foreign language’ study programme”. Among other things, an external difficulty is highlighted (common to all universities in the country), namely the permission to register foreign students until the end of the first semester of the academic year, meaning around the middle of February. The authors punctually describe the unfortunate implications of this legal aspect and the regrettable consequences upon the quality of the educational act. They suggest that the deadline for admitting foreign students not exceed the 1st of December of every academic year. The list of difficulties in teaching Romanian as a foreign language is extremely long, reaching sensitive aspects from an ethical perspective of multiculturalism. This approach belongs to Constantin Mladin from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia, who writes about “The role of the ethical component in the learning process of a foreign language and culture. The Macedonian experience”. Therefore, we are moving towards the intercultural competences which, as the author states, are meant to “adequately and efficiently round the acquired language competences”. In today’s Macedonian society, that which the author refers to, a society claimed to be multiethnic, multilingual and pluriconfessional, the emotional component of an intercultural approach needs a particular attention. Thus, reconfigurations of the current didactic model are necessary. The solution proposed and successfully applied by Professor Constantin Mladin is that of shaking the natural directions in which a foreign language and culture is acquired: from the source language/culture towards the target language/culture. All this is proposed in the context in which the target group is extremely heterogeneous and its “emotional capacity of letting go of the ethnocentric attitudes and perceptions upon otherness” seem to lack. When speaking about ‘barriers’, we often mean ‘difficulty’. The article written by Silvia Kried Stoian and Loredana Netedu from the Oil & Gas University of Ploiești, called “Barriers in the intercultural communication of foreign students in the preparatory year”, is the result of a micro-research done upon a group of 37 foreign students from 10 different countries/cultural spaces, belonging to different religions (plus atheists), speakers of different languages. From the start, there are many differences to be reconciled in a way reasonable enough to reduce most barriers that appear in their intercultural communication. Beneficial and obstructive factors – namely communication barriers – coexist in a complex communicational environment, which supposes identifying and solving the latter, in the aim of softening the cultural shock experienced within linguistic and cultural immersion. Several solutions are recommended by the two authors. An optimistic conclusion emerges in the end, namely the possibility that the initial inconvenient of the ethnical, linguistic and cultural heterogeneity become “an advantage in learning the Romanian language and acquiring intercultural communication”. Total immersion (linguistic and cultural), as well as the advantage it represents as far as exposure to language is concerned, is the subject of the article entitled “Cultural immersion and exposure to language”, written by Adina Curta (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia). Considered to be a factor of rapid progress and effectiveness of acquisition, exposure to language that arises from the force of circumstances could be extended to that what may be named orchestrated exposure to language. This phrase is consented to reunite two types of resources, “a category of statutory resources, which are the CEFRL suggestions, and a category of particular resources, which should be the activities proposed by the organizers of the preparatory year of RFL”. In this respect, we are dealing with several alternating roles of the teacher who, besides being an expert, animator, facilitator of the learning process or technician, also becomes a cultural and linguistic coach, sending to the group of immersed students a beneficial message of professional and human polyvalence. A particular experience is represented by teaching the Romanian language at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. This experience is presented by Nicoleta Neșu in the article “The Romanian language, between mother tongue and ethnic language. Case study”. The particular situation is generated by the nature of the target group, a group of students coming, on the one hand, from Romanian families, who, having lived in Italy since early childhood, have studied in the Italian language and are now studying the Romanian language (mother tongue, then ethnic language) as L1, and, on the other hand, Italian mother tongue students who study the Romanian language as a foreign language. The strategies that are used and the didactic approach are constantly in need of particularization, depending on the statute that the studied language, namely the Romanian language, has in each case. In the area of teaching methodology for Romanian as a foreign language, suggestions and analyses come from four authors, namely Eliana-Alina Popeți (West University of Timișoara), “Teaching the Romanian language to students from Romanian communities from Serbia. Vocabulary exercise”, Georgeta Orian (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia) “The Romanian language in the rhythm of dance and hip-hop music”, Coralia Telea (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia), “Explanation during the class of Romanian as a foreign language” and Emilia Ivancu (Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Poland), “Romanian (auto)biographic discourse or the effect of literature upon learning RFL”. The vocabulary exercise proposed to the students by Eliana-Alina Popeți is a didactic experiment through which the author checked the hypothesis according to which a visual didactic material eases the development of vocabulary, especially since the textual productions of the students, done through the technique that didactics calls “reading images”, were video recorded and submitted to mutual evaluation as well as to self-evaluation of grammar, coherence and pronunciation. The role of the authentic iconographic document is attested in the didactics of modern languages, as the aforementioned experiment confirms once again the high coefficient of interest and attention of the students, as well as the vitality and authenticity of interaction within the work groups. It is worth mentioning that these students come from the Serbian Republic and are registered in the preparatory year at the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology of the West University of Timișoara. Most of them are speakers of different Romanian patois, only found on the territory of Serbia. The activity consisted of elaborating written texts starting from an image (a postcard reproducing a portrait of the Egyptian artist Eman Osama), imagining a possible biography of the character. In the series of successful authentic documents in teaching-learning foreign languages, there is also the song. The activities described by Georgeta Orian were undertaken either with Erasmus students from the preparatory year at the “1 Decembrie 1989” University of Alba Iulia, or with Polish students (within the Department of Romanian Studies in Poznań), having high communication competences (B1-B2, or even more). There were five activities triggered by Romanian songs, chosen by criteria of sympathy with the interests of the target group: youngsters, late teenagers. The stake was “a more pleasant and, sometimes, a more useful learning process”, mostly through discovery, through recourse to musical language, which has the advantage of breaking linguistic barriers in the aim of creating a common space in which the target language, a language of “the other”, becomes the instrument of speaking about what connects us. The didactic approach, when it comes to Romanian as a foreign language taught to students of the preparatory year cannot avoid the extremely popular method of the explanation. Its story is told by Coralia Telea. With a use of high scope, the explanation steps in in various moments and contexts: for transmitting new information, for underlining mechanisms generating new rules, in evaluation activities (result appreciation, progress measurements). Still, the limits of this method are not left out, among which the risk of the teachers to annoy their audience if overbidding this method. Addressing (Polish) students from the Master’s Studies Program within the Romania Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Emilia Ivancu crosses, through her article, the methodological dimensions of teaching Romanian as a foreign language, entering the curricular territory of the problematics in question by proposing an optional course entitled Romanian (auto)biographic discourse”. Approaching contact with the Romanian language as a foreign language at an advanced level, the stakes of the approach and the proposed contents differ, obviously, from the ones only regarding the creation and development of the competence of communication in the Romanian Language. The studied texts have been grouped into correspondence/epistolary discourse, diaries, memoires and (auto)biography as fiction. Vasile Alecsandri, Sanda Stolojan, Paul Goma, Neagoe Basarab, Norman Manea, Mircea Eliade are just a few of the writers concerned, submitted to discussions with the help of a theoretical toolbox, offered to the students as recordings of cultural broadcasts, like Profesioniștii or Rezistența prin cultură etc. The consequences of this complex approach consisted, on the one hand, of the expansion of the readings for the students and, on the other hand, in choosing to write dissertations on these topics. A “tangible” result of Emilia Ivancu’s course is the elaboration of a volume entitled România la persoana întâi, perspective la persoana a treia (Romania in the first person, perspectives in the third person), containing seven articles written by Polish Master’s students. Master’s theses, a PhD thesis, several translations into the Polish language are also “fruits” of the initiated course. Of all these, the author extracted several conclusions supporting the merits and usefulness of her initiative. The volume ends with a review signed by Adina Curta (1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia), “The Romanian language, a modern, wanted language. Iuliana Wainberg-Drăghiciu – Textbook of Romanian language as a foreign language”. The textbook elaborated by Iuliana Wainberg-Drăghiciu (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia) respects the CEFRL suggestions, points at the communicative competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic) described for levels A1 and A2, has a high degree of accessibility through a trilingual dictionary (Romanian-English-French) which it offers to foreign students and through the phonetic transcription of new vocabulary units.