Vol 11, No 1 (2019)

All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Vol 11, No 1 (2019)

Table of Contents

Articles

The Image Schema: A Definition  (PDF)  

    Aleksander Szwedek

Abstract: The common belief among linguists is that the image schemas cannot be defined, except by enumeration only (e.g. Clausner and Croft, 1999). There are two reasons of that impotence: a) total disregard of the prenatal development; b) almost total neglect of the object schema. In a), what is entirely overlooked, is the simultaneous development of the nervous system and the sense of touch from the 7-8th week of g.a. It is obvious that the constant tactile interactions between two physical objects – the foetus and the mother’s body – must leave some imprint on the nervous system and the mental structures. For b) physical objects are the only entities which we experience all the time through touch since the 7-8th week of gestation. Objects are also conceptually independent in contrast to conceptually dependent relations. Following Grady’s 2005 condition to rule out “schemas that are too general to be associated with any particular type of perceptual experience, or too rich to count as fundamental dimensions of perceptual representation”, I have taken the object schema as the basis for formulating a definition of the image schema as “a mental structure with at least one OBJECT image schema, which is a conceptually independent entity representing a physical object whose fundamental property is density experienceable by touch, with ensuing boundedness, shape, size, etc.”

  Bifurcating the Mechanism of Foodsemy: Randy Skeletal Meats, Sinister Variety Meats, Gay Fruit, Sick Veggies and Bad Apple  (PDF)

    Grzegorz A. Kleparski, Małgorzata Górecka-Smolińska

Abstract: Recent decades have witnessed increased interest in the study of metaphor. New categories of metaphorical transfers have been singled out and studied in world linguistics. In recent times the two types of metaphorical extensions that have drawn the attention of those markedly interested in the process of metaphorisation – both synchronically and diachronically – are by now well-recognized categories of metaphorical transfers known as zoosemy and foodsemy. The former has been defined as metaphorical transfer onto the conceptual macrocategory HUMAN BEING of the lexical items primarily linked to the macrocategory ANIMALS, while the latter pertains to the transfer from the macrocategory FOODSTUFFS . This paper is intended to be a contribution to the study of foodstuffs-related metaphor. The term foodsemy was first used for the purpose of data-oriented study in Kleparski (2008). In the case of this type of metaphorical transfer, the food-related lexical items are a subject to metaphorical shifts where the source domain is identifiable as the category FOODSTUFFS, and the most frequent target domain is the macrocategory HUMAN BEING, but also other categories, such as BODY PARTS or MONEY. It turns out that there are certain well-definable paths and tendencies that may be captured in the semantic history of the relevant vocabulary, and this paper attempts to point to so some of the most obvious patterns of metaphorical shifts.

 Types of the “Emotive-I” of R.L. Stevenson’s Identity in the Children’s Poetic Discourse  (PDF)

    Anna Pikalova

Abstract. This paper aims to interpret the principle of the emotive constructing the poet’s identity on the basis of R.L. Stevenson’s letters (Alps, Highlands, Hyeres, Bournemouth, 1880-1887) and of the poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses (Robert Stevenson, 1885). The study focuses on the concept of “identity”, considering the identity of R.L. Stevenson as the children’s poet and on the category of emotiveness. This principle constructing the poet’s identity is presented by referring to the theory of the “I-concept”, the psycho-biological model of emotive event. This article includes the recognition of the types of “emotive-I” of R.L. Stevenson’s identity which are represented in the children’s poetic discourse. The features of actualization of types such as, “childlike”, “wonderer”, “optimist”, lyricist”, “fantasizer”, “ingenuous”, “moralist”, and “dreamer”, are described using linguistic description. This study also presents the quantitative correlation of the types of the “emotive-I” of R.L. Stevenson’s identity in the children’s poetic discourse and indicates the possibilities for further nvestigation of identity.

  Efficient Communication through Influencer Marketing  (PDF)

    Nikola Vangelov

Abstract. The aim of the article is to study the evolution in communication due to the rise of the influencer as a communicative mediator. It focuses on the fields of marketing communications, advertising, public relations and journalism. Companies have always aimed at attracting new customers while retaining the old. The new millennia has given businesses new digital channels so as to reach their target audience. Through the use of digital media new types of communication have arisen. The structure and tasks of the article are predetermined by its aim: definition and classification of influencers; characteristics of influencer marketing; analysis of its communicative aspects; opportunities how they offer companies to optimize their marketing communication. The article gives examples how influencers communicate with their audience through social networks. Various examples are analyzed on how influencer marketing presents opportunities for evolution in communication.

  Tradition, Communities and Social Media: How Tradition of Sewing Romanian Blouse Moved from Offline Gatherings to Online Communities  (PDF)

    Oana Maria Calin

Abstract. In the modern world, changes are happening with high speed, while traditions and cultural identity of communities are faced with forces that redefine them in many ways. We observe the journey that the tradition of sewing Romanian blouses is having from ancestral village to city life and modern online times. At first, this tradition was part of the mandatory activities that were happening in the Romanian village life back at the beginning of the 20th century, because of the conditions of small communities with homogeneous interests and occupations, and similar time conditions, but with a space limitation in terms of geographical area. Moving to the city, the tradition was lost at the level of common group activity, due to the context of big communities, with a big variety of people and interests, with a bigger space and time limitation, but was somehow re-enacted due to the new context of social media. Despite the existence of heterogeneous communities nowadays, Facebook groups are a perfect opportunity to display Romanian traditions through Facebook groups. In Romania, a special movement began in 2014 when Romanian women started to sew again the Romanian blouses in their homes, and moved the gathering from the village time in the online environment. The purposes of this article are to show how traditions are now subject to a new reinvention due to online communication, to highlight the importance of the active participation of the initiatior of the community and its members in the online discussion. They are creating a public discourse that is reshaping an old tradition in new modern ways. Using Beckstein’s model of living tradition based on Hobsbawn’s theory of invented tradition, I provide an insight into the characteristics of evening gatherings in Romania (”sezatoare”) on the Facebook public group of ”Semne Cusute in Actiune”. Using qualitative content analysis of over 1500 comments, the research defines the main categories of messages that underline its functions, in comparison with the old historic model of evening gathering presented in ethnographic studies. While the economic function is clear in both cases, the social and spiritual functions are different due to the different contexts in which they took place.