Exploring English Studies: Aspects of Language, Culture and the Media
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Volume 8, Issue 2 - 2020 · ISSN 2534-9538 S L, C FLT ISSN 2534-9538 Konstan n Preslavsky Universi of Shumen Department of English Studies Studies in Linguistics, Culture and FLT Volume 8, Issue 2 - 2020 Exploring English Studies: Aspects of Language, Culture and the Media Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen Department of English Studies This eighth issue of Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT is the end result of the work of the Department of English Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen. Editorial Board*: Editor-in-chief: Prof. Roumyana Todorova, PhD (Bulgaria) Co-Editor-in-chief: Assoc. Prof. Desislava Cheshmedzhieva-Stoycheva, PhD (Bulgaria), Editors: Assoc. Prof. Carol Griffiths, PhD (UK), Prof. Dr. Habil. Anna Bączkowska (Poland), Prof. Peter Gärdenfors (Sweden), Assoc. Prof. Irina Ivanova, PhD (Bulgaria), Dr. Antonia Navarro Tejero (Spain), Prof. Dr. Birsen Tütünis (Turkey), Prof. Dr. Habil Berrin Aksoy (Turkey), Prof. D. Litt. Maya Pencheva (Bulgaria), Joanna Mikosz, PhD (Poland), David Mossop, PhD, Mary Sinéad Fallon (Spain), Assist. Prof. Mira Bekar, PhD (The Republic of North Macedonia), Prof. Dr. Tatiana P. Karpilovitch (Belarus) SILC is indexed and watched by EBSCO, CEEOL, Scribd, GoogleScholar, Directory of Research Journals Indexing (DRJI), ROAD – Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, The Journals Impact Factor (JIFACTOR), Systematic Impact Factor (SIF), Directory of Periodicals and MLA International Bibliography and RINZ SILC is archived in CEEOL (full texts, electronic), Bulgarian National Library St. St. Cyril and Metodius (full texts, print and electronic) * The Editorial Board bear no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the articles. © Individual contributions: respective authors © Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT © Asenevtsi Publishing, Sofia SJIF 2020 = 5.892 ISSN 2534-9538 ISSN 2534-952X DOI: 10.46687/SILC Contents PREFACE .......................................................................................................5 THE SOCIO-COGNITIVE ASPECT OF VERBALIZATION OF JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE Alesia Shevtsova .............................................................................................7 ASPECTS OF MEDIA PRESENTATIONS ON RUSSIANS: YET ANOTHER SPY STORY IN THE MEDIA Desislava Cheshmedzhieva-Stoycheva ........................................................ 19 AUTHORITY LEGITIMATION IN CAMPAIGN DISCOURSE OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES Boryana Kostova .......................................................................................... 52 THE LIMITS OF TRANSLATING POSTCOLONIAL EXPERIENCE INTO A FOREIGN CULTURE N. Berrin Aksoy ............................................................................................85 EXPLORING SMELL FROM A COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE IN ENGLISH AND BULGARIAN (A CORPUS STUDY) Svetlana Nedelcheva ....................................................................................95 Exploring English Studies: Aspects of Language, Culture and the Media 5 PREFACE The second issue of volume 8 of SILC “Exploring English Studies: Aspects of Language, Culture and the Media” features five papers dealing with different aspects of media studies, applied linguistics, as well as contrastive studies and translation. The issue opens up with a paper by Alesia Shevtsova titled “The Socio-Cognitive Aspect of Verbalization of Journalistic Discourse”. The focus of study are news headlines from the British and the Russian media and the way they employ the mental and contextual models of readers and journalists. Some of the findings of the analysis show that unlike the Russian-language headlines which avail themselves of ethno-specific contextual models and use propositions with an implication and an abstract level of description, the high-quality UK press shows a very serious approach to the presentation of information in their headlines. The latter use “a clear description indicating specific agents and patients of the communicative event, and also represent fairly explicit propositions”, which can easily be understood by applying the shared knowledge of “the British epistemic community” (ibid.). Another research conducted on a comparative basis, this time between articles in English, Russian and Bulgarian, focuses on the topic of spies and more specifically on the different aspects of Skripal’s poisoning that the newspapers in the three countries foreground. Desislava Cheshmedzhieva-Stoycheva concludes that the different papers differ in their tone as well as in the information that they foreground in their articles, however, they all touch on four main topics which metaphorically may be described as Flexing Muscles, Expansion and scare, the Blame game, and last but not least the Life of a spy. Boryana Kostova discusses the speeches of four presidential candidates in the USA with an emphasis on authority legitimation which in the analysed media discourse can be obtained in several ways but mostly through intertextuality. The author finds that “that the most common source of intertextuality is the voice of the political opponent, while the most salient functions are elevating one’s moral standing and credibility, solidarity building and downgrading opposing points of view” (ibid.). These first three papers are followed by a research on the limits of translating post-colonial experience into a foreign culture. In her paper, Berrin Aksoy analyses the challenges she has experienced and the approaches she has used in translating Ben Okri’s The Famished Road into Turkish. The author argues that the challenges are mostly due to the fact that postcolonial experience is not 6 Studies in Linguistics, Culture and FLT - Volume 8, Issue 2 shared by the target audience, i.e. by the Turkish readers, and is, therefore, a new concept that they are not familiar with. The second issue of volume 8 of Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT finishes off with a corpus-based study on smell in Bulgarian and English by Svetlana Nedelcheva. The author applies the cognitive approach in her analysis and argues that “cross-linguistic analogy in polysemous meanings may rely not only on universal cognition, but also on the universal experiences of social interaction” (ibid.). Exploring English Studies: Aspects of Language, Culture and the Media 7 THE SOCIO-COGNITIVE ASPECT OF VERBALIZATION OF JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE1 Alesia Shevtsova2 Abstract: The paper focuses on the differences in the English and Russian headlines referring to the mental and contextual models of readers and journalists. The article considers the tendencies in the verbalization of the models under the influence of a concrete linguistic culture. The analysis reveals that the Russian-language headlines of articles to a greater extent actualize the ethno-specific contextual model. The title is represented by a proposition with an implication and an abstract level of description. Unlike the Russian-language headlines, the high-quality UK press is still characterized by a rather “serious” approach to presenting information in the genre of news articles. The headlines of the articles have a clear description indicating specific agents and patients of the communicative event, and also represent fairly explicit propositions. Based on the socially shared knowledge of the British epistemic community, the author actively forms a dynamic contextual model of the recipient reader by introducing new knowledge about current events and realities of modern life. Key words: journalistic discourse, mental (semantic situational) model, contextual (pragmatic) model. Introduction Journalistic (or publicistic) discourse is one of the most popular and widely spread types of discourses belonging to the wider category of media discourse. Though it is the oldest and most traditional discourse, it is still the most dynamic and variable one. It always reflects the current tendencies in a specific society or in the world in general. This discourse can be viewed upon as a result of the real events through the prism of the journalist personality. Journalistic discourse is quite influential, as it can affect the recipient and persuade him or her of the perspectives chosen by the author-journalist. 1. The research was carried out within the framework of the research and development pro- gram “Trends in the development and functioning of the Belarusian-language media discourse in the context of globalization and intercultural dialogue” (State registration No. 20161437) of the subprogram “Belarusian language and literature” of the state program of research “Econ- omy and Humanitarian Development of the Belarusian Society” for 2016-2020. 2. Assoc. Prof. PhD. Department of Romance-Germanic philology, Mogilev State Uni- versity named after A. Kuleshov, Mogilev, Belarus, e-mail: [email protected], ORCID: 0000-0002-3041-6862 8 Studies in Linguistics, Culture and FLT - Volume 8, Issue 2 According to the modern discursive linguistics (Cuhna, 2015; Dijk, 2016; Filliettaz & Roulet, 2002), any language phenomenon can only obtain a complete description if it is analyzed taking into account the peculiarities of its use, all discursive aspects. This tendency of linguistic research predetermined the key role of discursive analysis and defined its position as one of the central sections of modern linguistics. At the same time, it should be noted that discourse is the object of an interdisciplinary research, including philosophy, psychology and sociology. The analysis of journalistic discourse, in particular,