CP – Number 9 (2004)

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper is an attempt to explore some of the most important cultural aspects of the Middle Ages, from the perspective of gift-giving acts. The steps of our approach are meant to identify different types of gifts and are, consequently, backgrounded against the major aspects of English medieval history and culture.

Keywords:

gift, balance, hierarchy, order, fealty, transfer, transaction, pilgrim(age), apprenticeship.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0001 [0004515]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

Gift, as a noun, has three reading paths. Gift as a verb means give something oluntarily and gratuitously. The significance of a gift is much more than the meaning of the object standing for a gift; it is given by the act of gift-giving. The gift-giving act is a social act similar in a way to a speech act. In this microsystem composed of giver, gift and receiver context plays a crucial role. Roughly, the gift-giving acts can be subdiveded into self-oriented and other-oriented. It seems that the global significance of a gift-giving act has two components: the conventional significance of the gift (of the object standing for a gift) and the contextual significance of the act of giving. The force of the act is determined by: context; the relation between giver and gift; the relation between gift and receiver.

Keywords:

gift, gift-giving, gift-exchanging, giver/donor, receiver/ recipient, voluntariness, gratuitousness, significance, social act, context.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0002 [0004516]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper is an attempt meant to identify to what extent a compliment can be considered a gift, consequently, to what extent compliment paying can be synonymous to gift-giving.

Keywords:

compliments, gift, compliment paying, gift-giving.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0003 [0004517]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper is a case study in which an analysis of the lexeme thank you (referred to as a polite formula) used by the Polish speakers in the giving-gift situation is presented. The author argues that the meanings of the lexeme in question are not only culturally-bound and socially diversified, but also determined by the situation in which it is applied. Moreover, as the study shows, the choice of a formula that expresses gratitude is highly subjective and depends on the communicational and sociolinguistic ompetence of the interlocutors. Concluding the paper, the author states that linguistically the giving-gift situation can be described in terms of communicational grammar of a particular discourse in which culture seems to play the decisive function.

Keywords:

communicational grammar, context, discourse, gratitude, communicative competence, turn-taking.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0004 [0004518]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The theme of Doctor Faustus reveals the conflict between ambition and responsibility. The central question of our paper is: are we dealing with the pact with the devil or is it more? Can it be regarded as a gift of knowledge? We will try to find the answer by drawing a parallel between the works of Marlowe and that of Goethe. Is there any difference in perspective, due to the fact that the authors lived in different historical periods? The very survival of the myth depends on the answer to this question.

Keywords:

gift, knowledge, temptation, conflict between good and evil, human psyche.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0005 [0004519]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper deals with the ritual of gift-giving in Shakespeare’s Othello. The object that is offered as a gift is a handkerchief that Othello gives to Desdemona as a token of his love. The paper tries to depict the importance this handkerchief has for the three major characters in the play (Othello, Desdemona, Iago) in order to see the reasons why this ritual of gift-giving turns in the end into a sacrificial one.

Keywords:

gift, love, jealousy, ritual, sacrifice.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0006 [0004520]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

In this paper we endeavour to make an anlysis of how the idea of an entrapping gift is poetically encoded in Ted Hughes’s volume of poetry, Birthday Letters. The study of imagery, metaphors and symbols reveals aspects which lead us to the poet’s being imprisoned in a past time, in an activity of decoding a gift he received from Sylvia Plath, a gift which is never completely deciphered.

Keywords:

gift, trap, imagery, time, space, historicity, phenomenological principles.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0007 [0004521]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper is an attempt to show the nature of gifts an artist is endowed with, or would like to possess, the power of such gifts to generate significations and the creator’s right to dare and to defy all barriers, particularly the temporal ones. The study of the roles of the two different makers (the painter and the text-creator) in The Picture of Dorian Gray and of the picture-within-the-text type of creation allow the foregrounding of the long looked-for whatness which might give a work of art its distinctive sign of uniqueness.

Keywords:

act, gift-stealing/gift-giving, creation, picture, self-showing, reflexivity, (un)death, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0008 [0004522]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper is an interpretation of Shaw’s Pygmalion from the point of view of the experiment that is performed by the main character with the purpose of giving/bestowing his knowledge on his subject. Whether this process of giving is unilateral or whether it becomes in turn a challenge, an invitation, a reparatory act or a temptation is one of the main issues of our paper. We shall debate upon the possibility of the subject/recipient swapping places with her donor and, thus, upon the bilateral nature of the process of gift-giving. Authorship vs. creation and Shaw’s innovations, be they thematic, stylistic, orthographical, didactic, are some other aspects dealt with in this paper.

Keywords:

creation, experiment, challenge, exchange, trade, (trans)act(ion) gift, present, offer, donation to teach, to give (knowledge/life), to bestow, to endow, to lavish, to fling, to throw, to chuck, to shy to give/to take, to give – to receive, giver/taker.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0009 [0004523]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

Being the discourse of “the best”, a political discourse needs to have a verbal “face” (x President) and an iconic “face” (the bust). We shall interpret electoral promises as acts of gift-giving or of playing “God”. With any election campaign a voter is the witness of a double “miracle”:

– on the one hand, a candidate’s social creation through the act of voting,

– on the other hand, a candidate’s discursive creation through the act of self-representation.

The political print advertisement (Annex) our paper is based on belongs to the Liberal National Party and it shows Theodor Stolojan’s “reshaped” image that includes not only a liberal promise but also the opponents’ discourses obtained by suppressing other constitutive parts of the candidate’s face.

Keywords:

electoral exchange, electoral representation, political “knights”, confrontation relation, political promise (sincerity = intention + trust), intra-discoursal voices, political faces.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0010 [0004524]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

Throughout the centuries, the religious, mythological and allegorical perspectives on gift have also provided themes for painting. The paper is meant to suggest different instances of gift giving, including the sacrificial offering, the miraculous healing, the alms, the gift on familiar occasions, the gift with purpose and so on.

Keywords:

gift, offering, Christian myths, sacrificial gift, devotion, light, psychological insight, conventional/familiar gestures, means of expression.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0011 [0004525]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The primary aim of the following paper is to present theoretical assumptions of a translation/interpretation process which should be understood as an intercultural text interpretation activity. Great attention is put on the defining the role of a translator as a ‘cultural mediator’ and his/her significance in the entire text re-modulation process, which has an all-too-convincing effect on the locating proper source text equivalents in the target language culture. According to the authors, translator’s incompetence and cultural incommensurability lie at the foundation of translational misfires (originally coined by Newmark,1 which is analysed as ‘unexpected gifts’) – a new sociolinguistic phenomenon existing within the Translation Studies. The ‘unexpected gifts’ are also viewed as a communicational value analyzed from the point of view of discourse studies, hence the direct influence of cultural, social, and situational embedding of a text on the translation/ interpretation activity is undisputable.

Keywords:

translation, interpretation, culture, translational equivalence, discourse.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0012 [0004526]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

Linguistic authorities worldwide have come to the conclusion that the best choice for an international tool of communication is the English language. We analyse the factors playing a part in making English the world language and the crucial reasons in accepting English as a world language, some features of the current world-English language situation.

Keywords:

acceptance, dominance, establishment, expansion, influence, lingua franca.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0013 [0004527]

Issue:

CP, Number 9

Section:

No. 9 (2004)  Editorial

Abstract:

The basic characteristic of translations is that they convey the meaning of the original to the target audience. It seems essential that a translation represents an original text in another language, but the demand that it communicate the meaning of that original to the target audience runs into problems in secondary communication situations. Does relevance theory provide some more appropriate ways of characterizing what translation is about? The obvious place to look for art answer to this question is the notion of interpretive use. There are two fundamentally distinct ways in which utterances, and representations more generally, can be used: they can be used descriptively, that is, as true descriptions of some state of affairs, and they can be used interpretively, and this means they are used in virtue of their resemblance with some other representation. Since translations are also texts presented in virtue of their resemblance with an original, it seems they fall naturally under the category of interpretive use. Translation simply is interpretive use, the only difference from other instances of interpretive use being that the original and its report happen to be in two different languages. Interpretive resemblance is not an absolute, but a comparative notion: that is, utterances can interpretively resemble one another to varying degrees, and this will depend on the number of implicatures and/ or explicatures they share. As both art and science, translation is a gift, a gift from gifted people to modern generations, a both intra- and interlingual transfer of worthy knowledge.

Keywords:

source/target language, communication theory, relevance theory, interpretive use, utterance, intra-/inter-lingual translation, cultural translation, gift.

Code [ID]:

CP200409V00S01A0014 [0004528]