CP – Number 15 (2010)

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to identify the ekphrastic representation of houses and paintings in Victorian novels, and to define the functions of ekphrasis in various instances. The paper also approaches the relationship between real Victorian houses and fictional/‘ekphrastic’ houses and characters as painters, and the ekphrastic representation of paintings and portraits in Victorian novels, with a view to outlining a different mode of signification: the ekphrastic mode.

Keywords:

ekphrasis, house, reality, fiction, painting, representation, signification.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0001 [0003323]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

The problem of identity, be it personal or collective, is of great importance in a world that faces the process of globalization. Individuals and nations are interested in defining themselves, in finding similarities and differences with the others around.

The paper is an empirical study on the radiants of meaning in constructing Romanian national identity in young adults from “Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacău. It is following closely Donald Carnbaugh`s classification of radiants of meaning in cultural discourse (2007). It is also meant to put to test the conception regarding national identity as developed by Wodak, Cillia, Liebhart, and Reisigl (2009) and to discuss outcomes for Romanian national identity images.

The outcomes of the quantitative study resulted from word/phrase completion tasks and, in the absence of a well-defined Social Identity Theory of National Identity, the study draws on social identity approaches, having as framework the Social Identity Theory and the Self-categorization Theory. The core components of these theories help us identify radiants of meaning in the images of national identity. By examining them, we notice their cognitive, behavioral, ethnic, cultural, evaluative and affective components that trigger equivalent meanings and content, in a fully integrated view on the national identity.

Keywords:

social identity, nation, national identity, radiants of meaning, social identity approaches.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0002 [0003324]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

The aim of the paper is to present the results of the analysis of Polish jokes about Chinese and Japanese cultures. Those are the groups of texts that in a very condensed way show the stereotypes dealing not only with particular cultures. Due to their representative character, they are perceived as carrying prototypical Asian features. The oppositions between the Asian culture and the European one belong to the most often debated issues in the period when the cultures have more than ever opportunities to melt and meet (in direct or indirect way through the means of films, books and the general easy flow of information). The appearance of new characters in traditional Polish jokes is only a reflection of more considerable changes and a growing interest in oriental cultures.

The main scripts present in the jokes were shown and their relations to the broader stereotypes were analyzed. The major features present in humorous texts may be divided into four groups. The first one is connected with visual differences and strangeness. The second focuses on differences in manners – especially habits connected with food. The third category consists of texts pinpointing the language which is perceived as very difficult and incomprehensible, and totally different from Polish or any other European language. The fourth more complex phenomenon is having its reflection in jokes with a political dimension.

The analysis shows how much still needs to be done to make the knowledge about these two cultures more widespread so that an average Pole could overcome the clichés and gain the more precise data that would influence the quality of information included in the jokes. In spite of numerous differences between the Chinese and the Japanese characteristic features described in the jokes there are also many common features making them just belong to the group of texts about strangers one would like to know something more about.

Keywords:

jokes, Poles, Chinese, Japanese, stereotypes, humor, culture.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0003 [0003325]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

Secular and religious worldviews constitute the essential elements of culture greatly influencing, in and through their interaction, all facets of social life. On the basis of a particular culture life-world, the efforts of theoretical and practical reason, as well as the judgment faculty, produce a variety of worldview forms ranging from everyday understanding of reality, its mythological and religious portrayal up to artistic, moral, historical, scientific and philosophical visions of reality. In the traditional societies, religious worldviews constitute the core element of the legitimation basis for the political order. In the Anglo-Saxon world, protestant ethics facilitated the establishment of democracy. However, with the coming of Modernity and the rise of democracy, the new political reality demands for a rational philosophical justification that might be acceptable for any citizen irrespective of his or her adherence to a particular secular or religious worldview. Despite A. MacIntyre’s negative evaluation of this change, it was completely legitimate. The contemporary democratic modernization proves that in order to be effective, general democratic principles should be contextualized within the milieu of traditions and worldviews prevailing in this or that area of the world. At the same time, the democratic establishment should stay at a certain distance from the particular secular and religious worldview influences.

Keywords:

secular/religious worldviews, Anglo-Saxon world, democracy, modernity, cultural experience.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0004 [0003326]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper deals with alphabet books, referring especially to the complexity of modes of signification in such discourses. Lyrics Pathetic and Humorous, from A to Z, an alphabet book written and illustrated by Edmund Dulac in 1908, offers the addressees (bearing in mind Roman Jakobson’s model of communication) the possibility of observing, analysing and interpreting diachronic differences and of valuing synchronic artistic productions.

Keywords:

mode(s) of signification, alphabet book, act of reading, children’s literature.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0005 [0003327]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

The question of how texts interact within a cultural tradition and context is known as intertextuality.The term designates the various relationships that a given text may have with other texts and denotes the basic cultural awareness that is located in the text itself, when explicit or implied reference is made to another text, as well as in the person who interacts with the target text when s/he brings to the interaction previous texts and his or her experience with them. T. S. Eliot called this phenomenon “consciousness of the past” when he stated the relations between a poet and tradition as the frame within which any writer creates his works. Prior texts are considered as contributions to a code which makes possible the various effects of signification. Intertextuality thus becomes a designation of a text‘s participation in the discursive space of a culture; texts are considered to belong to a certain cultural code where no text has its meaning by itself; all texts signify something in relation to other texts. The question becomes more complicated in case of cultural differences between producer and receiver. Wide knowledge of alien cultural background is necessary to activate cultural codes of the reader to bring them in accordance with the codes used by the writer on the ground of finding associations and similarities between them.

Keywords:

intertextuality, cultural context, tradition, semiotics, dialogism, intersubjectivity, hypertextuality.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0006 [0003328]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

In our paper we first make critical use of Christiane Nord’s (2005) checklist of the possible questions to be asked by one in order to pinpoint the extratextual factors of a text, which, in our opinion, are of paramount importance for the translator of a literary text. Next, we analyse Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death in terms of the author or sender of the text (who?), the sender’s intention (what for?), the audience the text is addressed to (to whom?), the medium or channel the text is communicated by (by which medium?), the place (where?) and time (when?) of text production and text reception, and the purpose (why?) for communication.

Keywords:

act of translating, act of communication/of communicating, extratextuality, The Masque of the Red Death.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0007 [0003329]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

Our inquiry into the prevailing signifying values (metaphorical, metonymic and ironic) of additional and substitute names for “celebrities”/”public figures” is meant to indicate their enforcement as social codes, used to communicate social identity and as public codes, known and shared by the members of the whole community (Cmeciu 2003:51-52). The way in which society establishes and imposes such codes is rendered through varied forms of bynames and nicknames, appended to or replacing the official ones and whose significance is shifting with their bearers and users.

In approaching the topic of contemporary celebrity culture in Romania, we do not simply build on concepts such as fame, celebrity, stardom, fandom, cultural icon etc., as most cultural historians, anthropologists and analysts do, but underline the “string of antinomies” they are composed of: “public roles opposing private selves, artificial opposing natural, image opposing reality, ideal opposing typical, special opposing ordinary, hierarchy opposing equality” (Gamson, 1994:195), acceptance (supportive attitude) vs. rejection (subversive and undermining attitudes).

Keywords:

celebrity, byname, nickname, signifying value, metaphor, metonymy, irony, mode(s) of signification.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0008 [0003330]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

The purpose of the article is to compare and contrast the modality in which two main characters of Kiran Desai’s novel, The Inheritance of Loss, experiment cultures, their native Indian culture and the ones they embrace as foreigners / migrants, namely U.K. and U.S.A.

The former of these characters, Biju, represents an atypical migrant portrait: confronted with the classical scenario of migration, he refuses to comply with it, his American experience ending with the heretic Non-Serviam and thus his return to India, his native land. The cultural constructs of his discourse are built by following the trajectory of his defying what a typical migrant would have blindly followed: his reasons for not accepting the route to a new and borrowed identity as well as the identity consequences of “the route not taken.” The other character, Jemubhai Patel, builds the discourse of the two cultures by means of stereotypes: the English native’s superiority versus the foreigner’s/Indian’s necessary cultural inferiority, in a perfect colonial logics. What deconstructs the seemingly predictable colonial discourse is the character’s identity crisis that manages to disrupt the previously set values, questioning their validity and suggesting a probable reversal of opinions. What brings them together is the atypical treatment of the other’s perception, against the common acceptance of the other’s being necessarily better, more rewarding and definitely more satisfactory than the native living pattern.

Keywords:

(post)colonialism, cultural discourse, globalization, identity.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0009 [0003331]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

Communication is a key concept in semiotics, which analyses the act of communication on different levels – on physical, linguistic, psychological, social and on cultural levels. The act of communication represents a special interest for the intercultural dialogue and, particularly, for the process of understanding.

It is widely known that there are a lot of factors influencing the process of understanding. The paper deals with social and cultural factors that may influence the proper reception of the message and the effects produced upon decoders who have different socio-cultural representations.

Keywords:

communicative act, relationship, culture, language, process of understanding.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0010 [0003332]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

The paper deals with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Endgame, as examples of literary embodiments of specific modes of signification in the discourse of self’s identity. The experience of waiting and struggling with a pervading sense of futility, anguish and loss, and the attaining of timelessness as a technique of getting closer to the self in Beckett’s theatre have been analysed as major aspects of Beckett’s technique in the pursuit of identity.

Keywords:

self’s identity, timelessness, Samuel Beckett, modes of signification.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0011 [0003333]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

In traditional terms, and for reasons that have to do with its sheer brutality, terrorist violence has been approached exclusively via its undeniable physicality. The present paper seeks out to depart from this point of view and to explore terrorist violence as part of a larger and more complicated process of communicating a message and generating an intended result. In order to achieve this overall objective, the focus is first laid on the idea of terrorist violence as a communicative practice (implying the sending of a message from a sender to a receiver, often wider than the immediate victim). Next, the paper investigates the manner in which this practice is decoded in the cultural discourse of postmodernity, with special reference to the 9/11 terrorist event and its interpretation by such famous academics as Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard.

Keywords:

mode of signification, terrorism, signifying practice, postmodernity, cultural discourse, symbolic exchange, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0012 [0003334]

Issue:

CP, Number 15

Section:

No. 15 (2010)  Editorial

Abstract:

Both Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciére have subjected to devastating critiques what they consider to be the “ethical turn” in contemporary political and philosophical thought. Moreover, both agree that this ethicization of politics is largely due to a certain apolitical reading of the Nazi genocide. While the consequences of this “ethical turn” on politics and philosophy are quite clear, the question as to the implications of this “ethical turn” for the thinking of art have not yet been examined in more detail. For this reason, this paper attempts to address the ways in which ethics figures in both Badiou’s and Ranciére’s writings on art and aesthetics.

Keywords:

Badiou, Ranciére, Auschwitz, ethical turn, art, mode(s) of identification, the Other.

Code [ID]:

CP201015V00S01A0013 [0003335]