CP – Number 24 (2019)

Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

Building a genuine brand is a growing challenge on a competitive market. The modern consumer has become an elitist one, being more interested in the quality of the products they consume and appreciating the personalized brand communication. Loyalty often occurs when the consumer’s experience following the interaction with the brand is a memorable one, both in the traditional environment and in the digital environment. Starting from a review of the elements that contribute to the construction of a brand (story, name, logo, tagline), we propose to present the ways in which a name with an existence of over 100 years has become known on the international market and has constantly tried to differentiate itself, taking into account the consumption preferences and trends.

Keywords:

brand, brand story, naming, logomark, tagline/slogan.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0001 [0005011]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

The present paper attempts to decode cultural differences, as well as specific national brands in terms of linguistic projections of cultural identities. The paper finds its place in the series of discourse analyses which apply linguistic and cultural theories to different texts. However, the novelty of this work resides in its use of the latest linguistic trend – cognitive semantics – as its most important apparatus as well as the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to English proverbs by following the theoretical cognitive-semantic studies of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Gilles Fauconnier and others. Starting from the premise that a brand is a particular product made by a company exactly as language is the cultural tool of a society, the paper proposes an interpretation of proverbs as cultural branding products. Proverbs are rich sources of cultural models which speak about the national identity of a society. Moreover, proverbs may be interpreted as cultural signs which convey moral lessons to be learned from certain events or happenings. The metaphorical images that we perceive while interpreting proverbs help us interpret similar situations.

Keywords:

proverbs, cognitive linguistics, cultural branding, cultural models, identity, conceptual metaphors.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0002 [0005012]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

Looking back through the history of detective/mystery fiction I would like to find out what it is that has helped to establish the genre and win it the position it holds within literature. One of the pillars of the genre is definitely the character of the ‘Great Detective’, more particularly the exceptional and outstanding one – Hercule Poirot. I tried, therefore, to analyze him as a character through his creator’s attitude to media and their treatment of her Detective, and the degree to which the most recent adaptations had helped to establish what can today be defined as a literary character which long ago became fixed within British pop-culture. The question, quite simple to ask but definitely not that easy to answer is – what was it that made the typical detective of the Golden Age (the period of roughly the 1920s and 1930s i.e. the most prolific years for mystery fiction) become an icon of the modern times literally round the world such a long time after his coming to life? Some information that is dealt with in this text may be generally known but I see it as important to refer to it as it is essential for understanding the process of changing the literary experts’ attitude to and treatment of mystery novel, as well as for understanding the process of Poirot’s becoming a (fictional) brand.

Keywords:

detective fiction, Hercule Poirot, adaptation, theatre, television, criticism.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0003 [0005013]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

This article theoretically discusses the national identity concept and its relation to the upholding of those distinctive elements that are associated with a country’s or a nation’s past. With a particular focus on the perceptions of British national identity in the 1990s, it presents some views of British academics, political pundits, politicians or journalists of those times regarding the state of the British society caught between the old and the new. The ‘Cool Britannia’ project proposed by the New Labour government aimed to resolve matters largely connected to a declining British society by putting forward a national rebranding plan, with the ultimate intention of modernizing a backward-looking British society at the turn of the century.

Keywords:

national identity, the celebration of the past, decline, rebranding, Cool Britannia.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0004 [0005014]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

In the postmodern globalisation puzzle, a necessary path is represented by the search for national identity and, more and more frequently, among the features that define it, food is a component that is invoked to serve as “the main engine of human development”, a significant identity landmark at both individual and national level. Seeing that there is hardly any speech on the subject of identity without some reference to the ethnic culinary component, we will dwell upon polenta as a dish which has been the Romanian’s very base of the act of feeding for centuries, one for which we have been, depending on the case, stigmatised or praised, but which must now be seen from a different perspective. The theoretical framework of our research resides on Anholt’ s (2007) theory of competitive identity, which suggests that we play “chess with reality against perception”, meaning that we must identify those elements which help us present ourselves in front of the others with a forever new and attractive image.

Keywords:

food, brand, culinary identity, national identity.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0005 [0005015]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to reflect upon the concept of cultural branding that may be applied to Romanian traditional customs and habits. One representative ritual is the offering of traditional March amulets to friends and family, which could be analysed as a cultural practice. This practice could be examined as an important element of both identity and national brand. Furthermore, our approach intends to study the potential of cultural heritage-based brands.

Keywords:

cultural heritage, cultural branding, identity, alterity.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0006 [0005016]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

Starting from the idea that the process of country branding is meant to highlight those elements that differentiate a country from others, this study intends to show how Romania’s country branding is shaped through a series of posters in a campaign initiated by the Romanian newspaper Gândul in response to The Guardian’s anti-Romanian migration campaign. The study focuses on the linguistic analysis of the elements that underline Romania’s country branding, viewed in opposition with those linguistic elements that suggest British stereotypes.

Keywords:

country image, country branding, British stereotypes, Gândul campaign, Romanian immigrants.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0007 [0005017]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to examine how the concepts of trauma and hauntology intertwine each other in the play Beside Herself (1990) by Sarah Daniels – a British contemporary woman playwright. Sarah Daniels’s dramatic plays present the critique of patriarchy as well as the stereotypes and prejudices in contemporary societies (Godiwala 2003: 121). The subject matter of Daniels’s plays is also the problem of violence and abuse towards women (Griffin 2000: 194-211). The main reference for the analysis will be the portrayal of Eve – the inner self of the protagonist Eveline. Incorporating the theory of trauma, the newly developed concept of “trauma culture” (Wald 1995: 95), as well as the concepts of hauntology theory (Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive spectre and Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s phantom) the analysis will concentrate on such factors as: trauma/haunting resulted from child sexual abuse, the figure of the ghost as a part of double personality, the ghost as the personification of traumatic experience not only for the individual but also for the whole mankind and the way in which haunting trauma can involve the further life of the protagonist.

Keywords:

hauntology, spectre, phantom, trauma, memory.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0008 [0005018]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

The British Council Project Shakespeare Lives! launched as part of the events celebrating the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death exemplifies the continuing investment in Shakespeare as a cultural brand and commodity. The project translates Shakespeare into contemporary culture, offering Instagram versions of his plays, “Mix the play” application in which users are invited to direct their own scenes from the original plays and short films, reinventing Shakespeare in a variety of forms and contexts. My major focus will be on these short video clips, each presenting a different perspective and investigating new thematic and formal possibilities inherent in Shakespeare’s drama, ranging between self-referential deconstruction of race and intertextuality in Othello, the celebration of the comic and carnivalesque potential of Hamlet, the exploration of alternative/disabled corporealities in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, old age in King Lear or using the technique of the Manga cartoon to present Lady Macbeth’s transformation in Macbeth. Referring to the concepts of spreadable media and digimodernism, my aim is to investigate how the British Council makes Shakespeare a spreadable commodity, combining the technologically advanced popular cultural aesthetics with a degree of updated yet re-circulated controversy and subversion. Such strategies involve, for example, the use of computer-generated imagery or cartoon techniques, kitsch aesthetics, the grotesque humour, on the one hand, and the problems of race, gender, old age or disability, on the other.

Keywords:

Shakespeare Lives!, anniversary, digimodernism, race, disability.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0009 [0005019]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

Starting from the premise that anthroponyms constitute a subgroup of idiomatic components which are “deeply rooted in the cultural tradition of a community” (Fiedler 2007: 55), it seems natural to investigate their culture-specific elements and connotations. This attempt at exploring an array of Romanian phraseological expressions based on personal names is supported by well-documented lexicographic sources, including Zanne (1895-1903), Scriban (1939), Dumistrăcel (1997) and Tomici (2009), to name the most important ones. Hence, we have identified about 35 universal anthroponymic idioms with their equivalents in English and French and 70 national and local onomastic phrasemes, whose cultural and axiological markedness is assessed on account of their challenging crosslinguistic correspondences. As proven by our research, Romanian anthroponymic phrasemes with universal, national or local culture components (Szerszunowicz 2011: 82) are both semantically charged and axiologically loaded (Szerszunowicz 2009: 172). Hence, due to their anthropocentric character, they carry connotations that can be retrieved and activated when the idiomatic meaning relies on them.

Keywords:

anthroponymic phraseme, onomastic component (OC), crosslinguistic equivalence, cultural carrier, Romanian phraseological units.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0010 [0005020]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

The article focuses on the economic evolution of the city of Bacău, over a relatively large period of time – from the mid-19th century to the end of the interwar period. The demographic specificity of Bacău, an ethnic mosaic, dominated by the presence of the Romanian, Jewish and Armenian communities, allowed us to develop a unique segment of analysis of the urban economy in a research from an ethnic perspective. As we will illustrate in the article, the city’s economy used to have clear ethnic divisions, with surprising percentages of Jewish domination and a high degree of territorial “ghettoization” of the economic sectors. From the bibliographic point of view, the article is based on a consistent investigation of the demographic studies as well as the local archival sources, which have privileged the lists of voters, the lists with the economic operators highlighted by the Bacău City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, etc. The article deals with a topic less addressed in the specialized literature – the modern and interwar economy of small and medium-sized urban centres in the central area of Moldova. Numerous archival sources cited within the paper are unique, which ensures a high degree of interest the article.

Keywords:

Bacău city, Jewish community, Urban economics, interwar period, ethnic map of Urban economics.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0011 [0005021]

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Issue:

CP, Number 24

Section:

No. 24 (2019)

Abstract:

The cross comparison of the works of art has always been fascinating and has led to the discovery of many interesting ideas. Although much has been written on Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett’s works, this paper introduces a comparative outlook of two of their works. Basing its approach on content analysis, the paper compares the theme of menace in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter and Endgame by Samuel Beckett. We try to show how protagonists in both plays are afflicted by some sort of threat which is best justified by the manifestations of Pinter’s Comedy of Menace which in the end results in Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd. One character is threatened by the nationally oriented fears of the system and the other harbingers an international atmosphere of menace hovering over the mind and soul of the protagonists at a micro level viewpoint and reflecting that of the postmodern man at a macro level one.

Keywords:

The Caretaker, Endgame, menace, thematic comparison.

Code [ID]:

CP201924V00S01A0012 [0005025]

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