CP – Number 26 (2021)

Issue:

CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that, while bad things can happen, it is important to remain positive and see the glass half full rather than half empty. Thus, with the help of the technological innovation, we have learnt to stay connected online and accept that we have to adapt and deal with the challenges faced because of the pandemic. The online environment has become ‘our everything’, our vital space, one without which work, communication, teaching, survival itself would not have been possible. Consequently, from the negative image projected by COVID-19 that started with social distancing we embraced a more positive perspective brought by the pandemic itself, due to the economic redirection and the changes made by whole societies fighting with or against the tide, from one extreme to another. Having all these in mind, the aim of this article is to prove that, even in such harsh times, online classroom management can still be effective in the digital era (just) as it is face- to-face.

Our research intends to investigate Romanian students’ metaphorical representations of the online learning during the pandemic of COVID-19. The main focus has been to analyse the way students perceive the process of education online together with the type of interaction ‘behind the desk’, and to reveal the advantages brought by online teaching, as well as the disadvantages brought by the impossibility of creating a ‘face-to-face’ connection.

Keywords:

digitalization; educational crisis; cultural representation; conceptual metaphor; online teaching/learning.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

The political censorship in Romania during the communist period set off the so-called exile. Romanian writers, who did not submit to the political regime, leaning towards a realistic, aesthetic, transparent and open literature, waiving the opacity of words and the hiding of truth in their approach, were forced to endure the route to exile.

Keywords:

exile; crisis; communist regime; autobiography; cultural identity; literature.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

The topic of ‘culture in crisis’ is one of those which at first look may evoke a false impression that it is easy to deal with. Even though we are now confronted with the serious issue of the world pandemic which has affected culture in the broadest sense really hard, culture seems to have been in crisis for longer time than anyone would have noticed before the pandemic. The way all the areas of culture operate nowadays may evoke in many people the feeling that artists and other people involved in all kinds of creative processes are lost for ideas (and means). I decided to opt for one area that is closest to mass ‘consumers’ of what we like to refer to as popular culture – film adaptations of some of the most traditional literary texts still alive – detective fiction. For my research and subsequent analysis, comparison and a bit of confrontation with criticism, I selected a few novels by Agatha Christie featuring Miss Marple as one of her most popular sleuths and their adaptations. Before getting to the adaptations themselves, however, I also tried to offer a critical look at theatre as one of the branches of performing arts closely related to TV production through creative teams composed largely of people of similar professions, thus facing similar problems.

Keywords:

society; culture; crisis; detective fiction; film adaptation; alterations; additions.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

The essay focuses on the end-life crisis in two plays by Edward Albee, The Sandbox (1960) and The American Dream (1961) and investigates the contexts of this crisis through the figure of Grandma and her means of encountering age and death. I will use age studies and the close reading of the two dramas in order to see the ways in which Albee’s senior citizens challenge mainstream constructions of aging by reconnecting with their pasts in various ways on their deathbeds. They build up an idiosyncratic “age autobiography” (to use Margaret Morgenroth Gullette’s term) in an inventory of events and feelings by assessing a complete(d) life. By doing so they achieve an “agewise” (Gulette) identity that comes full circle in the very moment of grace.

Keywords:

Edward Albee; The Sandbox; The American Dream; Grandma; agewise; age autobiography; ageility; age; death.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

Translation is a human activity and like all human activities, it has its difficulties and satisfactions. With the aim to enlighten some theories regarding the translations, we are going to explore the studies of the theorists Anca Greere (2003), Hans J. Vermeer (2000) and Christiane Nord (1997). By examining the above theories, our goal is to obtain a clearer view upon the difficulties encountered in the translating activity, on the one hand and on the other, to find the proper way to surpass these difficulties.

The translator as a professional has to take into account different aspects in order to comply with the translation task. Thus, the translator has to consider aspects related to the analysis of the source text, this constituting a source of information. On the other hand, the translator has to consider aspects regarding the text type, the text production and the recipient of the target text. In addition to presenting theoretical considerations on functional approaches, the applicative part of our paper will bring to attention four types of translation mistakes, which any translator should avoid and some viable solutions to the problems they pose.

Keywords:

translation; translator; Skopos theory; TOSTA theory; translation task.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

The progress of any society, be it modern or traditional, entails and depends on mentalities, derived from stereotypes and prejudices formed over time and transmitted from one generation to another. Of these, the most commonly used are those about the role and place of women and men in society. For Romanians, the nineteenth century was a century of “lights” because, beyond their liberation from foreign rule (Phanariot, then Ottoman), it was the time when an extensive process of “enlightenment” of the people began, including the gastronomic field.

Supported by the theoretical framework on gender provided by Kelly, Bayes et al. (2004) and Gordon (1993), our paper aims at illustrating the factors that contributed to the resistance of traditional perceptions on the gender-based division of domestic labour. The survey conducted in this study highlights the major changes that have taken place in Romanian society, from the 19^th century to the present, in order to account for the evolution of the housewife to the lady chef or chef. The sociolinguistic perspective will be based on a corpus of texts, namely prefaces of some cookbooks as “useful books” for Romanian domestic economy, published in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and on information extracted from online and contemporary media, to the purpose of highlighting the major changes that have taken place in Romanian society, from the housewife to the lady chef or chef.

Keywords:

chef; culinary; housewife; gastronomy; gender identity; relationships.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

There is hardly anyone in the EFL field who would not agree on the necessity of culture as a core component of any EFL textbook. One of the main benefits of including foreign cultural aspects is the development of intercultural competence, i.e., the ability to successfully interact with people from other cultures. Thus, the aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of teaching the form of culture that would enable students to engage in successful intercultural communication using English as a foreign language. To do so, the paper presents a descriptive analysis of the cultural content of four textbooks that are used to teach the fifth and sixth grades (ages 11 to 12 years) in Palestinian state schools. The findings reveal that all cultural aspects found in the textbooks are elements of surface culture, which include all visible aspects of culture (e.g. food, festivals, monuments, tourist attractions, etc.) with no single reference to any deep cultural aspects which can help students construct attitudes and values towards other international cultures. The study stands out as a call for abandoning the traditional way of presenting shallow cultural information in EFL textbooks by adopting an approach that focuses on promoting deeper intercultural attitudes and values instead.

Keywords:

intercultural competence; culture in EFL; critical thinking; surface culture; deep culture; Palestinian ELT textbooks.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

Due to the recent developments in technology, and especially due to the rise of digital communication, people have access to a new form of rapid and easy communication. Almost everybody owns a mobile phone, however, this device is no longer used nowadays just for transmitting oral messages under the form of voice calls, but it turned into a mini-computer, through which people communicate by text messages, be they under the form of SMS or messages sent through e-mails and applications such as WhatsApp or posted on social media networks (Facebook or Twitter, for example). Out of the necessity to be informative and comprehensible, text messaging offers the possibility of a quicker interaction through the use of modified forms of words, shortened or abbreviated phrases and sentences and even symbols. This new emerging register has come to be known as textese or textism.

Based on the already existing lists of the most frequent textese (with the exclusion of symbols), the present paper aims to depict the patterns according to which this new register is formed. It also aims to underline the impact texting has had on the English language.

Keywords:

textese; numbers; letters; abbreviations; acronyms.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

This paper reviews different factors affecting an inclusive educational environment for British children, including race, ethnicity, and social class. Research has shown that different ethnicities and races affect children’s national identification – to be British is perceived as less relevant than being English, Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish. In addition, children’s association of positive attributes, such as food, school clothes, or extra classes, with people from high-ranking social class also divides classroom environments in the UK. In this context, children coming from lower ranking social status can be vulnerable. This reality requires educational solutions to promote intercultural competence that would foster respect, embrace differences and cultural diversity, and create an inclusive educational environment for British school children.

Keywords:

ethnicity; race; social class; British children; multicultural education; intercultural clashes

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

Starting from her first, award-winning novel, Difficult Daughters (1998), Manju Kapur has always chosen to focus her narratives on the controversial condition of women in the context of Indian patriarchal society. Moreover, her characters’ struggle to balance tradition and modernity, their attempts at reconciling the demands of their families and their own individual aspirations, have often been reflected in the tension between the spaces women are entitled to inhabit and those from which they are supposedly excluded. By employing the approach of close reading and critical analysis, this essay sets out to explore the way physical and metaphorical thresholds are trespassed in Kapur’s Home (2006). Therefore, family values symbolically identified with domestic spaces are challenged and transgressed to attain the freedom and self-fulfillment the characters long for.

Keywords:

Gendered spaces; Home; Manju Kapur; marginalized masculinities; modernity; tradition.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

Edgar Allan Poe neither cherished nor appreciated the fundamental standing points of American Transcendentalism, never missing the opportunity to express his “disagreement” with the ideas discussed by some leading figures of this religious, literary and philosophical movement in antebellum America. He criticized their “obscurity for the sake of obscurity“, their being prone to vagueness and imprecission as well as  the way they perceived the Universe, the Oneness, the Soul of the World and the Soul of the Individual. The aim of this paper is to highlight Poe’s perspective on Transcendentalism, both on the literary scene of the day and in some of his short stories.

Keywords:

Transcendentalism; antebellum America; short story; reviews.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

The article focuses on an envisaged crisis of humanity in one hundred years’ time, as it is presented in the novel 2121 (2013) by English neuroscientist and writer Susan Greenfield. Greenfield transfers her scientific expertise and pours into the mould of a dystopian view of the future her knowledge of the way in which technology has already, and will, potentially, change people’s brains and the entire course of mankind. The novel, having received mixed reviews, is a “translation”, a transfer or a carrying forward into (the world and language of) fiction of her studies and convictions from her scientific research. The article explores the depicted crisis caused mainly by the excessive and irrational use of technology, with its consequences at individual and collective levels and various types of associated loss and impairment connected to the imagined crisis: loss of measure, loss of control, loss of emotion, loss of the ability to interconnect, loss of environmental equilibrium and connection with nature, loss of purpose, loss of the ability to form mental processes and, subsequently, loss of a sense of identity.

Keywords:

crisis; technology; past–present–future; identity; loss.

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CP, Number 26

Section:

No. 26 (2021) Editorial

Abstract:

Film criticism in the United States went through significant changes over the last 50 years due to the technological involvements and, thus, the altering needs of the moviegoers. In the 20^th century, the evaluations of the film critics mattered more to the consumer who sought recommendation for movies. Through the examination of the paradigm shifts that occurred from the second half of the 20^th century until today such as the widespread popularity of the television, the home video, and the Web 2.0 one can observe a transformation in the American film critic industry, that also led to the rise of amateur film reviews. This paper focuses on American film criticism from the 1960s and discusses in what ways the television, the home video, the film rating websites (IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic) and the social media network Twitter have altered both professional and amateur film criticism.

Keywords:

film criticism; paradigm shifts; television; Twitter; Pauline Kael; Richard Schickel.

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