Chapter One: Studies of Repetition: Establishing a Unit of Analysis

This book explores how experienced authors repeat word forms in three different genres: research articles, short stories and political speeches. Methods from corpus linguistics are used to elicit all the repeated word forms in each text and then the material is analysed to establish the nature of the repetitions. The analysis seeks answers to the questions: in what naming complexes are the words repeated; is the same concept evoked; is the referential type repeated; are there metaphoric, pragmatic or other shifts in the meaning of the word? Taxonomy of repetition types is evolved which leads to conclusions about the role of repetition in creating coherent texts. The book provides evidence that repetitions amount to about 60% of the words in a text and they form groups of chains typical for each genre. Thus the way words are repeated serves to create the skeleton of a genre. Comparisons show that in texts written by inexperienced authors the repetitions are considerably fewer than in the work of the experienced ones. The study also reveals which types of repetition decrease the quality of the text. Specific applications of the theory are suggested for assessing the quality of a text, creating short summaries and building good texts in the respective genres. The study is placed within the framework of discourse studies of lexical repetitions and presents a brief non-technical description of the linguistic field. Inasmuch as the issue of how words relate to objects in reality is one of the criteria for assessing the repetitions, an overview is given and the analysis elicits specific reference types

Studying the image of a country - three theoretical perspectives

Статията представя преглед на литературата по въпроса за изграждане на образа на дадена страна. Обхващат се теоретичните направления на медийни изследвания,изследвания на културата и анализ на дискурса. Разграничават се подходите, свързани с критично отношение към явления като неравнопоставеност и дискриминация. Търсят се взаимовръзки между богатство, контрол върху информационните потоци и влияние върху широката публика. Стремежът е да се установят подходи, подходящи за анализ на имиджа на нации и държави

Chapter Three: Critical Discourse Analysis

The research is presented in five stages, each set as a chapter. The first chapter outlines a review of image studies conducted by various disciplines and an account of theoretical concepts useful in such a venture. The second chapter presents content analysis as a tool for image studies. Several techniques are exploited to study the media material and the results are discussed with a view of their suitability for the task of establishing the image of a country. The third chapter presents studies which apply Critical Discourse Analysis to media texts. The techniques are based on Systemic Functional Grammar. The Fourth Chapter shows corpus analysis and the contribution it gives to image studies. The Fifth Chapter draws the line summarising the contribution each of the proposed methods gives to establishing images and evaluates the methodology. Theoretically, the research is situated on the interface between Media Studies and Discourse Analysis. The concept of a country’s image created through media is very much within this theoretical domain. The object of the investigation is a medium and the tools are discourse analytical with reference to its critical dimension, inasmuch as the topic applies to a country which has been construed as a pariah on the international scene and issues of inequality and domination are expected

The Place of East European Researchers in International Discourse

Globalisation connects cultures which may have had little awareness of each other and whose values often differ or even are in conflict. The present study explores relations of power in research discourses from the East and West of Europe. Last century in socialist Bulgaria, one was taught to ignore theories with no Marxist grounding. Among those neglected were names such as Chomsky, Halliday, Firth - researchers who have had formative impact on linguistics in the West. Based on diverging roots, nowadays two disciplines could be expected to exist - Eastern and Western linguistics. With the collapse of the communist block, the interactions between the two is a topic worth investigating. The discourse in an international specialised journal is explored here as a reflection of the relations in the worldwide research community. Because Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) studies structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control‏, it is the method employed to establish whether researchers from the former communist block participate in international discourse on a par with their colleagues from West European countries. Methods from CDA are combined with Corpus Linguistics (CL) approaches. The conclusions concern the place of East European researchers in international linguistics discourse and sociolinguistic factors shaping the situation. Key words: Critical discourse analysis, power, globalisation, corpora, search engines

Intercultural Communication in Teacher Education - the Participative Approach

The British Council in Sofia originated and assisted a project, under which British and Bulgarian students training to be teachers exchange visits and teach secondary-school pupils in the host country. The project was designed to supplement teacher-training with an intercultural and interdisciplinary perspective. The British representative was the School of Education at Durham University, and on the Bulgarian side five Universities with teacher-training strands took part . The students’ task was to prepare and teach lessons presenting their country to the pupils in the host country. Teaching culture as a part of foreign/second language instruction is quite common. However, the genre of presenting cultural issues without the link to language learning made the classroom (referred to here as project classroom) quite specific. This paper discusses how otherness affected the situational context of the project classrooms taught by the Bulgarian Student Teachers (ST). The data come from the STs’ diaries, the tutors’ observations and discussions with staff members at the schools and the STs. The instrument is Hymes’s cross-section of communicative events in Kramsch’s1 interpretation

Media as content for language learning at university: impact on language proficiency

The article outlines the content of a course teaching English through developing media literacy at University

Integrating Citizen Education into English Language Courses for University Students

This paper presents an experiment carried out at the New Bulgarian University (NBU) seeking to explore whether integrating citizenship education into the teaching of English can increase the motivation of the students and improve their language proficiency. The presentation here focuses on the benefits for Citizen Education from the activities and the methodology. Firstly, the rationale for the course is outlined; secondly, the course is evaluated on the basis of the European Citizenship Education Matrix (ECEM); finally, feedback from the learners is explored

The place of Eastern European researchers in international discourse: Critical discourse analysis applied to corpora from specialized journals

The present study explores relations of domination in publishing research papers. It assesses the production of articles by authors from the former communist bloc, called here symbolically ‘the East’, against influences from ‘the West’. Knowing that in the past the research scene differed significantly in the two parts of the world, we ask how researchers from the former Eastern bloc fare nowadays on the international scene: do they publish research which brings its own specific contribution; do they differ from their Western colleagues in terms of methodology, in the authorities they quote etc.? We also engage in an analysis of the circumstances of those who contribute to journals to establish factors which stimulate publications. The conclusions concern the place of Eastern European researchers in international linguistics discourse and the sociolinguistic factors shaping the situation