KÖRPERSPRACHE IM KONTEXT DES KOMMUNIKATIONSPROZESSES BODY LANGUAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

This paper presents several research-based aspects on language-related communication, message-related communication and action-related communication and the connection between inner and outer attitude within communication, meaning that mental and physical conditions of speaking and hearing go hand in hand. The article also describes some differences between verbal and non-verbal communication, as well as encoding and decoding procedures in inter-cultural communication. Communication is about acting, with and without language, about intentions, about the circumstances and relationships between people, about attitudes behind the words, about physical behavior that expresses inner attitudes. Feelings are expressed in body language and physical changes also change the emotional state of communication participants. Summing up, some views of what communicative language and action are and are not, of what they can and cannot, are also presented.

DEVOTIONAL DISCOURSE AND FEMALE AUTHORSHIP: FROM THE STEELE CIRCLE TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

The article brings into discussion the case of a few exceptional women who wrote, published, and became popular in the Age of Reason as poets, critics, and activists. They were considered as Nonconformist because they belonged to the Baptist or Unitarian Church and did not follow the mainstream Church of England views. On the other hand, the end of the eighteenth century witnessed the rise of Romantic aesthetics and of a number of nature poets. The questions this article attempts to answer refer both to the influence of the Biblical discourse on a group of women’s literary and non-literary productions and to the way in which the emerging Romantic aesthetics also impacted their work. How did devotional poetry go along Romantic principles and feminist views? Anne Steele’s and Mary Steele’s poetry, Mary Scott’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminist agenda will be highlighted in the analysis.

INVISIBILITY OF WOMEN MIGRANT WORKERS AND COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN INDIA

The neo-liberal model of development has facilitated the cross-border movements, thereby making both national and international migration one of the survival strategies to fight against persistent poverty, economic insecurity and deepening inequalities. It is known to all that Covid-19 and lockdown measures had a large impact on employment and labour market affecting human lives across the globe. This paper focuses on the experiences of women migrant workers situated within one of the most populous states of India, i.e., Uttar Pradesh. How did they make sense of their lived realities in the face of downsizing being done by the companies, which meant partial wages or losing the jobs permanently, and also the sudden transition that they had to opt for and negotiate with?

HER MENTAL HEALTH DURING COVID-19: FAMILY A STRESSOR OR A DE-STRESSOR

The world witnessed very troubled times in the past year and there seems to be not much respite in the coming days. The COVID-19 pandemic is viewed as one of the most disturbing calamities by many countries, their governments and the people alike. Women have been found to be impacted more by the pandemic due to financial insecurities and increased workload at all fronts. Increased time spent with the family was seen as a boon by some and a downside by some others. The present study is an attempt to gain a perspective on whether family is perceived as a stressor or a de-stressor by Indian women during the current pandemic. Findings of the study conducted on women in India suggest that they found solace with their family during this period.

THE THREAT OF DISEASE ON FEMALE IDENTITY IN EMILE ZOLA’S NOVELS

Disease and its effect on the body and personal autonomy, as well as its influence on the social position of the diseased person, are among the key themes in the novels of the 19th century French writer Émile Zola. When it comes to female characters, illness has a multifold impact, having both physical and psychological effects, erasing in extreme cases female identity itself. The aim of this article is to offer insights into how sickness is depicted as a menace that leaves female characters deprived of any power they might have by affecting their appearance, which is the main indicator of their social identity and the key instrument they can use to establish and maintain relationships, and by taking away their ability to control themselves and how they are seen by others.

PITFALLS OF PROFESSIONAL WRITING – THE MOST COMMON MISTAKES IN WRITING FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES

The present research looks into the most common inadvertencies that occur in professional writing – more specifically, in writing for business purposes. Against the background of the labour market requirements for professionals equipped with sound writing skills – perceived as ‘deal makers or breakers’ – the paper presents the results of a qualitative analysis of business written assignments of students from an English-taught Business Administration programme organised by the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania. The analysis reveals that, despite students being highly proficient users of the target language, they nonetheless stumble upon challenges that pertain not to accuracy and correctness, but to extraneous factors such as appropriateness, flexibility, conciseness, relevance and deference. In the following, we shall attempt to shed light on these inadvertencies and highlight the aspects to be taken into account when writing in a business context.

TOWARDS A POSTMODERN METONYMY OF FORMAL LIBERATION/EMPOWERMENT: ANA CASTILLO’S THE MIXQUIAHUALA LETTERS

By addressing the peculiarities and formal inventiveness of Ana Castillo’s novel The Mixquiahuala Letters, the paper identifies and categorizes the elements of identity that generate the metaphysical construction of a bicephalous feminine/feminist experience—a permanent fluidity of the ethos, a profound alterity of the receptive act, and a radical, disruptive participatory courage. While examining how identity (re)construction can resonate, metonymically, in the actual scriptural arrangement of the novel’s text, the paper focuses on the study of the relationship between the formal, textual, and semiotic-receptive representation of the idea of emancipation, through Ana Castillo’s explicit auctorial intentionality.

DIALOGIC ADIGA: THE NEOLIBERAL GOSPEL AND ITS CONTEXTS IN THE WHITE TIGER

Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The White Tiger, both accommodates and provokes a variety of voices and discourses, evoking and dealing with India’s past, present, and future, thus highlighting its author’s dialogic vision. Although postcolonial and posthumanist approaches are worth exploring at length in this very challenging text, the current starts from the novel’s initial “conversation” with a controversial non-fiction book, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, and the theory of the ten flatteners that reshape globalization, with Bangalore as the then (2006) neoliberal hub of the world. Using the patterns of the frame narrative of the Arabian Nights and of the European epistolary novel, the text under investigation dramatizes and transfigures the dark side of neoliberalism by means of the imaginary conversation between a murderer turned successful entrepreneur and the leader of the world’s most prominent rising economic tiger.