Complex Patterns in L1-to-L2 Phonetic Transfer: The Acquisition of English Plosive and Affricate Fake Geminates and Non-Homorganic Clusters by Polish Learners

This paper analyses the way that Polish learners of English articulate plosive and affricate consonants preceding another obstruent occlusive in both L1 and L2. Considering that English allows unreleased plosives before any stop, that is in a wider range of contexts than Polish, a Polish learner may find it confusing that it is regarded unacceptable to block the affricate release before another (in English always homorganic) affricate. In Polish the first of two homorganic affricates is often reduced to the occlusion phase, while unreleased plosives appear very rarely in non-homorganic contexts. This apparent paradox in the treatment of affricate and plosive consonant clusters may lead to complicated transfer patterns, which we examine by observing the release suppression tendencies in Polish and English phrases and sentences read by phonetically trained and untrained Polish learners of English. The results indicate strong negative transfer tendencies and suggest a connection between gemination patterns and unreleased occlusive distribution in a language.

Visual Metaphtonymy in Automobile Femvertising

In a 2017 landmark reform, Saudi authorities decided to lift the ban on women driving in this conservative society. In tribute to women's newly-gained freedom to drive, major automakers turned to Twitter to launch creative femvertising campaigns that vividly articulate the female empowering motto 'driving is feminine'. Building on the eloquence of visual rhetoric, which combines the communicative force of figurative language with the expressive potential of visual imagery, automobile advertisers resorted to visual metaphtonymy to efficiently target prospective female consumers. The selection of this visual compound, which emerges from the intricate interplay between metaphor and metonymy, allows for a dynamic interaction between the highlighting function of metonymy and the mapping role of metaphoric thought to establish informed parallels between femininity and automobility. Analysis of survey data on the likeability, complexity and effectiveness of a representative sample of four digital automobile advertisements asserts the role and value of visual metaphtontonymy in automobile femvertising.

Metaphors Instrumental in Achieving the Pragmatic Effect in Animal Rights Advertisements

Metaphor can manifest itself in a variety of form including the visual one, which can be an extremely expressive means of communication. That is why visual metaphors are widely used by marketers and advertisers thus becoming a topical object of linguistic research programmes. The study of visual metaphor is tightly related to the study of conceptual metaphor as the target message delivered by a picture is derived from a certain source field that is employed for metaphorical representation. Another type of metaphor commonly used in visual representation is a multimodal metaphor. The present research dwells upon the study of metaphor use in animal rights protection advertisements. The hypothesis of the study is that visual metaphors present strong content that can activate emotions and contribute to the marketers’ desire to influence the audience.

Word-final /ɔ̃/ in Greater Poland Polish: A Cumulative Context Effect?

An empirical corpus-based study of the likelihood of realizing the Polish nasal vowel /ɔ̃/ word-finally as [ɔm] (i.e. of 'nasal stopping') is presented. The goal was to verify whether the phenomenon exhibits a cumulative context effect, with words typically occurring in an environment favoring a particular phonetic variant showing higher rates of that variant regardless of environment. The results show that nasal stopping is more likely before stop-initial words than before words beginning in other sounds, if there is no intervening pause. Results with regard to the hypothesis that words typically followed by stops will show higher likelihood of nasal stopping, however, remain inconclusive.

Terminology in Media Discourse: A Case Study of Terms Denoting Phobia Types in English, Lithuanian and Norwegian News Media Sites

The paper presents the trilingual (English – Lithuanian – Norwegian) analysis of the terms denoting phobia types in mass media discourse. The aim of the paper is threefold: to perform conceptual categorisation of the terms, establish the term formation patterns in the investigated languages, as well as to determine which phobia types were most often discussed in the selected news media sites (“The Guardian”, “DELFI” and “Dagbladet”) over a 10-year period. For the purposes of the research, a trilingual comparable corpus was compiled, from which 268 terms were manually extracted, matched and investigated. The findings of the research provide important information on conceptual, linguistic and social aspects of the phobia terms which may contribute to terminology research in the psychiatry domain.

Translation in Forming Musical Discourse: A Case Study of English-Language Song Lyrics in Russia

The paper considers translation as an intermediate stage in the creation of English-language song lyrics by native Russian speakers. Russian songwriters quite often rely on their native language and translate their thoughts from Russian into English. This leads to the use of a “russified” variety of English, which performs poetic and pragmatic functions and serves as a medium harmonizing content, sound, and music. Drawing evidence from 214 songs in various musical genres, as well as 10 ethnographic interviews with Russian songwriters, it examines the specific features of the Russian variety of English used in song lyrics, and discusses the main views on the authenticity of translation in song lyrics depending on the musical genre.

An Analysis of Identity Construction in Interactional Narratives by Women with Turner Syndrome

The study aims to uncover and explore the social identities of women suffering from a genetic disorder called Turner syndrome (TS), and whose main symptoms are a short stature and gonadal dysgenesis. Such a genetically-determined physical appearance is argued to influence the positioning of TS women in the web of social relationships and identities. This linguistic analysis of narratives delivered by Polish women with TS in semi-structured interviews aims to explicate the extent to which they are actors or recipients in creating their own identities. The analysis draws on the assumptions of the ‘small story’ paradigm developed by Michael Bamberg (1997, 2005) who claims that in interaction, narrative is not only used to convey meaning, but also to construct the identities of the interlocutors. Thus, narrative is treated in a functional way, in which its formal structure and content are integrally associated with its use and any deviations are relativized as a consequence of a user’s deliberate activity.

On the Normative Paradigm of Sworn Translation in the Realm of Law

In the 1920s the Polish legislature adopted a whole range of normative acts focused on the protection of the Polish language and on sworn translators practicing in official contexts. In accordance with statutory law, since 2004 sworn translators have been considered a profession commanding public trust. Among the many professional duties associated with sworn translators' performance, the regulations emphasize the duty to translate both spoken discourse and written texts with precision and faithfulness, and make sworn translators liable to disciplinary sanctions for poor quality work. The principles and rules for practicing the profession of sworn translator are enumerated in the Professional Sworn Translator’s Code of 2018.

A Few Remarks on Legal Translation and Intercultural Encounters

The text offers comments on legal translation and its special nature. It is argued that legal translation is much different from other types of specialised translations. Unlike the language of engineering or medicine, legal language does not only refer to the related specialised practice, i.e. the law, but constitutes legal reality, being at the same time an instrument with which legal disputes are resolved. In the context of translation, legal language is particularly challenging as the process of finding equivalence is not restricted to interlinguistic level, but invites both intralinguistic and intersemiotic considerations. Moving not only between different natural languages, but also between different legal cultures, legal translators have to face problems that can often be naturally found in intercultural communication.

Translation in Semantically-Restricted and Professional Domains: In Search of a Theory—Editorial to Ril 18.

This paper comments on selected problems related to the theory and practice of translation in various professional, and other semantically-restricted domains. The text introduces a selection of papers published in Research in Language, Vol. 18, No. 3, which together with a number of papers published in RiL earlier issues collectively present various research programmes which link translation and specialised discourses. The field of specialised languages is constantly growing, including new professional varieties and new approaches. There are numerous publications and journals focusing on LSP problems, as well as conferences which offer fora for relevant discussions. Selected articles in the volume originated from conference meetings “Meaning in Translation,” held in Riga, Latvia. The present paper comments on selected approaches to semantically-restricted domains in translation and features of specialised and professional discourses.