English Studies at NBU

Embracing Full Openness: Transitioning ESNBU from CC BY-NC to CC BY

2024-11-29T19:10:02+00:00

This editorial explores the rationale behind transitioning the ESNBU journal’s content licensing from CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) to CC BY (Attribution). For a decade, the journal operated under the CC BY-NC license to restrict commercial use, but this approach has unintentionally limited its reach and visibility. The objective is to address these limitations and promote unrestricted dissemination of scholarly content. The analysis involved a review of the journal’s indexing history, feedback from database providers, and usage statistics over the past ten years. We examined cases where the NC clause hindered the journal's inclusion in databases, especially those operated by commercial or for-profit entities. We also reviewed existing literature on licensing impacts in open access publishing to understand broader trends and potential benefits of a transition to CC BY. The study found that the NonCommercial restriction created significant barriers to the journal's visibility and dissemination. Several commercial and academic databases opted not to index the journal's content due to ambiguity around the "commercial use" clause. By transitioning to a CC BY license, we anticipate enhanced indexing opportunities, increased content integration into educational resources, and a broader reach, ultimately leading to higher citation rates and greater impact. Moving to a CC BY license aligns the journal with the principles of Open Science, fostering unrestricted access to knowledge. This change supports wider dissemination, potential for increased collaboration, and enhanced visibility in academic databases. Future analysis will focus on measuring the impact of this transition on the journal's citation metrics, user engagement, and overall accessibility.

Infanticide as Self-de-facement: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"

2024-12-08T18:30:58+00:00

Based on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point (1847), and trusting, at the same time, existential phenomenology and deconstruction, this paper aims at investigating a guilty individual’s impulse for self-authorization (and self-narration). It discusses infant mortality, motherhood, and suffering, in which Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s oeuvre abounds. Despite the unceasing critical interest in the poet’s abolitionist leanings, the ontological uniqueness of The Runaway Slave is yet to be explored, having been dominated so far by militantly politicized researches on women’s rights, the religious incongruities of Victorian culture, and the wavering solidarity that nineteenth-century England demonstrated for nations struggling under foreign despotism and illiterate self-government. Infanticide could be perceived as an act of self-de-facement, rather than of self-declaration. Considering muteness against the voicedness of the Face, this paper reveals the travail of a Self’s inevitable sacrificial exposure to an Other, and by extension, the foundational role of alterity in authorial intentionality.

Children as Commodities in the American Suburban Home: Joyce Carol Oates’s Adaptation of the Ramsey Case in "My Sister, My Love"

2024-12-08T18:39:45+00:00

Joyce Carol Oates's My Sister, My Love is a fictional memoir inspired by the unsolved murder of JonBenét Ramsey. The novel, told from the perspective of the victim's brother, satirizes the exploitation of children in beauty pageants and the superficiality of suburban life. Through a counter-memory narrative, Oates sheds light on the hidden abuse endured by children, revealing the dark underbelly of a seemingly perfect family. The novel serves as a powerful critique of societal pressures and the devastating consequences for young victims.

Alterity in Autobiography: Charles Lamb's "The Essays of Elia"

2024-12-08T18:49:01+00:00

This article scrutinizes the unorthodox turn in Charles Lamb’s autobiographical writing through the figure of Elia with its potential to test the limits of alterity and one’s representation of oneself while challenging at the same time the immunity of self as the origin of knowledge and truth. In so doing, this study also maintains that Elia as the autonomous entity calls into question the authority of the writer as well as any claim on teleology and coherence in the act of writing one’s own life specifically. To this end, explication of some of the key passages in the essays is informed by Jacques Derrida’s theoretical stance towards autobiography in his seminal work The Ear of the Other. In this vein, the article suggests that Elia’s individuality and self-consciousness in the essays manifest in unorthodox ways the simultaneous interpretative potential of the figure as the reader of Lamb’s life in making.

'Welcome Home, Our Bitter Home!': Rethinking National Identity in Nuruddin Farah's "Links"

2024-12-08T18:55:54+00:00

Nuruddin Farah’s Links (2005) represents the civil war-torn Somalia, and particularly Mogadiscio, from the perspective of Jeebleh, who returns to his homeland after twenty years. The novel, through Jeebleh’s exilic perspective, interrogates the implications of national identity and sense of collective belonging in a society driven by clan politics. This article examines the representation of fragmented nationhood as a consequence of the civil war along with the narrative’s portrayal of other forms of belonging and collectivity to engender an alternative understanding of national identity. I contend that Links, while maintaining its focus on the national space and what the nation stands for in times of crisis, also offers ways to envision connections between the national space and what lies beyond through the implementation of exilic point of view and literary and non-literary allusions.

Hyperreal Replicas in Julian Barnes' “England, England”

2024-12-08T19:02:22+00:00

This article aims to examine Julian Barnes’ England, England through Jean Baudrillard’s influential concepts of hyperreality and simulation, illuminating profound resonances with the postmodern condition of contemporary Western societies. The novel portrays a world increasingly governed by models, signs and simulacra, challenging traditional notions of authenticity and reality. The theme park’s replication of English culture, history and identity exemplifies how simulations and hyperreal constructions have saturated domains like tourism, nationhood, historical narratives and media representations. The novel encapsulates Baudrillardian themes such as the blurring of reality/illusion, the eclipse of the original by replicas, and the commodification of culture into marketable experiences. This mirrors contemporary experiences where the virtual and artificial hold sway over the authentic, fuelled by forces like consumer capitalism and the media. The actors’ embodiment of historical roles reflects how mediated depictions shape public memory more than facts. Ultimately, the novel's vision of a hyperreal England supplanting traditional conceptions of nationhood resonates with contemporary anxieties about meaning and truth in a world dominated by simulations. By vividly fictionalizing Baudrillard’s philosophical perspectives, the novel offers insightful views on modern complications distinguishing reality amid our self-constructed simulations.

"All That Glitters is Not Gold": Reflections on Javor Gardev's Production of William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" at The Bulgarian National Theatre

2024-12-08T19:12:18+00:00

The article reviews Javor Gardev’s recent production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice on the stage of the Bulgarian National Theatre in the context of the play’s long debated generic ambiguity and the “unpleasant” issues it confronts. It argues that even though, due to good historical reasons, the issue of antisemitism has attracted most of the attention so far, the central “unpleasant” issue in the original text is patriarchalism and the inequality between men and women. The play and the production’s divergent treatments of this issue are considered in the context of today’s antifeminist backlash, as well as the more general tendency to withdraw from traditional Western values, such as democracy, freedom, human rights. The current global and locally Bulgarian perspectives are discussed in order to demonstrate the urgency of taking a clear stand in support of these values.

Online Teaching and Learning: New Dimensions

2024-12-08T19:52:56+00:00

The article focuses on the variables of foreign language teaching and learning online vis-à-vis traditional classroom methods. Aspects to be discussed range from the subjective factors for both students and tutors that can be motivating (mobile access, swift feedback, automated marking, individual tasks, etc.) or demotivating (technical glitches, lack of technical support, extra work for lecturers, etc.), to objective factors that facilitate online learning in general (increase in student attendance, fast internet, the ‘digital natives’ generation, among others). Some synchronous, asynchronous and hybrid language learning online platforms will be highlighted with an emphasis on the different possibilities that they present and the weighing of their advantages and drawbacks. This essay will also touch upon the emergence of online education, examining its key drivers, advantages, challenges, and the implications for the future of learning.

Bridging Cultures Through Subtitling: A Case Study of “Southland” and Romanian Subtitles

2024-12-08T19:57:40+00:00

With the rise of technology and globalisation, subtitling has become essential for accessibility and cross-cultural communication. This study explores the subtitling strategies employed by Romanian subtitlers in the crime drama series Southland, focusing on the translation of extralinguistic culture-bound references (ECRs). Using Jan Pedersen’s model of translation strategies, the research analyses approximately 5,000 subtitles from different episodes, revealing how subtitlers navigate cultural differences between American and Romanian contexts. Findings indicate a strong reliance on source-language oriented strategies such as retention and specification to preserve cultural authenticity, alongside target-language oriented strategies such as generalisation and cultural substitution to adapt references for Romanian viewers. Paraphrase has also emerged as a key method for conveying cultural nuances. This research highlights the challenges of translating culture-bound items and emphasises the role of subtitlers as cultural mediators. By providing insights into Romanian subtitling practices, the study contributes to the understanding of audiovisual translation and sets the stage for future research in this evolving field.

Exploring the Linguistic Patterns of Gratitude: A Comparative Analysis of Acknowledgments in Philosophy PhD Theses

2024-12-08T20:04:00+00:00

Acknowledgments as expressions of gratitude are not only mere formalities in academia but also represent heartfelt attempts by researchers to acknowledge the support that shaped their academic journeys. They are a specific academic genre in which personal texts are produced as a part of academic genres such as theses or books. Hence, a systematic understanding of the linguistic features of this specific genre may contribute to the literature on academic writing. Comparing expressions of gratitude across English, German, and Turkish L1 academic contexts, this study presents a detailed picture of linguistic patterns in Ph.D. thesis acknowledgments in the field of Philosophy. We found that thanking for academic purposes was the main reason for gratitude in the three cultures. Our analysis also revealed the influence of cultural and linguistic nuances on the syntactic patterns of gratitude in the three contexts. We concluded that while acknowledgments remain deeply personal and emotionally charged, they adhere to genre-specific encoding patterns and share common lexical preferences, which require explicit instruction in academic writing courses.

Idiomatic Space of Anthroposemic Substantival Bahuvrihi with a Zoonym Component and its Semantic Modelling in Modern English

2024-12-08T20:11:28+00:00

The article considers the versatility in perception of a person’s appearance and streaks of character through the phenomenon of bakhuvrihi with a zoonym component according to conceptual pattern: OBJECT (ZOONYM) → HUMAN / PART OF THE HUMAN BODY, where ZOONYM acts as a conception referred to by a word, and HUMAN / PART OF THE HUMAN BODY – a conception recognized as a target. This study focuses upon the new integrated approach to the anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component in the cognitive and semantic perspectives. The choice of such bahuvrihi is justified by the fact that the "zoonym-words" are perhaps the most proliferous lexical source of the items with positive / negative connotation, firmly based on traditions in specific cultural contexts and are traces of mythical thinking. Idiomatic space of anthroposemic substantival bahuvrihi with a zoonym component appears to be a complex structure of knowledge about humankind in biological, mental and social dimensions.

Editors' Message

2024-12-08T20:38:27+00:00

Editor's Message
Volume10, Issue 2, 2024