Synergy

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Authors: Roxana Marinescu

Synergy 1/2021 is a mirror of the times we live in: after a year (2020) in which we learned to deal with a global pandemic both on a personal and on a professional level (but how are we to clearly separate the two when most of our work as academics is now taking place in the private space of the home which we have learned to share with our co-workers, students and colleagues?). Teaching, research, conferences, most our work is now done online and from home, and we have been constantly searching for mechanisms and instruments to help us cope with this constant discovery of teaching and assessment methods and intense search for meaningful activities in the new medium, and also with the all too frequent burnouts or increased stress levels.

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Authors: Irina DAVID

Perspectives is addressed to Pre-Intermediate to Advanced learners of English and comes with a wide range of study resources, from the traditional printed Student’s Book, Workbook and Teacher’s Book, with the incorporated audio CDs and DVDs, to the online version of the Workbook.

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Authors: Monica Alina TOMA

This paper analyses the relationship between the author and the reader in two of Borges’s most representative fictions: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”. In the first writing, the fictional reader and narrator Borges not only challenges the non-fictional reader to interpret correctly the various references that appear in the text, but he also invades his real-life world. In the second story, “Pierre Menard”, the fictional reader and narrator challenges the non-fictional reader again by claiming that two identical texts may acquire different values when they are attributed to two different authors living in different periods of time. By exploring these provoking texts, the article attempts to establish Borges’s own perspectives on “authorship” and “readership” starting from the premise that, in the Borgesian stories, the line between the reader and the author is blurred.

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Authors: Monica GOT

Drawing on Jan Assmann’s interpretation of cultural memory as devoid of any racial/biological component, as well as James Clifford’s repudiation of the notion of cultural purity, the paper redefines memory as a mentally configured cultural institution, claiming that any reconfiguration of group identity is an act of symbolic violence. By emphasizing the crucial role that identity plays in understanding the fundamental themes tackled by Chicana literature—patriarchal oppression, racial terror, domestic abuse, sexism, homophobia—, the paper illustrates the extent to which the ethnic-gender binomial, i.e. belonging to a group that faces bias on various levels (femininity, Mexican American genealogy and, sporadically, sexual minority status), stands at the very core of the desire to redefine identity that largely fuels contemporary Chicana prose.

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Authors: Angelica MARINESCU

One of the most controversial discussions in the contemporary Indian arts environment remains the connection of the post-colonial classical dance practice with the DevadƗsƯ or the MaharƯ, the temple dancing girls. Born in the Early Medieval India, amidst and in close connection to the Bhakti and the Tantric movements, abiding in the temple institution, the socalled ‘DevadƗsƯ temple system’ remains a mystery, between awe and fascination to the nowadays practitioner and connaisseur of Indian arts. While tracing back the socio-religious contexts that brought the temple dancers on the foremost place of the stage of Indian art history, the author looks for the understanding of this myth in the imaginary and the reality of contemporary practitioners, from the perspective of a foreigner researcher-cumpractitioner of an Indian art form. The paper is based on consulting the existing literary sources concerning the Devadãsĩ system, and the research is focusing on the nowadays classical dance practitioners’ imaginary (re)construction(s) of this system. Till today, here she stands, the woman-as-dance practitioner, either Indian or from any other part of the world, at the cross-road of all myths, imaginarily rooted in the past, but living all the aspirations of the nowadays social, cultural, religious, political dynamics, neither celestial maiden, nor sacred prostitute.

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Authors: Roxana Marinescu

This issue of Synergy includes a variety of articles in the areas of language education and learning, applied linguistics, literature and cultural studies. We are, thus, inviting you to read the articles in this issue of Synergy, think about their topics and involve in a written dialogue with their authors.

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Authors: Anca-Teodora ŞERBAN-OPRESCU

Upon first thought, the idea of disease, of pestilence, of plague, of exposed contaminated flesh or tissue, may provoke repulsion and ontological fear, or trigger questioning the author’s reasons for tackling such a topic. However, upon closer look and reading of the first pages in Florian Andrei Vlad’s book, one quickly understands and becomes an adept of the author’s endeavor.

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Authors: Florian Andrei VLAD

Toni Morrison’s Beloved, although based on a terrible antebellum episode that shook America, is not a historical novel, despite some notable claims to that effect. To come up with a gripping narrative of imaginative engagement with the past, an author like Morrison has to leave out most of the apparently objective facts of history. These facts, far from removing the vividness and pathos of Beloved, provide a framework and a substance in contrast to which a work of fiction is more likely to be appreciated in its ‘biased’ approach to human experience. What follows focuses on the significance of the Railroad Underground in the shaping of the abolitionist ethos in antebellum America, at the time of Margaret Garner’s trial.

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Authors: Antonia ENACHE

The present article looks into the way in which former US President Barack Obama capitalizes on the emotional resources of the rhetoric of hope, making use of promises in the State of the Union Addresses in order to win over the audience or, as the case may be, to reinforce his legitimacy and enhance the credibility of his political persona. The research sheds light on the role promises play in political communication, on the way in which they have become an inherent part of a politician’s permanent campaigning, that is, campaigning that goes beyond electoral purposes and aims to put forward and consolidate a specific, long-lasting public image. The corpus consists of the State of the Union Addresses Obama delivered throughout his two terms of office, and our main goal is to identify how the speaker resorts to making promises both for electoral purposes, and to adequately respond to the public’s expectations. Thus, promises not only help lay out the prospect of a brighter future, they also contribute to shaping a political agenda in line with the requirements of the audience.

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Authors: Bashar FARRAN, Ildikó HORTOBÁGYI

The study investigates whether the Linguistic Landscape (LL) in the main street of Ramallah, Palestine should be considered a situational variable of the English language in the country or a treat-like variable and exclusive to this city. The analysed data include over 519 pictures of signage so as to determine the number of languages used on the signs, the signs genre, their taxonomies, and the number of languages. Findings evince that there are significant differences between language policies and the street reality. The linguistic landscape in the street is not abided by the official language policy regarding the state language (Arabic) nor does it employ any minority language. The results of the study may contribute to ameliorating the situation through the policymakers to rectify the state language status. Further studies are expected to arrive upon other factors that influenced the status quo.

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Authors: Noha F. ABDELMOTAGALLY

One of the preconditions for personal growth is self-awarenessș that is because real change comes from the heart. If people become aware of their behaviour and their communication patterns, they will be able to modify their lives in a positive direction. When they recognize their problems that need correction and resolve them, they will be able to achieve harmony between the self and the Other. Guided by Eric Berne’s theory of Translational Analysis, this article examines how Leila Abouzeid’s The Last Chapter and Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan pinpoint the social ills of Arab societies in an attempt to effect a measure of healing.

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Authors: Roxana Marinescu

We are presenting you another issue of our journal which contains a selection of articles presented in the Synergies in Communication Conference 2019. Hoping to provide large context for another academically fruitful dialogue, we are inviting you to read the articles, reflect and bring forward your own contributions to Synergy Journal.

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Authors: Bashar FARRAN

In The politics of Palestinian Multilingualism: Speaking of Citizenship, Nancy Hawker provided a discursive overview of multilingualism where Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular, as speakers of a marginalised and contained mother tongue, through their multilingualism, manage to engage in the political system of Israel, maintain their Arabic identity on different contexts, and create spaces to practice Arabic as L1. As expected from a first glimpse at a book on politics and sociolinguistics in Israel, the politicised interactions that take place within and between the domains of civil culture as well as the Israeli cabinet, elections’ events - such as promotions and meetings and political structures - are among the main poles of this book. Hawker preluded key concepts, theories and schools of thought to build a quintessential epitome to ground the sociolinguistic aspects of her book. Vividly and accurately, she harnessed and managed the social context to provide a rich portion of political and social life with excerpts and records from her field research to convey the complexity and dynamism in Israel. This book, which is a part of a series entitled Politics of Language

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Authors: Mihaela PARPALEA

The form that linguistic development takes is social, economic, political, religious, or genetically determined. At different times, different features of language have struck people as particularly significant, typical or worthy off attention. Any complex system, as the human language, is bound to lend itself from a variety of other language systems. This article does not stand as an aversion against foreign words used in German language, but TOO MUCH IS TOO MUCH. Although, the inflationary use of English words in today's German is not perceived with hostile feelings as one must be CONTEMPORARY even if this modernization means a streamlining of German which, in many communication situations, has become only an English dialect. In nowadays usual language, there are more and more types of texts in a mixture of self-made English, that the Germans themselves have made, and of a remainder of German. The Anglo-German is as weird as it is unavoidable, and the distortion of German into DENGLISH has almost become a custom. Examples of this language are analysed in this article and the opinions of linguists on this topic are presented.

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Authors: Ali ABDULLAH

This essay explores the historiography of pre-Victorian and Victorian women travelers in the Islamic Orient and their impact on Orientalism. The major focus will be on how scholars on the subject express the ways in which the intimate gaze aided in developing the eroticism and exoticism of not only the female space but also the Islamic Orient in general. The essay is divided into two parts: the first examines authors who consider women’s travel writing pivotal in shaping the Victorian preconceived notions of the Islamic Orient; and the second explores scholars who contextualize European women’s travel writings as vital agents of both the Imperialist and the Orientalist agendas.

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Authors: Monica TOMA

The idea of “gentlemanliness” appears frequently in Jane Austen’s novels, being associated with notions such as “chivalry”, “knighthood” or “politeness”. Her books present the ideals of gentlemen that were publicly approved by the English society around the turn of the nineteenth century, but also the way in which these models interacted with each other. The article intends to reveal Austen’s conceptions regarding this topic by examining the manner in which she constructed the leading male characters in her work.

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Authors: Roxana Marinescu

Here we are presenting a new issue of our academic journal which we hope will be as intellectually stimulating as (at least) all the previous ones. This issue includes a number of selected articles from the Conference Synergies in Communication,organised by the Department of Modern Languages and Business Communication in 2018.

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Authors: Yolanda-Mirela Catelly

The influence of English lexis on various countries vocabulary has increased, with English becoming the lingua franca worldwide and with the penetration of IT and business terminology, due to the need to cover new realities, and up to the youth tendency to communicate fashionably. Political contexts have favored this trend in countries such as Russia and Romania. Therefore, the paper aim is to comparatively analyze anglicisms related paradigms under several aspects in these two countries, focusing on identifying similarities and differences. The investigation didactic consequences are outlined, for a tertiary education engineering faculty context with multicultural groups.

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Authors: Irina David, Roxana-Elisabeta Marinescu

As short presentations delivered usually by experts in a specific field or known personalities, TED talks have an entertaining and informative value, as well as an educational dimension. In the past few years they have started being used in ESP classes as tools for encouraging language acquisition and the development of other competencies. This article shows how TED talks can be used to help learners develop their plurilingual competence, as well as to increase their social awareness. Special references will be made to a series of activities based on speeches selected as teaching material within the framework of the ERASMUS+ Project Oportunidance – Dance your Way to Other Cultures.

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Authors: Nadav BADRIAN

The rise of English as a Lingua Franca brings forth many questions concerning the English language, the pedagogical theory of teaching English and the new position of native English speakers. This qualitative study focuses on two specific cases of TESOL teachers in Israel. Both have a similar career path, and both hold a PhD in this field. However, one is Israeli born and the other is an immigrant from England. Through using the principles of Grounded Theory, the study explores how their role perception and perception of language has evolved over the years and whether there are common features in that evolution. The analysis shows that as their teaching experience and level of education progressed, their perceptions became more multicultural with regards to both teaching and the use of language which took on some of the characteristics of English as a Lingua Franca.

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Authors: Adriana Diana Polgar (Urian)

The paper aims at discussing the treatment of fictional characters through the theoretical apparatus of possible world semantics with clear and practical applications within postmodern fiction, more precisely in Ian McEwan’s novel On Chesil Beach. First it explains the manner in which the theoretical apparatus applies to fictionality in general, to postmodern fiction and to the selected novel going through the essential theories in the field, the Kripkean perspective, David Lewis’ Counterfactuals, Marie-Laure Ryan’s system for understanding fiction through the possible worlds framework. Then it showcases how the identity of fictional characters appears in the fictional piece under discussion, and the manner in which it unfolds within the mindset of the possible world semantics. Finally, by blending in these perspectives within the narrative universe and observing how they render a structural matrix of fiction upon which worlds of possibility can be modally distinguished, the paper will prove that the analysis of character identity and character worlds in fiction completes the entire picture of a syntax of the narrative within the possible world determinism.

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Authors: Roxana Marinescu

We are inviting your to reflect upon the varied topics included in this issue of Synergy, and hope to stimulate a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas in a highly challenging academic context.

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Authors: Mihaela ARSENE

The textbook series that National Geographic Learning has built around TED Talks caters to language levels from A1 to C2, and emphasizes American English or British English in separate publications. What all the Keynote textbooks have in common is a brilliant idea and a passion for enhancing English language education. The brilliant idea is to bring the TED Talks into the English class, thereby introducing the language learners to inspirational talks around exciting ideas, presented with passion, expertise, and enthusiasm.

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Authors: Ioana STAMATESCU

The essay looks at the various ways in which the erotic dimension is played out in Toni Morrison’s Jazz by making reference to the interplay of two major aspects: identity construction and the city, which are set against the background of jazz and blues that underscores the Roaring Twenties in New York City. The city is an environment filled with erotic potential, as it represents a space of the encounter with the other based on exchange and play. This triggers another element closely linked to eroticism: violence. The analysis focuses on these two (the erotic and the violent) in an attempt to show that while putting forth the illusion of freedom and joy, the eroticism only highlights a deeper history of trauma and violence. I also discuss “jazz” as a cultural theme on the one hand, and a compositional device of the novel on the other

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Authors: Monica CONDRUZ-BĂCESCU

The paper deals with the issue of open educational resources (OER). The first part focuses on the concept of OER, its use in education and benefits for students, educational institutions, employers, public and private organizations. Open educational resources refer to unhindered access to instructive materials, facilitated by information and communication technologies, for user consultation, use and adaptation for non-commercial purposes. The use of OER means a change in educational practices and requires changes at institutional level and innovations in teaching and learning. The role of OER in building, disseminating and sharing knowledge is presented, focusing in particular on using open and collaborative tools to build new virtual learning environments for higher education. The second part presents some examples of OER sites such as: Curriki, CK-12, CNX, Smarthistory, Opencourseware. Many OER sites are sustained by non-profit organizations, universities or different companies. Their mission is to offer high quality education for free to students, educators, self-learners. Despite OER's benefits, including the ability to exchange information with other students, according to personal learning goals, students are still striving to find relevant content and receive little or no recognition of their informal studies. Both teachers and students lack the skills for self-directed learning. The OER dialogue needs to move away from the discussion on access to materials and address the way in which co-creation, adaptation and shared management can be promoted. Open educational resources are a place of excellence in social inclusion and inclusion policies and have the support of many decision-makers. This is because the main objective of OER at present is to allow broad access to digital content, without reflecting whether this will support educational practices and promote quality and innovation in teaching and learning.

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Authors: Carmen ARDELEAN

Due to the specificity of their activity at the crossroads of cultures, translators have become today important pillars of “cultural communication” (Malone, 1998), as well as of the “soft power” described by Nye (1990; 2004). Ever more often the place of conflicts is taken by debates and negotiations in which translators hold an important role. However, state propaganda sometimes makes it more difficult to distinguish truth from lie, in written documents as well as in the official political discourse. Translator trainees should be prepared for this role and be offered the opportunity to study such texts, in order to learn how to act as real cultural mediators. The question is: should they go beyond the surface meaning of words, in search of a hidden truth, or should they remain “invisible” and provide the linguistic transfer without any personal involvement?

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Authors: Roxana CIOLĂNEANU, Alina VILLALVA

The present paper looks at instances of possible incipient morphological borrowing in Romanian and Portuguese from English within the context of “societal multilingualism” (Romaine 2006). We suspect that the ever-increasing number of right-headed compounds in Romanian and Portuguese might be a consequence of the English influence; consequently, we will bring linguistic and extra-linguistic factors to support the hypothesis that rightheaded compounding in Romanian and Portuguese places itself at the crossroads of language internal evolution and external influence. Some of these compounds are already registered in dictionaries, some others are not, but they are frequently met in specialised texts and newspaper articles.

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Authors: Roxana OLTEAN

This article looks at fictional and non-fictional renderings of Cold War Eastern Europe from Anglo-American perspectives, with a focus on Romania, and proposes gender as a focus of reading that illuminates particular aspects of the relationship between traveller (frequently associated with a male gaze) and foreign country (feminised, and/or represented through an array of female figures). Cognisant of critiques from post-colonial perspectives, from East-European standpoints and from gender studies directions to this type of stereotyped interaction, this approach ponders the degree to which the texts selected here engage in a fruitful dialogue with the space of representation. Reading these narratives as Cold War romances, the article also suggests the emergence of the selfdoubting Western narrator invited to question his own positions of power and knowledge, pointing to multiple routes of remembrance to a post-Cold War present.