rss_2.0Sciendo RSS Feed for Journal of Linguistics/Jazykovedný casopishttps://sciendo.com/journal/JAZCAShttps://www.sciendo.comhttps://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/6472097d215d2f6c89db990f/cover-image.jpghttps://sciendo.com/journal/JAZCAS140216https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0015<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In this paper, the various arguments that have been presented with respect to usage of generic masculine forms and pair/feminine forms are discussed and analysed. The source of the data is provided by a questionnaire carried out in October 2019, including a sample of answers and comments from Slovak, Czech and Polish respondents. In the study, two dominant views on generic masculine forms, arbitrary and semantic, are introduced and discussed against empirical findings from many experiments and studies. The material from the questionnaire is qualitatively analysed with respect to the axiological reactions of the respondents. The language attitudes are further classified into eight categories: representation, offensiveness, addressing, economy, textual qualities, language naturalness, tradition and ideological markedness. The attitudes of participants from both “camps” are quoted to illustrate the argumentation process yielding to the acceptance or rejection of forms substantiating gender-inclusive language.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00152023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0012<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In the globalised world connected via communication technologies and social media, this paper endeavours to understand how politicians succeed in influencing peopleʼs linguistic worlds through their public communication. The patterns in politiciansʼ precise verbal usage convey intended connotations and redefine how people naturally experience the expressions concerning their conceptual knowledge associated with words. The paper thus suggests adjusting the schema of lexical meaning based on the biology of cognition, which acknowledges the uniqueness and diversity of how people understand received expressions and convey various contents in communication.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00122023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0014<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The study deals with the lexical meaning of lexemes <italic>female teacher, teacher</italic> (male teacher and a generic meaning of the lexeme), which might be in Slovak influenced by context and discourse as well as by attitudes and gender stereotypes of interlocutors. In pragmatic research, the author focuses on semantic indeterminacy as an implicit component of lexical meaning determined by the socialization of interlocutors. Analysis of the lexemes <italic>female teacher</italic>, <italic>teacher</italic> and their collocations with the adjectives <italic>typical</italic>, <italic>crazy</italic>, <italic>burned out</italic>, in different contexts, has shown that the gender of the person referred to has an influence on the meaning. The implicit or socialized meaning of the lexemes of the feminine gender is frequently associated with those phenomena that are percieved negatively in society, while the names of the masculine gender do not contain this component.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00142023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0013<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Today, word embeddings have become a standard method in natural language processing, largely due to the availability of large language corpora. The models effectively reflect the semantic relationships between words without any additional linguistic input. Recently, more emphasis has been placed on interpreting the seemingly discriminatory results of some queries, with the goal of de-biasing language models.</p> <p>However, if we consider the vector space to be a reasonably valid model of a linguistic semantic space, does not the asymmetry and subsequent discrimination in word embeddings reflect the (average) discriminatory tendencies inherent in the language? This article explores word embedding models for the Visegrád group languages and we apply basic vector arithmetic to demonstrate the basic language asymmetry present in the models.</p> <p>It is well known that in English models, vector transfers result in eerily accurate predictions when swapping genders (the famous <italic>king – man + woman = queen</italic>), but these transfers also result in rather uncomplimentary roles for certain occupations (<italic>doctor – man + woman = nurse</italic>, or <italic>computer programmer – man + woman = homemaker</italic>). The article explores similar transfers in models of V4 languages – Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian. With Hungarian gender neutrality, Polish strong generic masculine, and close parallels between Slovak and Czech, we hope to uncover interesting similarities and differences in gender asymmetry in these languages, based on real language data.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00132023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0017<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In the urban space of Łódź, this paper studies some anti–Semitic aspects of discriminatory discourse of football fans. Its main goal is to present how anti-Semitic discriminatory meanings are formulated and spread in the urban space and how particular social groups (football fans) organize the urban discourse. In the multimodal material from the urban discourse, we scrutinize verbal and visual forms of discrimination captured on the walls of buildings, parks, or shopping centres in various stickers, posters, and flags. This paper implies that the language of particular social groups goes beyond closed internet communication or stadium discourse to a more open social sphere. A consequence of the social polarization found in the analysed data may be the radicalization and vulgarization of language in general.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00172023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0011<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The paper focuses on the description of language used as a tool of discrimination. We understand discrimination as a relationship between two subjects when ontological and axiological certainty is violated. In this sense discriminatory instrumentalisation of language is released at the level of harmful discrimination, unequal treatment and disadvantage. Language use plays a major role in creating a discourse which establishes certain ways of thinking and speaking. The research material is based on conversation about the advertisement for Absolut vodka. The conversation was held on Facebook.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00112023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0018<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the presence of linguistic discrimination in pedagogical situations, especially in pedagogical evaluation. The paper is based on a survey which involved 502 Hungarian Language and Literature teachers and teacher trainees from Hungary (N = 216), Slovakia (N = 128), Romania (N = 108) and Ukraine (N = 50). Data were primarily collected through a technique similar to matched-guise tests; however, the method of the present research had some additional complexity. The article discusses similarities and differences in linguistic discrimination between Slovak and Hungarian teachers who teach Hungarian Language and Literature. The question it raises is whether there are any differences between the two samples. The results of the mentioned research show that the presence of linguistic discrimination is powerful in both samples, but there are differences in its strength and realization.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00182023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0016<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>We examined the general attitude to new feminine titles, as it formed in the media in 2021, and the overall image of social feminine titles currently prevalent in the Serbian media, all by way of ascertaining the reasons for acceptance or non-acceptance of new social feminine titles that were articulated in the media. Having defined the necessary terms (<italic>discrimination</italic>, <italic>gender equality</italic>, <italic>social feminine title</italic> and so on) and after a brief review of the social context that made social feminine titles a hot topic in the Serbian media in 2021, we analysed the relevant media texts that present the various positions on social feminine titles. The method of qualitative content analysis was applied, as it was deemed the most fitting methodological procedure for extracting both the arguments put forward in favour of, and those against social feminine title use. The research corpus consisted of media texts and official announcements by Serbian linguistic institutions on the subject of social feminine titles, collected from January to September of 2021. The basic assumption was that the dominant attitude in the media texts would be against new feminine title use, but also that both supporters and opponents of new social feminine titles would feel discriminated against, whether the discrimination came via opposition to or, conversely, via obligatory and consistent use of these terms.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00162023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0010<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article explores the difference between equality and the absence of discrimination within the area of language use. It draws on examples of social practices of linguistic inequality in Slovakia, and analyses how these are regulated by Slovak law, international law and laws of countries of best practices. The article argues that these examples represent three different models of linguistic equality: formal equality, equality of opportunities and substantive linguistic equality. It will analyse how these approaches empower or disadvantage speakers of minority languages, and what normative guide they provide for linguistic equality.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00102023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0008<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This paper focuses on Northern Catalonia, a territory ceded to France by Spain through the signing of the Treaty of Pyrenees in 1659. The focus is placed not only on the demography and the number of speakers using the Catalan language in Northern Catalonia but also on the linguistic politics and the use of the Catalan language in various areas of social life, especially in education. The school plays the most important role in the revitalization of the Catalan language, and without its active contribution, it is not possible to restore bilingualism in French Catalonia.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00082023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0009ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00092023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0006<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Along with portraits of historical figures, images relating to the culture and history of a particular nation, the presence (or absence) of languages on banknotes is also an element of symbolic politics and part of the manifestation of the language policy of a particular state. In this paper, banknotes are seen as an element of the linguistic landscape, and the linguistic landscape – as a reflection of language policy, its peculiar public expression. This paper analyses the way in which the text displayed on multilingual banknotes constructs and reproduces linguistic hierarchies, reflecting the relative status of the languages within two multi-ethnic states: the Czechoslovak Republic and the Soviet Union. The study explores which languages were represented in the inscriptions of the various series of banknotes issued, based on the assumption that banknotes participate in the official language practices constituting the linguistic landscape and as such mediate language ideologies. The authors conclude that even multinational states that issue multilingual banknotes guarantee that the state language should be in a dominant position.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00062023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0003<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In this paper, I present and discuss the ways of intensifying in Polish and Slovak language communication using reduplication, because one of the semantic properties of reduplication is intensification. Various linguists have pointed out that reduplication may perform many different functions. Reduplication is also associated with a large subset of semantic and syntactic operations, including intensity. Although it is heavily semantically limited to adjectives and adverbs, it applies to nearly all parts of speech. According to its intensifying function, it is common in contemporary Slovak, being mainly associated with compound adjectives, i.e. <italic>šírošíry</italic>, <italic>číročíry</italic>, <italic>dennodenný</italic>. Reduplicative constructions are understood as independent language signs, formally and semantically different from their components. Reduplication means a reinforcement of a statement, so there are various semantic constraints on the reduplicant: it involves only gradable attributes and attributes denoting a higher degree of feature intensity (<italic>in plus</italic>). The reinforcement does not necessarily mean the increase of intensity of a state – the aim of reduplication is not only to modify but also to specify the meaning. Intensifying reduplication is one of the many ways of expressing the intensive degree or intensity of an action that is something above the assumed norm and it is a legitimate way of expanding the lexis.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00032023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0004<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The article describes the construction of the corpus of Slovak legislative documents. By analyzing several statistical values of the source metadata and documents, we efficiently improve corpus quality. We describe the methods used to clean up small variations in metadata, length based discrimination of document and examine the effectiveness of several strategies of deduplication. The corpus is a part of a comparable corpus of legislative documents of seven languages, created in the <italic>Multilingual Resources for CEF.AT in the Legal Domain (MARCELL)</italic> project.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00042023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0007<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The newspaper headline is the first contact between the author and the recipient and in terms of stylistics, it is one of the compositional aspects of the text. In relation to the text itself, as well as to the communication partner, the headline fulfils an informative, engaging and especially in journalistic genres, persuasive function. Following the previous research focused on the 1960s, the aim of the study is to analyse and compare headlines in Slovak newspapers in the period of totalitarian and democratic establishment with a focus on the journalistic genre. The research sample, excerpted from the official discourse of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (1948 – 1956, 1961 – 1970) and the more recent Slovak mainstream <italic>e-</italic>discourse (2011 – 2021), contains almost 800 headlines to monitor the developmental tendencies of a given text component under the influence of changed extra lingual conditions. The aim of the research is to verify the expected linguistic and communicative modifications captured, for example, in a freer approach to the use of language. The given assumption expected at the structural-pragmatic level is conditioned by the dismantling of political-ideological control of the socialist period. At the stylistic-pragmatic level, we also assume a more direct and qualitatively more elaborate expressiveness in the language.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00072023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0002<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This paper addresses the issue of a non-assigned case in Czech. This so-called default case can be found in many languages and its behavior seems to be largely determined by the type of the given language. English, being a poor case language, does not have many options for the default; it is basically the nominative or accusative that are somehow available. Czech, on the other hand, being a rich case language, offers a greater variety. The paper considers special environments where case is not assigned, such as those suggested by Schütze (2001) for English. From these, only the left-dislocation seems to be the right environment for the default case in Czech. Moreover, we consider post copular DPs, which show a competition of the nominative and the instrumental. The former proves to be the default option for Czech.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00022023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0001<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article seeks to contribute to the body of research on the formulaicity of academic written English by adopting a text-internal perspective on the use of lexical bundles across four main rhetorical sections (i.e. Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion) of research articles in public health. The corpus linguistic approach was adopted to explore a section-coded corpus of 200 research papers published in high impact journals with the aim of identifying salient shared and section-specific 4-word bundles, calculating their respective frequencies as well as classifying them structurally and functionally. The results show that the Method is the most formulaic section, containing the greatest number of bundles, including those most frequent and section-specific ones. The sections also differ in the extent to which they exploit the distinct structural and functional categories of shared bundles to fulfill their individual communicative needs.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00012023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-0005<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Czech is a flective Slavic language that traditionally expresses gender in female surnames by suffixation. The formation of female surnames of Czech citizens is regulated by Czech law. The surnames and the related law repeatedly attract the attention of non-linguists and are discussed in the public arena. The study analyses metaphors and metonymies used in these discussions involving non-linguists. The data for the analysis are collected from public discourse, especially from newspapers and magazines. Although the main topic of the public discussions is “linguistic”, the material reveals much about Czech speakers’ understanding of other, non-linguistic topics, such as the role of the state, state legislation, and personal freedom of choice. The discussions show parts of the folk theory of language as well. The repertoire of metaphors and metonymies used in the discussions is rich and it concerns three main target domains (language; law and the state; discussion and argumentation). Many non-linguists who participate in this type of public discussion today tend to see individual freedom as more important than any linguistic tradition.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2023-00052023-03-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2022-0025<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The pragmatic reason for supporting the promotion of equal language communication is that this communication is part of a social event that aims to develop an inclusive society. However, this support also has an anthropological reason, which is based on the reconstruction of the origin of man as a being of his kind and his humanization. His humanization is based on continuous self-realization and rational social solidarity, consisting in the fact that the actors of social interaction are committed to creating a lively environment for parity self-realization. Such self-realization is governed by the principle of equality differentiation, which includes the contextual neutralization of relevant differences between actors. Transparency is essential for overcoming equality barriers in language communication, but it is important to perceive the opposition between levelling and cultivated equality communication. This contrast draws attention to the idea of optimally transparent language, which leads the actors to set the optimal ratio between transparent and non-transparent forms of expression. Since the humanization of individuals and society corresponds to cultivated equality communication, the order of the day is to increase the volume of language communication in society with such a degree of non-transparency (negativity) that stimulates the interpretive activity of the actors. When examining equal language communication with regard to its impact on the cultural level of society, one of the relevant issues is the adaptation of the relationship between positive and negative transparency to current communication events.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2022-00252022-10-13T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2022-0030<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Conversations accompanying collective activities are exceptionally appropriate material for the development of “interactional stylistics” (cf. Orgoňová – Bohunická 2018). They display a number of specific aspects, including a low frequency of full-meaning expressions and, conversely, a high frequency of substitute deictic expressions, used when showing and pointing. Characteristic for these dialogues is the observation of the cooperative principle (Grice 1975), above all through various forms of agreement, strengthened by reduplication and intensification (<italic>yeah that’s it that’s it; yeah that’s clear</italic>, <italic>of course</italic>); also through speakers repeating after their interlocutors, but also through emphatic, confirmational repetition of their own expressions or the accompaniment of utterances and turns with strong coreference. Less frequent, but striking, are the expressions of motivated, functional disagreement, gradually eliminated through negotiation. Through the use of all of these means, a specific structure of the conversation is created, often based on the actual coproduction of turns, on non-extensive overlaps and on the use of numerous continuers. Here, verbal communication merges inseparably with gestures, movements and facial expressions, which necessarily leads to the use of methods based on the analysis of video recordings.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/jazcas-2022-00302022-10-13T00:00:00.000+00:00en-us-1