http://hdl.handle.net/11089/48994 2026-04-06T06:43:04Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/49003 The Pronunciation of the Capital of Ukraine in English-Speaking Media Bikelienė, Lina Speaker identity is one of the factors that might play a role in the realisation of sounds. Previous studies have observed that phonetic variations, alongside the formation of speaker’s identity, can index political meaning. This article aims at analysing a politically conditioned variation in rendering the name of the capital of Ukraine. Though the change from ‘Kiev’ to ‘Kyiv’ precedes the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine, the analysis shows 24 February, 2022 has accelerated the process. Contrary to the general tendency for a language change to manifest first in the spoken mode and then proceed to writing, the findings indicate faster shift from ‘Kiev’ to ‘Kyiv’ in written English. 2023-12-28T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/49002 Pro-Peace vs. Pro-War Conceptualizations in the Language of Hungarian Propaganda Grygiel, Marcin The language of propaganda can be treated as a specialist language with its own specialized terminology. It is produced by groups of variously configured propaganda experts responsible for the creation of propaganda messages, placed at one end of the communication channel, together with its specific target audience that consumes these messages, situated at the other end of the communication channel. As a result of this specialized communication process, the language of propaganda is function-oriented and its focus is always put on the objectives that are to be achieved. These include shaping and manipulating public opinions. For these goals to be successful, the language of propaganda must be equipped with efficient and well-designed conceptualizations able to change and modify the way people think. Defined as such, the language of propaganda is not a purely linguistic construct, but a multimodal tool able to make use of the visual and audiovisual output as well. The interest in mental processes such as conceptualization lies at the very center of cognitive linguistics and the study of cognitive mechanisms responsible for various types of conceptualizations is of high priority in cognitively driven approaches to language. Another issue which makes cognitive linguistics suitable for this type of research in specialist languages is its long standing preference for multidisciplinary and multimodal phenomena. Applying the methodology of cognitive linguistics, the present paper aims at identifying and discussing the PRO-PEACE vs. PRO-WAR network of conceptualizations in the language of Hungarian propaganda, often compared in its mastery with Orwell’s newspeak or the Soviet propaganda machinery because of its power and influence. Hungary’s leading right-wing party, Fidesz-KDNP, has retained political control in Hungary ever since its landslide victory in the 2010 national elections and developed a powerful propaganda tool that is ideally customized to the culture-specific preferences of Hungarian voters. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, this research studies linguistic expressions shaping PRO-PEACE vs. PRO-WAR conceptualizations with their rich social, historical and cultural contexts. 2023-12-28T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/49001 Speech Acts and Relevance: in Search of a Dialogue Witczak-Plisiecka, Iwona This paper comments on the notion of the speech act in the tradition of J.L. Austin (1962/1975) in an attempt to assess its relevance (sic!) in a relevance-theory-based research. Relevance theory (RT) since its introduction (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995) has consistently rejected much of speech act-theoretic thinking, explicitly questioning its having a central position in pragmatics. Using the notion of “the speech act”, RT seems to ignore most of speech act-theoretic apparatus. However, despite the superficial divergence between the two frameworks, the advancements within RT, as developed especially by Deirdre Wilson, and her co-researchers over the years, are convergent with selected thoughts in the Austinian thought. The paper comments on selected points which bring the two linguistics approaches together. 2023-12-28T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/49000 A Topic-Based Diachronic Account of the Polysemy of the English Verb ‘Run’ Kiyama, Naoki; Shibuya, Yoshikata This study discusses the polysemy and diachronic semantic frequency shifts of the English verb run using a topic model. The increase in corpus-based research in cognitive linguistics has yielded many empirical findings on various aspects of language. However, there are still areas that have not received sufficient attention. One such area is the study of word meaning in terms of related topics and social interest. In this paper, we analyze diachronic data collected from the NOW corpus (News on Web) and argue that the polysemy of run can be described in terms of topic, and that the change in the use of the meanings that this verb has can be described in terms of a change in social interest. 2023-12-28T00:00:00Z