Linguistics, Interpretations, Concepts (LInC)

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https://doi.uni-plovdiv.bg/handle/store/5

p-ISSN: 3033-0181 / e-ISSN: 3033-0599

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1922 – 1925 in BULGARIA – LITERATURE, LITERARY CRITICISM and POLITICS
(Plovdiv University Press “Paisii Hilendarski”, 2024-04-21) Protohristova, Kleo
This text aims at analysing literary life in Bulgaria between 1922 and 1925. The analysis is motivated by the dominant impression of its extraordinary intensity and draws upon the assumption that the chronological stretch is self-contained as a distinct micro-period in national literary history. The goal of this research is to endorse the hypothesis that the projection potential in the dynamics of the examined time span is meaningful. Observations have been carried out in the mode of H. R. Jauss’s “synchronic cross-sections” and include contextualising parallels with the respective literary years in Western European literature.
45 YEARS IS NOT ENOUGH: AN IDEA THAT SHOOK THE WORLD OF LINGUISTICS
(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Dagnev, Ivaylo
Conceptual metaphor theory emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s and viewed the process and product of metaphorization as a complex interrelationship between language and thought. A central claim of this theory proposed by Lakoff & Johnson and subsequently developed by numerous researchers is that the apperception of the unknown takes place through a special process of construction in semantics – metaphorization, which results from the complex interaction between embodied experience, the conceptual system and its linguistic representation. The evolution of the theory problematises many essential issues of semantics such as the meaning and use of words, the relationship between literal and figurative meaning, between the conceptual character and the lexical expression in language. Like any significant idea, the theory of conceptual metaphor has become the target of numerous criticisms on all its aspects, which, after all, are the necessary driving force for its development.
ADJECTIVAL -ING PARTICIPLES: ROOTS AND MANIFESTATIONS OF ADJECTIVENESS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Georgieva, Nikoleta
This paper investigates the adjectival nature of the English -ing participle, tracing its roots and examining its manifestations. The adjectival characteristics are conceptualized in two distinct ways: (1) adjectiveness – an inherent property of some participles, rooted in their semantic content, and (2) adjectivization – an acquired property resulting from syntactic deployment. The analysis reviews existing criteria for the classification of -ing participles in order to identify the most reliable ones and to organise them into distinct sets corresponding to each of the two phenomena. In addition, the study investigates both the principal meanings conveyed by adjectival -ing participles and the verb classes that hold the greatest potential for their derivation, presenting a meaning-based classification of adjectival -ing forms.
ANDREY PLATONOV: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOTEXTUALITY
(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Kiossev, Alexander
Following a methodology developed by Radosvet Kolarov, which relativizes „the death of the author“ and turns it into an inner-textual mechanism, this article deals with the complex and dramatic biography of the great writer Andrey Platonov. An attempt is made to analyze it as an organizing auto-poetic principle of his creative work. The transformations of enduring ideological and emotional motives that start from the early Platonov and reach his late works are traced; the principles of auto-citation, transformation, and auto-polemics are analyzed. The conclusions comment on the special phantasmal core present in every ideology and the possibility of it being manipulated politically.
AUTHORS AND FIGHTERS, ROMANCES, COFFEE-HOUSES: SOME POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS PRECEDING THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE NOVEL “UNDER THE YOKE”
(Plovdiv University Press “Paisii Hilendarski”, 2024-04-21) Zlatanov, Blagovest
The article reconstructs and analyses in detail previously unknown events, statements, and interrelations in a series of political developments preceding the English translation of Ivan Vazov's novel “Under the Yoke”, published in London at the very end of 1893. Two main issues fall into the focus of research interest. First, for what reason was the author Ivan Vazov considered an immediate participant in the struggles for national liberation of Bulgaria? And secondly, why are efforts being made to define “Under the Yoke” as a “romance”? As a final accent, the article answers the question why the novel includes a coffee-house that afterwards became so famous in Bulgarian literature and cultural history.
CLASSIFICATION AND VARIATION OF FIXED EXPRESSIONS IN BULGARIAN
(Plovdiv University Press “Paisii Hilendarski”, 2024-04-27) Zidarova, Vanya
Fixed expressions comprise a large, specific and diverse group of linguistic units which makes them a serious theoretical and lexicographical challenge. This article offers a review of the existing classifications. There is also a new model proposed – one which distinguishes between a core and a periphery. Manifestations of structural variability are also considered in two directions: in language and in speech. The observations are based on the corpus in one of the Bulgarian phraseological dictionaries.
CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS: LIFE IS A JOURNEY IN DOCTOR MARIGOLD BY CHARLES DICKENS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Kyriakakis, Efstratios
This paper explores the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to the language and narrative structure of Charles Dickens’ short story Doctor Marigold. It identifies and discusses some of the numerous correspondences between the source domain and target domain which underpin the structural metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY, such as THE PERSON LEADING A LIFE IS A TRAVELER, HIS PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS, THE MEANS OF ACHIEVING PURPOSES ARE ROUTES, etc. The analysis establishes the rich mapping nature of the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor which might provide an explanation for its being an entrenched metaphor. This metaphor also structures the whole narrative of the short story. The linguistic evidence and the narrative structure reveal the cognitive processes in which both everyday and literary language are grounded.
COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE MISSION OF THE HUMANITIES
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Tihanov, Galin
In the first part of this article I explore various meanings of the word ‘cosmopolitanism’ and attempt to attain finer granularity by identifying two different strands within what has long been taken to be a unitary discourse. In the second part, I discuss the complex relationship (often also divergence) between the two types of cosmopolitanism – political and cultural – that I identify in the first part. I do so by analysing two foundational narratives of exile, the first of which bears on the humanities and their supreme capacity to cultivate creativity and freedom through estrangement. In the final part, I turn to the mission of the humanities today, which I happen to believe needs to be grounded, against the odds, in the cultivation and articulation of a cosmopolitan ethos.
DIMINUTIVES IN RABBIE BURNS’ POETIC PIECES (AND THEIR TRANSLATION EQUIVALENTS IN RUSSIAN, FRENCH AND GERMAN)
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Chankova, Yana; Bagasheva, Maria; Kiryakova-Dineva, Teodora; Todorov, Blagovest
The present paper is part of a more comprehensive and extended re-search project which seeks to investigate and quantitatively and qualitatively analyse the data obtained with respect to the diminutive forms attested in the poetic works of Robert Burns and their respective translation equivalents in Russian, French and German. What we present here is a pilot study on the diminutive forms in the original poetic texts and in their translations into the three languages. The aim is to investigate the types of form-formative patterns of expressing diminutiveness and their function in the respective languages. The discussion opens with a brief outline of the specific features of the category of diminutiveness in the studied languages.
DIPLOMATIC AND CONFERENCE INTERPRETERS IN BULGARIA IN THE FIRST DECADES FOLLOWING SEPTEMBER 9, 1944
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Naimushin, Boris
This article is part of an undefended and unpublished dissertation on the history of diplomatic interpreting in Bulgaria from 1944 to 1974, in comparison with the Soviet Union, the United States, Cuba, Romania, and Hungary. Based on archival documents, memoirs, interviews, media reports, photographs, and newsreels, this text traces the efforts of Bulgaria and the USSR to address the situation arising from the shortage of experienced diplomats and diplomatic interpreters following the purges in the USSR in the 1930s and in Bulgaria after the coup of 9 September 1944.
ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN BULGARIAN FINANCIAL DISCOURSE: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY WITH A FRENCH COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Todorov, Blagovest
This study examines the influence of English loanwords on Bulgarian financial discourse using a corpus-based approach. The analysis draws on 168 financial media articles published between 2019 and 2022, comprising approximately 140,000 words. A total of 90 English-origin terms were identified and examined in terms of borrowing type, frequency, institutional incorporation and adaptation. The results show a clear predominance of relatively new borrowings and confirm English as the dominant source of financial terminology. Most terms are already integrated into official discourse and display minimal structural adaptation. A comparative perspective with French reveals a contrasting model characterized by stronger institutional regulation and preference for native equivalents. The findings highlight the role of sociolinguistic factors in shaping borrowing processes in financial communication.
EXILE AS A TRAUMATIC PRETEXT OF A COUNTERNARRATIVE LITERATURE: THE MUSEUM OF UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER BY DUBRAVKA UGREŠIĆ
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Kambourov, Dimitar
The text undertakes another attempt to read Ugrešić’s great novel from the viewpoint of the recent phenomenon of an East European world literature. It is an attempt to demonstrate how features such as counter-narrativity, anti-fictionality, and non-linearity, summoning key novels by Tokarczuk, Cărtărescu, Krasznahorkai, and Gospodinov, find their paradigmatic model in the novel of this Croatian exile. Her prose invents and implements the paradoxical regime of an intellectual commentary distance, pursuing identification through pain. An amateurish authenticity, shining out from an imitation of exemplary art, is the artistic program that, openly formulated and fulfilled by Ugrešić, was indirectly inherited and developed by Tokarczuk and Gospodinov, bringing them world audiences and awards. At the end, the text reflects on why a program that proved so successful with Tokarczuk and Gospodinov did not make Ugrešić the literary star and cult writer she deserves to be.
EXPLORING NEGATION IN BULGARIAN YES-NO QUESTIONS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Dimitrova, Margarita
The present paper addresses negation in yes-no questions focusing on data from Bulgarian. Considering that Bulgarian yes-no questions are structures licensed by the interrogative particle li (Rudin 1986, Rudin et al. 1999, Izvorski 1995, Dimitrova 2020, among others), we more particularly concentrate on the relation between li, the negation marker and the licensing of Negative Concord. Based on the intriguing contrast concerning the blocking of Negative Concord and the behaviour of n-words, we will argue against the previous accounts claiming that negation in yesno questions is expletive, i.e. void of negative content. Rather, we suggest that the blocking of Negative Concord results from the occurrence of the interrogative particle li. In view of the Bulgarian data and building on previous analyses, namely Dimitrova (2020), we suggest that what prevents the licensing of n-words and moreover contributes to the characteristic positive bias these structures denote is verb movement to functional projections of the Left Periphery accounting for the speaker’s evaluations and kind of attitude (Ambar 2000, 2003, Yoon 2011, Giannakidou 2016).
FANTASTIC ELEMENTS IN THE NARRATION OF PAST TRAUMA IN LISA WEEDA’S NOVEL ALEKSANDRA
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Zhygun, Snizhana
The article analyzes the narrative of past trauma in Lisa Weeda's novel Alexandra as a third-generation trauma narrative. The aim of the study is to assess the role of the fantastic elements in the narrative strategy of the author. Lisa, the protagonist and narrator, seeks to discover the history of her relatives, the Krasnov family, but the sources she needs are remote in time and separated in space. Therefore, the novel creates an imaginary chronotope, the Palace of the Lost Don Cossack, where Lisa meets the dead, and imaginary narrators, the deer, symbols of the Don Cossacks. In this way, the author fills in the gaps in the information concerning the experience of the traumatized generation and comprehends the impact of her ancestors’ experience on the present of her contemporaries. The fantastic elements contribute to the realization of the narrative as a dialog between generations and turn the neglected history of the Ostarbeiters into an emotionally accessible one. The knowledge that Lisa recovers from obscurity helps her understand the first phase of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 as a return to the arbitrariness of the Soviet dictatorship which has not been condemned for its crimes because it has silenced its victims.
FRANKENSTEIN AND POWER DYNAMICS: FROM TEXT TO CONTEXT
(Plovdiv University Press “Paisii Hilendarski”, 2024-04-21) Kostadinova, Vitana
This paper traces aspects of the dynamic power hierarchies in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) and in Richard Brinsley Peake’s stage adaptation Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein (1823). It close-reads these two as interpretations of Satan challenging the omnipotence of the Maker and touches upon the Victorian burlesque Frankenstein, or the Model Man (1849), which features education as a civilizational tool. The discussion then moves to the realm of newspaper publications in the nineteenth century that make use of the Frankenstein metaphor. The power dynamics between the creator and the creation getting out of control may be wavering but monstrosity soldiers on. In the final instance, a recent tendency in the Bulgarian political discourse of inscribing the speaker into the inherent tension produced by the power hierarchies demonstrates that different contexts bend the metaphor in different ways.
HOW TO USE THE CAMERA TO CONTINUE THЕ WRITING. “THE TALES OF HOFFFMANN” THROUGH THE LENS OF DIFFERENT MEDIA – ON STAGE, IN FILM AND ON TELEVISION
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Gimpel, Derek
E. T. A. Hoffmann’s fantastic stories are, due to their complexity, structure and subject matter the source of many adaptions and reworkings. One of the most popular of these is Jaques Offenbach’s opera „Les contes d‘Hoffmann“, itself n adaption of the original theatre play which was also the inspiration for many other television and cinema adaptions. Narrative techniques and storytelling motives demand different approaches from the various media. An in depth study of ‘Eyeglasses’ (Der Sandman / Olympia Act) and ‘Appearance’ (Rat Krespel / Antonia Act), will reveal how these elements function and are depicted in the various media.
IMPRESSIONS OF ISTANBUL BY DR. TODOR YANKOV – THE FIRST BULGARIAN TRAVELLER TO THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Mevsim, Hüseyin
Regardless of whether it is called Constantinople, Istanbul or Tsarigrad, the global city on the Bosphorus has always occupied an important place in Bulgarian political and spiritual history. The first travelogue in Bulgarian literature about this city appeared in the pages of a magazine only at the end of the 19th century, and very little is known about its author, Dr. Todor Yankov, today. This paper attempts to understand the reasons for the late appearance of the first travelogue; it examines three works – by Petko Slaveykov, Ivan Bogorov and Dimitar Mollov – about Istanbul, which may be taken to function as preludes to Impressions of Istanbul. The research offers a biographical and creative portrait of the educationalist, politician, publicist and writer Todor Yankov while outlining the compositional features of his travelogue about the imperial capital. The author of the travelogue was a representative of the first post-independence generation, which also determines his different attitude towards both the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage in it; he carries the consciousness of a Bulgarian European pushed away from the narrow dimensions of the strictly domestic.
LITERATURE, POWER AND IMAGINATION: THE QUEST FOR DYSTOPIA IN THE BULGARIAN NOVEL OF THE 21st CENTURY
(Plovdiv University Press “Paisii Hilendarski”, 2024-04-21) Kirova, Milena
The study opens with the question: Why wasn't there a powerful wave of satire in Bulgarian literature in the first two decades of the 21st century, even though the situation of the Transition closely resembled the situation that spawned the satire of Ivan Vazov, Aleko Konstantinov and Stoyan Mikhailovsky a hundred years earlier? The answer to this question is found in the compensatory emergence and rapid rise of a genre that had been virtually absent: the dystopian novel. This article traces the process in which two dozen dystopian works were published in twelve years; their number helps defining an already remarkable phenomenon in Bulgarian literary history. Among the authors discussed are famous writers such as Georgi Gospodinov, Zahari Karabashliev, Emilia Dvoryanova, Vasil Georgiev, Vladislav Todorov, Georgi Tenev... The article concludes with a synthesis of the genre specificity and thematic diversity of Bulgarian dystopian literature of the early 21st century.
LONGING FOR PERSONALITIES – THE TESTAMENT OF BORIS YOTSOV
(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Damyanova, Rumyana
The text follows Boris Yotsov's idea of the personalities who should lead the Bulgarian people forward – the optimistic forecast for the right choice and the explanation of the failures on the historical path that are due to wrong choices. In its aim to present the main moments of the scholar's life and creative destiny, the text is based on aspects of Boris Yotsov's article “Longing for personalities”.
MAINSTREAM AND COUNTERCULTURE
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Aretov, Nikolay
The concept of province can be read as what lies outside the centre – broadly speaking, outside the canon and the dominant mainstream. This article continues observations on literary stratification by introducing and discussing the concepts of mainstream, counterculture, and underground, which are less frequently used in Bulgarian academic criticism, and examines their place within the established typology. The mainstream is a dynamic phenomenon: it follows dominant representations and tastes, achieves commercial success, and is popularised by the media. The existing typology – primarily based on politics – is critiqued. I argue that for a phenomenon to be classified as counterculture or underground, it must not only oppose the mainstream aesthetically but also in its mode of dissemination. Counterculture is understood as the expression of (often suppressed) minorities that oppose cultural and/or social norms and seek alternative dissemination channels. Conditional examples include non-traditional folklore (jokes), chapbooks (pesnopoyki), samizdat, 1980s public readings, the fantasy genre, and certain popular music forms (punk, rap, chalga). The article highlights such phenomena and authors, demonstrating their links to contemporary folklore and urban argot.

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