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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PANTOMIME AS A COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGY IN CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S SOUND FILMS AND TALKIES
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Marinov, Angel
The present research paper focuses on Charlie Chaplin’s sound films and talkies, emphasizing the role of pantomime as a communicative strategy in the context of the transition from silent to talking cinema and the subsequent sound-visual synthesis. Based on a number of research studies and the autorsown observations, the text offers a structural and comparative analysis of the following films: “City Lights”, “Modern Times”, “The Great Dictator”, “Monsieur Verdoux”, “Limelight” and “A King in New York”. It represents an original interpretation on how pantomime predominates or is combined in balance with speech, musical theme and sound effects. Attention is paid on Chaplin's desire to preserve the identity of his main character, the Tramp, through a dominant visual expression, despite the emergence of dialog and sound in film. The text traces Chaplin’s subsequent introduction of an innovative model – one displaying an effective combination between pantomime and speech and sound in the film, which confirms the unique communicative style of his films. Up to the present, this approach has attracted not only the interest of various theorists, critics and researchers, but it has also had broad practical significance for the development of film art.
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.
VISIONS OF THE CLASSICAL FORM IN LYUBOMIR DALCHEV’S SCULPTURE
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Dekova, Galina
This article aims to examine the artistic evolution of the prominent Bulgarian sculptor Lyubomir Dalchev – from his early fascination with symbolism and his explorations of the realistic form to his later modernist stylized human figures. Always rooted in the human form, Dalchev succeeds in modernizing the understanding of socialist realism to such an extent that the concept itself becomes meaningless. His education in Rome and Paris during the interwar period laid the foundation for the later development of his artistic language. The article pays special attention to the image of the male body in his work and, through the analysis of several examples from different periods, explores how the treatment of the male figure distances the author from the ideological use of the image.
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.
THE EMBLEM AS A PRINCIPLE OF VERBAL ORGANIZATION IN “SEPTEMBERˮ BY GEO MILEV
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Panov, Alexander
“Septemberˮ by Geo Milev is one of the emblematic works of Bulgarian literature, which continues to have, to this day has an extraordinary impact on its readers. The article attempts to find an explanation for this strong impact. The working hypothesis is that the way of verbal organization of the work grows on the principle of the emblem, a mixed visual-verbal genre, whose main idea is to instill a strictly defined and value-stable idea. The genre specificity of the work, which has consistently been perceived as a “poemˮ, has also been reevaluated. In the light of contemporary genre theory, however, the work exhibits all the characteristic signs of a classical volunta. This lyrical genre, negatively evaluating the past and assigning all expectations to the future, aims to evoke a collective suggestion of hope and the dream of an earthly paradise. The most appropriate way to realise this artistic task is the principle of the emblem – a visual or verbal image expressing a sustainable meaning in a value-based sustainable world. The unambiguous and equal connection between vision and word in the emblem genre allows this function to be realized not only by visual images constructed with words, but also by stable expressions, slogans, mottos, characteristic types of onomatopoeias, as well as by symbolically charged personal names. All things that are consistently present in the verbal fabric of “September“.
THE QUESTION OF THE SOUL IN AVANT-GARDE LITERATURE (WITH A FOCUS ON CHINESE LITERATURE)
(3033-0599 (Online), 2026) Rusinov, Stefan
In the 1980s, many Chinese writers insisted that literature should focus on the human psyche, which had been long neglected until then. This deceptively familiar and banal call actually raises numerous questions. What exactly is the “soul”? Which “soul” exactly? Does it differ from the Western “soul”? From which Western “soul”? What is the context of this call, given the different historical development of the concept in China and Europe? What is the connection between avant-garde literature and the soul? In contrast to the apparent clarity of the word’s everyday usage, the answers to these questions require deconstruction and careful xamination of the concept’s articulations, revealing a range of research possibilities, some of which this study explores.
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.
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.
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).
THE CONCEPTUALISATION OF REBELLION IN BULGARIAN
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Markou, Christina
The present study is devoted to the representations of the concept of REBELLION as a fragment of the Bulgarian linguistic worldview. The features embedded in the structure of the concept are revealed through the analysis of systematic linguistic data, including lexicographic definitions, as well as collocations with varying degrees of stability. In addition, materials from paremiology are employed as a source of ethnospecific and culturally significant information. The aim is to describe and reconstruct the stereotypical features of the concept that are firmly established in the collective linguistic consciousness of Bulgarians and widely operative in usage. In general terms, REBELLION is interpreted as an axiologically ambivalent concept which, in a number of contexts, is understood as a means of defending and affirming fundamental values such as freedom, justice, and human dignity.
THE USE OF THE PUPPET THEATRE AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING AND STIMULATING STUDENTS’ IMAGINATION
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Kapon, Zoya
This article examines a working educational theatrical practice that has been established in the dynamically developing contemporary theatrical art, namely the work with theatre puppets for the development of actors' imagination. Puppet theatrical techniques, with their specificity, possess a high educational potential for building vivid imagination, spontaneity and creativity in the process of educating contemporary multifunctional actors.
TOWARDS A FULLY CROSS-PLATFORM, UNICODE-COMPLIANT, SOFTWARE ENTRY SYSTEM FOR DIGITISATION OF OLD BULGARIAN TEXTS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Mathewson, John
This article makes a case for moving from a plethora of ways of digitising Old Bulgarian texts that are incompatible with each other towards a software package that is cross-platform and results in texts that utilise the Unicode standard and are completely cross-compatible. It also describes the programming of just such a software package.
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.
STRUCTURING INFORMATION: INSIGHTS FROM A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF PASSIVE VOICE
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Spasov, Krasimir
The present paper explores how speakers use the passive voice in spoken English as a practical tool for organizing information and guiding listeners through a message. Rather than being just a stylistic alternative to the active voice, the passive often helps speakers highlight what is already familiar, keep a topic in focus, leave out agents that do not matter, and place heavier or more complex details towards the end of a clause. Using examples from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), this paper shows that these choices reflect broader tendencies in the English language toward presenting information from given to new and maintaining a smooth flow of ideas. The findings suggest that the passive voice plays a meaningful role in real-time communication by helping speakers manage attention and process demands.
RURAL SOUNDS – URBAN SOUNDS: THE ACOUSMATIC RANGE OF A YOUNG MAN’S BEING IN GREAT EXPECTATIONS
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Yasenova, Kristina
In the following text, I would like to suggest the hypothesis that Magwitch’s influence over Pip is an acousmatic one. My methodological platform could be called developmental acousmatic phenomenology, as far as I attempt to discuss the dynamics between subject, sound, and development in time. The strategy of analysis, according to such a platform, includes selecting moments from the novel that exemplify Magwitch’s acousmatic influence over Pip, and also, comparing rural and urban acousmatic influences and the ways in which they affect the young man. Through the methods of selection, comparison and contextualisation, I arrive at the conclusions that rural and urban sounds in the Dickensian novel Great Expectations are more like subjective attributes, coloured with, or evoking, certain memories or events, rather than simple physical facts. Additionally, hearing, as a sense, is presented as a universal sense which is able to connect and communicate other senses – for instance, visions and smells in the novel could also be heard.
NATIONAL LITERATURE – WORLD AUDIENCE: PROJECTS, IMPOSSIBILITIES
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Peleva, Inna
The text draws upon a significant number of allusions to classical and recent Bulgarian literary works incorporated in Yanitsa Radeva’s novel The Year That Began on Sunday (2024). This “catalogue” is designed to show that the book is yet another example of a work that cannot be re-created – even if the translator is gifted enough – to be properly received in a non-Bulgarian cultural context. Parallels are drawn with the communicative strategies of other contemporary Bulgarian authors who (unlike Radeva in this particular novel) reach out to an audience beyond the confines of Bulgaria’s national context. The discussion also revolves around the fact that such globally oriented projects often involve a negative assessment of Bulgarian-ness; this tendency contrasts with Radeva’s narrative which, at the same time, is alien to a patriotic idealization of the local. The paper puts forward the idea that the translation of the world – national nexus into the dreamland – self-deprecating identity nexus (a translation peculiar to some contemporary Bulgarian literary texts) re-confirms the hypothesis that Bulgarian culture is self-colonizing (after Alexander Kyossev).
WESTERN MODELS, EASTERN FOLLOWERS: BULGARIAN CRIME FICTION FROM SOCIALISM TO POST-SOCIALISM
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Bressan, Francesco
This article analyzes the evolution of Bulgarian crime fiction from the socialist period (1944-1989) to the post-socialist era, focusing on the work of Bulgarian writer Andrei Gulyashki and on various elements of crime prose as a mirror of the country's sociopolitical transformations. During the socialist period authors such as Andrei Gulyashki created ideologized heroes like Avakum Zakhov, a socialist counterpart to James Bond, who operated within the rigid narrative boundaries imposed by socialist realism. The genre served both as a propaganda tool and as a form of controlled escapism. The comparison between the Russian translation, faithful to the original work, and the English translation of the novel Momchilovo Case demonstrates substantial differences. With the fall of the regime in 1989, detective fiction underwent a radical metamorphosis: incorruptible heroes gave way to morally ambiguous antiheroes, reflecting the chaos, corruption, and crisis of values of the post-communist transition. Through textual and comparative analysis, this article demonstrates how Bulgarian crime fiction has maintained a national specificity while dialoguing with Western traditions, functioning as a literary barometer of the country's historical upheavals.
THE TALENTED AGAINST THE BLABBERMOUTHS OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: FLOWERS FOR THE NEIGHBOURHOOD BY IVAN DINKOV
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026) Mihaylov, Dimitar
This article offers an interpretation of Ivan Dinkov’s book Flowers for the Neighbourhood in which he examines the relations between the talented and the parochial, his reaction against it and ultimately his victory over it. The author comments on Dinkov’s thoughts about the Bulgarian people’s psychology and his ideas about personality vs community, people vs inhabitants, neighbourhood vs fatherland.
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.
POLITICAL FORNICATION AND THE NATIONAL IDEAL: THE IMAGE OF THE UNION
(Plovdiv University Press, 2025) Gyulemerova, Velika
The article analyzes Chardafon the Great. A Biographical Sketch in Profile, examining the ideological image of the homeland and different perceptions of the Unification. The emphasis is on the opposition between Zahari Stoyanov and Ivan Vazov which affected their different perceptions of the act of Unification. While for Vazov the heroes of this period are compromised, for Stoyanov they embody a new form of dignity. This difference in points of view is of crucial significance to understanding different ideological models in Bulgarian literature. The article also emphasizes the way in which patriarchal morality and traditional values are reinterpreted in the text. The main focus is the reversal of the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son – instead of condemnation, political “fornication“ is shown as adaptability. Chardafon the Great offers an alternative historical perspective, in which traditional notions of power, homeland and political loyalty are questioned. Zahari Stoyanov does not simply tell the biography of a hero, but creates a new model of national identity, in which imperfection and humor play a central role. The text affirms the Unification as an act of national self-affirmation, in which the people take their destiny into their own hands, despite the lack of “blessing“ from the Great Powers.

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