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The conducted study has shown problems with electronic documents already in the moment of their accession, as well as arrangement and description, storage and providing access to them in the archive. It turned out that, unfortunately, electronic documents are treated only as an addition to paper versions of materials. The study uses method of document analysis (including electronic document), as well as a survey – a questionnaire. The object of the study was a private papers of Professor Stanisław Gorgolewski.

Culture-bound references receive considerable attention from translation scholars, as they are regarded as one of the most difficult challenges that translators face. However, most studies examine the transmission of culture-bound references to the target audience in literary texts, while research that would examine the translation of culture-bound references in audiovisual discourse involving additional constraints is somewhat limited. Dubbing is considered to be one of the most challenging modes of audiovisual translation, mainly due to the synchronization applied to it. This paper presents a model for the analysis of the translation of culture-bound references dedicated specifically to dubbing. The authors of the paper discuss the complexity of the concept of culture-bound references, their categorization and the taxonomies of their translation procedures. The article discusses the specifics of dubbing, the typology of synchronies applied in dubbing and restrictions posed by it on the translation of culture-bound references.

The present paper focuses on one of the main features of legal communication, namely informativeness. The article presents the informativeness of Polish legislative documents as an inherent but not always clearly understood socially feature of legal discourse, which has been regarded as a distinctive characteristic of normative acts. The study includes several levels of approximate semiotisation in relation to the cognitive criterion. The corpus comprises the most important Polish normative texts, namely the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, Criminal Code, Civil Code, and the Code of Civil Procedure. The analysis also included rulings of Polish common courts. Pragmatic and semantic criterion has been applied as the methodological basis for the analysis. The factor related to the use of legislative metaphors in executive and judicial practice was applied as an additional criterion. The aim of the paper was to determine the form of informativeness of the Polish legal texts and its extra-textual usefulness. Two levels of informativeness of legal texts, surface level and deep level, were established in the analysis. In legal discourse, informativeness took the form of a specific phenomenon. It referred not only to surface structures, but also to the elements of the content, requiring reconstruction from their meaning.

The paper analyzes works by the Serbian postmodernist writer Milorad Pavić. It attempts to prove that he possesses knowledge of royal art and uses masonic symbols in his writing related to geometry and architecture, including the radiant delta, compass, masonic gloves, and clepsydra. It is assumed that under the influence of these particular ideas, the writer creates the leading image of an architect and the motif of construction as freemasons believe in the Great Architect of the Universe. In the short novel Damascene, according to speculative masonry's beliefs, the building of the church projects the building of a temple in a human soul. M. Pavić, as an architect, creates a structure of every novel, which he identifies with the golden section. This paper finds special symbols of the divine proportion in his prose, including snail’s shells, pyramids, and violins. A dynamic structure as an embodiment of the open work concept and a broad spectrum of themes provide artistic communication with a creative recipient. A reader has an opportunity to choose their own style of reading and solving textual puzzles because Pavić’s prose represents a wide variety of themes, symbols, images, and allusions that embody the secrets of Freemasonry, allowing for various interpretations.

The article focuses on the metaphorical conceptualisation of the #MeToo movement, which has spread virally as a hashtag used on social media in an attempt to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment. The #MeToo movement as a social issue is looked at from the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) (Charteris-Black 2005/2011, 2014, Musolff 2004, 2016, Koller 2014, De Landtsheer 2009, Hart 2010). CMA is a blend of Cognitive Metaphor Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis that aims at identifying how metaphors are used to describe socially contested issues and how they reveal speakers’ hidden intentions and attitudes (Charteris-Black, 2014, p. 174). CMA is also concerned with the different functions metaphors may perform. A predicative function, being one of many, is most likely to explain how socially sensitive issues are communicated (Charteris-Black, 2014, pp. 204-207; Musolff, 2016, p. 4). In other words, it implies positive or negative attitudes expressed towards certain issues. Thus, the paper aims to study how the predicative function of metaphor manifests in the discourse of contemporary social concerns cross-linguistically and cross-culturally. In other words, the paper looks into how different attitudes towards the #MeToo movement are communicated via metaphors in Lithuanian and English media and how they shape prevailing public attitudes.

The aim of this paper is to raise awareness of the significance of slang in educating well-rounded EFL learners. The study, first, uncovers the most salient features of slang, distinguishing it from jargon, argot, cant, etc. It also discusses the reasons why slang springs to life; the users of slang and functions it performs, as well as the word-formation processes employed in its creation. The paper further investigates the familiarity of Macedonian undergraduate students of English with currently relevant English and American slang, the main hypothesis being that they lack knowledge of slang due to insufficient exposure and instruction. The instruments used are a questionnaire and a quiz comprising 60 slang terms, intended to inspect informants’ knowledge of slang. The results obtained from this research confirm that slang is disregarded in EFL acquisition, and that no steady progress is made in the students’ knowledge of slang in the course of their university studies.

This paper deals with the comparative analysis of the possibility to apply both linguo-cognitive and quantitative methods in the study of structure of mental units, e.g. concepts. The current research continues our overall and integrated study of English ecological discourse and is the next in a number of logical research series of this scientific challenge (Ковалик 2017; Ковалик, Тимочко 2018). The study object of this paper is WATER concept in English water management metadiscourse. The research is carried out on the basis of the original text of the EU Water Framework Directive 2000/60 / EC. The aim of the paper is not only to conduct a frame-based analysis of WATER concept using Svitlana Zhabotynska’s methodology of conceptual analysis (Жаботинська 1999) but also to analyse the concept occurrences in the researchable metadiscourse. In the present investigation, the conceptual structure of WATER concept is modelled through basic frame schemas and is considered as an open system. The research takes a new look at the application of linguo-cognitive and quantitative data analyses in the study of WATER concept in English water management metadiscourse.

The article is devoted to the description of new trends in theory and dictionary making process of modern English lexicography. At the same time the paper also covers the main historic steps of formation and development of national English lexicography with special reference to the most reliable English dictionaries for general purposes (early glossaries and concordances, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary, etc.) and special purposes (English writers’ glossaries, concordances, lexicons to the complete and separate works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other famous English men of letters). The main accent is made on the digital époque of English national lexicography, describing innovative features of both printed and Internet dictionaries of various types and formats from the point of view of a user studying English as a foreign language. The paper touches upon new branches of English lexicography (collaborative, volunteer) with users’ needs and demands at the centre of dictionary making process.

This paper presents a conceptual-discursive analysis of Immanuel Kant’s texts from the viewpoint of the ontological essence of humanity (the so-called human nature). On the basis of a functional-pragmatic methodology, the author proposes a metalanguage for a pragmatic conceptual analysis of Kant’s philosophical discourse, together with his own idea of a human as a person, human being, individual, character, and bearer of human traits. The paper consists of two parts. Part One presents the principles by which the human personality is structured, as well as the fundamental methodological questions of the essence of humanity. Part Two analyzes Kant’s notion of “human nature” in both the formal aspect and that of systematic localization. It also considers the issues of social pragmatics and the empirical motivation of “human nature,” which arise from a discursive analysis of texts by Kant. The author attempts to demonstrate that Kant was one of the first philosophers to discern the specificity of human nature in social relations of human personality, which he presented neither in a causal-deterministic form (as a spiritual substance handed down from generation to generation) nor an essentialist one (as a timeless transcendental essence), but rather as a function of social experience for a particular human being (both pragmatic-teleological and transcendental-a posteriori).

The conceptualization of limits in academic legal written language is the focus of the present article. The main problem of the research is the controversial evaluation of such metaphorical expressions from the normative point of view. In academic legal papers, the upper limit of various payments is named as ‘ceiling’. Thus, the implemented conceptual metaphor shows that THE SYSTEM OF SOCIAL SECURITY IS A ROOM. In the same papers, the minimal limit of incomes of inhabitants and of lawbreaker at which some social measures are applied or at which some sanctions start to take effect is named as 'threshold’. Therefore, these metaphorical expressions implement the conceptual metaphor CIRCUMSTANCES (OF INHABITANT OR OFFENDER) IS A ROOM. Though the figurative meanings of both ‘ceiling’ and ‘threshold’ in the Lithuanian language had formed due to the impact of foreign languages; the figurative meanings of the word ‘threshold’ are included in the dictionaries as the correct ones, but the expressions with ‘ceiling’ are evaluated like semantic calques.

Published in 1816, "Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition" by Maria Wirtemberska appeared but five years after the publication of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" (1811). My paper stipulates that Wirtemberska's Malvina was to a large extent inspired by Austen's novel although no straightforward evidence exists to suggest that the Polish writer was familiar with the works of the English author. Austen's novels were not rendered into Polish in the nineteenth century: the first translation was published as late as 1934. But novels by Western European authors were read by educated Poles in their original language versions, or in French translations and adaptations. It is crucial to view Wirtemberska's romance as a specimen of the same genre as Austen's works because several parallels emerge in terms of the novel's structure, motifs and characters. My paper looks at the ways in which the motif and images of crying are used in Austen's and Wirtemberska's novels. The two works seem a good choice for this kind of comparative analysis as they tackle various aspects of sensibility, a phenomenon which invoked mixed feelings among the novelists' contemporaries, excitement and a sense of moral jeopardy included.

his article studies the development of the translation theories in the second half of the twentieth century, a period during which significant theoretical contributions were made in translation circles. These contributions had a profound impact on the practice of translation. The individuals who contributed to the present state of translation theory worked in translation circles, and this article examines their contributions. A selected history of theoretical developments, focusing on the most important ideas relevant to translation work, is presented in order to examine the impact of such theories on the practice of translation. It has become commonplace to believe that the deconstructionist and poststructuralist views on translation have opened new perspectives in Translation Studies. The aim of this paper is to highlight the main tenets of the major authors of these theories. The attention is especially drawn to a well-known controversy related to the concept of equivalence and translation strategies. This paper presents the main criticism made by the poststructuralist translation views on interpretation. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

The present article is aimed at examining the category of the reality status by discussing the dichotomy “realis / irrealis” in the context of the categories of modality, habituality and futurity. Prototype analysis is juxtaposed with scope analysis, and the category of the habitual is discussed from the typological perspective as well as from the perspective of its connection with the category of futurity. The paper presents aspect diversity of habituals (perfective and imperfective aspect and its contextual implications) as well as the differentiation between the habitual and modality. A special focus is on the prototype analysis and its application instances in Polish, English and Hebrew. The primary objective of the paper is to show that, although it is possible to treat irrealis as notional category, the habituals in Polish and many other Slavic languages (e.g. Czech) should be identified with the modality domain rather than irrealis category. The paper is also an attempt to provide an insight into the distinction between (ir)realis and encoding systems of modalities as the habitual aspect displays modal category features in many languages (including Polish).

The aim of this paper is to present translation strategies applied in the process of literary translation of proper names. The analysis is carried out on the example of the translation of the novel Prince Caspian by Clive Staples Lewis: into Polish by Andrzej Polkowski and into German by Lena Lademann-Wildhagen. The paper analyses how proper names referring to living creatures, geographical or topographical names were translated. The techniques applied by the two translators were significantly different, from transference, substitution, translation of part of the names, through referring associations with the character’s behaviour or the features of the object, to free translation, limited only by the author’s imagination. All the names were analysed in terms of semantics, morphology, for some the graphemes and phonemes were studied. First, the translation techniques used dealing with proper names were identified. Based on this, the results of the analysis of the selected names from the novel and its translations were presented together with conclusions on their influence on the world depicted in the novels and the impact the differences in translations can have on the reader.

The Panama Papers leakage implicated several African leaders in global corruption deals. It confirmed perceptions that these leaders care little for their people. African leaders who overstay term limits are the focus of Western democratic ire. Pro-democracy movements, the overthrow of regimes characterised as undemocratic gain unquestioned media coverage and praise. African leaders are summoned to the International Criminal Court in The Hague; their societies debate whether justice can be administered from outside. Increasingly, voices question African political and developmental processes. African Literature participates in struggles defining modern Africa’s search for identity and its own definition of leadership. It points to possibilities rooted in African Oral Tradition and in customs predating various colonial systems. Leadership forms that societies choose are closely linked to perceptions of identity. This paper examines the crisis of identity which has resulted in Africa’s crisis of leadership and looks at approaches taken by African writers and filmmakers: Malian filmmaker Cheik Oumar Sissoko’s film La Genèse (1999), South African writer Zakes Mda’s novels Ways of Dying(1995), Heart of Redness (2000).

The paper analyses how the discourses of a commodity, trade, and shop become, on the one hand, the subjects of literary reflection and, on the other hand, the certain structures of meaning that form the existential and cultural practices moulding the commodity into a form of reality, trade as a relationship with reality, and shop as a kind of a reality genre in the modern Lithuanian literature. Although the history of a commodity, trademark, or other related subjects in the Lithuanian literature have not been traced on the paper, it is claimed, more out of the feeling, that a commodity and the phenomena related to it are more likely to appear in the modern literary texts. The feeling is based on the theory of a commodity and the trade as a model of a certain culture; the theory, starting with the works of Karl Marx, explains the transformations of the art creation and reception in accordance with the demand / supply forces that started to determine the processes of the art in the Western culture from the middle of the nineteenth century. The theoretical core of cultural commodification enables to speak about a commodity as a literary top not as a coincidence, but as a process, which came to be discussed and reflected long before the market economy in the last decade of the 20th century, in the “non-commodity” Soviet political system, as the documents of the Lithuanian Association for Writers suggest. The combination of the archival data, the facts of the modern literature, and the theory of cultural commodification detects the evolving discourse of commodification reflection and its character in the Lithuanian literature.

The article aims to present the creation of the text corpus of short prose by Latvian women writers and a pilot study on the distribution of body words in the corpus. The corpus development is a part of the research process, which aligns with the goals and perspectives of feminist literary history. First, the paper introduces the design of the corpus. Consisting of 259 texts, published between 1893 and 2002, it is the first literary corpus focusing on Latvian women writers and on short prose. Given that short forms have long dominated women’s prose, this focus was a conscious decision to highlight women’s contribution to writing. Further, the article presents the methods of distant reading that were applied to identify the distribution of body words in the texts. The desire to reintroduce women into the history of literature has also led to a focus on the body. While writing is mediated through the body, it is also a space to explore and take possession of the body. Finally, by combining the results of distant reading with examples of close reading, the distribution of body words in different periods is compared.

The present paper discusses the problem of unethical speech acts, verbal aggression and valuing of texts in the context of legal regulations concerning the axiology of communication in a democratic state. The aim of the study was to describe the relationship between linguistic activity and the rules of ethics of expression in the context of Polish cultural-civilisational conditions and legal directives on ethics of expression and to relate forms of linguistic aggression to how they are qualified as prohibited acts that violate the norms of acceptable patterns of communication. The research corpus comes from legal acts and public statements. The legislative corpus was based on two normative texts fundamental for regulating the ethics of social life, i.e. the Constitution of the Republic of Poland (K97) and the Polish Penal Code(KK97). Discursive analysis and legal functional-systemic interpretation constituted the methodological foundation of the study. The analysis showed the expected functionality of a word in the context of a community organised within state structures. On the one hand, a word can be a way of describing reality or emotions, and on the other, an object of legal protection or an instrument of crime.

The paper analyses 782 nicknames that were recorded at Veliuona vicinity during the project of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language “Modern Research of Geolinguistics in Lithuania: Optimisation of Network of Points and Interactive Spread of Dialectal Information”. The paper aims to identify the characteristic attributes of nickname structure. The analysis of the relations in derivation, i. e., tentatively distinguishing the derivation base and formant is the only way to talk about common word derivation. While researching the nicknames it is difficult to find such a universal criterion in derivation which would enable the distribution of nicknames into the primary and the secondary ones due to the fact that when a nickname and its appellative derivation motivation coincides the confusion arises. Thus, the paper invokes the structural analysis of nicknames to find universal criteria that would enable the distinction of nicknames into the primary and the secondary. The article eliminates the primary nicknames that do not differ from the motivational word, 241 secondary nickname is being researched ant structurally analysed. The structural analysis discloses a proper structure and common words being selected for nickname creation. Structurally analysing the secondary nicknames, the nicknames with suffix, inflection, mixed structure, compound, composite and phrasal nicknames were distinguished. It was determined that in vacinity of Veliuona the nicknames with suffix and inflection are mostly used.

The paper examines wit as a major, informing and thematically important literary element that enables the readers to penetrate into the deeper realms of imagination and interpretation. The meaning of the term ‘wit’ has changed a lot during the years both in critical and dictionary usage. Therefore, various conceptions of wit from the diachronic perspective are presented and its types in the theatrical discourse are examined. In the discourse of drama wit is generally divided into two main forms: ‘repartee’ and ‘quip’. As repartee it is used to display ones agility or mental superiority over another character in the dialogue taking a form of a verbal contest. As quip it can act as a sharp stroke of wit to announce the speaker’s original opinion or observation. However, both types of wit invoke cleverness as the most important component of a witty utterance. The interest of the authors is particularly directed towards the role of social wit in John Webster’s drama "The Duchess of Malfi" (1613). This Jacobean drama is often considered the dramatic masterpiece of the early seventeenth-century English stage. The paper aims to reveal the complexity of a witty dramatic discourse by analyzing its technique, contexts and contest characteristics through the examination of witty instances formed in the drama. It gives an exploration of the social context and mechanism of the formation of a witty utterance that has a high social value as it is in Webster’s play where wit serves to convey the language of contest, often resulting in aggression, open mockery, exposing moral corruption and social injustice.

The paper presents a semantic analysis of a range of selected terms along with contrastive characteristics of their syntagmatic and paradigmatic peculiarities. “Price”, “cost” and “value” are the basic notions of market economy and, correspondingly, the lexemes denoting them. As a result, the paper focuses on the information these lexemes transmit along with their equivalents in the Polish and Russian languages. Probable variants of their translation are also shown. The problem of evaluation of their linguistic volume refers to the functioning of these words in economic discourse as general notions (hyperonyms) that involve a range of particular ones. The author takes into consideration the factors, which have the impact on translation of the Polish and Russian terminological phrases (word groups) that are often calques of English terms. An adequate translation is influenced by the following: understanding of terminological and non-terminological nature of a phrase being translated, acquaintance with idiomatic expressions used at translation of English terminological lexis, taking into account the regularities of syntagmatic collocation of a word. On the basis of use of phrases from the Russian and Polish economic discourses, the author shows the characteristics of use for selected terms and gives some adequate variants of their translation. The analysis of relations within the terminological group under study has shown that in the process of translation and choice for synonyms terminological and non-terminological meaning of a word, use of idiomatic expressions in both target languages that are calques from English, a tradition in realization of syntagmatic collocation of a word should be taken into consideration.

The aim of this paper is threefold: firstly, to establish whether the transitive into -ing complementation pattern is productive; secondly, to establish the semantic taxonomy of the matrix verbs taking the into -ing complementation pattern; thirdly, to investigate the existence of a correlation between the semantics and the predicate-argument structure of the matrix verbs selecting the transitive into -ing pattern in contemporary spoken American English in the COCA corpus. Goldbergian construction grammar constitutes a framework for this inquiry, whereby grammatical constructions do convey meaning, irrespective of the words used in them, with the transitive into -ing pattern instantiating a type of a caused motion construction (Goldberg 1995). The results of the patternbased, synchronic corpus inquiry are believed to constitute a contribution to the area of shifting verbal complementation, thus providing further evidence to the validity of Gunter’s notion of Great Complement Shift (Rohdenburg 2006). This paper is structured in accordance with traditional IMRD model.

This paper presents a conceptual-discursi­ve analysis of Immanuel Kant’s texts from the viewpoint of the ontological essence of humanity (the so-called “human nature”). On the basis of a functional-pragmatic methodology, the author proposes a metalanguage of pragmatic conceptual analysis for Kant’s philosophical discourse, along with his own idea of a human as a person, human being, individual, character, and bearer of huma­nity’s traits. The paper consists of two parts. Part One presents the principles of structuralization of human personality, and raises fundamental methodological questions about the essence of humanity. Part Two analyzes Kant’s notion of human nature in both the formal aspect and that of systematic localization, and also considers issues of social pragmatics and the empirical motivation of human nature, issues which arise from a discu­rsive analysis of texts by Kant. The author aims to prove that Kant was one of the first philosophers to see the specificity of humanity in social relations, and presented it, neither in a causal-deterministic form (as a spiritual substance handed down from generation to generation), nor an essentialistic form (as a timeless transcendental essence), but in the form of a function of an individual’s social experience (both pragmatic-teleological and tran­scendental-aposteriori).

This paper presents a contrastive linguo-cognitive study of the phraseological semantic field, here viewed as a means of manifesting the corresponding fragment of the phraseological picture of the world built in consciousness and defined as a semantic unity of phraseological units which are connected with some pheno­menon of thereal or imagined world and reveal the phraseological concept of this phenomenon.The paper focuses upon three main aspects of a contrastive linguo-cognitive study of the same phraseological semantic fields in different languages, highlighting their cognitive value: 1) a semantic inventory of the phraseological semantic field; 2) a phraseological representation of individual phraseological semantic groups as components of the phraseological semantic field and manifestants of separate features of the phraseological concept; and 3) a configuration of the component structure of the phraseological semantic field. The paper presents a method of contrastive linguo-cognitive study which is carried out in the three mentioned directions and allows explication on the basis of language data, as well as comparison and characterization of the contents of the different languages’ concepts and accents available in these contents. The method emphasizes the need to process language data and the importance of employing statistical procedures, both to estimate the relevance of possible interlanguage differences and to assess the possibility of their interpretation in terms of cognitive and cultural specificity. Use of the method is demonstrated through the example of a contrastive linguo-cognitive study of the Russian and English phraseological semantic field of arguing.

The occurrence of linguistic variants is called variantivity (in Polish: wariantywność) or variance (in Polish: wariancja). Not always does the term linguistic variance have an identical meaning. In this paper, it is understood in its narrower meaning, i.e., it encompasses linguistic elements that differ in form but have the same or a similar function. It deals with both variants sensu stricto (i.e., identical as far as the function is concerned) and oscillating variants (i.e., those that differ from one another in one quality). Linguistic variantivity can be clas­sified using the following criteria: 1. Linguistic correctness (correct and incorrect alternate forms); 2. Area of linguistic operation: extralinguistic (spel­ling and punctuation) and intralinguistic (grammar, lexis, phonetics); 3. Universality of usage (systemic and idiolectic variants); 4. Frequency (frequent and rare forms); 5. Chronology (contemporary and outdated forms); 6. Geography (countrywide and regional variants); 7. Range (countrywide and non-countrywide forms characteristic of a particular milieu, profession, etc.); and 8. Stylistics (neutral and marked forms). The typology presented in this paper is open, which means that other criteria can be added to discriminate alternate forms (for instance, the criterion of genetics—native and non-native variants). Some criteria overlap, e.g., outdated, regional, idiolectic, environmental, and/or stylistically marked forms can all be considered rare (the criterion of frequency). Putting that aside, this classification can be expected to contribute to a better recognition of the phenomenon of varian­tivity in the Polish language.

This paper discusses two literary works by Chinua Achebe—"No Longer at Ease" (1960) and "The Education of a British-Protected Child" (2011)—in the context of the issue of diversity in the postcolonial setting. It aims to approach Achebe’s work from a new perspective, by applying a theoretical paradigm employed in business to the study of literature and culture. The “diversimilarity” paradigm, used for managing cultural diversity in organisations, is applied and shown to be pertinent to the investigation of literature, too. The methodology employed combines theoretical data with the practical implications of the conceptual framework on Achebe’s work. The paper starts with a discussion of the diversity concept and then moves on to tackle the diversimilarity paradigm in business. Then the investigation focuses on Achebe’s “duality” and “middle ground” concepts as they assist diversimilarity, concepts which work together at the levels of mentality, ideology, and identity. Finally, the paper focuses on language and the methods proposed by Achebe to manage and solve the existing linguistic diversity problems in Nigeria. The findings show that in the works explored, the diversimilarity paradigm is assisted by other concepts as solutions for the Nigerian people to cope with diversity. Moreover, Achebe shows that the other conceptions that support diversimilarity are still effective, even though they are rooted in the ancestral values of his Igbo people. The originality of the paper results from placing Achebe’s literary work in the context of contemporary concerns related to human identity in the postcolonial globalized environment and from expanding the scope and methods of literary research by employing concepts from other areas of human activity. Thus, the intersection between the worlds of the economy and culture seems fruitful for the investigation of cultural diversity.

In the Second Polish Republic, only professors and associate professors (docents) working at universities were referred to as academics. This paper presents issues related to their employment. In the interwar period, the rules for employing academics were stated in the laws of academic schools. There were two such acts at the time, which defined the rules for promotion to associate and full professorships. The manner of the appointment was based on the existence of a limited number of such chairs. All professorships were set up by the Polish government. The laws of academic schools also described the habilitation procedure, which led to receiving permission to lecture and use the academic title of docent. In this paper, general reflections on hiring academic teachers at universities are supported by examples from Stefan Batory University. I determined the size of the two employed groups, professors and docents, at the University between the wars. 138 persons worked there as professors—the largest number in 1937–38—and 70 were docents, with a maximum in one academic year of 11. I also describe issues regarding their scientific research (philosophers, literature specialists, and the academics from the Faculty of Medicine had the greatest achievements) and didactic and organizational work, as well as their salaries. I devote some attention to their private lives and non-academic activities as well (especially in relation to the most famous among them). My deliberations are based on archives and printed sources generated by SBU.

This paper analyzes the dynamics of usage of the lexical units ксива and малява (types of slip) in Russian criminal discourse. We are led to believe that, despite the large variety in understanding of the term “discourse,” it can be defined as a sphere of human linguosemiotic experience which is determined by the pragmatics of activity carried out within it, the socio-psychological features of the participants of interactions, the specifics of time and space, and topics according to the methodology proposed by O. Leszczak. Nowadays, a growing interest in criminal discourse has been observed and implies “complex research on the discourse about crime, which enables better understanding of its participants, their criminal positions and functions, the problematics and issues for discussions about crime, along with its influence on modern criminology and crime prevention” (Жалинский 2009). All these factors should be taken into account, making the researcher verify the sources of language material in order to avoid distorting meanings in the word usage under study. This is caused by the notional sphere itself, which, in certain types of discourse, can be verbalized by the word group, which may be represented by a word expression, phrase, speech segment, etc. Words and word expressions considered as phraseological units of criminal discourse were analyzed in this paper.

This paper discusses the cityscape as an essential element of African American fiction. Since the time of Romanticism, the city has been regarded as the embodiment of evil forces which are alien to human nature and radiate fear and death. For decades, African-Americans have been isolated in the black ghettos of major American cities which were in many ways responsible for their personal growth or their failure. Often this failure is determined by their inability to find their bearings in a strange and alien world, which the city symbolizes. The world beyond the black ghetto is shown as brutal and terrifying, while the world inside is devoid of hope. Crime, vandalism, poverty, overcrowding, and social conflicts turn out to be the landmarks of big cities, because the people who migrate to them and make up most of their population are also the poorest and least adapted to urban life: they have lost their roots, and feel displaced in the anonymous urban society. A number of African-American novels depict protagonists who are unable to adapt to life in a big city, and end in degradation and misery. James Baldwin’s novels are among the most representative. His disordered and dislocated characters are products of the external world of the city of the machine age, and as such they are characteristic of all African-American fiction. This paper analyzes some of the recent black novels that reverberate with Baldwin’s ideas.

When communicating on the Internet, the participants, so to say, mingle two traditional modes of communication: writing and speech. The phenomenon appears to be most noticeable in chat room interactions. This suggestion is based on the fact that users try to behave as though they are engaged in a spoken act of communication, though the actual medium of communication employs written language forms. Therefore, Internet users need to know what conventions to employ and how to perform such actions in order to express the desired meanings, all with the aim of driving the interaction as close as possible to speech. Such implementations of certain language-related customs require a specific kind of language awareness from the users. This concept, plus the applied conventions, constitute the essence of this article. The discussion begins with an introduction to the research problem, in this case the intentional utilization by Internet chat participants of the graphic mode of communication in order to express their desired meanings. Second, the reader becomes acquainted with the terminology used in the paper, which includes: language awareness, (Internet) chat, and (language) corpus. Moreover, the source of the studied language material—a corpus of Internet chats—is presented. The said description additionally includes the informants’ characteristics, as well as the topicality of their conversations. The further sections of the paper discus the application of selected non-normative spelling conventions and word-formation processes, with the support of examples taken from the corpus. Based on the discussion, an attempt is made to indicate which features comprise certain values to the participants of Internet chats.

This paper presents a conceptual-discursive analysis of Immanuel Kant’s texts from the viewpoint of the ontological essence of humanity (the so-called human nature). On the basis of a functional-pragmatic methodology, the author proposes a metalanguage for a pragmatic conceptual analysis of Kant’s philosophical discourse, together with his own idea of a human as a person, human being, individual, character, and bearer of human traits. The paper consists of two parts. Part One presents the principles by which the human personality is structured, as well as the fundamental methodological questions of the essence of humanity. Part Two analyzes Kant’s notion of “human nature” in both the formal aspect and that of systematic localization. It also considers the issues of social pragmatics and the empirical motivation of “human nature,” which arise from a discursive analysis of texts by Kant. The author attempts to demonstrate that Kant was one of the first philosophers to discern the specificity of human nature in social relations of human personality, which he presented neither in a causal-deterministic form (as a spiritual substance handed down from generation to generation) nor an essentialist one (as a timeless transcendental essence), but rather as a function of social experience for a particular human being (both pragmatic-teleological and transcendental-a posteriori).

This paper reviews the more important standpoints concerning interlinguistic homonymy in a broad sense. It is a comparison of various opinions published during the last 50 years by researchers from the former USSR, Slovakia, Poland, and Western Europe. The paper shows many different terms and types of interlinguistic homonymy and explains what they result from. It also examines interlinguistic paronymies, interlinguistic synonymia, and false friends. There is no single precise definition of interlinguistic homonymy—there are a lot of different definitions concerning this issue. Some researchers claim that interlinguistic paronymies and interlinguistic homonymy are the same issue. Others claim that it is impossible to describe them together, for instance in one dictionary. The opinions of researchers are various and sometimes opposed. Not everybody believes that interlinguistic homonymy really exists, leading to frequent denials of the term interlinguistic homonymy. Homonymy is an issue which usually exists within one language—not among two or three (or more) languages. Many researchers have tried to explain this topic but each of them has understood interlinguistic homonymy differently. The paper considers doctor Katarzyna Wojan from the University of Gdansk, who shows a lot of very interesting precise definitions. She uses her own terms to be more precise and to avoid being misunderstood.

The aim of this paper is a cognitive grammar analysis of noun phrases in German which contain a proper noun. It is common for proper nouns in German, like first names, surnames, the names of cities and countries, to occur without an article. They can, however, also occur with the definite article, the demonstrative pronoun or with the indefinite article. There are also proper nouns in German, such as the names of rivers, mountain ranges, and some countries, which—according to many grammars—obligatorily occur with the definite article. However, it may happen that even those occur without an article. Whether there is an article before a proper noun or not is regarded as a grammatical phenomenon, without acknowledging its semantic aspects. The latter are only considered in a very few cases. A cognitive grammar analysis makes it possible to look at the abovementioned phenomena from the semanticconceptual perspective, thus ensuring wider opportunities to explain and describe them. According to cognitive grammar, every use of any element should have a semantic-conceptual motivation. The cognitive grammar analysis of German noun phrases containing a proper noun carried out in this article allows us to conclude that the use of articles in the German language is in most cases determined by the speaker’s intention. The analysis in this paper includes a description of noun phrases containing proper nouns selected from the German magazine 'Der Spiegel'.

The conceptualization of limits in academic legal written language is the focus of the present article. The main problem of the research is the controversial evaluation of such metaphorical expressions from the normative point of view. In academic legal papers, the upper limit of various payments is named as ‘ceiling’. Thus, the implemented conceptual metaphor shows that THE SYSTEM OF SOCIAL SECURITY IS A ROOM. In the same papers, the minimal limit of incomes of inhabitants and of lawbreaker at which some social measures are applied or at which some sanctions start to take effect is named as ‘threshold’. Therefore, these metaphorical expressions implement the conceptual metaphor CIRCUMSTANCES (OF INHABITANT OR OFFENDER) IS A ROOM. Though the figurative meanings of both ‘ceiling’ and ‘threshold’ in the Lithuanian language had formed due to the impact of foreign languages; the figurative meanings of the word ‘threshold’ are included in the dictionaries as the correct ones, but the expressions with ‘ceiling’ are evaluated like semantic calques.

Published in 1816, Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition by Maria Wirtemberska appeared but five years after the publication of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811). My paper stipulates that Wirtemberska's Malvina was to a large extent inspired by Austen's novel although no straightforward evidence exists to suggest that the Polish writer was familiar with the works of the English author. Austen's novels were not rendered into Polish in the nineteenth century: the first translation was published as late as 1934. But novels by Western European authors were read by educated Poles in their original language versions, or in French translations and adaptations. It is crucial to view Wirtemberska's romance as a specimen of the same genre as Austen's works because several parallels emerge in terms of the novel's structure, motifs and characters. My paper looks at the ways in which the motif and images of crying are used in Austen's and Wirtemberska's novels. The two works seem a good choice for this kind of comparative analysis as they tackle various aspects of sensibility, a phenomenon which invoked mixed feelings among the novelists' contemporaries, excitement and a sense of moral jeopardy included.

This article studies the development of the translation theories in the second half of the twentieth century, a period during which significant theoretical contributions were made in translation circles. These contributions had a profound impact on the practice of translation. The individuals who contributed to the present state of translation theory worked in translation circles, and this article examines their contributions. A selected history of theoretical developments, focusing on the most important ideas relevant to translation work, is presented in order to examine the impact of such theories on the practice of translation. It has become commonplace to believe that the deconstructionist and poststructuralist views on translation have opened new perspectives in Translation Studies. The aim of this paper is to highlight the main tenets of the major authors of these theories. The attention is especially drawn to a well-known controversy related to the concept of equivalence and translation strategies. This paper presents the main criticism made by the poststructuralist translation views on interpretation. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

The use of literary translations as an ideological weapon in the Cold War era has received considerable attention from translation scholars. However, the same tendency in today’s world remains underestimated, and research tends to be limited to political and media discourse. This paper examines the use of literary translations in the contemporary RF for contesting Ukrainian nationhood, fueling anti-Ukrainian sentiment and providing public support for the Russian military aggression against Ukraine. The research combines analysis of translated texts with examining factors that influence (non)translation and reception of works highlighting Russian-Ukrainian relations. The study focuses on translations of works by Taras Shevchenko, Nikolay Gogol and Oksana Zabuzhko and the Russian public debate concerning the role of literary translations in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

This paper aims to present conceptual metaphors employed to discuss psychedelics in texts published online by organizations popularizing knowledge about psychedelic substances. The foundation of this investigation comprises Cognitive Grammar, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and Corpus Linguistics. A corpus of 160 texts on medical research, mental health, and therapy published in 2020 is built to enable quantitative and qualitative analysis. The investigation reveals the existence of the conceptual metaphors: psychedelic experience is a trip (a single experience that requires return and may involve adventurous, sacred, challenging aspects), psychedelic experience is a journey (a set of experiences (trips), integration process, and development, may involve healing), psychedelic substance is a tool / bridge / vehicle / agent providing access. The study of collocates of the word “psychedelic” also suggests the conceptualization of the psychedelic substances and/or experience as medicine in the analyzed corpus.

Based on theories in pragmatics, rhetoric, argumentation and discourse analysis, the genre of “journalistic film review”, relatively little examined, has been analysed in this paper as a discourse reflecting a justified assessment. Our analysis, presented as a case study, concerns the persuasive function of the titles of 53 French and francophone film reviews. In this analysis, the act of persuasion, anchored in Perelman’s (1971) concept of argumentation, corresponds to the rhetorical structure of public discourse. For the act of persuasion, we focus on discursive and stylistic parameters related to the rhetorical principle of “movere” as the basis of the film review’s deliberative (advisory and justifying) dimension. The role of this dimension is to invite the addressee to co-create the meaning of the discourse through the process of co-schematisation, implemented with the help of emotional argumentation in the form of appraisive and affective lexemes. These stylistic devices also constitute a mechanism of persuasion typical of advertising discourse.

This article tries to familiarise the correspondence from Wałcz region and Krajna to Toruń magistrate on the basis of letters stored in the holding of State Archives in Toruń. 75 catalogue descriptions of letters from 12 towns located in the north-western territories next to the borders of pre-partition Republic of Poland were presented. One cannot exclude that there are more of them in Toruń Archives, but only two sections chosen from so called Catalogue II (Acts of Toruń) and Catalogue III (Craftsman letters) were submitted in the query.Chronological borders of the correspondence presented are from 1402 to 1799; however, majority of the correspondence come from the XVIII century. The authors are both private persons and institutions (craftsman associations, city councils, evangelical commune council). Among craftsmen and city council letters one can find so called birth certificates (Geburtsbrief ), job certificates (Lehrbrief ) and ecommending letters (Empfehlungsbrief ). Court letters concern cases similar to contemporary ones: inheritance issues, suits for vendor cheating, legal proceeding in case of murders and others. Private persons ask the city council of Toruń to help them execute debts from Toruń inhabitants. Evangelical commune from Łobżenica asks a few times for financial help.Material gathered in the article constitutes the excellent source for research on chancery’s functioning at that time, both when it comes to senders and recipients of letters.One can see some regularity in the forms of some typical documents – just like crafts man letters mentioned above – independently of the town they were issued. After the first partition of Poland (1772), when the territories under discussion were taken over by Prussia, there appeared even printed forms of certificates of craftsmen training. Court correspondence was ad hoc in nature, where only polite forms of address were repeated. Later, letter content was described and the recipient noted down the date of their receipt. Only a few craftsman letters were written on the parchment paper, rest of them were paper. Thanks to that, one can find water marks next to common samples; there are also watermarks hardly ever met in the subject literature. With majority of letters there are seals of senders, among others hanging wax seals, shellac seals, paper-shellac seals and wafer seals. The correspondence was mainly in German language due to the neighbourhood of Brandenburg and later – Prussia. Latin and Polish languages were used as well. The condition of letters varies a lot – from excellent to poor. Letters of Catalogue III are currently stored separately while the letters of Catalogue II are stored in sewn files.

The paper analyses how the discourses of a commodity, trade, and shop become, on the one hand, the subjects of literary reflection and, on the other hand, the certain structures of meaning that form the existential and cultural practices moulding the commodity into a form of reality, trade as a relationship with reality, and shop as a kind of a reality genre in the modern Lithuanian literature. Although the history of a commodity, trademark, or other related subjects in the Lithuanian literature have not been traced on the paper, it is claimed, more out of the feeling, that a commodity and the phenomena related to it are more likely to appear in the modern literary texts. The feeling is based on the theory of a commodity and the trade as a model of a certain culture; the theory, starting with the works of Karl Marx, explains the transformations of the art creation and reception in accordance with the demand / supply forces that started to determine the processes of the art in the Western culture from the middle of the nineteenth century. The theoretical core of cultural commodification enables to speak about a commodity as a literary top not as a coincidence, but as a process, which came to be discussed and reflected long before the market economy in the last decade of the XXth century, in the “non-commodity” Soviet political system, as the documents of the Lithuanian Association for Writers suggest. The combination of the archival data, the facts of the modern literature, and the theory of cultural commodification detects the evolving discourse of commodification reflection and its character in the Lithuanian literature.

The paper presents a semantic analysis of a range of selected terms along with contrastive characteristics of their syntagmatic and paradigmatic peculiarities. “Price”, “cost” and “value” are the basic notions of market economy and, correspondingly, the lexemes denoting them. As a result, the paper focuses on the information these lexemes transmit along with their equivalents in the Polish and Russian languages. Probable variants of their translation are also shown. The problem of evaluation of their linguistic volume refers to the functioning of these words in economic discourse as general notions (hyperonyms) that involve a range of particular ones. The author takes into consideration the factors, which have the impact on translation of the Polish and Russian terminological phrases (word groups) that are often calques of English terms. An adequate translation is influenced by the following: understanding of terminological and non-terminological nature of a phrase being translated, acquaintance with idiomatic expressions used at translation of English terminological lexis, taking into account the regularities of syntagmatic collocation of a word. On the basis of use of phrases from the Russian and Polish economic discourses, the author shows the characteristics of use for selected terms and gives some adequate variants of their translation. The analysis of relations within the terminological group under study has shown that in the process of translation and choice for synonyms terminological and non-terminological meaning of a word, use of idiomatic expressions in both target languages that are calques from English, a tradition in realization of syntagmatic collocation of a word should be taken into consideration.

The paper examines wit as a major, informing and thematically important literary element that enables the readers to penetrate into the deeper realms of imagination and interpretation. The meaning of the term ‘wit’ has changed a lot during the years both in critical and dictionary usage. Therefore, various conceptions of wit from the diachronic perspective are presented and its types in the theatrical discourse are examined. In the discourse of drama wit is generally divided into two main forms: ‘repartee’ and ‘quip’. As repartee it is used to display ones agility or mental superiority over another character in the dialogue taking a form of a verbal contest. As quip it can act as a sharp stroke of wit to announce the speaker’s original opinion or observation. However, both types of wit invoke cleverness as the most important component of a witty utterance. The interest of the authors is particularly directed towards the role of social wit in John Webster’s drama ‘The Duchess of Malfi‘ (1613). This Jacobean drama is often considered the dramatic masterpiece of the early seventeenth-century English stage. The paper aims to reveal the complexity of a witty dramatic discourse by analyzing its technique, contexts and contest characteristics through the examination of witty instances formed in the drama. It gives an exploration of the social context and mechanism of the formation of a witty utterance that has a high social value as it is in Webster’s play where wit serves to convey the language of contest, often resulting in aggression, open mockery, exposing moral corruption and social injustice.

The paper analyses 782 nicknames that were recorded at Veliuona vicinity during the project of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language “Modern Research of Geolinguistics in Lithuania: Optimisation of Network of Points and Interactive Spread of Dialectal Information”. The paper aims to identify the characteristic attributes of nickname structure. The analysis of the relations in derivation, i. e., tentatively distinguishing the derivation base and formant is the only way to talk about common word derivation. While researching the nicknames it is difficult to find such a universal criterion in derivation which would enable the distribution of nicknames into the primary and the secondary ones due to the fact that when a nickname and its appellative derivation motivation coincides the confusion arises. Thus, the paper invokes the structural analysis of nicknames to find universal criteria that would enable the distinction of nicknames into the primary and the secondary. The article eliminates the primary nicknames that do not differ from the motivational word, 241 secondary nickname is being researched ant structurally analysed. The structural analysis discloses a proper structure and common words being selected for nickname creation. Structurally analysing the secondary nicknames, the nicknames with suffix, inflection, mixed structure, compound, composite and phrasal nicknames were distinguished. It was determined that in vacinity of Veliuona the nicknames with suffix and inflection are mostly used.

The occurrence of linguistic variants is called variantivity (in Polish: wariantywność) or variance (in Polish: wariancja). Not always does the term linguistic variance have an identical meaning. In this paper, it is understood in its narrower meaning, i.e., it encompasses linguistic elements that differ in form but have the same or a similar function. It deals with both variants sensu stricto (i.e., identical as far as the function is concerned) and oscillating variants (i.e., those that differ from one another in one quality). Linguistic variantivity can be classified using the following criteria: 1. Linguistic correctness (correct and incorrect alternate forms); 2. Area of linguistic operation: extralinguistic (spelling and punctuation) and intralinguistic (grammar, lexis, phonetics); 3. Universality of usage (systemic and idiolectic variants); 4. Frequency (frequent and rare forms); 5. Chronology (contemporary and outdated forms); 6. Geography (countrywide and regional variants); 7. Range (countrywide and noncountrywide forms characteristic of a particular milieu, profession, etc.); and 8. Stylistics (neutral and marked forms). The typology presented in this paper is open, which means that other criteria can be added to discriminate alternate forms (for instance, the criterion of genetics—native and non-native variants). Some criteria overlap, e.g., outdated, regional, idiolectic, environmental, and/or stylistically marked forms can all be considered rare (the criterion of frequency). Putting that aside, this classification can be expected to contribute to a better recognition of the phenomenon of variantivity in the Polish language.

This paper presents a contrastive linguo-cognitive study of the phraseological semantic field, here viewed as a means of manifesting the corresponding fragment of the phraseological picture of the world built in consciousness and defined as a semantic unity of phraseological units which are connected with some pheno­menon of thereal or imagined world and reveal the phraseological concept of this phenomenon.The paper focuses upon three main aspects of a contrastive linguo-cognitive study of the same phraseological semantic fields in different languages, highlighting their cognitive value: 1) a semantic inventory of the phraseological semantic field; 2) a phraseological representation of individual phraseological semantic groups as components of the phraseological semantic field and manifestants of separate features of the phraseological concept; and 3) a configuration of the component structure of the phraseological semantic field. The paper presents a method of contrastive linguo-cognitive study which is carried out in the three mentioned directions and allows explication on the basis of language data, as well as comparison and characterization of the contents of the different languages’ concepts and accents available in these contents. The method emphasizes the need to process language data and the importance of employing statistical procedures, both to estimate the relevance of possible interlanguage differences and to assess the possibility of their interpretation in terms of cognitive and cultural specificity. Use of the method is demonstrated through the example of a contrastive linguo-cognitive study of the Russian and English phraseological semantic field of arguing.

When communicating on the Internet, the participants, so to say, mingle two traditional modes of communication: writing and speech. The phenomenon appears to be most noticeable in chat room interactions. This suggestion is based on the fact that users try to behave as though they are engaged in a spoken act of communication, though the actual medium of communication employs written language forms. Therefore, Internet users need to know what conventions to employ and how to perform such actions in order to express the desired meanings, all with the aim of driving the interaction as close as possible to speech. Such implementations of certain language-related customs require a specific kind of language awareness from the users. This concept, plus the applied conventions, constitute the essence of this article. The discussion begins with an introduction to the research problem, in this case the intentional utilization by Internet chat participants of the graphic mode of communication in order to express their desired meanings. Second, the reader becomes acquainted with the terminology used in the paper, which includes: language awareness, (Internet) chat, and (language) corpus. Moreover, the source of the studied language material—a corpus of Internet chats—is presented. The said description additionally includes the informants’ characteristics, as well as the topicality of their conversations. The further sections of the paper discus the application of selected non-normative spelling conventions and word-formation processes, with the support of examples taken from the corpus. Based on the discussion, an attempt is made to indicate which features comprise certain values to the participants of Internet chats.

This paper analyzes the dynamics of usage of the lexical units ксива and малява (types of slip) in Russian criminal discourse. We are led to believe that, despite the large variety in understanding of the term “discourse,” it can be defined as a sphere of human linguosemiotic experience which is determined by the pragmatics of activity carried out within it, the socio-psychological features of the participants of interactions, the specifics of time and space, and topics according to the methodology proposed by O. Leszczak. Nowadays, a growing interest in criminal discourse has been observed and implies “complex research on the discourse about crime, which enables better understanding of its participants, their criminal positions and functions, the problematics and issues for discussions about crime, along with its influence on modern criminology and crime prevention” (Жалинский 2009). All these factors should be taken into account, making the researcher verify the sources of language material in order to avoid distorting meanings in the word usage under study. This is caused by the notional sphere itself, which, in certain types of discourse, can be verbalized by the word group, which may be represented by a word expression, phrase, speech segment, etc. Words and word expressions considered as phraseological units of criminal discourse were analyzed in this paper.

In the Second Polish Republic, only professors and associate professors (docents) working atuniversities were referred to as academics. This paper presents issues related to theiremployment. In the interwar period, the rules for employing academics were stated in the lawsof academic schools. There were two such acts at the time, which defined the rules for promotion to associate and full professorships. The manner of the appointment was based on the existence of a limited number of such chairs. All professorships were set up by the Polish government. The laws of academic schools also described the habilitation procedure, which led to receiving permission to lecture and use the academic title of docent. In this paper, general reflections on hiring academic teachers at universities are supported by examples fromStefan Batory University. I determined the size of the two employed groups, professors and docents, at the University between the wars. 138 persons worked there as professors—the largest number in 1937–38—and 70 were docents, with a maximum in one academic year of 11. I also describe issues regarding their scientific research (philosophers, literature specialists, and the academics from the Faculty of Medicine had the greatest achievements) and didactic and organizational work, as well as their salaries. I devote some attention to their private lives and non-academic activities as well (especially in relation to the most famous among them). My deliberations are based on archives and printed sources generated by SBU.

This paper discusses the cityscape as an essential element of African American fiction. Since the time of Romanticism, the city has been regarded as the embodiment of evil forces which are alien to human nature and radiate fear and death. For decades, African-Americans have been isolated in the black ghettos of major American cities which were in many ways responsible for their personal growth or their failure. Often this failure is determined by their inability to find their bearings in a strange and alien world, which the city symbolizes. The world beyond the black ghetto is shown as brutal and terrifying, while the world inside is devoid of hope. Crime, vandalism, poverty, overcrowding, and social conflicts turn out to be the landmarks of big cities, because the people who migrate to them and make up most of their population are also the poorest and least adapted to urban life: they have lost their roots, and feel displaced in the anonymous urban society. A number of African-American novels depict protagonists who are unable to adapt to life in a big city, and end in degradation and misery. James Baldwin’s novels are among the most representative. His disordered and dislocated characters are products of the external world of the city of the machine age, and as such they are characteristic of all African-American fiction. This paper analyzes some of the recent black novels that reverberate with Baldwin’s ideas.