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By using the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), Comparative Imagology (Cl) and a corpusbased approach, this article studies the frequency and the content of conceptual metaphors of Romanian and European identity in the Romanian public discourse of 2012-2018. Our working practice focuses on the systematization of the characteristic occurrences of the Romanian autoand hetero-images, the comparison of the two series of data, as well as the analysis of the dominant trend therein, in relation to the previous time interval (2007-2011). The conclusions of the article concern the increase or decrease in the Romanian speakers' interest in identity-related problems, the structure of each identity ethno-profile, with a special attention paid to the relationship between the negative and the positive traits assigned to the two communities, as well as the analysis of the extent to which the Romanians have assumed a European identity, at die level of their public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not many people are specialists in economics, but everyone tends to have the impression of knowing something about economic crises--and, above all, they are eager to talk about it. The economic crisis seems to have been the dominant topic of the last decade at least in Romania, generating a plurality of parallel or even contradictory discourses. This paper explores, through an automated analysis using the ReaderBench Framework, Romanian media discourses on the economic crisis spanning the years between 2008 and 2018. We start by delineating four categories of discourse relevant for the selected topic: specialized academic publications (SA), specialized non-academic publications (SN), non-specialized non-academic publications (NN), and informal debate platforms (ID). For each of these categories, we selected 50 texts, which were then analyzed using the ReaderBench Framework. The 13 statistically significant textual complexity indices that resulted from this automated analysis show that the first three categories of discourse follow a downward progression pattern, while the fourth category (ID) appears to exhibit an eccentric behavior. The central thesis of our article is that this behavior stems from the ID's attempt to replace the specialized non-academic discourse, currently under threat of being devoured by the tabloid press in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic development of the word gen in contemporary Romanian against the terminological couplet (inter)subjectification - grammaticalization. The most important conclusions of the present research highlight the following aspects: the early twentieth-century (inter)subjectification of the phrase în genul constitutes the main premise for the grammaticalization of the term; the postwar competition and specialization of Romanian phrases în genul, de genul, and de tipul; the full grammaticalization of the anteposed (adverbial) gen and the insufficient grammaticalization of the postposed (adjectival and adverbial) gen, witnessed in Romanian over the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resulting from a post-doctoral research project, this study investigates the discourse of power in Early Middle Ages Transylvania (11th-14th centuries), viewed from the perspective of the relation between centers and peripheries. Our approach is based on three premises: unless acting as brute force, power is exercised mainly through discourse; public discourse is itself an act of power; discourse is not only a sign of power, but also a space of negotiating it. The most important conclusions of our research are: (a) during the 11th-14th centuries, the discourse of power in Transylvania undergoes a series of transformations caused by a number of factors such as the geopolitical situation in the region, the centralizing agenda of the Hungarian monarchy, the changes in socio-economic structure and the reform of the legal system; (b) although it is in the beginning (11th-to-13th centuries) an exclusive attribute of "those who fight" (bellatores) and "those who pray" (oratores) and it emerges from the balance between these forces, the discourse of power becomes also accessible in the 14th century Transylvania to "those who work" (laboratores), even if this process is only an alibi for increasing the centralizing power of the Hungarian monarchy; (c) despite the unifying trends of the center, the peripheral Transylvania retains, during the 11th-14th centuries, a substantial autonomy in relation to the Hungarian monarchy, both because of the military difficulties and the administrative problems entailed by the government of such a distant territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study performs an analysis of the discourse of power in the Early Middle Ages Transylvania (11th - 13th centuries). The conclusions of our research highlight that the discourse of power in the space and era, subject to investigation, is not a homogeneous one, but it undergoes a major paradigm shift at the middle of the 13th century, caused by the fluctuant relations between the king of Hungary, the nobles and the Pope, as well as by the Mongol invasions. The new discourse of power explores various self-legitimizing strategies, against the background of an accelerated process of separation and emancipation of the state power against the religious power. It also reveals that, paradoxically, the progressive incorporation of Transylvania into the Hungarian Kingdom and into the Catholic world during the 11th - 13th centuries has not led to an increase of central authority in this area, but rather to the strengthening and multiplication of local (“peripheral”) nuclei of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study investigates the creativity of textemes in the informative discourse. The methodological guide chosen for our approach is Eugeniu Coseriu's Integral Linguistics, while the material of analysis is given by the use of quotations from I.L. Caragiale's work in the Romanian public discourse of the last decade. With respect to the devices of meaning generation, we have limited the area of our research to the operation of texteme reframing, within which we delineated three subtypes: the weak reframing, the strong reframing and the absolute reframing, to which we added a fourth subtype (the topicalization), which signals a border-case. The conclusion of our study is that, in the current Romanian public discourse, textemes not only represent an important source of textual creativity, but they also tend to act as cognitive patterns which apply to an increasing number of prototypical situations of social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study analyses the manner of conceptualising and of describing the secondary object (SO) in the latest treatise of Romanian Grammar (GALR 2005, 2008). To that effect, the five criteria presented by the academic treatise for the purpose of differentiating the SO from the direct object (DO) are considered both from the perspective of their consistency and from the perspective of the current tendencies in the dynamics of the Romanian language. With respect to consistency, the last three of the five criteria advanced by the GALR -- the impossibility of coordination between the SO and the DO, the existence of a different grid of thematic roles and the incompatibility between the SO and the indirect object (IO) -- are discarded as non-conclusive in the process of carrying out an efficient separation between the SO and the DO. Furthermore, we note the fact that, from the list of the 12 ditransitive verbs provided by the GALR (to announce, to listen, to convince, to teach, to examine, to inform, to learn, to ask, to advise, to state, to traverse and to pass), some have lost this trait in the current stage of evolution of the Romanian language. On the other hand, when the SO indicates an object co-referential to a 3rd person singular feminine clitic, in the common use of the Romanian language one can observe the tendency of constructing the SO with pe and, therefore, of substituting/ doubling it by the corresponding clitic (o), which results in these properties no longer functioning as distinctive traits of the DO in relation to the SO. In conclusion, none of the five criteria suggested by the GALR works as a diagnostic test in order to dissociate between the two functions (DO and SO). However, we think that this fact should not lead to the elimination of the SO function from the Romanian grammar, but merely to a more rigorous formalisation of the thematic roles characteristic to the SO and the DO. In our opinion, only such an operation shall be able to support a criterion which should be sufficiently solid to differentiate between the two syntactic functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]