Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies

https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/issue/feed Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2026-03-05T00:00:00+00:00 Rodica Ilie, PhD, Prof. editor.but@unitbv.ro Open Journal Systems <h2>General Infomation</h2> The Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies is an academic journal, specialized in publishing scientific papers in the fields of Language, Literary, and Cultural Studies. The authors are both Romanian and foreign scholars who have made a contribution in these fields. The journal uses academic standards – MLA style of reference, double-blind peer-review, and language reviews. The journal has both a printed and electronic full version, also offering an online archive of abstracts. The main language of the journal is English but since 2009, a series of articles written in French and German have also been accepted. All abstracts and keywords are written in English. <h2> </h2> <h2>Aim</h2> The journal aims to offer an efficient framework of analysis as well as of communication between Romanian and international research in the field of Humanities. It also sets a series of high academic standards (by the peer-reviewing process, specialized scientific committee, English language abstracts, and articles), supporting the connections between Romanian research in the field of Linguistics, Literature, Cultural Studies, and the international mainstream academic publishing. The journal is <a href="http://www.cncs-nrc.ro/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/categorii.Reviste.Site_.CNCS_.2020.pdf">Category B</a> according to the Romanian National Research Council evaluation and is currently indexed in six international databases: <a href="https://about.ebsco.com/m/ee/Marketing/titleLists/e5h-coverage.htm">EBSCO</a>, <a href="http://www.ceeol.com/search/journal-detail?id=442">CEEOL</a>, <a href="https://erihplus.hkdir.no/journal?id=486362" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ERIH Plus,</a> <a href="https://search.catalog.loc.gov/instances/1c7f3e0b-30af-5aaa-95ce-7921bd0682ef?option=lccn&query=2010213581" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Library of Congress</a>, <a href="https://search.crossref.org/search/works?q=Bulletin+of+the+Transilvania+University+of+Brasov.+Series+IV%3A+Philology+and+Cultural+Studies&from_ui=yes">Crossref</a>, and <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/bulletin-of-the-transilvania-university-of-brasov-series-iv-philology-cultural-studies/oclc/997425764?referer=di&ht=edition">WorldCat</a>. Open Access Statement All content is freely available to the user in the full text since 2009. This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. Senior-editor, Rodica ILIE <a href="http://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read more</a> https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11462 Exclamative que/că constructions in Ibero-Romance and Romanian 2026-03-03T12:47:07+00:00 Ioana Stoicescu ioana.stoicescu@lls.unibuc.ro

The paper discusses Romanian că exclamative structures in comparison with their Ibero-Romance counterparts. It demonstrates that Romanian uses că as an illocutionary complementiser, homophonous to its subordinating counterpart, to mark an exclamative illocutionary force, much as Ibero-Romance languages do with que. Exclamative că/que utterances are expressive speech acts. They convey non-propositional meaning that extends beyond the at-issue content of the utterance. Specifically, they indicate the speaker’s attitudinal or emotional stance towards the propositional content, which is presupposed to be true. Such utterances encode a range of “non-neutral” mental attitudes, including surprise, admiration, or criticism. Moreover, they share with other exclamative structures core properties such as presuppositionality and a scalar interpretation. Unlike in Ibero-Romance, Romanian că exclamatives are restricted in the range of syntactic configurations they employ, always featuring dislocation to the left periphery.

2026-01-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11463 How L2 English Speakers Interpret Disjunction in Negative Sentences 2026-03-03T12:53:01+00:00 Maria-Cristina Lica maria.lica@s.unibuc.ro

The present study investigates the interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences, focusing on the cross-linguistic variation between English and Romanian and on the resetting of parameter values by Romanian-speaking learners of English. One experimental study was conducted for each linguistic group, and the results indicated that: 1) English speakers preferred the interpretation according to which disjunction is not understood as a positive polarity item (i.e., the –PPI interpretation), 2) Romanian speakers preferred the interpretation according to which disjunction is understood as a positive polarity item (i.e., the +PPI interpretation), and 3) the majority of English learners were at an interlanguage stage where there was variation between the English-like and Romanian-like preferences. This study contributes to the understanding of cross-linguistic variation in polarity phenomena and of parameter resetting in second-language learning.

2026-01-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11464 Feminine role nouns: A focus on Romanian and English 2026-03-03T13:17:18+00:00 Silvia Dragomir silvia.dragomir@s.unibuc.ro

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the influence of gender stereotypes and the role played by the prestige of professions in evaluating the role of nouns. The study looks at two languages that differ in their encoding of gender – English (a semantic gender language) and Romanian (a grammatical gender language). Four experimental studies were developed. The results confirm our main hypotheses: 1. gender stereotypes play a crucial part in evaluating role nouns; 2. the masculine form is used for more prestigious professions, while the feminine form is primarily used for stereotypically feminine, less prestigious role nouns.

2026-01-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11468 On the syntax of the Russian motion-verb system 2026-03-04T06:48:57+00:00 Marius Vasilca marius.vasilca@s.unibuc.ro

This study focuses on the motion-verb system in a Slavic language, namely Russian. It discusses the lexical elements that combine to express motion events. Talmy (1985, 2000) introduces a two-class typology based on how a language encodes Path of motion: Satellite-framed languages (Path conveyed by a satellite: a preposition, a particle, a prefix) and Verb-framed languages (the verb itself encodes Path). In this typology, Russian is a Satellite-framed language. The paper aims to analyze the various syntactic patterns that emerge from the combination of the lexical tools available in the language. By isolating and analyzing the syntactic patterns, the paper arrives at a comprehensive view of development regarding the expression of motion.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11469 The voiceless consonantal stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ in code-switched and non-code-switched contexts. A study on Romanian and English 2026-03-04T09:17:37+00:00 Victor Octavian Ionescu victorionescu99@gmail.com

The present study analyzes the variation that occurs in the realizations of the voiceless consonantal stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ by Romanian-English bilingual speakers, in both monolingual/non-switched and bilingual/code-switched language contexts. The central issue of our research is whether or not there exists cross-linguistic phonetic transfer of the suprasegmental feature [+aspiration], measurable through VOT values, when bilingual speakers of Romanian (as their L1) and English (as their L2) produce code-switched sentences, irrespective of the direction of the switch. The analysis of the VOT values of the speech productions, extracted using Praat (v. 6.3.09), shows that code-switching affects the productions of /p/, /t/, and /k/, with the [+aspiration] feature being transferred from English (L2) to Romanian (L1) in code-switched sentences, and that, in monolingual language contexts, we may also see a transfer of this feature occurring from one language to another.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11470 Accents in EFL and FLE Textbooks: A Romanian Perspective 2026-03-04T09:31:20+00:00 Oana-Miruna Machita oana-miruna.machita@lls.unibuc.ro

This study investigates the distribution of accents in the audio materials accompanying two EFL and two FLE textbooks commonly used in Romania. A total of more than 25,000 seconds of recordings were analysed and classified according to accent type, with percentages calculated per textbook. Results show that both English and French textbooks overwhelmingly prioritise prestige standards, Received Pronunciation and Paris French, while other varieties appear only in token proportions or in peripheral contexts such as songs or authentic video clips. These patterns reinforce the ideology of the standard, shaping learners’ perceptions of what counts as “correct” pronunciation. While maintaining a model accent provides stability at lower levels, broader variation is needed to normalise linguistic diversity and reflect the input learners encounter in classrooms and media.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11471 Accents and the supernatural: Code-switching in the TV miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) 2026-03-04T09:43:43+00:00 Alexandrina Ugrenova alexshort819@gmail.com

“The Fall of the House of Usher” (2023) is an American gothic horror drama TV miniseries about a wealthy family haunted by a mysterious stranger called Verna, a shape-shifter who assumes a different identity before meeting each of the Usher heirs prior to their deaths. Verna not only alters her physical appearance, but she also puts on various accents, which ultimately adds richness to her transformations. This paper will examine closely an important scene from Episode 5 where Verna, who has assumed the identity of a patient named Pamela Clemm, is speaking with Victorine LaFourcade, a researcher and one of Roderick Usher’s illegitimate children. I aim to see why Verna code-switches from the accent that she uses as Pamela Clemm to the accent that she normally speaks with whenever she is not in disguise.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11472 Dissidence in seven Romanian alternative translations of The Great Gatsby 2026-03-04T10:01:01+00:00 Nadina Visan nadina.visan@lls.unibuc.ro

The present article investigates instances of intertextuality in retranslation, especially cases of dissidence, namely situations in which a choice in a retranslated text differs from the obvious choices employed in previous versions of the same source text. By analysing a translational series that is made up of seven target texts, the article argues that filiation (strategic similarities in retranslation) is much easier to prove than dissidence and that a correlation between textual analysis and the study of paratexts remains the effective method of illuminating the process of retranslation.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11473 Direct, indirect and cultural strategies in El heredero de la corona and its Romanian counterpart, Moștenitorul coroanei 2026-03-04T10:13:44+00:00 Anca Raluca Romanescu jane_ancaraluca@yahoo.com

In this paper, I will look at the direct, indirect, and cultural translation strategies employed for the rendering into Romanian of the phraseological units present in the Spanish folktale “El heredero de la corona”, translated by Ileana Scipione in 2009. While phraseological units are widely acknowledged in the literature as linguistic–cultural hybrids, often encoding culturally specific meanings, they are approached in the present study primarily from a functional and linguistic perspective, unless they contain explicit culture-bound references. The translation procedures applied for the phraseological units chosen from the corpus are the ones described by Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet (1995). The conclusions will include the confirmation/denial of my working hypothesis, according to which direct strategies prevail in the translation from Spanish into Romanian, as languages of Latin origin, but will also touch upon the effects of these techniques on the reader.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11474 Dictionaries still in use? On the applicability of dictionaries in language learning 2026-03-04T10:20:52+00:00 Tunde Nagy nagytunde@uni.sapientia.ro

The present paper gives a brief overview of the research on dictionary use and presents the results of a survey completed by upper intermediate level ELF Students of Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania on the use of dictionaries. It also reflects on the vocabulary learning strategies upper-intermediate students tend to use, their difficulties in improving their vocabulary skills (known as the intermediate plateau), as well as on the factors that often hinder the acquisition of new vocabulary (e.g., the lack of certain skills, like noticing). Finally, taking into consideration the fact that students prefer the use of search engines and AI-powered tools, the paper encourages a vocabulary practice that includes the use of electronic dictionaries combined with linguistic databases and AI-powered tools, which can help students not only to become autonomous learners but also to develop their metalinguistic and collocational awareness.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11475 From Hamlet to 15-Minute Hamlet: genre shift through language manipulation 2026-03-04T10:40:17+00:00 Oana Tatu oana.tatu@unitbv.ro

While Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted and interpreted for many years now, and are being reshaped and refashioned as we speak, it is Tom Stoppard’s 15-Minute Hamlet that will be the focus of this study. This particular retake on Shakespeare’s Hamlet calls for attention since it is an open display of drastic linguistic and ideational change. We look into how the original tragedy turns into a parodic comedy, and how this genre switch is achieved by language manipulation, especially through lexical choice, syntactic compression, and humorous hints, all of which contribute to subverting the original tragedy.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11476 Linear comprehension of cultural appropriation in the business world 2026-03-04T10:46:12+00:00 Nada TKA nada.tka@unitbv.ro

This article critically explores cultural appropriation (CA) within the global fashion industry. Drawing on a critical literature review methodology, the study synthesizes interdisciplinary perspectives from cultural studies and intellectual property law to examine how cultural elements, particularly those belonging to historically marginalized communities, are extracted, repurposed, and monetized by dominant businesses. The analysis engages key theoretical frameworks, including postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and the concept of “ethnopreneurship”, arguing that CA in fashion is often a continuation of colonial logics under the guise of innovation. Through detailed discussion of typologies of CA, historical context, and power imbalances, the article highlights how designers and brands frequently disregard cultural origins and profit without consent from or compensation for the communities whose cultures they draw on.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11477 Spectacle and silence: vampire tourism and the erosion of folkloric cadence in Romania and Serbia 2026-03-04T11:00:40+00:00 Alton Arnold altonarnoldPhD@yahoo.com

This article stands at the boundary between spectacle and silence, tracing how vampire myth erodes differently in Romania and Serbia. In Romania, ancestral beliefs once woven into ritual life have been transformed into global spectacle—Dracula branding, tourism circuits, and algorithm-driven fragments. The myth remains visible but emotionally thinned, present yet disconnected from its cultural memory. In a rural Serbian village, by contrast, the vampir and veštica persist quietly in elders’ fading recollections. Their stories are not erased by censorship but by generational drift, a slow cultural erosion. Drawing on trauma theory, cultural memory studies, and ethnography, the article asks what is preserved when myth becomes a commodity, and what is lost when it fades without fanfare. It argues that both spectacle and silence diminish folkloric cadence, though Serbia’s quiet may signal care rather than absence. The folklorist becomes a witness to fragile memory, tending stories before they disappear.

2026-03-04T00:00:00+00:00 Copyright (c) 2026 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/11461 Editors’ Note: Constructing and Decoding Meaning 2026-03-03T12:40:37+00:00 R. Sinu raluca.sinu@unitbv.ro O. Tatu oana.tatu@unitbv.ro

No abstract