https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV <h2>General Infomation</h2> <p style="margin: 0cm; margin-bottom: .0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Segoe UI','sans-serif';">The Bulletin of the <em><span style="font-family: 'Segoe UI','sans-serif';">Transilvania </span></em>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.</span></p> <h2> </h2> <h2>Aim</h2> <p style="margin: 0cm; margin-bottom: .0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Segoe UI','sans-serif';">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.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm; margin-bottom: .0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: 'Segoe UI','sans-serif';">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 four international databases: <a href="https://www.ebscohost.com/titleLists/a9h-journals.htm">EBSCO</a>, <a href="http://www.ceeol.com/search/journal-detail?id=442">CEEOL</a>, <a href="https://search.crossref.org/search/works?q=Bulletin+of+the+Transilvania+University+of+Brasov.+Series+IV%3A+Philology+and+Cultural+Studies&amp;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&amp;ht=edition">WorldCat</a>.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm; margin-bottom: .0001pt; text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-family: 'Segoe UI','sans-serif';">Senior-editor,</span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm; margin-bottom: .0001pt; text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-family: 'Segoe UI','sans-serif';">Rodica ILIE</span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm; margin-bottom: .0001pt; text-align: right;" align="right"><span style="font-family: 'Segoe UI','sans-serif';"><a href="http://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read more</a></span></p> Transilvania University Press en-US Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2066-768X https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10725 No abstract Elena Buja Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 1 4 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10726 Political leadership is often deeply intertwined with notions of masculinity, shaping public perceptions and reinforcing cultural expectations of authority and dominance. This study explores the construction of hegemonic masculinity in political discourse by analysing recent speeches of the current US president, Donald Trump, and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. It intends to draw attention to R.W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, as well as its presence in performing a traditional and thus political masculinity, to present the stance of each president. Above that, using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study examines how both leaders, grasping firm political positions regarding their stands, deploy discursive strategies to mirror authority, dominance, and control, comparing Western and Middle Eastern perspectives. Findings suggest that while Trump’s discourse often emphasises personal success, competition, and confrontation to make “America great again”, and, most importantly, confrontation, El-Sisi’s speeches frame leadership within paternalistic and protective narratives, mirroring Middle-Eastern values of authority and national unity. Najla Lilya Jaballah Ahlem Bounechada Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 5 24 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.1 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10727 The article analyses the case of filming a Christmas culinary video programme in the Refectory Chamber of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra2 and the reaction of Ukrainian society to this event. The Orthodox Church in Ukraine is quite conservative in its traditions and rules of behaviour in religious buildings. The very place where the video programme was filmed caused a significant public resonance. The article analyses the immediate news reports of the leading Ukrainian media and the more prolonged echo of this event in public conversations of Ukrainian church ministers, philosophers, theologians, and historians. The approach of critical discourse analysis, the theory of argumentation, and the case study method are used. Ukrainian public intellectuals and Orthodox clergy see the thousand-year history of the Lavra as a source of new meanings and a great potential for state-building and the development of Ukraine. Olena Semenets Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 25 38 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.2 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10728 Metaphorical political slurs (MPSs) have been very common on social media since the Arab Spring, during the Gaza-Israeli war, and the Syrian revolution. This study aims to analyse and describe the type, structure, meaning, and purpose of a sample of Arabic MPSs. Results showed general MPSs referring to political figures (Khissisi for Sisi); TV channels (Alkhanzeera, “the swine” for Aljazeera); religious, ethnic, and racial (Satan's Party for Hezbollah). Structurally, MPSs consist of satiric word play as phoneme and word substitution (?aahir salacious for ? ahil monarch); a pejorative produced by combining a general-purpose insult with the name of ethnicity, as calling Arabs "a nation of ewes", calling Iranians "fire worshippers"; adding common insulting modifiers to create loaded descriptivism (history's dump). Semantically and pragmatically, MPSs express abuse, disparagement, contempt, criticism, and hostility. They refer to personalities, parties, countries, or TV channels that the users oppose or dislike in a derogatory, satirical, or insulting manner. Further analyses and examples are given in detail. Reima Al-Jarf Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 39 58 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.3 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10729 The antiscientific discourse is a social and linguistic construct ensuing from a permanent restructuring of preexisting discourses. The goal of this study is to test whether antiscience qualifies as a genre, which might be a guarantee of its hybrid nature. Secondly, this paper aims to identify some of the most common hybridisation strategies that are used to expand and impose the antiscience genre. The findings confirm the existence of an antiscientific genre in Romania strategically equipped to contradict science and to deny the benefits of scientific discoveries. The analysis reveals that the antiscientific genre has got a parasite lexical behaviour, given that its discourse thrives using science’s technical vocabulary for contrary purposes, depriving science of one of its major tools, which has become a common lexical pool, making it even more difficult to discriminate between arguments. Overall, the article emphasises the predatory character of the antiscientific genre, which thrives on the scientific vocabulary and on mimicking the scientific method (Nature 2009, 237). Cristina Silvia Valcea Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 59 70 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.4 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10730 A central element of economic culture, advertising is a form of communication through which information is conveyed, attracting the recipient's attention, the issuer's intention being to elicit a response or reaction from the consumer. The social dimension of advertising is largely determined by its ability to reflect the needs, aspirations, and desires of the public. In order to achieve its persuasive aim, advertising constructs a spectacle to which stereotypes contribute. These allow for the construction and reception of easily identifiable schemas which, through familiarity, create mental comfort for the target audience (Moraru 2009). This paper focuses on gender stereotypes, specifically on the image of masculinity, as it appears in recent advertisements broadcast on Romanian television channels. It is well known that Romanian society has long been dominated by a patriarchal vision, centred on the image of the secure, authoritarian man, while femininity has been associated with fragility and vulnerability. However, it can be observed that the current advertising discourse increasingly employs the anti-stereotype (Moraru 2009) as a persuasive strategy, undermining through humour and irony the established image of the male hero. Andreea Petre Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 71 82 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.5 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10731 In an era of globalization, “knowing how to speak a foreign language” is constantly acquiring new meanings. Thus, grammatical accuracy, once so coveted, and mastery of a rich vocabulary in a foreign language (a non-native/a secondary/a desirable language to be acquired), seem to be insufficient today in the absence of minimal sociocultural knowledge. In this paper, we aimed, therefore, to investigate how the approach to culture is reflected in several Romanian as a Foreign Language textbooks published at the beginning of the current century, respectively, to what extent the selected contents correspond to the everyday needs of the learner immersed in the Romanian cultural space. Browsing through them, a first obvious conclusion was that not only the teacher and the learner play the role of mediator, but also the vocabulary can mediate access to culture. Olivia-Carmen Tirlea Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 83 92 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.6 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10732 Foreign language teaching should aim to raise learners’ cultural awareness and improve their communicative skills, not just introduce linguistic structures. The question that arises is how to foster cultural competence in the foreign language classroom. This paper focuses on teaching Romanian to foreign students and presents the results of an experiment conducted with foreign student groups at the University of Bucharest and the “Ovidius” University of Constanța. The aim was to assess students’ interest in high culture, more precisely, the visual arts. The experiment consisted of the presentation of three paintings by famous Romanian artists, after which the students were asked to describe and comment on the images. The framework employed is based on the analysis of appraisal in the English language, proposed by Martin and White (2005). The results show that students easily recognized the main messages conveyed by the paintings. Furthermore, they evaluated the pictures based on their background knowledge, expressed detailed opinions and feelings about them, and made associations with their native cultures. These results suggest that foreign learners may be interested in high culture topics as long as they are actively involved in the learning process. Raluca Levonian Ioana-Cristina Joita Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 93 112 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.7 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10733 This paper explores the intersection of language teaching and Chinese cultural values through analysing the design of a Romanian language textbook for Chinese students. Rooted in the holistic, harmony-oriented worldview of Chinese philosophy (Shi-xu, 2014), the contemporary Chinese discourse reflects a distinct cultural and pedagogical framework that influences foreign language teaching methodologies in China. By analysing the Romanian textbook, this paper demonstrates how a language-learning tool can be seen as a discourse on Chinese culture, presenting language acquisition within the context of Chinese educational traditions and cultural norms. Understanding the link between Chinese discourse and language learning is crucial for enhancing the teacher’s intercultural competence. By reflecting on these cultural dynamics, teachers can better navigate the complexities of teaching Romanian in a Chinese context, ultimately improving the effectiveness of their pedagogical approach. Ioana Clara Enescu Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 113 126 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.8 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10734 This study investigates how French Language acquisition, which varies from one learner to another, plays a detrimental role on the quality of the learner’s oral production. The research focuses on the “diamesic” variation of French (Belgian or other Francophone variations), as well as “diaphasic” variations, in some cases. According to the collected qualitative data, this study adopts: a thematic analysis of spoken French variants on real case studies; an investigation on the type of linguistic “input” and its impact on the learner’s “output,” and an examination of the learners’ “linguistic attitudes” regarding the French language spoken in Belgium and in other francophone countries. Thus, the incorporation of a pedagogical analysis is of utmost importance in order to reach the point of interest; the production of a diamesic competency within foreign learners of French – students of the FLE (Français Langue Etrangère) programme. Zahra Al-Sharoufi Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 127 146 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.9 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10735 The paper analyses students’ identity as expressed in narratives. The theoretical framework relies on the constructionist approach, which defines identity as manifested in individuals’ social actions, developed in discourse, and fluid (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2013, Benwell and Stokoe 2006, Cohen 2010, Bamberg, de Fina and Schiffrin 2007). The paper focuses on the institutional and interactional types of identity and interprets narratives as a way to understand the world and the self and to account for what the narrator has become. The data analyzed come from a research interview conducted with students who were asked to narrate an experience that made them feel that they are students; the conclusions focus on the narrative structure and on the identity features expressed. Gabriela Chefneux Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 147 160 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.10 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10736 This study explores the ideological nature of language through Slavoj Žižek’s reinterpretation of Heidegger’s concept of “essencing” and its role in shaping discourse. It examines how language constructs and reinforces social hierarchies, particularly gender-based inequalities, by analyzing Homer’s Odyssey and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Rachel DuPlessis’s feminist narrative strategies— “changing the sentence” and “changing the sequence”—the study highlights Atwood’s subversion of male-dominated narratives. By engaging in revisionist mythmaking, The Penelopiad challenges hegemonic structures, reclaims female agency, and envisions an egalitarian discourse free from patriarchal constraints. Mahinur Aksehir Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 161 180 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.11 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10737 The aim of the current paper is to study the family relations in two cultures, situated continents apart, i.e., the Korean and the Romanian ones, in an attempt to bring to the surface specific cultural and social aspects related to family relations, with a focus on the father-children power relationship. The data employed are two novels, representative of each culture: Marin Preda’s (1964) Moromeții (volume I) and Kyung-Sook Shin’s (2023) I Went to My Father. The theoretical framework employed in the analysis of the excerpts from the two sources is Hofstede’s (1994) cultural dimensions theory, according to which the culture of a particular society may impact the values and behaviours of its members, and Foucault’s (1982) theory of power. The findings of the analysis indicate that the way in which power is exerted in the two families and the driving force in each of them differ considerably. Elena Buja Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 181 206 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.12 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10738 This article examines the relationship between sustainable development and the translation of culturemes within globalization and intercultural communication. It argues that sustainable development requires cultural sustainability, i.e., the preservation and transmission of intangible cultural heritage across generations. The paper positions culture as a driving force shaping human identity and global dialogue, with translation serving as the key mediating process for cross-cultural transfer of meanings and worldviews. It also addresses major challenges – cultural misrepresentation, tensions between localization and authenticity, and ethical dilemmas around cultural appropriation – while emphasizing culturally responsive translation practices that respect diversity and foster inclusive dialogue. Ultimately, the article advocates for translation approaches that serve both effective communication and sustainable development goals – equity, participation, intercultural understanding, and global solidarity – positioning translators as vital agents in shaping a culturally aware, interconnected world. Nigar Ogtay Babayeva Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 207 218 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.13 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10739 No abstract Madalina Adam (Irimia) Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 221 228 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.14 https://webbut.unitbv.ro/index.php/Series_IV/article/view/10740 No abstract Maria Tatu Copyright (c) 2025 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 2025-10-08 2025-10-08 229 234 10.31926/but.pcs.2025.67.18.3.15