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Mittelalter erschließen
(2021)
Research communication has been gaining public attention in recent years. Therefore, medievalists also need to focus on the transfer of their research topics to the public both within and outside the university. Based on current political demands calling for a change in communication culture, the article first of all deals theoretically with two different concepts of research communication, by distinguishing between forms of translation and those of popularization. Numerous public events, exhibitions, and cooperative projects with cities, schools, adult education centres, museums, and other educational institutions show that knowledge about the Middle Ages has been trans-mitted to interested laypersons for a long time. The authors see a particular challenge in the alterity of medieval culture, which at the same time provides an excellent opportunity for transferring research findings into society. The fascination with medieval materiality facilitates the transfer of knowledge by those disciplines that work with concrete objects, addressing issues of visuality and aesthetic experience. The article pinpoints conditions, strategies, and perspectives of successful research communication in medieval studies, and when focussing on cur-rent topics, the authors refer to concrete occasions and regional examples, showing why medieval research is still relevant today.
The article deals with the educational comics of the Mozambican artist Sérgio Zimba, especially in the context of the current pandemic situation caused by Covid-19. First, comics from and comic research on Africa will be presented, especially in their repercussion within the German-language comics landscape. This will be followed by a discussion of the special situation in lusophone Africa, exemplified and illustrated by the works of the Mozambican cartoonist Sérgio Zimba. The article closes with a brief comparison of Zimba’s work with the cartoons of Sérgio Piçarra from Angola, to better classify the artist's work.
The arrival of the Spanish in present-day Oaxaca, Mexico, led to manifold communicative challenges and was the origin of the first written documents in the local indigenous languages. This paper focuses on Spanish-Zapotec translations produced by Christian missionaries during the colonial period. In this context, it aims to investigate the expression of the concept of soul in their catechisms and confesionarios by analyzing chronologically how different authors apply the Spanish synonyms alma and ánima. On the one hand, we can observe some similar tendencies in central Mexican documents for the early colonial period so that we can assume that the corpus was influenced by Nahuatl translations. On the other hand, there is an independent development in Spanish-Zapotec translations not only regarding the target text but also the source text.
This article aims to trace the development of different verb forms that express future tense of Old Portuguese from the 13th to the 15th century by analyzing a historical text corpus. During this period, Portuguese future tense could be expressed through one synthetical as well as two analytical morphological verb constructions. Adapting an analytic model formerly employed by the Mexican researcher Concepción Company Company for an investigation of similar future tense forms in Old Spanish, this article seeks to point out that the use of the different verb forms in Portuguese followed distinct functions regarding aspects of both information structure as well as modality.
According to the Senegalesian scholar Felwine Sarr who conceives an African utopia in his programmatic essay Afrotopia (2016), this Afrotopos has already germinated in contemporary African literature. However, it still needs to be enquired to what extent the narrated topos of the street in Sarr’s own anthology 105 Rue Carnot (2011) has already realized the Afrotopos. In order to respond to this question, we would like to mobilise Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, which elaborates on the interactions between truth production/knowledge, power and space, and permits us to conceive of «les lieux utopiques» (Foucault 2005: 40) as actually locatable on the map and real other places outside of all places (cf. Foucault 1994: 755). Thus, in the street, a different relationship between global North and South is founded, which becomes legible as an African «utopie localisée» (Foucault 2005: 41) that Sarr calls for in Afrotopia (2016).
The encounter with non-human animals has always been a major preoccupation in the (philosophical) quest of understanding the human (condition). Of course, they are not only present in literary texts, but also in other media such as music and art. We consider ourselves aware of their selves, natures and skills as well as their sensory perceptions. Indeed, the ways we interact with non-human animals in everyday life and in the fictional world, how we perceive, think and talk about them as well as how we communicate with them are often related to our own self-perceptions in the social collective and in social-historical discourse. If we take a closer look at literary interspecies relations, we can detect clear shades in language and communication. Based on the approaches of Human-Animal Studies, this article deals with those nuances regarding animal-human encounters in Juan Ramón Jiménez’ Platero y yo (1914/1917) and Thomas Mann's Herr und Hund (1919) in a comparative perspective. In addition to this, a special focus is placed on the effect these elements can have on (inter)acting literary subjects as well as on extra-textual recipients.
This paper deals with the origin of the hundred-year old theory of tierras bajas and tierras altas, focusing on the description of vowel weakening within that theory developed in 1921 by Henríquez Ureña. I argue that the early conception of vowel weakening and its dialectal distribution has strongly influenced the kind of research we have been conducting about this phonetic feature to this day. The aim of this study therefore, is to sharpen our understanding of the former zeitgeist of research and to stimulate further big data-based studies on vowel weakening overcoming the traditional dialectal division of tierras bajas and tierras altas.
This article will examine the cinematic approach to the trauma of the Falklands/Malvinas War in Lola Ariasʼ film Teatro de Guerra (AR/ES, 2018). The armed conflict between Ar-gentina and Great Britain in 1982 can be understood as a traumatic liminal experience, whose artistic reception pushes conventional aesthetics to their limits and calls for innova-tive representational strategies. Based on a cultural studies approach to the Falklands/Mal-vinas War as a collective trauma, this contribution will highlight selected moments of aes-thetic border crossing in Teatro de Guerra, by which the film succeeds in transcending boundaries between former enemies of the war.
This paper intends to trace the introduction of an English-induced, COVID-related neologism, covidiota, into the Spanish language. The study is based on a corpus of tweets, starting in March 2020. It examines several specific features which mark the word as a new, unfamiliar item, such as different ways of graphical highlighting, for example. On the other hand, the paper aims to detect possible indicators of an integration of covidiota into the Spanish language use in the tweet corpus compiled for this case study.
To indicate emphasis, auxiliary do is used in affirmative contexts (do+) when no other auxiliary is present. It is thus rooted in the grammatical system of do‐support; however, do+ does not always bear stress and can fulfil various discourse‐marking functions (Nevalainen & Rissanen, 1986). Positioned at the intersection of grammar and discourse, do+ constitutes an interesting study for its use in ‘non‐native’ varieties of English since it can be assumed that the more salient grammatical functions are easier to master for learners. Focusing on Asian Englishes in contrast to Inner Circle varieties, this exploratory paper assesses the frequency and distribution of do+ in the spoken and written parts of eight ICE components.
This paper analyzes the mental development of the main character Salvador in the Spanish movie Los girasoles ciegos (2008) by José Luis Cuerda, based on the camera perspective and focalization, as well as the three-instance model according to Sigmund Freud. For this purpose, screen captures from the movie are examined to see how Salvador’s loss of control is pictured. This is applied to Freud’s three-instance model to prove the takeover of the Id. Throughout the whole movie, the inner conflict between his Ego and Id, i.e. his life as a deacon versus his life as a soldier, is present. The whole process of the breakdown of his mental state is revealed through the camera perspective and visual focalization.
The present article aims to examine images of the Mediterranean Sea in Jean-Daniel Pollet’s essay film Méditerranée (1963), with a particular focus on its representation as a multifaceted space of cultural memory. After some preliminary observations on the relation between the essay film as a genre and images of the Mediterranean, I shall, on the one hand, have a look at the semantic processes through which the film builds up a recognizable image of the Great Sea. On the other hand, however, I will argue that, at the same time, Méditerranée calls this signifying process into question by representing the sea as a space of cultural memory understood as a space of becoming and of deferral of meaning.
To this day, Lorca’s most popular plays, the Trilogía dramática de la tierra española, are considered to be among the most widely read texts of twentieth century Spanish literature. By combining elements from Antiquity with classic and modern features of Spanish theatre and placing them in new functional contexts, the author succeeds in creating an innovative theatre of sociocritical nature in times of political repression. This article analyses several of these innovations and aims to demonstrate the influence Lorca’s Tragedias rurales still have on today’s literature and culture. Simon Stone’s play Yerma (2017) and the Netflix series Las Chicas del Cable (2017-2020) are approached here with this purpose.
This article deals with discursive and argumentative strategies used by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to bring science in discredit during the 2020’s COVID-19-pandemic. Based on official statements and Tweets launched over the crisis the Discourse-Historical Approach is applied to make strategies brought into play by Bolsonaro visible. While the President declares scientific advice such as distancing and quarantine as ineffective, he recommends the use of hydroxychloroquine as well as old fashioned prayers for staying safe and healthy. He evokes that there are «fake news» and «partners of paralysis», to which he responds by demasking and bringing the one and only truth towards «the people». The analysis points out that Bolsonaro is downplaying the virus and the risk of transmission and puts the economy ahead of health. His supporters as a consequence tend to ignore the
WHO recommendations how to behave during the pandemic.
The present article examines the narrative modes in which Lebanese author Amin Maalouf investigates his roots in Origines a hybrid work which stands in contrast with his previous essays and fictions as to its (auto)biographical dimension. Resembling what Dominique Viart and Bruno Vercier in their analysis of predominant themes and narrative strategies in contemporary French literature name «récit de filiation», Maalouf’s quest for his familial past explores the concept of intergenerational transmission of memory. However, despite this individual postmemorial approach, Maalouf’s intimate writing is intrinsically linked with the complex history of the Ottoman Empire and therefore with collective narratives of war, diasporic identities, and migration relating to the present time or the recent past.
France, Italy, and Spain are three Romance-speaking countries which – at least in Europe – have been affected to a very high degree by the consequences of the Corona pandemic. This paper examines discursive strategies on social media (Twitter and Facebook) by the three heads of government/state of the aforementioned countries – namely Emmanuel Macron (France), Giuseppe Conte (Italy), and Pedro Sánchez (Spain)- from a corpuslinguistic point of view. For this purpose, a corpus was created which contains all Twitter and Facebook messages posted by these heads of government/state from the beginning of February until the end of April 2020. By applying corpus-linguistic methods we find that all three politicians consciously use social media to sensitize, inform, and – in view of a dramatic pandemic situation – unite their respective populations behind them.
With her famous suggestion to «give her [the woman] a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speak her mind» from 1929, Virginia Woolf verbalized a core issue of female
writing by hinting at the socioeconomic circumstances and domestic obligations of most women – valid at her times, but still today. Both Elena Ferrante and Annie Ernaux discuss, in their respective novels, the topics of being women in the particular sociocultural landscape (in Italy and, respectively, in France) after World War II and up to these days, the themes of marriage and motherhood, employment and especially (female) authorship. This article aims to show in a close reading of both Ferrante and Ernaux that the two writers play with the literary form of the (auto-)biography on a diegetic, but also extradiegetic level, while formulating at the same time a collective work that embraces the experience of womanhood but circumvents the hazard of a merely subjective and sensitive writing, as female writing has sometimes been claimed to be.
This article examines so-called colonial discourses in Belgium on the former Sub-Saharan colony owned by the Belgian King, Leopold II., which today is known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) or the Congo-Kinshasa. After having introduced the colonial history of the DR Congo from the 15th century until 1910, an empirical analysis of the colonial discourses in Belgium from the 1890s until today will be illustrated in conjunction with Belgium’s linguistic-cultural division and the age-related divergence. Belgian colonial discourse is characterized by a historical misrepresentation by the political authorities while especially social forces have pled for a critical examination of their own colonial history in Belgium since the year 2000.
This article exemplifies Gunter Grimm’s concept of productive reception by analyzing César Fernández García’s young adult novel La última bruja de Trasmoz (2009) and the episode Tiempo de hechizos (2017) of the TV series El ministerio del tiempo as two modern works which artistically and creatively deal with Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s Cartas desde mi celda (1864). The study is based on the core assumption that the choice of genre greatly influences the treatment of motives such as the perception of nature and the idea of dreams, as well as the image of the witch. While Bécquer’s letters, which focus on the rural people’s superstition, present the witch of Aragonese folklore, the modern examples portray two of her fantastic counterparts: the novel depicts its magical protagonist as an evil supernatural being, whereas the TV episode of the science fiction series shows the witch as a time traveller and a victim.
When it comes to linguistic norms in France, one standard will be immediately evoked – le bon usage. This version of traditional French is taught at school and has been serving as a model ever since the French Revolution. Yet – and maybe as a counter-reaction to such strict and prescriptive norm – there exists a multitude of alternative forms, especially with regard to the lexis, which are marked by different registers or styles. Thus, the French language is characterized by lexical doublets in the transition area between standard and familier. A varied terminology in the description of styles in dictionaries as well as a stigmatisation of the nonstandard lead to speaker insecurities and to a general devaluation of the parallel vocabulary. What are the consequences of this in speech behaviour? Is there a remarkable difference between speech behaviour and prescriptive norm? Do speakers show any sign of linguistic insecurity when using nonstandard structures? The research issue will be addressed by means of a qualitative analysis of videoblogs from French YouTubers.
This article is dedicated to the analysis of the body, which is staged as sick and painful. El último cuerpo de Úrsula by Peruvian author Patricia de Souza is characterized by the connection between body, pain perception and eroticism. Illness and paralysis play a fundamental role in the narrative because they cause the recomposition of the ego, which leads the protagonist, Úrsula Res, to perceive and reflect the fragmentation of her identity and the increasing distance from her body. Through approaches to pain and disability, the expressiveness of the narrativized eroticism of this text, based on an obedient relationship to the body, is revealed.
This article focuses on selected Latin American female rap artists (Anita Tijoux, Rebeca Lane, and the duo Krudas Cubensi), and the way they perform feminism, autobiography and testimony through their lyrics and performances. The analysis concentrates on the synergies between the texts themselves, the official music videos shared on YouTube and the background music. It aims to demonstrate that only such a synergistic approach to rap allows a profound understanding of its particularities and its contributions to feminist discourses and spaces for feminist testimony in the current rise of both right-wing politics and feminist movements on the continent.
This article explores the construction of Catalan masculinity and Catalan identity in literature on the Spanish-Moroccan War of 1859/60. During the war, an immense amount of patriotic literature in Catalan language was published in Catalonia, in which the authors glorified the deeds of the Catalan general Joan Prim i Prats and of the Catalan volunteers who fought in the war. The article aims to illustrate, on the basis of the analysis of poems, theatre plays, patriotic songs, reports and chronicles written by Catalan authors, the importance of the First Spanish-Moroccan War for the development of Catalan identity. It attempts as well to demonstrate that the authors used the literature about the war to diffuse a specific Catalan ideal of masculinity and to stylize General Prim and the volunteers into national heroes, who embodied the strength of the Catalan cultural nation, since the Catalan community needed new idols after a long time of political and cultural decline caused by the centralist policies of the Spanish state. The Catalan ideal of masculinity was utilized to differentiate the Catalans from the other Spaniards whose masculinity was considered to be in decadence by the other European nations.
This contribution deals with the phonetic heterogeneity of spoken Spanish in Andalusia in the sector of public auditory media, specifically in the program ¡Anda Levanta! of Canal Fiesta Radio. First, we take into consideration Article 10 of the Statute of the Autonomy of Andalusia, which enhances the protection, promotion, study, and prestige of the Andalusian modalities and its respective variety (cf. Parlamento de Andalucía 2007: 13). Second, we refer to the Libro de Estilo, a mandatory guide for presenters of public audiovisual media in Andalusia since 2014. The results of the qualitative analysis indicate divergences between the presenters and their audience with regard to their use of phonetic characteristics typical of the Andalusian varieties: where the presenters tend to avoid the salient aspects of the varieties, the audience employs a range of phonetic characteristics typical for Andalusian varieties, including some of the characteristics that are considered less prestigious.
Investigations focusing on the social criticism in La Regenta (1884-1885) by Leopoldo Alas «Clarín» have constantly referred to the unmasking of society’s hypocrisy and provincialism through the implementation of satire and irony in the novel. This observation, though, has to be defined more clearly. Vetustan society, specifically the bourgeoisie, is characterized primarily by the incessant exhibition of supposed wisdom and intelligentsia in public to generate social prestige and power. By analyzing the narrative strategies which are related to the composition of the secondary characters, the role of two specific public venues (Casino and Theatre of Vetusta) and the (de)construction of P. Ronzal, P. Guimarán and S. Bermúdez in the novel, this article illustrates how false wisdom and pseudo-intelligentsia become central motifs regarding social criticism in La Regenta.
This essay argues that Orwell’s representation of animals as companion species offers a strikingly new, as-yet largely neglected view of animal agency and interiority in his work. In “Shooting an Elephant”, Burmese Days and “Marrakech”, the writer’s focus on the social reject is supplemented by a marked sense of community implying human tragedy yet framing it within precariously situated human-animal, colonial or urban-imperial transitions that visualise animals as agents of change and co-shaping species interdependent with the lives of the humans that utilize and domineer them. Animals are required whenever Orwell aspires to shift from isolation to communality, from the self-conscious outsider to the larger realm of ideas framing the world in which his characters strive to overstep the accepted lines of social performance and conformity. Read in and around disciplinary structures of rationalization, Orwell’s animals appear to secure themselves, quite paradoxically, a place within the normative anthropocentric framework excluding them. They extend beyond anthropomorphising or allegorical modes of description and open up bio-political perspectives within and across regimes of knowledge and empathy. Orwell’s writings thus present a challenge to the culturally accredited fantasy of human exceptionalism, collapsing any epistemic space between humans and animals and burying the idea of sustaining radical species distinction.
This paper deals with the interrelation between the concept of linguistic insecurity described by Labov (1966) and the irregular formation of Spanish superlatives based on Latin roots such as paupérrimo, celebérrimo etc. instead of the analogue formation pobrísimo or celebrísimo. After a brief overview on the frequency of these forms and their alleged regular equivalents in Spanish corpora, a closer look is taken on the speakers’ internal and external aspects of linguistic (in)security. Finally, it is shown by an acceptability test that there are forms on -érrim*, which are not exclusively restricted to the norma culta in Spanish.
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Abstract
Constructing evidence constitutes a practice to establish the speaker's authority at Prime Minister's Question Time (PMQT), a weekly half-hour session in the British House of Commons. Here the verb see constitutes a resource for both the questioning Leader of the Opposition (LO) and Members of Parliament (MP) as well as for the responding Prime Minister (PM) to claim first-hand perceptual experience. This paper takes an integrated approach, offering a combined analysis of the grammatical formatting, semantics and pragmatics of the verb see in the context of evidential moves at PMQT. It shows how the verb see is functional in referring to the perceptual basis of a claim made and how its grammatical formatting is reflective of the contingencies of the local interactional context. The analysis is grounded in 32 sessions of PMQT (ca. 16 hrs of video-recordings). The results can be summarised as follows: 1) The evidential function of the verb is achieved through its context-specific grammatical formatting and semantics. 2) The reference to the perceptual basis of a claim evoked by see may co-occur with epistemic qualification and evaluative expressions. 3) The formatting of the verb may be indexical of the political relationship between the questioner and the responding PM.
AbstractUne tradition grammaticale largement répandue distingue trois types de relations entre propositions, donc trois types de phrases complexes: les propositions juxtaposées, les propositions coordonnées et les phrases hypotaxiques. Riegel et al. (2009) ajoutent en outre les phrases avec incise ou incidente comme quatrième type. Les grammaires et traités décrivent les différentes sortes de coordination (copulative, disjonctive, adversative, causale et consécutive) et de subordination (complétive, relative et circonstancielle). Pourtant, jusqu’à présent il n’existe pas, à ce qu’il semble, de description plus détaillée, ni des divers degrés de l’hypotaxe et de la parataxe d’une part, ni des différentes combinaisons de structures hypotaxiques et parataxiques d’autre part. Le but de cet article est donc de proposer une typologie plus complète des phrases complexes sur la base d’un petit corpus de référence. Cette typologie distinguera, d’un côté, divers degrés de phrases parataxiques homogènes et de phrases parataxiques hétérogènes et, de l’autre côté, des phrases hypotaxiques simples et des phrases hypotaxiques multiples.
Over the past few decades, a multitude of scientific research has been published on the topic of discourse markers, intending to define this linguistic phenomenon. Despite this increase of interest in discourse markers, fundamental questions pivotal to a clear definition remain unanswered. On basis of an empirical analysis of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan discussions, this essay sets out to demonstrate that combining of the two prevailing research approaches (formal-syntactical vs. functional-pragmatic) has advantageous effects on the definition of discourse markers.
In the wake of the general tendency towards slow cinema which has been evolving in Mexican cinema, cinematographic devices have gained importance not only with regard to the construction of a persuasive narrative but also in terms of the aesthetic constitution of the movie itself. Not only is this observation evident in the absence of camera movements but also in the semiotic depth of mise en scène resulting from this circumstance. Natalia Almada’s movie Todo lo demás (2016) provides an impressive example of both the repercussions of this technique in the representation of loneliness as well as the suggestive power of the scenographical composition. Hence, the ensuing analysis of those scenes referring to water is to elucidate the semiotics of mise en scène and its influence on the representation of the main character and the repetitive routine constricting her freedom.
This article summarises an examination of sentence patterns in modern European standard Spanish, in order to give an answer to the following questions: How many different sentence patterns are there and which are the most frequent patterns in modern European Spanish? Based on the principles of verb valency, as established by Lucien Tesnière and further developed by Ulrich Engel and others, a corpus of 500 sentences is analysed, identifying the sentence patterns of the main clauses. The analysis shows 19 different sentence patterns, the most frequent of which is p-s-cd, that is, predicate – subject – direct object. Subsequently, the results are compared to those of a different study on Spanish sentence patterns.
The normative use of past tenses is supposed to be a big challenge for learners of Spanish. Although they might understand the grammatical chapter in theory, adequate past tense use in spontaneous oral production is not guaranteed. Morphological errors, overgeneralizations of tenses and interferences with other languages characterize the interlanguage of the learners. Based on two corpuses, we analyse how the past tense use differs between secondary school students from Austria and Romance polyglots. Qualitative and quantitative analyses show that polyglot speakers surpass the secondary school students in some areas such as the distinction of verbal aspect. However, the students tend less to use the perfecto compuesto in an inadequate way in narration.
The present study focuses on Marion Maréchal-Le Pen’s self-representation on social media. Despite her youth, the niece of the party’s chairwoman and granddaughter of its founder is a distinguished member of the French radical right-wing populist and nationalist party Front National. The corpus-based analysis of her digital presence on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook on which this paper is based shows a specific use of linguistic and multimodal resources as a means of strategic framing of political content. In particular, an analysis of Maréchal-Le Pen’s use of searchable hashtags and @mentions referring to different political and non-political actors reveals it as a strategy of polarization between a constructed us and a negatively connoted them.
This article is an analysis and a comparison of German and French special language of music in the 18th century, more precisely about the terms used to describe the activity of singing. The analysis is based on two treatises about music theory. The first writing, Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, was written by Johann Mattheson in 1739 and the second, Code de musique pratique by Jean-Philippe Rameau was published in 1760. Both texts contain a chapter which gives explanations how to sing. The treatises include different types of technical words: specific terms easy identified as special language terms like names of ornaments in the music, special verbs standing for singing, and words and anaphors to describe tonality and dynamics. By having a look on the terms of music language, the influence of Italian and French words on German vocabulary of music becomes obvious. The vocabulary is often similar in both languages, but not always defined as a part of the special language of music.
Multilingualism is part of our everyday lives and has recently entered the medium of film. Based on the linguistic diversity of Spanish-speaking countries, the present paper explores multilingualism as a key competence of foreign language learning. Since film provides students with audiovisual access to multilingual situations, a selection of educational videos that form parts of German textbooks will be critically explored concerning the presentation of multilingual phenomena. The results will be discussed in order to contribute to the systematic acquisition of multilingual skills in the sense of language and cultural awareness during classroom learning.
Peau d’Âme has often been regarded as an enigmatic and mysterious text which prevented a broad attention and interpretation since its posthumous publication in 1935. But putting the perspective on Pozzi’s Journal, particularly during the years 1920 and 1921, allows us to discover a significant intertextuality between both of them. Catherine Pozzi’s perception of space in her every day writing does not differ from her philosophical work, since for her the concepts of center and periphery do not form a strict dichotomy. It becomes superfluous in a world without limits. The perception and philosophy of Catherine Pozzi tends to go beyond the boundaries of space which allows us, as readers of these two forms of writing, to comprehend her vision of a spatial and temporal eternity.
After independence, in the sixties, sub-Saharan Africa including Francophone, saw moving to the head of his governments, dictatorial powers. Henri Lopès translated this in his work by a formal violence. We will study in this paper, the violence employed by the Congolese novelist in Le Pleurer-rire (1982): the technique of fragmentary. Our work is structured in three parts: the presentation of formal violence in Le Pleurer-rire, manifestations of postcolonial political system in this novel and the operation of the technique of fragmentary.
The history of intellectual and cultural contact between West and East is very complicated and contradictory. A long time ago, eastern culture attracted the attention of many writers, orientalists and researchers, who headed east not only to study and describe the fascinating eastern civilizations, but also to analyze their different literary, historical and scientific aspects.
The new mysterious but exciting environment inspired the orientalists to record and describe what they experienced regarding the architecture, the nature and the people. The attractive eastern natural views which are distinguishable from the monotonous western environment – especially after the industrial revolution – helped them to find new prospects.
The East has been coming into focus since the middle ages, when the church campaigns started to study Islam as the prevalent religion in this area. The orientalist motivations were not only religious, but also followed economic, colonial and scientific agenda, which lead to a plethora of specialized research, stories, novels and analytical studies. A close look at the orientalists’ works will provide us with an overview of eastern civilization. Therefore, their works are considered as a mirror reflecting their point of view to the east and the north of Africa, especially to pharaonic Egypt.
The orientalists who travelled to the east and expressed their passion to this old civilization in their writings influenced the literary movement deeply. But what do we mean by the term orientalism? Edward Saïd has defined this term in different ways. Saïd presented and interpreted it as a way of thinking, a historical phenomenon. Defining orientalism has become a problem indeed, and now it is carrying a number of meanings which do not match. Therefore, the aim of the study is to bring into focus the most important definitions of the term orientalism from the late 17th to the mid-20th century.
The present paper is concerned with the use of English cognitive verbs like think, mean and guess as well as with fixed expressions that contain these verbs like guess what (?) or think about it in Portuguese online discourses. In the qualitative analysis of examples retrieved from the Corpus do Português (Web/Dialects) I mainly focus on the syntactic behavior of the expressions under survey, also comparing their use and function in the English language. In the final part of the paper I reflect about possible reasons of the employment of English elements in Portuguese conversation.