Lockdowns and other counter-measures introduced by governments around the globe in the aftermath of the outbreak of coronavirus dealt a serious blow to tourism and the hospitality industry. Faced with bankruptcy and closure, tourism-related businesses raised the alarm and called for government support, which in turn triggered numerous comments from online audiences. Focusing on such online discourses and the incivility they abound with, the present article aims to address various aspects of the interface between the crisis, online communication and social polarization, as well as the constitutive and constituted nature of discourse. We bring under scrutiny the response of the online public to appeals from the tourism industry, working on the assumption that these Internet comments, in terms of content and form, have been considerably shaped by three factors, namely (1) public perception of the tourism industry, (2) culture-related emotionality patterns, as well as (3) techno-discursive design and the resulting dynamics of communication within cyberspace. Adopting the Media Proximization Approach (MPA), together with the CDA perspective on discourse and representation, and drawing on insights from studies on online communication we analyze and discuss the corpus of online comments (53,043 words) following 21 articles on the crisis within the tourism industry in Poland published between 6 March and 23 June 2020. Our findings show that the response of the online public, which is predominantly negative and at times hostile, reflects the socio-political polarization in Poland, enhanced by the sense of threat to life and health as well as the scarcity of resources. Cyberspace and its technological affordances considerably affect solidarity and disunity dynamics through representational and interpersonal proximization, enabling creation and perpetuation of stereotypes along with values and emotions. Acting as proximization triggers, nomination, predication and argumentation strategies both reflect and shape knowledge and axiological preferences, which constitute an integral part of the construction of social reality.

The study is aimed at gaining further insight into the concept of proximity and its contribution to text development in general and newspaper editorials in particular. It also furthers our understanding of cross-linguistic differences in the use of metadiscourse. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate and compare proximity elements in Iranian and American newspaper editorials. Following Hyland's proximity model (2010a) which comprises five major elements, organization, argumentative structure, stance, engagement, and credibility , we focused on a detailed analysis of proximity features in two corpora, Iranian newspaper editorials and American newspaper editorials. To this aim, 240 newspaper editorials, including 120 editorials from each category, were collected. The outcomes revealed that there were significant differences in the use of proximity elements in the mentioned corpora. It was demonstrated that stance markers were considerably more recurrent in the American data than their Iranian counterpart. Unlike the American editorials, the Iranian ones contained a larger number of engagement markers. The key reasons behind such discrepancies are discussed in terms of differences in cultural, social, and political backgrounds. This study can be helpful for English for Specific/Academic Purposes (ES/AP) learners who study journalistic English to become familiar with proximity.

During intercultural communication, it is crucial to interpret correctly and to use appropriately foreign idioms which are culturally marked and reflect linguistic and cultural identity of a speech community. Interlocutors should be aware of the cultural and historical precedents that gave rise to the primary image underlying idiomatic expressions and thus created their unique phraseological worldview. The aim of the research is to find out what is a better predictor of correct idiom interpretation - degree of proficiency in a foreign language or degree of genealogical kinship between the native and foreign languages. The topicality of the research is justified by the need for a deeper understanding of linguistic and cultural identity of native and foreign-language speakers, with a view to facilitate and enhance cross-cultural communication. The working hypothesis is that due to the close genealogical kinship between Russian and Bulgarian and the users’ advanced level of English, the number of correctly interpreted idioms may vary within a statistically significant medium range. The total sample comprises 5000 idioms (2500 English and 2500 Bulgarian ones). The subsample used in the experiment comprises 60 idioms (30 English and 30 Bulgarian ones) selected from ‘The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms’ and ‘Nov fraseologichen rechnik na bylgarskiya jezik’ (‘Нов фразеологичен речник на българския език’) by means of stratified systematic sampling. The main methods used in the research include (1) comparative linguistic and cultural analyses, (2) scientific experimentation, (3) systematic and stratified sampling, and (4) a paired t-test. The experimental research and the paired t-test have proved our hypothesis and demonstrated that Russian participants correctly decode more Bulgarian than English idioms, with intergroup variation being statistically significant. Research findings have implications for cultural linguistics. Since translation loans (calques), isomorphic idioms, and idioms dating back to a common source are interpreted more quickly and more accurately than idioms which contain unique or culturally-loaded elements, such as old-fashioned words or proper names, access to cultural precedents that served as prototypes of set expressions contributes to a more seamless code-switching and enables communicants to penetrate deeper the mentality of a specific linguacultural community and thus become aware of the variability of cultural cognition and conceptualisation.

Until recently the deictic procedure in most research papers by Russian and foreign linguists has been discussed on the material of fiction texts and oral communication, where we deal with situational deixis, functioning within the framework of spatial-temporal coordinates. The system of these coordinates is not applicable to contextual deixis, whereas the system of deictic coordinates for contextual deixis has not been designed yet. Such a well-designed system of deictic coordinates for contextual deixis would allow scholars to analyze the functions of lexical units in speech in order to find out if they perform a deictic function. In other words, this system would enable researchers to define the scope of deictic elements, which at the moment is rather vague for the time being. In order to develop the system of deictic coordinates functioning within contextual deixis we have selected academic texts, where contextual deixis is especially vivid there, whereas situational deixis is not presented at all. The research is aimed at defining the main elements of the system of deictic coordinates functioning in academic texts. The material under analysis includes 1450 pages of linguistic research papers in English. The main methods of the research are contextual analysis and the constructive method, applied for designing the system of deictic coordinates and describing intertextual deixis. The research is yielded a system of deictic coordinates for contextual deixis which, designed throughout the research, consists of three elements: the deictic centre, the deictic vector, and the antecedent / subsequent element(s). The fact that the research is conducted on the English language material does not mean that this developed system of deictic coordinates can be applied only to texts written in English: this part of the research results is applicable to contextual deixis functioning in any text, regardless of its style, genre and the language it is written in. The proposed system of deictic coordinates is used to describe the new type of contextual deixis - the intertextual one, which is a peculiar feature of academic texts and not described in other researchers’ papers. Moreover, it provides the opportunity to define new deictic elements of intertextual deixis: intertextual references in brackets, and lexical units which, being full-fledged units of a local context, point at elements of vertical presupposition. Thus, the results of the research are relevant for defining the dimensions of the deictic procedure applied to contextual deixis.

The article is devoted to cross-cultural communication and its implementation in Polish translations of Russian fiction. Nowadays, both the study of national specifics relating to the worldviews of speakers of different languages, and the analysis of the way those worldviews are reflected in translation, are becoming more relevant. This article aims to study the properties of cross-cultural dialogue, which is mirrored in parallel fictional texts. The research material came from the Russian-Polish corpus. The analysis indicates that nationally specific features can manifest themselves on different levels of the language system - in vocabulary, phraseology, word formation, morphology, and syntax. The translation of sentences which include units representative of the Russian linguistic worldview demonstrates both cross-cultural successes and failures (omission of elements symbolic of Russian culture, their inaccurate interpretation or replacement with items typical of the Polish worldview). The existing printed and electronic dictionaries, as well as online translators, do not fully meet current requirements, including those related to conveying Russian cultural and linguistic senses by means of the Polish language. The practice of translating literary works from Russian into Polish demonstrates the need for further investigation of the worldviews of both nations.

The paremiological stock of a language is an important source of axiological information that helps to identify the features of a culture, people’s mentality, and their worldview. The paper is devoted to the study of gourmandise as a component of the French and Belgian worldviews reflected in the French language paremias. The aim of the research is to determine its place in the hierarchy of values of the native speakers of French and its Belgian variant. The research material includes 202 units obtained from “Dictionnaire de proverbes et dictons” (121 units) and from “Proverbes et dictons de Belgique francophonie” (81 units). The research methods include semantic, axiological, quantitative, and comparative analyses. The results of the study indicate that 5,9% of French and 6,6% of Belgian units of the total number presented in the dictionaries are devoted to food and gourmandize, which proves that they occupy an important place in the hierarchy of values in both cultures. More than half of the gastronomic proverbs and sayings have a positive connotation. Some types of food, such as bread, butter, and eggs, are symbolic for both ethnic groups. The analysis of gastronomic realities has revealed similar French and Belgian values (such as wealth, prosperity, happiness, health, pleasure, life) and antivalues (poverty, hunger, misery, disease, death, etc.). The obtained data contribute to the axiological studies of the worldview of the native speakers of various variants of the French language and can serve as a starting point for conducting similar research of other values, including those based on the material of other languages and cultures.

The existing research on onomastics does not sufficiently reflect upon the relation between cultural codes and demonyms, having in mind that demonyms universally represent linguistic devices for expressing territorial and regional identity. The article focuses on the complex polyparadigmal analysis of the system of demonyms related to the macrotoponymy of the four founding countries of the Pacific Alliance: Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Each of the four founding countries of the Pacific Alliance is characterised by the uniqueness of its culture, historical development, the specifics of the national variant of Spanish that reflects the indigenous influence of substrates and the collective values of the society. The research tasks of the article consist in systemising the morphological devices and the cultural layers of demonyms connected with the administrative division of given countries, detecting the variation parameters, comparing them from the linguacultural point of view. The main material of the research have been 100 official demonyms of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, and 31 variative denominations. The materials for the research are based on the official websites of the administrative units of the four countries, dictionaries data, diverse types of texts and discourse, as well as the notes of the informants’ speech. The research uses such methods as the continuous sampling method based on Internet sources, the analysis of dictionary definitions, the method of semantic interpretation, the morphological analysis, combined with interviews with informants whose interaction is made possible by the complex polyparadigmal analysis of the material. The authors have determined a series of lexemes that function as demonyms, analysed their form and content from the linguistic point of view. It has been revealed that the main tendency in the formation of suppletive demonyms for macrotoponyms are the terrain features and the assessment of ethnic background or mentality. The analysed demonyms manifest the relations of intralingual, intervariant homonymy, as well as hypo-hyperonymic relations. The complex analysis of the material has provided an opportunity to represent the demonym systems of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru as multidimensional and at the same time inherent to the unified functional continuum of entity in Spanish-speaking countries. The research results have led to the conclusion that demonyms act as independent notions and generators of new meanings and allusions. It is recommended to use transliteration when translating suppletive demonyms, while their decoding amplifies the linguacultural competence of Spanish-language students and harmonises the intercultural dialogue with the native speakers of Chilean, Colombian, Mexican and Peruvian national variants of Spanish in the areas of education and business.

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