In 1965, Claude Chabrol created La Muette – a fifteen-minute homage to Paris’s sixteenth district. In this short movie, Chabrol uses silence to ask some fundamental questions about the nature of human coexistence: the movie is seen, or better heard, from the perspective of a boy who, ignored by his parents, does not manage to say a word throughout; provoked by this imposed restriction, the boy decides to become not only “mute” but also “deaf.” His decision, however, results in tragic (...) consequences. In La Muette, Chabrol reminds us that the question of coexistence already posed by Virgil in his Eclogues, and signified by sound that freely resounds, has never ceased to be asked. In this Collision, I use the term “post-pastoral” to connect Virgil and Chabrol, and to open a discussion on sonically signified freedom. (shrink)

Recent evidence comparing recognition memory for famous faces and famous voices reveals an advantage for faces to elicit greater levels of episodic and semantic information than voices, even when overall levels of difficulty are matched between the two modalities. The paper by Barsics and Brédart makes a significant advance to this literature by demonstrating that even when encoding strategies are maximized to favor voice over face encoding by using personally familiar stimuli, facial cues continue to provide a more successful means (...) for associating episodic and semantic memories than voices. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the role of familiarity and its associated links to semantic memory as captured by person recognition memory models. (shrink)

We review evidence that language is involved in the establishment and maintenance of adult categories of facial expressions of emotion. We argue that individual and group differences in facial expression interpretation are too great for a fully specified system of categories to be universal and hardwired. Variations in expression categorization, across individuals and groups, favor a model in which an initial “core” system recognizes only the grouping of positive versus negative emotional expressions. The subsequent development of a rich representational structure (...) may require the integration of a verbal categorization system with a perceptual processing system that is category-agnostic. Such a model may reconcile many strands of apparently conflicting behavioral, physiological, and neuroscience evidence concerning our understanding of facial expressions of emotion. (shrink)

The usage of metaphor in languages for specific purposes has been in the focus of interest of cognitive linguistics for years, especially after Lakoff and Johnson published their famous book “Metaphors We Live by” in 1980. Inspired by that book, the author strives to prove that metaphor was not only intensely present in the history of law but also that it pervades the language of contemporary legal theory and practice. Terms like _injury of law, the burden of evidence, soft laws, (...) hard laws,_ etc. are so often used by lawyers in their professional communication that they are hardly recognizable as metaphors. In the theoretical part, the terms _conceptual metaphor_ and _lexical metaphor_, as well as _the source domain_ and _the target domain of the metaphor_ are defined. Accordingly, conceptual metaphor and lexical metaphor are interpreted from the perspective of the language of law. As an introduction to the discussion on metaphoric terms in the field of law, a number of metaphors is presented and discussed from the point of view of legal history, as the metaphoric and other poetic expressions were recognized as the features of legalese back in the early seventeenth century. In the main part, the author presents and discusses the most common conceptual metaphors in connection with the terms _law, justice, court,_ and the types of metaphors typically used in specific branches of law as criminal law, company law, and contract law. The empirical part of the paper is focused on two research tasks. Firstly, metaphors occurring in selected Legal English textbooks are explored and discussed by using a qualitative and a quantitative approach, and secondly, metaphoric terms and phrases of the EU Law are excerpted from the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Consolidated version 2002), the main task being to establish the frequency of metaphors in this relatively young branch of law and the types of conceptual metaphors they belong to. In the closing part, conclusions on similarities and differences in the use of metaphor between two different types of legal texts are drawn with specific reference to the frequency, lexical structures, and typology of conceptual metaphors in the field of law. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 97-110.

In many papers dealing with the stylistic features of legal texts, metaphor is highlighted as a stylistic figure often used in the language of law. On a daily basis we can witness the frequent use of metaphoric collocations like soft laws, hard laws, silent partner, hedge funds, etc. In this paper, the author analyses the use of denotations for colours as constituent parts of metaphoric collocations in the language of law. The analysis is conducted by using a comparative approach to (...) examples extracted by means of computer technology from international bills and conventions available online. In the main part of the paper, examples are classified by using a colour denotation as the main criterion for the classification. After that, the examples are compared with corresponding expressions used in German and Croatian. Taking into account the main principle of the Skopos translation theory that differences between cultures strongly influence the translation process, the hypothesis of this research is that in many cases there will be no lexical equivalence between collocations with colour denotation in three languages. Due to the fact that international bills and conventions build the corpus of the research, and that the English language has become the lingua franca of international communication, it can be expected that some metaphoric terms and collocations would be literally translated from English. Conclusions drawn from the comparative analysis of legal collocations containing denotations for colours can be interesting to lawyers and LSP teachers in the field of law. In this sense, results of the research can contribute to motivational aspects of teaching Legal English and Legal German. (shrink)

In accordance with the Bologna Declaration, modern languages and communication skills have a growing importance in all professions. With the prospect of Croatian membership of the EU and taking into consideration the conditions of the growing internationalization of law in general, knowledge of foreign languages represents an indispensable prerequisite for international com- munication within the legal profession. Thus, teaching foreign languages in the field of law, especially English and German, is necessary not only for the pro- fessional education of Croatian (...) law students, but also for their mobility within the network of European universities. This paper presents a case-study of the current situation in teaching Legal English and Legal German in Croatian Law Schools. First, the status of foreign languages for specific purposes in the Higher Education System of the Republic of Croatia in general is analyzed. The main part of the paper is dedicated to teaching Legal English and / or Legal German as compulsory courses within the curricula of Croatian law faculties. Then some projects on teaching foreign languages to practicing lawyers will be presented. With the prospect of Croatian membership of the EU, specific education programmes for lawyer- linguists have been introduced by the Law Faculties of Zagreb and Osijek. These programmes, developed within the lifelong education project for lawyers, offer an opportunity for Croatian law students and young lawyers not only to im- prove their knowledge of Legal English and Legal German, but also to learn other languages of the EU, like French or Italian. These new programmes are the response of Croatian foreign language teachers to the current requirements of the European labour market and the challenges of the internationalization of the modern world. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to outline an interpretation of the philosophical understanding of the concept of the good in pre-Platonic thought. The interpretation is based on those fragments only in which the concept actually appears. As a result of the adopted assumption, the ideas of the first philosophers, i.e. Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were outside the scope of the investigation, as well as those of Xenophanes, Eleatics, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Leucippus. In the case of the first philosophical systems (...) of the pre-Platonic philosophy one notices a connection between the good and the One. It can also be found that understanding of the `the Best' is depended on, and results from, ‘the good’. This is true also in Heraclitus, though, at the same time, he introduces an significant reversal in this respect, for he abolishes the absolute difference between the good and evil, and turns it to a subjective relation. The good has no ontological basis in the Democritus' system as well, though the good’s connection with truth, accessible for every human being, allows to interpret him as arguing for an objectivistic conception of the good. The objectivity of good has subsequently been denied by the Sophists.Key words GOOD, PRE-PLATONIC PHILSOPHY, ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. (shrink)

Pogost motiv v rimski paliati so medgeneracijski konflikti. Medtem ko očetje največkrat poudarjajo konvencionalno moralo in kažejo varčnost, že kar skoporitost, se sinovi v njihovi odsotnosti radi predajajo razvratu: zapravljajo denar, popivajo in se spuščajo v razmerja s heterami, ponavadi ob pomoči kakega nabritega domačega sužnja. Ker vlada v komediji saturnalijski narobe svet, na koncu »zmagajo« sinovi in sužnji, ki so tudi glavni junaki teh komedij. Tu in tam pa Plavt sinovom položi na jezik besede, ki odstopajo od njihovega siceršnjega (...) ravnanja in jih prikažejo v odgovornejši luči. Njegova najrazvpitejša »moralistična« komedija je Trinovčevo (Trinummus), vendar zasledimo moralno navdahnjene vložke in značajske lastnosti tudi v drugi komediji s podobnim izhodiščem, ki deluje veliko bolj razposajeno: v Hišnem strahu (Mostellaria). Ob primerjavi mladih protagonistov v Plavtovih komedijah Hišni strah in Trinovčevo ugotovimo, da je komedija Trinovčevo občutno bolj moralistična od Hišnega strahu, vendar po drugi strani tudi v slednjem ni mogoče videti gole burke kot, denimo, v Oslih (Asinaria) istega avtorja. Če si v Oslih oba protagonista, oče in sin, ki se pehata za isto meretrix, pravzaprav zaslužita zgolj posmeh občinstva, imajo glavni junak Hišnega strahu, njegov prijatelj in ljubica več značajskih lastnosti, ki so jih morale prikupiti tudi kritikom Katonovega kova. (shrink)