Papers by Inesa Šeškauskienė
Respectus Philologicus, 2020
The paper investigates how translation is conceptualised through metaphors employed in academic t... more The paper investigates how translation is conceptualised through metaphors employed in academic texts in English and Lithuanian focusing on translation problems. As established by previous research, metaphors are tools of rendering abstract thought in terms of more concrete experiences. The methodology of this investigation is based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and further development in metaphor research, the main principles of Metaphor Identification Procedure and metaphorical patterns. The results suggest that English tends to more frequently conceptualise translation as human and also as a dynamic activity, whereas Lithuanian opts for more static conceptualisation of translation in terms of object and material. Such tendencies might be linked, among other factors, to very different etymologies of the verb ‘translate’ and its derivatives in English and Lithuanian as well as other senses of the word.
Language and Communication, 2025
This paper investigates evaluative labels used in public discourse to frame events and main actor... more This paper investigates evaluative labels used in public discourse to frame events and main actors during the Belarusian political crisis in 2021. The data includes opinion articles from US-American, German, Lithuanian, and Russian (pro-Kremlin) media. Each sub-corpus consists of roughly 30,000 words. The time period of the data is from May 23, 2021 to February 23, 2022. The research aims to identify the main targets of evaluative labels and to determine values and value systems encoded in evaluation. Discourse analysis has been employed to examine labels referring to a selected number of referents. Our findings reveal that the main dividing line runs between the USA, Germany, Lithuania, and Russia. The targets in the US-American, German, and Lithuanian public discourses include Lukashenko, his form of governance and his government's actions. In contrast, labels in the Russian public discourse primarily address the Belarusian opposition, including Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. In the data, the prevalent type of evaluation is explicitly negative. The results contribute to the existing research on how language can shape different understanding of reality.
Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, 2015
The paper sets out to examine the metaphoricity of the discourse of literary criticism dealing wi... more The paper sets out to examine the metaphoricity of the discourse of literary criticism dealing with poetry. The research carried out in the framework of contemporary metaphor studies relying, first of all, on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and its followers, attempts to uncover metaphors structuring the discourse of literary criticism in two distinct cultures - English and Russian. The methodology of the investigation is based on the key principles of the metaphor identification procedure (STEEN et al., 2010) and metaphorical patterns (STEFANOWITSCH, 2006). The results suggest that the main source domain for conceptualizing poetry in literary criticism in both languages is a person. However, this domain features much more prominently in English, whereas the domains of sound and music, painting and journey are more relevant in Russian. Many metaphors are inevitably evaluative - employed to express the writer's positive or negative attitude.
Conceptualizing Events in Ukraine: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Online News Reports
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 2016
The paper sets out to examine the metaphoricity of mediatized political discourse, particularly, ... more The paper sets out to examine the metaphoricity of mediatized political discourse, particularly, news reports dealing with the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in its initial stage, from November 2013 to February 2014, as reflected in Lithuanian and Polish online press. The methodology of research relies on the principles of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Metaphor Identification Procedure (see Steen et al. 2010) and metaphorical patterns (Stefanowitsch 2004). Metaphorical expressions were identified in contexts surrounding three main content words identified with the AntConc (Anthony 2014) programme in Lithuanian and Polish corpus: Kyiv, Ukraine and Maidan. The results suggest that in the mediatized political discourse, these place-names are usually conceptualized as an animal or, more frequently, as a person, experiencing difficulties, suffering, feeling lost, angry, also ready to fight and able to make decisions and act independently. Another image is that of a traveller to Eu...
Vilnius University open series, Jul 26, 2021
We dedicate this volume to Axel Holvoet, a talented linguist, a distinguished professor of Vilniu... more We dedicate this volume to Axel Holvoet, a talented linguist, a distinguished professor of Vilnius University, Honorary Doctor of the University of Latvia, a recipient of the Gold Cross of Merit of Poland, a member of the Academia Europaea, a teacher, a colleague and a friend. He is best characterised by three things: first, by his passion for Baltic and general linguistics, second, by his dedication to students, colleagues and friends, and third, by his role in Academia Salensis, a gem of academic excellence and a place of attraction to many linguists. In January 2021 Axel Holvoet celebrated his 65 th birthday. He started his career as a linguist after graduating from the Department of Slavic languages and literatures at Ghent University in 1977, then moving to Poland and working mainly as a scholar of Slavic. He defended his PhD thesis on grammatical aspect in Polish in 1983 and began working at the Institute of Slavonic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1991 he defended his habilitation thesis on transitivity and clause structure in Polish. His growing interest in the Baltic languages in the mid-eighties of the 20 th century was a primary motive for him to learn first Latvian and later Lithuanian. In 1988 he started teaching Baltic linguistics at the University of Warsaw. In 1998 he moved to Lithuania; there he worked at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and then at Vilnius University, where he has been teaching and doing research until now. His main subjects include trends in contemporary linguistics, syntax, language typology, and grammatical theory. He has initiated and completed several international projects resulting in a series of publications such as monographs Studies in the
Chapter 8. Linguistic metaphor identification in Lithuanian
Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages: MIPVU around the world Edited by Susan Nacey, Aletta G. Dorst, Tina Krennmayr and W. Gudrun Reijnierse. pp. 159–181, 2019
Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 2024
The article sets out to examine the ENTERTAINMENT metaphor and its scenario as realised in the me... more The article sets out to examine the ENTERTAINMENT metaphor and its scenario as realised in the media discourse surrounding political events in Belarus in 2021. Metaphorical scenarios are investigated considering different viewpoints, such as those presented in Lithuanian, German and Russian media. The methodological framework is a blend of Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies, embracing the viewpoint (Sweetser, 2012), Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2005), metaphorical scenarios (Musolff, 2016) and framing (Hart, 2014) The results demonstrate that the ENTERTAINMENT metaphor acquires multiple scenarios depending on the viewpoint. The evaluation attached to the scenarios is mostly negative; however, the viewpoint adopted in the Lithuanian and German discourses is very different from the Russian discourse. The former is based on Western values and targets the authoritarian regime, whereas the latter is Russian-centric, with the Western world posited as a major threat to the Belarusian and Russian societies.
Urlaubsgasthaus" oder doch "Holiday Inn"? Sprachpolitik in Litauen im Spiegel von Facebook-Witzen
Peter Lang eBooks, 2018
Anglų filologijos studijų krypties kompetencijų plėtotės metodika
Vilnius : Vilniaus universitetas, 2011
Recenzentai: dr. D. Šileikaitė-Kaishauri; dr. A. Altuna-Garcia de Salazar (Deusto universitetas, ... more Recenzentai: dr. D. Šileikaitė-Kaishauri; dr. A. Altuna-Garcia de Salazar (Deusto universitetas, Ispanija)Užsienio kalbų, lit. ir vert. s. katedraVilniaus universitetas, inesa.seskauskiene@flf.vu.ltVytauto Didžiojo universiteta
Ukraine’s Voice Makes Russia Angry; Lithuania Speaks Boldly... Constructing attitudinal stance through personification of countries
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics
Personification, one of major types of metaphors often employed to express an attitude, is also a... more Personification, one of major types of metaphors often employed to express an attitude, is also an argumentative tool, especially in media texts on politically contested events. The present investigation aims at disclosing the attitudinal stance in personifying Ukraine, Russia, the Western countries and Lithuania in a corpus of texts collected from Lithuanian media in 2015–2018. The study relies on the three-step Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA, Charteris-Black 2004), involving three levels: linguistic, cognitive and rhetorical. More specifically, they include (1) identifying personification cases, (2) interpreting personification through cognitive metaphorical scenarios (Musolff 2016), and (3) explaining ideological implications encoded in the scenarios. The findings indicate that in the scenario of COMMUNICATION, Ukraine is mostly presented positively: active defender and in need of support, with occasional scepticism whether it is capable to change. The West, Lithuania including,...
The paper sets out to examine metaphors in some EU documents on criminal activities. Drawing on c... more The paper sets out to examine metaphors in some EU documents on criminal activities. Drawing on contemporary understanding of metaphor, the investigation attempts to identify the main source domains for conceptualising a broadly understood abstract concept of law and to identify linguistic metaphors realising such conceptualisation. It also tackles the problem of translating metaphors into Lithuanian. The results of the study demonstrate preference given to object and person metaphors, which confirms previously identified tendencies of metaphoricity in legal discourse. In addition, the metaphor law/control is up features rather prominently. The latter is also the one that is not preserved in translation: differently from the above metaphors, in Lithuanian it is either rendered non-metaphorically or employing another metaphor
Žurnalo "Kalbotyra" mokslo darbų įvadų teksto tvarka : gretinamoji studija
Apie on/ant reikšmę: kiek svarbi kontakto sąvoka?
The paper sets out to examine the relevance of the concept of ‘contact’ and/or ‘(the top of) the ... more The paper sets out to examine the relevance of the concept of ‘contact’ and/or ‘(the top of) the surface’ in the explication of the meaning of on in English and ant in Lithuanian. The investigation of a corpus of English and Lithuanian data revealed that the term is largely superfluous and imprecise, also in many cases a result of interpreting larger strings of context and an outcome of realising the overriding concept of ‘support’, underlying the prototypical meaning of on and ant.Straipsnyje keliama reikšmės aprašymo metakalbos problema. Įrodinėjama, kad angliškojo prielinksnio on ir lietuviškojo ant reikšmei apibūdinti tinkamesnė yra atramos sąvoka. Dažnai leksikografinėje praktikoje ir teoriniuose lingvistų darbuose sutinkama kontakto ar (viršutinio) paviršiaus sąvoka, kaip manoma, neatskleidžia prototipinės on ir ant reikšmės, o yra tik atramos pasekmė, nes vienas į kitą atremti objektai dažniausiai liečiasi. Tyrime remtasi Britų nacionalinio tekstyno ir lietuviškojo VDU Donelaičio tekstyno medžiaga. Bendrasis hipotetinis dedukcinis metodas, papildytas komponentinės analizės, prototipų teorijos ir kitais kognityvinės lingvistikos principais, leido atskleisti postuluojamos sąvokos relevantiškumą bei skirtingos konceptualizacijos nulemtus kalbos ypatumus. Skiriami atramų tipai (objekto ir žemės tipo) bei Y (reliatumo) tipai (dviejų matavimų erdvė arba linija/juosta). Nagrinėjami įvairūs vartojimo atvejai, įskaitant ir reikšmės perkėlimą, atskleidžia panašią ir skirtingą erdvės santykių konceptualizaciją, kas, kaip manoma, gali būti tiek istorinių ekstralingvistinių, tiek skirtingų kalbų ir dėl to besiskiriančių kalbos priemonių raiškos būdų pasekmė. Tikėtina, kad atramos sąvoka tolimesniuose tyrimuose leis atskleisti reikšmės perkėlimo mechanizmą tokiuose pasakymuose kaip ant širdies guli, to be on one’s conscience etc
Anglų filologijos studijų krypties kompetencijų plėtotės metodika
Vilnius : Vilniaus universitetas, 2011
Recenzentai: dr. D. Šileikaitė-Kaishauri; dr. A. Altuna-Garcia de Salazar (Deusto universitetas, ... more Recenzentai: dr. D. Šileikaitė-Kaishauri; dr. A. Altuna-Garcia de Salazar (Deusto universitetas, Ispanija)Užsienio kalbų, lit. ir vert. s. katedraVilniaus universitetas, inesa.seskauskiene@flf.vu.ltVytauto Didžiojo universiteta
Chapter 8. Linguistic metaphor identification in Lithuanian
Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages, 2019
Vertimo studijos, 2018
Based on the theoretical framework of lexical bundle research developed by Biber et al. (2004) an... more Based on the theoretical framework of lexical bundle research developed by Biber et al. (2004) and on Sinclair’s (1991) observations on the compositionality of meaning and delexicalisation of formulaic language, the present study analyses four-word lexical bundles found in English EU legal discourse, focusing on their structural and semantic properties and tendencies of their translation into Lithuanian. The study examines a selection of 43 lexical bundles with a total of 791 unique instances in the corpus, extracted from a self-designed 59,579-word corpus representing EU legal English comprised of five regulations on health claims and food labelling. The results show that lexical bundles can be rendered into Lithuanian as single lexical or function words, phrases, dependent clauses, through the grammatical category of case, or omitted altogether. The length of the translated bundles suggests that there is a tendency to choose a shorter way of rendering them into Lithuanian. High va...
Pastaraisiais dešimtmečiais gana gausu metaforų, kurias išpopuliarino praeito šimtmečio aštuntaja... more Pastaraisiais dešimtmečiais gana gausu metaforų, kurias išpopuliarino praeito šimtmečio aštuntajame dešimtmetyje atsiradusi kognityvinės lingvistikos kryptis, tyrimų. Tyrėjai, besidomintys metaforomis, yra net susibūrę į metaforų tyrimo asociaciją, angliškai sutrumpintai vadinamą raaM (angl. Researching and Applying Metaphor), kurios narė yra ir šio straipsnio autorė. Šios krypties ir šios problematikos tyrimų patrauklumo priežastys yra kelios. Viena iš jų – savitas ir naujas požiūris į metaforą, gerokai išplėtęs jos sampratą nuo literatūrinės puošmenos (kartais vadinamos „dekoratyviuoju požiūriu į metaforą“ žr. Deignan 2005: 2–4), kurią dėl savitumo ir retumo geba sukurti toli gražu ne bet kas ir kuri yra teksto, arba kalbos, bruožas, iki mąstymo įrankio (apie metaforos tyrimų apžvalgą žr. Leezenberg 2001). Požiūrio, jog metafora yra mąstymo įrankis, mąstymo, o ne teksto lygmens, reiškinys, šalininkus iš esmės subūrė konceptualiosios metaforos teorija (toliau – KMT). anot vieno iš ...
Nordic Journal of English Studies, 2020
The usage of English prepositions by non-native speakers is notoriously problematic. The debate a... more The usage of English prepositions by non-native speakers is notoriously problematic. The debate about whether prepositions should be memorised as distinct cases or introduced in the teaching process by demonstrating their multiple meanings as a network of related senses is more likely to be resolved by adhering to the latter, sometimes referred to as the motivated polysemy approach. We claim that semantic (non-)congruence between prepositional senses in L2 and in L1 is no less important. The present paper focuses on two English prepositions, in and on, as they are used by Lithuanian learners of English representing different language proficiency levels ranging from B1 to C2 (Council of Europe 2001). Adhering to the approach of motivated polysemy and, more importantly, to the principle of semantic congruence between the senses of the above English prepositions and their prototypical Lithuanian equivalents, we have established that in, which demonstrates a high degree of semantic cong...
Vilnius University Open Series, 2021
The paper sets out to examine prepositional polysemy in the Baltic languages. More precisely, the... more The paper sets out to examine prepositional polysemy in the Baltic languages. More precisely, the investigation focuses on the semantic structure of the Latvian preposition aiz + Gen. ‘behind, beyond’ as compared to the Lithuanian už + Gen. / Acc. ‘behind, beyond, for’ discussed in our previous paper (Šeškauskienė & Žilinskaitė-Šinkūnienė 2015). The methodology of research relies on the cognitive linguistic framework, mainly on the principle of motivated polysemy. Its key idea is that in the semantic network of the preposition all senses are seen as directly or indirectly linked to the central sense. In the case of aiz and už, the central sense encodes information about spatial configuration of Figure and Ground with the former located in the back region of the latter. A number of other senses, mostly concrete, derived from the central sense, overlap in Latvian and Lithuanian but demonstrate a differing degree of entrenchment. The most distinct differences are identifiable in the ab...
Taikomoji kalbotyra, 2017
Humour is part of human communication and can serve as an effective means for making contact, fin... more Humour is part of human communication and can serve as an effective means for making contact, finding a way out of an embarrassing situation, or mitigating different political and social tensions. However, not all humans are born capable of generating and processing humour and it remains an open question whether it is possible to learn and develop this ability. Therefore, a sense of humour, but not an *ability of humour, would be a frequent collocation in many languages. Cognitive linguists claim that collocations are not accidental as combinability patterns point to certain conceptualisation processes in the expression of meaning. The cognitive linguistic viewpoint that humour is based on a mismatch, or incongruity, between ideas, otherwise referred to as frame shifting, is adopted as a prerequisite for producing humour in this paper.The focus of this paper is the expression of verbal humour dealing with the introduction of the euro in Lithuania in 2015. Verbal humour is created by...
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Papers by Inesa Šeškauskienė