Elena Tsvetkova

Изследването е свързано с преподаването на ключови понятия по гражданско образование. Целта е да се предложи алтернативен подход за дефиниране на термини като гражданин, права, личност и др., който да свърже предишния опит на учениците с тези думи и лексикалната дефиниция на термините. Този подход е вдъхновен от идеи за прилагане на прототипната теория и изучаването на метафори в обучението по чужди езици. Хипотезата е, че може успешно да се приложат такива методи и в преподаването по гражданско образование, така че обучението да бъде обвързано с практиката. В статията са включени примери от учебниците по гражданско образование за XI клас, където са предложени дефиниции, вдъхновени от тези подходи. Освен това е направено сравнение между лингвистичните интуиции на учениците (обобщени в резултати от запитване) и предложените дефиниции в учебниците.

The article presents an overview of Grice’s notion of implicatures with a focus on the interpretation of quantitative (scalar) implicatures. Processing an implicature in the case of scalar implicatures is based on automatic understanding of expressions that are part of a linguistic scale. Such linguistic scales are sequences of terms where the use of the stronger term implies the weaker one or the use of the weaker term implies the negation of the stronger one. With examples that affirm the linguistic intuitions of members of a language community, it is illustrated that within these scales, the meaning of expressions is used with varying degrees of strength according to the speaker’s meaning.

The article examines the expressions in political slogans from several consecutive election campaigns held in Bulgaria in 2023 and 2024. Natural language analysis tools developed in the field of logic and philosophy of language were used to reveal the intention behind the slogan. In advertising, the slogan engages consumers in a language game and provokes them to choose a given product over others similar to it on the market. This characteristic of the slogan has also been adopted in election campaigns. By analyzing the implicit meaning of slogans, conclusions can be drawn about the message that the party aims to convey to its voters, even when it is not explicitly stated. An analysis of implicatures, and prototypical and salient expressions used in slogans is applied to achieve this goal. With the use of such means of expression the pragmatic inference is possible because people in a linguistic community have common sociocultural and linguistic intuitions. In this sense, the message of the slogan conveys values that are shared by the audience. The article examines examples that show the emotions that copywriters intend to provoke in voters. Prototypical and salient phrases are interpreted with minimal cognitive effort, because they are used frequently and participants in a given language community understand them almost instantly. Implicatures are perceived as a kind of form of linguistic creativity, which is realized in the text of the slogan, so a personal connection is created between the representatives of a political party and its voters, although another of their essential characteristics is also preserved - the free interpretation of the speaker’s intentions.

Campaign posters and printer billboards are reviewed in this article with a focus on the slogan. The main argument is that the analysis and the function of an ad slogan can be applied to political campaign slogans. Certain similarities can be found in the purpose of the two, but also similar techniques are used to engage the audience: by using salient expressions or conversational implicatures voters are engaged in a language game that increases the chances of the slogan fulfilling its purpose. For this reason, the theory of implicatures and the Graded salience hypothesis are briefly reviewed. The message becomes easier to grasp and remember because it uses familiar expressions as it is shown in the evidentiary sample.

The article reviews cases of unsuccessful implicatures and possible reasons for misunderstanding the speaker’s meaning. The focus is on explaining misunderstanding with the graded salience hypothesis. Under review are examples of cases where the conventional meaning and intended meaning differ thus resulting in a misunderstanding. The graded salience hypothesis offers an explanation of how we understand expressions based on personal preference priority, so the main argument made is that in cases of misunderstanding the speaker and the listener prioritize different meanings attributed to the same expression due to differences in knowledge, personal background, familiarity with the expression in particular usage, etc. There are also cases of scalar implicatures where the inference meaning is not always the same. In such cases, the speaker’s meaning could be misunderstood if the listener considers a different meaning of the scalar expression as more salient than the one the speaker wishes to convey.