From the perspective of Critical Metaphor Analysis, the paper examines how the topic of lithium mining and extraction is metaphorically conceptualized in the Serbian political and media discourse, particularly focusing on the ways anti-lithium activists and politicians use metaphor in the argumentation of their viewpoints. Based on a dataset collected fromvarious electronic news media in the period June–September 2024, we aim to investigate the functions of the two metaphors manifested in the anti-lithium discourse, i.e., WAR and COLONIALISM, and how they help shape attitudes against Rio Tinto’s lithium mining and extraction in the Jadar river valley in Western Serbia. Our analysis shows that these two metaphors exhibit three main functions: the persuasive one, to convince the various audiences of the seriousness of the issue and mobilize the public against the Jadar lithium-mining project; the affective one, to create a sense of urgency in the public and deepen their emotional reaction to the project; and the evaluative one, to provide a negative judgment of opponents and belittle their arguments. The third function becomes particularly evident when anti-lithium activists and politicians use the ideologically charged COLONIALISM metaphor. The paper highlights the irreplaceable role of metaphor in structuring reasoning about controversial and contentious issues.

The study investigates the Voice Onset Time (VOT) characteristics of Slovenian native speakers producing voiceless plosives in Slovenian and English. Building on foundational research by Lisker and Abramson (1964), the analysis aims to fill a gap in VOT literature regarding Slovenian phonetic features, particularly in the context of second language (L2) acquisition. Utilising connected speech recordings from two native Slovenian speakers fluent in both languages, VOT measurements were obtained for word-initial voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ in stressed syllables. The results reveal that both speakers exhibit a progressive, statistically significant increase in VOT as the place of articulation shifts from bilabial to velar in both L1 and L2 contexts. Notably, while the speakers maintain similar but distinct VOT ranges in Slovenian, their English productions align more closely in VOT ranges higher than those in their L1, indicating an adaptive phonetic response to the L2 environment.

The terms ‘catchwords’ (including ‘catchphrases’ and ‘keywords’), ‘winged words’ (including ‘winged phrases’) and ‘precedent lexemes’ (under which both words and phraseological units are subsumed) are used, supposedly synonymously, in different analytical traditions. As linguistic analytical terms, the three terms discussed seem to have an overlapping referent in the world. However, the terms evoke different associative interpretations and are based on different conceptual metaphors, indicating different conceptualizations of the phenomenon of special wordhood. The question that the paper addresses is which of these three conceptualizations of special wordhood is most suited to capturing the sensitivities of political cognition. The paper analyzes three catchwords in Bulgarian discourses and their ‘politicalness’, contrasting these with their patterns of use in English discourses. In view of the fact that digital communication and social media have made everyone and anyone a political actor, the redefinition of ‘political’ as indexing any social juncture, which leads to contentious, debatable and controversial communicative exchanges, it appears that the term ‘catchphrases’ most naturally accommodates the premodifier ‘political’ in both senses (as a point of origin from institutionally/actor marked political discourses and as an index-symbol of shared public sensitivities and opinions with clusivity-neutral properties) and reveals the communicative and cultural contagion of special wordhood.

This study addresses two concerns: (1) how political actors communicate while doing politics, and (2) how language analysis can shed light on the conceptualization and re-conceptualization of a key concept of European politics, i.e., BORDER. Our aim is to analyze and model the variation in the conceptualization of BORDER with respect to three dimensions: (1) time (2015, 2022), (2) country (Austria, France, Poland, UK), and (3) political affiliation (Right, Centre-Right, Centre, Centre-Left, Left). To this end, we use transcripts of parliamentary debates available in the Parla-Mint corpus. Our results show statistically significant differences in the representation of BORDER across all three dimensions.

Editorial of the volume.

This study examines lexical blends as tools of political discreditation in contemporary Serbian discourse. Despite being a relatively recent word-formation process in Serbian, blending has demonstrated remarkable productivity in political contexts, generating over 3,000 formations. Analysis of a corpus of 585 political blends investigates why informal, playful linguistic devices have proliferated in traditionally formal political discourse. The findings reveal that Serbian political blends are overwhelmingly derogatory, serving as weaponized lexical items designed to discredit opponents. These formations primarily target three dimensions of political credibility, primarily casting doubt on benevolence, competence, and dominance, with benevolence being the most frequent target, reflecting voters’ prioritization of morality in political evaluation. The study identifies five key mechanisms through which blends achieve discrediting effects: humor and ridicule, wordplay, iconicity through formal cohesion, metaphorical semantic fusion, and onomastic distortion of personal names. The analysis demonstrates how morpho-phonological processes are strategically harnessed for political warfare, with blends serving simultaneously as identifying, discrediting, and offensive linguistic weapons. A notable finding is the recent shift toward targeting ruling party politicians rather than opposition figures, suggesting broader changes in Serbia’s political landscape. The research contributes to understanding how morphological creativity intersects with political communication strategies.

This paper presents a corpus survey on metaphor types in a contemporary Bulgarian corpus of Parliamentary Sessions. The following processes are described: the extraction of the contexts of the selected key words virus, coronavirus, pandemic, epidemic, COVID-19, COVID, corona; the classification method that was employed for dividing the detected contexts into the relevant metaphor frames; the language expressions that are associated with the corresponding metaphor type; the frequency of the used key words and the frequency of the related metaphor frames. Some problems are outlined with respect to this kind of study. The most frequent metaphor frames in our data turned out to be CONTROL and WAR.

This article is a review of the study titled Wychowanie dwujęzyczne w rodzinie polsko-bułgarskiej [Polish–Bulgarian Families and Bilingual Upbringing. Linguistic Context], authored by Yordanka Ilieva-Cygan (Warszawa: Dom Wydawniczy Elipsa, 2024, pp. 401).

In the paper I discuss content explication processes in sentences expressing the causal relation in Bulgarian and Polish. The work implements the model of theoretical contrastive studies with a semantic interlanguage. I focus on condensation processes in the causal position. Apart from phenomena well-known in the literature, such as nominalization and pronominalization/prosententialization, I highlight the “articlization” of the propositional argument, in which the latter is compressed to the form of the Bulgarian definite article. Equivalent constructions with demonstrative pronouns as modifiers in the adnominal position in some compound pronouns are also presented.

This article examines the propaganda language used in documents produced by the security services of the Polish People’s Republic and the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. Based on archival materials from 1945 to 1989, the study examines the surveillance of intellectual circles. There is an interesting blending of administrative and bureaucratic styles in these texts, as well as elements of propaganda. Although the documents are official in nature, they contain a great deal of epithets and military metaphors, and they stress the necessity of combating political opponents. The analysis reveals numerous similarities between the examined collections as well as certain differences, particularly in the intensity of propagandistic elements.