Constructing Socialist Thought through Translation: Alâeddin Şenel and the Politics of Activist Translation in Türkiye

Across Languages and Revolutions: A Conversation with Julia Alekseyeva

How does multilingualism function not just as a biographical condition but as a political, aesthetic, and pedagogical practice? In this interview, Julia Alekseyeva, a multimodal scholar, graphic memoirist, translator, and leftist activist whose scholarship spans Soviet, French, Japanese, and US cultural contexts, reflects on language acquisition through displacement, translation across media, and the role of comics and documentary forms in antifascist politics. The conversation foregrounds Alekseyeva’s perspective as a post-Soviet Jewish immigrant to the US working across four languages and multiple artistic registers, from graphic memoir to academic monograph and public-facing essays. It offers an account of how multilingualism shapes intellectual formation, creative practice, and political commitment, while also advancing a critical argument that multilingualism can challenge ethnonationalist identity frameworks. The interview presents multilingualism as a form of intellectual and political bridging that unsettles fixed identities and speaks directly to urgent contemporary cultural debates.

METAPHORS AND SOCIO-CULTURAL VALUES IN CHINA’S PRESS STATEMENT TRANSLATION

In real practice, political text translations are in line with a country’s main foreign policies. Thus, an in-depth understanding on communicative strategies employed in translating political texts, e.g. press statements, is essential. The paper analyses the translation of press statements from the Source Text (Mandarin Chinese) into the Target Texts (English and Indonesian). To elaborate, this study uses van Dijk’s Political Discourse Analysis at the macro (contexts) and micro (texts) levels. By considering Newmark’s equivalent translation concept, as well as metaphor and annotated translations, the analysis reveals that the translation from China’s perspective uses metaphors and China’s socio-cultural values within the techniques of (i) equivalency of message and form, and (ii) active- passive. Overall, this study will be beneficial for analysts, translators, and the public who are curious about studies on the translation of press statements delivered by the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs.

SOCIO-RHETORICAL CRITICISM: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT ANDAFRICAN CONTEXTUAL APPLICATIONS IN BIBLICAL STUDIES

Socio-rhetorical criticism (SRC) emerged from the pioneering works ofVernon K Robbbins' in the 1980s and had metamorphosed into amultidisciplinary approach which delves into the intertextual, socialcultural, ideological, and sacred “textures” of a text. This article thetraced SRC's historical development, paying attention to its focus onclassical rhetoric, Robbins's “textures” model expansion of it, and theglobal adaptation into various hermeneutical contexts such as feminist,African, and postcolonial ones. It further investigates SRC's strong pointsas a holistic, dialogical approach and evaluates its potential shortcomingsin terms of methodological complexity and interpretative subjectivity.The study adopted the qualitative method of research, integratinginterpretive mechanism of Socio-rhetorical criticism. The studyillustrates how SRC still instructs contemporary biblical scholarship toprovide a new and surprising framework for grappling withcontemporary issues of justice, identity, and ecology. Thus, SRC standsas more than just a method; it becomes a way of listening to Scripture inthe complexity and plurality that exists today.

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Conceptual Metaphors of the Political Order. Structures, Hierarchies, Agents and the (Im)Possible Transformation

Abstract: The aim of this article is to develop a conceptual model for investigating the problematics of social change through the integration of three theoretical perspectives: social constructivism, conceptual metaphor theory, and critical discourse analysis. A comprehensive theoretical review is conducted, encompassing the work of major philosophical thinkers (M. Foucault, A. Gramsci), scholars contributing to the study of metaphor (G. Lakoff, M. Johnson), and key figures in the methodology of critical discourse analysis (N. Fairclough, R. Wodak, T. A. van Dijk, Z. Kövecses). On this basis, the proposed conceptual model is constructed. The central hypothesis posits that the social order is sustained not only through norms and institutions but also through deeply embedded metaphorical systems that function as its cognitive and ideological infrastructure. The analysis is based on a corpus of selected metaphors referencing Bulgarian political discourse. The findings lead to several principal conclusions. First, conceptual metaphors such as “the state is a body,” “the state is a machine,” “the state is a family,” as well as neoliberal variants (“the state is a firm,” “politics is a market”), serve to naturalize specific power relations and hierarchies by transforming them into “common sense” and “self-evident truths.” Second, these metaphors structure perception and cognition, thereby shaping the rationality of action. Third, insofar as social change constitutes a discursive practice, its realization is significantly constrained when agents operate within the language of the same hegemonic metaphors through which the existing social order is naturalized. Keywords: social constructionism, critical discourse analysis, conceptual metaphor theory, neoliberalism, social change.

Protest Discourses in July Revolution: An Analysis Using Hymes’ SPEAKING Grid

This study examines the protest discourses of the 2024 July revolution in Bangladesh through an interactional sociolinguistic lens. Adopting qualitative method this study aims to explain the discourse focusing on the ways in which Generation Z articulated political dissent through slogans during the 2024 movement. A total of 40 slogans are selected from three key sources: street protest, graffiti and social media. Dell Hymes’ SPEAKING grid within an interactional sociolinguistic framework is used as an analytical framework to explore how contextual factors such as setting, participants, ends and norms etc. shape the meaning and function of protest discourses. The findings reveal that the SPEAKING model provides a nuanced understanding of how Gen Z utilized linguistic diversity and contextual adaptability to transform slogans into powerful tools of political resistance. It demonstrates that these slogans functioned as strategic interactional acts that effectively shaped collective identity and redefined the discourse of the movement. Mother Language, 2026; 10(1): 262-281