site.btaBilingual Publications Construct Nation’s Symbolic Models, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elena Getova Says

Addressing an international forum on the Cyrillic alphabet titled "Alphabet. Language. Identity", Bilingual publications construct the nation’s symbolic models, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elena Getova said here on Friday. She spoke on the second day of an international forum on the Cyrillic alphabet titled "Alphabet. Language. Identity." The event opened in Sofia on Thursday, and its second session is held at the Plovdiv Regional History Museum on Friday.

Getova presented a report on "Bulgarian Revival Journalism: Languages and Identity (Research on Bilingual Publications of the Revival)". Her work traces back the relationship between language, nationality and journalistic mission in the first Bulgarian periodicals.

According to her, bilingual publications were popular because they gave rise to the problem of the contact between cultures and how dialogue between them took place. In Getova's words, at that time journalism became a tribune for multilingualism and through it Bulgarians were able to declare their national ideas.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elka Traykova also presented a report during the forum, putting an emphasis on the synthetic literary model between "own" and "foreign" in the literary works of the 20th century. For most of the century, the "own" and the "foreign" coexisted in an aesthetic space that marked the distinctive path of Bulgarian literature, Traykova summarized.