Foreign Languages
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.aab-edu.net/handle/123456789/55
The Foreign Languages community showcases scholarly publications and research outputs authored by faculty and researchers in the Faculty of Foreign Languages. This collection includes journal articles, working papers, conference proceedings, and other academic works that contribute to the understanding of theory, policy, and practice. It aims to promote open access to high-quality economic research conducted within the institution.
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Item Extending ethnic humour theory: Genuine vs. functional ethnic jokе scripts(AAB College, 2025-07-15) Takovski, AleksandarMost ethnic humour that has been studied so far consists of jokes which use ethnically nonspecific qualities such as stupidity or canniness in order to ridicule an ethnic group and thus to preserve and perpetuate ethnically based social hierarchies in western industrial societies. In light of this dominant logic in ethnic humour theory, the objective of this study is to problematize the relation of such non-ethnic qualities and the notion of ethnic identity, as well as their relation to a specific type of society, in an attempt to convincingly argue in favour of the need to differentiate between ‘ethnically-empty’ functional joke scripts and genuine ethnic joke scripts that are related to the ethnic identity of the target. In so doing, I extend ethnic humour theory by introducing and testing the notion of genuine ethnic joke scripts in order to motivate future research that will tackle other potential ethnic humour idiosyncrasies. Toward this end, I have collected and analysed joke material (N=369) coming from Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Albania, societies with histories and relations very different that those in the western industrial societies. Additionally, the study incorporates two questionnaires with members of the two largest ethnicities in the Republic of Macedonia, Macedonians and Albanians, to ascertain the relation between the genuine ethnic humour and ethnic identity.Item Turning eu into me and you the politicization of eu representations in macedonia(AAB College, 2025-07-15) Takovski, AleksandarEU is discursive field where multiple meanings are created, negotiated and contested. Research has shown that it has interpretive power often used as an instrument of political confrontation. Such is the case, this study argues, with the two largest Macedonian parties – the Social Democrats and VMRO -DPMNE – who in a pursuit of changing or maintaining power have produced an EU discourse fitting to their own political agendas. In a situation of a prolonged political crisis, and a significant EU involvement in it, the two parties have turned their EU discourse into an instrument of positive presentation of the self and a negative presentation of the other. The general goal of the study is to analyze the specific discursive strategies in the party programs and media statements of the two parties and their leaders.Item Political alliance with COVID-19: Macedonian politics and the strategic use of the pandemic(AAB College, 2025-07-15) Takovski, AleksandarThe emergence of COVID-19 in Macedonia in March 2020 overlapped with a period in which the country was run by a technical Government tasked to organize premature elections. In circumstances of highlighted inter-party conflict predating the health crisis, the newly emerged health emergency has only added to the political confrontation and the existing political crisis. COVID-19 and the resulting discourses on health crisis in this respect, I argue, have been used strategically by the political actors to make a populist advancement in the struggle over state power. Moreover, the strategic use of the COVID-19 by the two major political parties in a discourse marked by blame casting and (inter)dependence on past political misconduct indexes, and at the same time perpetuates, a larger ongoing political crisis in the country. To demonstrate the strategic use of the COVID-19 health discourse within the interparty conflict and its diagnostic potential to witness a prolonged political crisis, I will use internet data collected from the websites of the two largest Macedonian political parties in order to analyze the discursive strategies of predication and argumentation employed by the political parties.