Introduction. Linguistics has undeniably borne the mark of ideologies and it has tacitly been accepted that the academic discipline had one ‘face’ in the West, and a totally different one – in the East. Many have felt that the practice of teaching linguistics in the former communist block was marred by neglect for works considered belonging to the ‘ideological enemy’. Among the authors shunned in those times were names such as Chomsky, Halliday, Firth - researchers who have had a formative impact on linguistics. While studying in socialist Bulgaria, or any other Soviet satellites, in the 70s and 80s of the last century (as I did) one would have learned that any theory which had no Marxist grounding "should be either converted to Marxism or liquidated" (Skolimowski 1965:238). That is why we must expect that the East had its own version of linguistics – ignoring Western authorities and methodologies but propounding its own bias and orientations.

The discourse in an international specialised journal is explored to establish whether researchers from the former communist block take part in the discourse on linguistics; what topics they prefer to research and which authorities they exploit in their publications.

Theoretical framework. The purpose of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is to analyse "opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of  dominance, discrimination, power and control  as manifested in language" (Wodak 1995:204)‏. CDA "studies real, and often extended, instances of social interaction which take (partially) linguistic form. The critical approach is distinctive in its view of (a) the relationship between language and society, and (b) the relationship between analysis and the practices analysed" (Wodak 1997:173).

For the present analysis CDA is both method and object of investigation. The extended instance of social interaction which takes a linguistic form - i.e. the object of the study - is the publication of articles in the journal Discourse and Society (DS). This interaction is situated in a social reality where researchers from various countries have the opportunity to publish in the journal while the editors have the power to select what they deem relevant to the objectives of the journal and of interest to its international audience. The method of the study is the CDA effort to establish relations of inequality: are East European authors treated as equals to West Europeans, are their articles published on a par with the other researchers?

According to the editors, the journal Discourse and Society 'explores the relevance of discourse analysis to the social sciences. It stimulates a problem-oriented and critical approach and pays particular attention to the political implications of discourse and communication' (DS website, aims and scope). The editors emphasise that they open the pages for a wide international community of researchers: "Discourse & Society is an international journal. Its board members, contributors and readers are from many different countries, and this will also be reflected in the variety of the topics, approaches and cultural backgrounds of its articles." (ibid.)

It has been the case that CDA authors have turned the tools of their research discipline to their own practices. Billig (2008) (also a co-editor of DS) published an article claiming that while CDA practitioners criticise writers for hiding agency and mystifying social processes behind excessive nominalisations, CDA discourse itself abounds in nominalisations. An extended discussion followed, the voices of authorities, such as Fairclough, van Dijk, Martin and others were heard emphasising that grammatical features by themselves are not sufficient tokens of social processes if divorced from the entire social context in which the discourse takes place. However, the very discussion reaffirmed the intent of CDA to discover relations of inequality, no matter where they reside.

The present research also tries to employ the tools of CDA and establish inequalities within the discipline. Unlike Billig's attempt, however, this one emphasises the very social context of producing the discourse.            

 Methodology. The issues of the journal Discourse and Society over a period of 9 years - between the years 1999 and 2008 - were explored from the website of the publisher Sage.

The search engine of the website allows investigations based on the option 'affiliation', which helped establish authors belonging to institutions - mainly Universities - based in the former socialist countries. To make sure that no authors have been left out - because the article may not have been referenced with the author's affiliation, for example - searches were generated by surname endings specific to the respective nationalities. Finally, searches for the country and nationality names were conducted, unrelated to a specific search field. In this way, the number of East Europeans who have published articles in DS over the specified period was established.

Secondly, the biographies of the respective authors were found via an additional Internet search to check their relationship to the post communist countries and their progress in life.

However, looking for domination in the field of linguistics journals can not stop at quantitative data. Qualitative data can be derived by content analysis. By definition, content analysis 'attempts to infer structural relations from a multitude of documents, while keeping an eye on the social context in which they were produced' (Krippendorf 2004:25). The structural relations of interest to this research are:

•        the concept of locality;
•        dominant methodologies;
•        recurrent names in the reference lists.

To this end, the corpus was searched for answers to the following questions:

What identities are projected by authors from the former communist countries?

What topics are they deemed competent to tackle?

Which authors are quoted more often than others?

Which methods prevail in the researches published by the journal?

To cross-check the data, a comparison with other fields is conducted to establish the situation in other research disciplines. The methodologies and authorities quoted in a Bulgarian linguistics journal are juxtaposed to those found in Discourse and Society. Finally, issues of access to linguistics journals are discussed.

Quantitative Data. Between 1999 and 2008, 535 articles were published in DS. Twenty-two could be attributed to authors who relate to an ex-communist country by birth or affiliation to a University based there. This presents fewer than 4% of all the articles. For the sake of comparison, the same number of articles - 22 - was published by Greek authors only, while 309 articles, or 58 % of all are authored by UK-affiliated researchers; 6 articles are from Israeli researchers, which presents 1% for one small country. Given the fact that the Eastern block originally included 10 countries, some of which split into 2 or more parts, this result is less than meager.

The authors come from the following countries: Slovenia (4), Romania (4), Czech Republic (3), Poland (3), Estonia (2), Lithuania, Serbia, Russia. The other three are book reviews and an in memoriam note dedicated to a deceased researcher. Several ex-communist countries have not been represented in the journal, such as Bulgaria and Hungary, also - the other component parts of the former USSR, Slovakia, Monte Negro and others. Except for Slovenia and Romania, it would be an overstatement to claim that East Europeans publish regularly in DS. The publications can be qualified as sporadic, rather than an accepted practice in these countries.

The additional research on the authors' progress in life shows that the authors of the articles have taken their latest degree - MA or PhD - at a Western University. The subject of the research presented with the publication in DS is related to the topic of their degree thesis. Eleven of the authors are still based in their native post-communist country; six are currently employed in academic posts at Western Universities and reside in the respective countries. Three of them have published more than one article in the journal; others appear in collaboration with colleagues from the country they left.

Research Patterns. All the authors from post communist countries explore topics from their native countries, usually - in comparison with the Western country where they studied. No articles on topics connected with other countries are associated with their names. Contrarily, the search by country and nationality names returns data that East European topics are explored by authors from the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA who have no apparent links to the respective post-communist countries but write on topics connected with them.

The authors based in post communist countries only write in big international teams when they are based in a Western University. In such cases, there is always an ex-patriot currently working in their own country in the team. By contrast, most of the other researches published in DS have been conducted in teams, more often than not - international.

The concept of nationality. Firstly, a discussion of the concept of nationality is in order. Common sense associates nationality with the place of birth, or residence, but the survey of authorship in DS adds two further dimensions: academic tenure and participation in international projects. Thus, the editor of the journal, Teun van Dijk, according to his website was born in the Netherlands, but is currently based in Spain as Visiting Professor. He has also held academic positions in Germany, France, Argentina and other countries, which makes it difficult to label him 'a Dutch researcher'. One of his co-editors, Ruth Wodak (data from her website) while originally from Austria, is presented as a member of an international team working on a project funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council  (ERSC) for one of her publications and as a member of an Austrian-Australian collaboration - for another. Therefore, globalisation appears to have re-drawn nationality descriptors, so that labels are too narrow to apply.

The identities of the East European authors in this study, however, are constructed differently. It is usually the case that they were born in an ex-communist country, then specialised at a Western University. Furthermore, the research they publish in DS applies methodologies learned at the Western University. For example, Karmen Erjavec (data from her web page) did her Doctoral Studies in Zalzburg (Austria) on Media Studies. The article she publishes in Discourse and Society is about the media representation of Roma minorities in Slovenia. She applies van Dijk's model of transitivity, as well as Steward Hall's analytical framework for media representations. When she quotes Slovenian, Romanian or Bulgarian authors, it is about the place of Roma populations in the region. Therefore, Eastern references shed light on the social context, while Western authorities provide the analytical frameworks.       

Veronika Kalmus, likewise, was born in Estonia (data from her web page), did her Master Degree in Sociology in Oslo (Norway) on youth behaviour in consumer society. Her publication in the journal is about the ethno-political socialisation of Estonian and Russian children. She applies van Dijk's model of group representations and quotes Estonian sources mainly concerning the situation of Estonian children, while her theoretical framework is entirely based on Western references.

Another Slovenian author is Zala Volcic (data from her web page), who emigrated from Serbia to get a PhD in America and is now based in Australia. The topic of her research is Muslim reactions in Bosnia and Kosovo to Bush's War on Terror.

Therefore, the mobility of East Europeans follows a pattern different from that of their Western colleagues. They get a first degree in their native country, then a second degree from a Western University and either return to their native country, or emigrate. Their publications in DS seem to share the characteristic that they combine expertise from their own country with Western knowledge acquired in the course of specialisations abroad or emigration. It is fairly obvious, however, that the theoretical models tend to be Western.

If some Eastern methodologies for linguistics research exist, no trace of them can be found in the articles in the journal. Also, no cases were established where a researcher published without the benefit of a specialisation at a Western University.

Which methods prevail in the researches published by the journal? Below is an indicative list of methods applied by researchers from Eastern Europe in the articles published in DS:

• Slovenia – van Dijk, macrostructures, Labov (discourse types), Bell (news values)‏
• Serbia - Bernstein (re-contextualisation)‏
• Romania – Fairclough (public space dialogue)
• Russia - Fairclough (discursive aspects of social change)‏‏
• Estonia – Fairclough (indirect perception analysis)‏

The theoretical influences on the researches can be summarised as follows: rhetoric analysis, social-psychological research, media analysis, genre analysis, metaphor  studies, analysis of cognitive processes. Apparently, none of these theoretical frameworks derives from 'socialist' linguistics. It is the case rather that the list strikes as a replica of the established formative influences on CDA formulated by Blommaert and Bucaen (2000:454). On the part of linguistics, Hallidayan systemic-functional linguistics is at work, combined with Lakoff-inspired approaches to metaphor, modern argumentation theory, van Dijk's framework for analysing discourse as a social practice and various theories of the narrative, plus social psychology. Thus, the discipline of CDA is practised by the East Europeans within its rightful Western boundaries. All the East European authors seem to blend cohesively into CDA discourse contributing only native research concerning the social context of the discourses.

Fairclough (1992) outlines three planes on which CDA functions:

• discourse-as-text – nominalisation, passivisation, etc. Linguistics structures which reveal social attitudes;
• discourse-as-discursive-practice  - new genres which structure new relations;
• discourse-as-social-practice  - new ideologies and hegemonic relations articulated through discourse.

Post communist researches tend to explore the third plane - discourse as social practice. The articles show how discourse presents and shapes the behaviour of social groups in the respective societies. Often psychological models are applied to gauge attitudes. A single research addresses the second plane: Erjavec (2004)  describes a new genre called advertorials ( adver/ tisements + edi/torials). Incidentally, this research is the most frequently quoted by the other publications in DS. The subject of linguistic features which project social relationships rarely occurs in the articles of East Europeans, probably because their local languages are of little interest as such.

The problems raised with the respective researches echo the agenda of public life: co-existence of religious communities, integration of minority groups, the repercussions of globalisation on ethnic groups, re-drawing political boundaries and national identity etc. The topics, as can be seen, are mainly of global character, seeking specific national projections. While Western research tackles an issue as specific for the West as the problem of migrants, for example, no topics characteristic of the East can be found, although several spring to mind – the changing discourse of political elites, the new genres of TV shows, the eclipse of ‘communist’ values etc.

It can safely be concluded that while drawing upon Western analytical models, Eastern Europeans contribute to the discussion of social issues which present global interest. CDA in its 'Eastern' application is more concerned with issues of sociology and psychology than with language as such.

Which authors are quoted most often?

By frequency, the most quoted names are (the figures indicate the number of quotations in the reference lists for the researched period) :

• Teun van Dijk (159), Norman Fairclough (124), Ruth Wodak (110), Stuart Hall (90)
• E. Schegloff (73) Michael Billig (67), George Lakoff (60), M.A.K. Halliday (63), G.Kress (61)
• M. Coulthard (47) R. Fowler (42) M. Foucault (41) Bourdieu (41)
• C. Goodwin (37), P. Chilton(32), J. Blommaert (32) M. Reisigl (31)
• A. Duranti (29), L. Chouliaraki (27) A. Giddens (25), D. Hymes (23),
• N. Chomsky (17), B. Bernstein (15) J. Habermas (16) J. Lemke, C. Briggs (13)
• V. Bhatia (8), J. Flowerdew (8), A. Gramsci (7), L. Althusser (6)

Of those names, only Fairclough has been associated with a University in Eastern Europe - in Bucharest, Romania. This fact explains his popularity among Romanian authors, on the one hand, and the active role Romanians take in publishing their research in DS - 4 Romanian authors were found with this study, 3 of whom are still based in their native country.

Authorities associated with ideologies, as can be seen, are less popular references than researchers providing analytical models and methodologies. Marx, for example, is only quoted 5 times, but none of the respective authors belong to a post-communist country.

Do Bulgarians publish at all? A search of all Sage journals returns data that 129 articles were published by authors with Bulgarian affiliation but none of them are in the filed of linguistics. The greatest number (51) belong to technological disciplines – biotechnology and polymers. Secondly, 40 articles are dedicated to medical topics – cancer research and toxicology. Twenty-five articles can be broadly classified as various Humanity topics – sociology, defence policies and comparative studies. The rest of the articles are book reviews and 2 letters to the editor – all of which on medical topics.

This indicates that Bulgarian research in Linguistics does not appear quite on a par with international research, or it does not seem to feature topics of interest to a reading public outside the country. A powerful factor for this situation is the fact that very few people outside the country are interested in the Bulgarian language. It can also be assumed that under communism linguistics was deliberately pushed away from ideological association. It will not be an exaggeration to assert that the same inertia moves linguistics nowadays. A review of articles on political language, for example, reveals that more often than not the politicians are scrutinised for sub-standard language forms, rural dialects or incorrect language choices.  

At the same time, a search of the bibliographies of the articles in a Bulgarian journal – Contrastive Linguistics - reveals a frequency list of authorities quite different from the authorities in Discourse Studies. The list of frequently quoted authors is headed by Yuriy Maslov, a renounced Russian linguist specialising in Grammar, Verbal Aspect and Contrastive studies.  Second comes one of the editors of the journal, Christo Stamenov, a specialist in English Grammar. The third most frequently quoted authority is Bulgarian: Lyubomir Andreychin, specilising in the morphology of the Bulgarian Language. The name of a linguist researching Bulgarian Lexicology comes fourth – Todor Boyadjiev. On a par with him is another Russian authority – Vinogradov. Thus we can see a range of Bulgarian and Russian scholars shaping the outlook of Bulgarian Linguistics today. The discipline is undeniably dominated by the shadow of a Soviet-satellite past. The focus is on traditional grammar and vocabulary, while links between language and social life are rare, if existent at all. From the Western authorities, the most frequent quotes come from Randolph Quirk and his collaborators on Contemporary English Grammar, followed by two distant second places - Brown and Levinson’s book on Pragmatics and Teun van Dijk’s Discourse Grammar. This fact corroborates the finding that the description of the language levels is in focus for Bulgarian linguistics, rather than language as a social semiotic.

Furthermore, the topics include: a comparison between the ways Bulgarians and Russians greet each other, Scandinavian influences on Middle English, adjectival intensification in English and Bulgarian, place names in Polish, Bulgarian, Russian and other languages, etymologies etc. It appears as if word formation and morphology dominate the agenda.  

Access. The website of SAGE allows access for Bulgarian researchers at the price of a subscription. The purchase of an article costs about 13% of a researcher’s monthly salary. Various institutional memberships allow viewing abstracts for free and a few articles which do not require subscriptions. However, each October the site opens for free access, when the data for this article were collected.

The libraries of Sofia University and the new Bulgarian University were searched for the most frequently quoted authorities in Discourse and Society.

Teun van Dijk’s Text and context : explorations in the semantics and pragmatics of discourse is available in the library of the New Bulgarian University and Sofia University provides his book A Handbook of qualitative methodologies for mass communication research. Fairclough’s Analysing Discourse can be found in the library of Sofia University, while his co-authored with Chiliaraki book Discourse in late modernity : rethinking critical discourse analysis is available from the NBU. Ruth Wodak’s Challenges in a changing world is listed in the catalogue of Sofia University, while the library of NBU does not stock any of her books. Stuart Hall is presented in the library of the NBU with one book on cultural identity, and none – in Sofia University.

Schegloff or Billig’s works can not be found in any of the libraries, but Halliday’s Construing experience through meaning is available from both Sofia University and the New Bulgarian University. At the same time, the most widely represented author is Chomsky - 10 of his books are at Sofia University, both as a researcher of ideology and cognition. At the NBU the catalogue search returns 6 titles, again from both his fields of interest.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the books in such libraries can only be borrowed by University staff for a limited period of time. If students need them, they can use the books in the reading rooms.

The issues of access, at least in Bulgaria, lead to the conclusion that it is limited, but not due to any ideological influences. Mainly economic concerns may prevent Bulgarian researchers from keeping an eye on what is being published in the world. However insignificant these obstacles may appear, they do exist and stop eastern researchers from participating in the international discourse on linguistics. It is also true that Bulgaria is among the poorest countries in Europe, but research is an area which can improve its understanding of itself and its power to communicate with the outer world. Therefore, investment in research should precede economic empowerment, otherwise expectations of progress can hardly be justified. 

Conclusions. Researchers from the former Eastern block do not publish as often as their colleagues from the West on the subject of discourse and society. There are other areas, however, where they are very active. For the Bulgarian researchers, according to the Sage website, these are the areas of technology and medicine, which can be construed considerably less ideological than sociology and linguistics. It stands to reason to argue that the inertia continues from the period of communism when seeking social underpinnings was largely discouraged. The topics of linguistics research published in the Bulgarian journal reviewed here corroborate this conclusion, revealing a focus on grammatical description. This study did not try to establish whether Eastern researchers do not offer contributions to Western journals, or they tend to be rejected by the editors. Another issue which may be researched as well is whether Easterners consider their problems too specific for the attention of a global audience. It would also appear unacceptable if Easterners live unaware of international research trends. Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that a gap exists and it should not be ignored. 

East Europeans publish research which brings its specific contribution in the sense that they explore typical global problems and reveal the situation in their native country. They do not propose issues of interest to their specific societies and hardly ever deal with realities outside their native country and the Western country where they studied. Quite contrarily, Westerners boldly explore issues in countries to which they have no relation and by this token they display a better confidence.

In terms of methodology, the easterners who publish in western journals do not differ from their Western colleagues, because they publish research which has probably been supervised in the course of specialisations they did abroad. No methodologies deserve the label ‘eastern’ from the ones described in articles in D&S. If the research in the Bulgarian journal investigated here is anything to go by, morphological, syntactic and discourse units constitute the main thrust of the researches.

The authorities easterners quote in D&S tend to be the typical western ones. In the Bulgarian journal studied here Russian and Bulgarian authorities dominate. It may be a matter of preference for a specific subject matter, i.e. grammatical descriptions, or a lack of access to modern works. However, the discrepancy is wide and denotes a wall between the two worlds.

East Europeans project identities which follow a well-established pattern – a researcher born in a communist country, educated abroad for one of their later degrees and possibly – a migrant to a Western country. It begs the question is it necessary for Easterners to specialise abroad in order to be able to publish in the West, or is it the case that from their own country they are unable to contribute to topics of international interest and demonstrate methodologies worth the while of an international audience?

If we assume that Eastern and Western linguistics sprung from two different sources, two disciplines would exist nowadays, with their respective ideologies, methodologies and authorities. If, however, in the past East European linguistics was superficially negating only ideological points and is now resuming its genuine place in an established single discipline, then there would be no difference in the theoretical bases and no two camps. From this study, it would seem that linguistics in the East sticks to language and refuses to take the step which reveals the power of language to be a social semiotic.

In conclusion, it may be safely assumed that the Berlin wall still separates Eastern linguistics from its Western counterpart. While Easterners study abroad and try to integrate, Westerners keep their distance.  It was not without remorse that I re-introduced a terminology which should have dissolved together with the cold war. Unfortunately, the findings proved its relevance to this very day.

References

Billig, M. (2008). The language of critical discourse analysis: the case of nominalization. Discourse Society. 783 (19).

Blommaert, J., & Bucaen, C. (2000). Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 447-466.

Erjavec, K. (2004). Beyond Advertising and Journalism: Hybrid Promotional News Discourse. Discourse & Society, 15, 553 - 578.

Fairlcough, N. (2002). Critical Discourse Analysis. in: McHoul, A. W. & Rapley M. (Ed.) How to Analyse Talk in Institutional Settings: A Casebook of Methods. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Wodak, R. (1995). Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. Language and Ideology.Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association.

Wodak, R. (1997). Critical Discourse Analysis and the Study of Doctor patient Interaction. The Construction of Professional Discourse. London: Longman.

Wodak, R. & Meyer, M. (2001). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage Publications.

        Websites

DS website, aims and scope http://kenli.nbu.bg:2079/journalsProdAims.nav?prodId=Journal200873 [10.06.2009].

Teun van Dijk's website http://www.discourses.org/[08.06.2009].

Ruth Wodak's website http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/265[08.06.2009]

Karmen Erjavec's webpage  http://old.fdv.uni-lj.si/osebne/Erjavec.htm [08.06.2009].

Veronika Kalmus  http://translate.google.com/

Zala Volcic  http://translate.google.com/

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