Discursive practices are looked upon as the core notion of discourse theory and the main instrument linguists can operate with studying language in connection with society and a human being. In this introductory article we will look into how language, culture and ideology are intertwined in diverse discursive practices and how these practices are shaped by people representing various cultures, ideologies and social entities. As part of linguistic discourse theory, we will briefly outline the major objectives and tenets of discourse theory or discourse analysis and track down the reasons why discourse theory turned into a dominant linguistic paradigm in the new millennium. Besides, some light will be thrown on the advancements and debatable questions arising within discourse theory as reflected in its methodology. Then we will give a brief synopsis of each individual paper and highlight theoretical and methodological contributions and innovations proposed by our authors. The results of the discussion as well as a brief outlook on future research will be summed up at the end of the introductory article.

In the 21st century, even local tourist spots are globally accessible and need to be communicated in a globally shared language, a lingua franca (Ben-Rafael & Ben Rafael 2015). The language of most obvious choice among speakers from different linguacultural backgrounds is English. When translating notices in national parks into English, translators should predominantly consider the function of the TT (target text), the target audience (not exclusively L1 speakers of English but, the speakers of a variety of languacultures communicating in English as lingua franca (ELF) and opt for translation solutions that would account for visitors representing a diversity of languacultures. The present paper aims at finding out what modifications in translation of visitors’ rules may be necessary if the target readership is to be considered, and at explicating the translation process through applying a transdisciplinary perspective of ELF studies, linguistic landscape (LL) studies, cross-field studies on conceptualization, translanguaging and translation studies. The study shows that these modifications affect the significance and hierarchy of the four principles operating in LL (presentation-of-self, power-relations, good reasons and collective-identity) and are projected into specific LL-tailored translation solutions (shifts in modality, lexis, style and discourse markers). The modifications are achievable in ELF, which, as a form and function, a de-regionalized and de-culturalized artifact of global village, is capable of catering for a variety of languacultures with their specific societal conventions, practices, and the whole explicit and implicit axio-sphere.

The cultural phenomenon of globalization has led to bilingualism and/or multilingualism (at least from a socio-pragmatic point of view). This brought to the attention of professionals the issue of the transformation of an identity from monolingual to multilingual. Due to the individual and at the same time social nature of the setting in which a man interacts, the study of the issue of personal identity has to be crossdisciplinary. We claim that in the course of this transformation the language-culture-identity interrelationship is vital and a multidisciplinary approach including (social) psychological, anthropological, philosophical, and discursive perspectives has to be undertaken. The paper approaches the issue of a multilingual’s identity through the prism of the four perspectives and in doing so offers justification for the above claim.

Rendering culture-specific items (CSI) into another language has always been a challenge for translators for obvious reasons: CSIs are context-dependent text elements carrying a connotative meaning in the source culture. For the same reason, several typologies are available, like Newmark's (1988), Tomaszkiewicz´s (1993), Valdeon´s (2008), or Pedersen´s (2011). Newmark's typology has been generally accepted by experts in translation studies and translation pedagogy. Tomaszkiewicz´s (1993) eight strategies are based on exploring subtitling in films; Valdeon´s taxonomy (2008) based on audiovisual mode comprises strategies resulting from preservation and from substitution. Pedersen´s taxonomy (2011) involves source-language-oriented and target-language-oriented ones. These can be juxtaposed with Pym's (2016) taxonomy, which he calls a typology of translation solutions for many languages. He (ibid) assumes them to be behavioral, problem-based, potentially conscious, intersubjective and starting from the most general and basic translation solution: to change something. With the arrival of something new, a couple of questions may arise: Why do we need still another classification? How is this approach different? Our basic premise is that Pym's typology is more user-friendly (i.e. translator-friendly). The present paper aims to compare and contrast the existing typologies and in doing so streamline the current trend in the translation theory.

In contact with foreign environment, the encounter of two (or more) cultures is common in situations with an incompatible cultural aspect. A typical example is T-V distinction. In most languages, mainly European ones, conveying social deixis oscillates between two poles: T and V forms. Present-day English is the only mainstream language with the absence of morphological markers for conveying T/V relationships. The present research examines the concept of expressing social distance in Slovak and in English, languages respectively having and lacking overt T/V markers, in order to specify the distinctiveness of English vs. Slovak lingua-cultural identity and/or discursive practice of the respective culture with regard to expressing social distance. This is done in two steps. Firstly, the underlying concepts (a lingua-cultural identity, social distance, T/V forms) are studied by means of the conceptualizing scheme (Kačmárová, Bilá, Vaňková 2018); its essence lies in accounting for and in aligning four sub-processes: frame establishment, encoding (pre-understanding), contextualization (salience), and code configuration. The conceptualization process utilized a set of principles (adopted from Clyne, Norrby & Warren 2009). Secondly, based on the theoretical results, the questionnaires were designed. The questions for native speakers of Slovak examined the preferences in the usage of T vs. V forms; the questions for native speakers of English examined the preferences in the usage of informal vs. formal ways of communication. The present study indicates that the conceptualizing process may as well be of hierarchical nature. Thus, the mere conceptualization of T vs. V or informal vs. formal may emanate from the conceptualization of social distance in terms of a set of principles, the conceptualization of the specific principle in terms of the relationship types, the conceptualization of the relationship type in terms of a specific culture and the conceptualization of a culture-specific relationship type through language means (T or V).