The paper tries to analyse the style of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five with the tool of Hallidayan systemic-functional grammar. Its aim is to explore in what way the syntactic and thematic structure helps construct the sentiment of fatalism  and simplicity, and how it reinforces the novel's concept of time.

In homage to the work of Uroš Mozetič, the paper takes as its starting point previously developed suggestions about how the language of “Eveline” conveys a picture of the heroine as a passive, paralysed character. Using Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics as a model of stylistic analysis, it investigates the contribution of both the ideational and the interpersonal metafunctions to the meaning of the text. The results extend and amend some ideas from the literature, such as the supposed prevalence of stative verbs, and suggest that while the short story as a whole predominantly uses material processes, their potential for change is mitigated by Joyce’s aspect, tense, and usuality choices. Eveline as the main character crucially has the role of a Senser, observing and internally reacting to the world around her, and even the processes in which she acts upon things and people are modalised and shown to be either hypothetical or instigated by others.

While language and culture are generally recognised to be intimately linked, English for Specific Purposes has typically been seen as “acultural”. This paper argues that cultural information is a necessary component of any ESP course and that a contrastive-comparative approach can help the learner in appropriating other cultures.

Based on the assumption that language and culture are inextricably linked, the paper looks at some characteristics of the domain that can be labelled 'house and home' in the British Isles and North America, and contrasts it in particular with the situation in Slovenia(n). It examines the construction materials used, the size of people's dwellings, the use of light, colour and style, hygiene, class distinctions, and the attitude to house vs. home, showing that like almost any concept in any language, the notions of house and home are culturally determined experiences of time and spacethey are not coincidental but have to do with structural traits of the three cultures. In addition, a corpus analysis of expressions to do with house and home is carried out to demonstrate the intimate link between language and culture and to show that mastery of a language goes hand in hand with understanding the target society/societies.Keywords: language and culture; British culture; American culture; Slovenian culture; collocations Hiša in dom v različnih kulturah POVZETEKČlanek temelji na predpostavki, da sta jezik in kultura neločljivo povezana, in na tej osnovi obravnava nekatere značilnosti domene, ki jo lahko poimenujemo »hiša in dom«, na Britanskem otočju in v Severni Ameriki ter jo primerja s slovensko situacijo. Ob podrobnejšem pregledu gradbenih materialov, velikosti stanovanj, rabe svetlobe, barv in slogov, higiene, razlikovanja med družbenimi razredi in odnosa do hiše v primerjavi z domom je pokazano, da sta, kot skoraj vsak koncept v vsakem jeziku, pojma hiše in doma kulturno določeni izkušnji časa in prostora -tu ne gre za naključje, temveč za povezavo s strukturnimi značilnostmi obravnavanih kultur. Razpravo dopolnjuje korpusna analiza izrazov, povezanih s hišo oziroma domom, ki jasno pokaže tesno povezavo med jezikom in kulturo ter ponazori, kako pomembno je razumevanje ciljne kulture oziroma kultur za obvladovanje jezika. Ključne

The article discusses the results of a study at the core of which is the question of whether teaching reference skills really matters – i.e. how useful it is to train students to work with dictionaries. To answer this query, two issues are investigated: firstly, how effective the particular methodology developed here is with regard to using thesauri; and secondly, whether it makes a difference if some specific hands-on exercises are included or excluded. By the end of the project, the students felt that thesauri, a previously unknown language tool, would be quite useful for their work in the future; on average, they were planning to use a thesaurus several times a month. The analysis of the student questionnaires and a comparison of lexical variation in the first and second drafts of the essays also showed that the experimental group, which received more practical training, generally found thesauri more useful and, accordingly, used them more than the control group did.