Ljiljana Saric

Evaluative Discourse Metaphor in Online Communities. Mateusz-Milan Stanojević & Ljiljana Šarić, John Benjamins, 2025.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan (2026). Evaluativna metafora u diskursu: teorijski i metodološki pregled. Fluminensia. ISSN 0353-4642. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana & Trnavac, Radoslava (2026). The representation of the climate crisis in Croatian online news media. Frontiers in Communication. 11. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2026.1754352. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana; Saračević, Fevzudina & Mitkovska, Liljana (2026). Disagreement in South-Slavic forum discussions: (Im)politeness in polarised digital discourse. In Mozo, Manuela Romano (Eds.), Polarised Discourse. De Gruyter Mouton. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana & Alvestad, Silje Susanne (2026). Slavonic noun phrases, The Oxford Guide to the Slavonic Languages. Oxford University Press. Full text in Research Archive
• Kljajevic, Vanja & Saric, Ljiljana (2025). Corpus-Based Investigation of Proverbs: Challenges and New Directions. Corpus Pragmatics. ISSN 2509-9507. 9, p. 135–163. doi: 10.1007/s41701-024-00181-2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Proverbs are an important component of cultural literacy and thus they are often encountered in everyday life. Corpus-based studies of proverbs typically focus on proverb frequency. Here we address challenges in using general language corpora and corpus searches as a method for estimating proverb frequency. Using two general language corpora from Sketch Engine, HrWaC2.2 and NoTenTen17, to search for a semantic counterpart of the same proverb in Croatian and Norwegian, we explore various search options and their (dis)advantages, as well as the issue of proverb modifications that hinders attempts to obtain a reliable picture of proverb frequency in a corpus. Based on the corpus evidence, we provide insights into modification types of proverbs. Finally, we propose that an optimal search tool would consider a proverb’s features beyond frequency, such as its semantic class, syntactic complexity, and abstractness as contributors to its cognitive load, allowing a better selection of these expressions in clinical testing, education, research and entertainment.

• Felberg, Tatjana & Saric, Ljiljana (2025). Crisis Translation in the COVID-19 Context in Norway: The Case of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS). Scando-Slavica. ISSN 0080-6765. 71(1), p. 173–190. doi: 10.1080/00806765.2025.2478551. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  During the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway, information and instructions about how to behave in this crisis situation were translated into more than forty languages, including Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS). After an initially slow reaction by the authorities, these translations were made available for free on various platforms. However, little is known about whether the translations were acceptable to the target groups. This article concentrates on quality assurance of translations by examining several official translations from Norwegian via English into BCS found on the webpages of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Several challenges are observed in these translations concerning terminology, the influence of the source language on collocations and syntax in the target languages, and translation choices in rendering modal expressions. These issues point to a need for systematic quality assurance of translations in crisis situations.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Horvat, Marijana (2024). Opis prijedloga i prefiksa u Križanićevoj gramatici. In Horvat, Marijana (Eds.), HRVATSKE DOPREPORODNE GRAMATIKE U EUROPSKOME KONTEKSTU – Zbornik radova. Institut za hrvatski jezik. ISSN 9789538390289. p. 87–103. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2023). METAPHORS FOR OČAJ ‘DESPAIR’ IN CROATIAN: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY. Croatica et Slavica Iadertina. ISSN 1845-6839. 19(2), p. 479–511. doi: 10.15291/csi.4323. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This study examines the role of metaphor in the conceptualization of očaj ‘despair’ based on the Croatian corpus hrWaC. The study also considers some non-figurative aspects. Employing “metaphorical pattern analysis” (Stefanowitsch 2006) and MIP (Pragglejaz Group 2007) methods, the paper scrutinizes corpus examples that contain the target-domain word očaj ‘despair’, looking for metaphorical patterns. These patterns were extracted from a random sample of 1,000 citations and additional corpus citations that were retrieved based on a list of collocation candidates. The analysis shows that the metaphorical conceptualization of očaj ‘despair’ in Croatian in the data examined relates to approximately forty source domains, out of which the most frequently utilized is CONTAINER, followed by OBJECT. The source domains identified in the conceptualization of očaj illustrate similarities between the metaphors for očaj in Croatian and those identified for sadness and depression in various languages, and point toward universal features of metaphorical conceptualization of some emotions and emotional states.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Horvat, Marijana (2023). Opis prijedloga i prefiksa u Križanićevoj gramatici / The description of prepositions and prefixes in Križanić’s grammar. Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje. ISSN 1331-6745. p. 87–105. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2023). Croatian Blends from Personal Names. In Bartels, Hauke; Menzel, Thomas & Zeller, Jan-Patrick (Ed.), Einheit(en) in der Vielfalt von Slavistik und Osteuropakunde. Prvdentia Regnorvm Fvndamentvm. Peter Lang Publishing Group. ISSN 9783631889886. doi: 10.3726/b20960. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana; Borza, Natalia; Koller, Veronika; Demata, Massimiliano & Filardo-Llamas, Laura (2023). Voices of supporters for populist parties across Europe, Voices of Supporters Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027213884. p. 279–293. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.101.c13. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this final chapter, we will answer our overall research questions, comparing findings across the various contexts investigated in the preceding chapters. In doing so, we will point out what voting motivations, aspects of national identities and ways of recontextualising original posts are shared across countries and which ones are specific to a given political context. This comparison will be followed by a review of the different methodologies that we used and a discussion on how far a given methodology may have influenced the findings. We will reflect on ethical considerations before the chapter finishes with a section on the contributions and limitations of the research and an outlook on possible future work.

• Saric, Ljiljana; Koller, Veronika; Borza, Natalia; Demata, Massimiliano & Filardo-Llamas, Laura (2023). Populism and populism studies: Theories and contributions, Voices of Supporters Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027213884. p. 17–34. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.101.c2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study, the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms, defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice, realised in discourse, that is based on a dichotomy between “the people”, who are unified by their will, and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people, with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties, what role national identities and values play in those motivations, and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters’ comments to serve as a voting motivation.

• Saric, Ljiljana; Borza, Natalia; Koller, Veronika; Demata, Massimiliano & Filardo-Llamas, Laura (2023). European elections and the voices of supporters on social media, Voices of Supporters Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027213884. p. 1–16. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.101.c1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study, the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms, defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice, realised in discourse, that is based on a dichotomy between “the people”, who are unified by their will, and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people, with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties, what role national identities and values play in those motivations, and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters’ comments to serve as a voting motivation.

• Saric, Ljiljana (2023). Croatia and Slovenia: Argumentation and identity construction by supporters of populists in the context of the 2019 European elections, Voices of Supporters Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027213884. p. 110–138. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.101.c6. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter analyses the argumentation of populist parties’ supporters in Croatia and Slovenia in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections. It focuses on two countries that are rather different in terms of populist tendencies, juxtaposing right-wing (Slovenia) and left-wing (Croatia) supporters’ voices. The analysis concentrates on the topics and motivations most frequently addressed in Facebook comments on an election video posted by the Croatian leftist populist party Živi zid, and online comments on news stories posted by people supporting right-wing populist parties in Slovenia. The focus is on examining identities that they discursively construct for themselves and their political favourites on the one hand, and for Others (e.g., other parties and their supporters) on the other.

• Saric, Ljiljana (2022). Impoliteness strategies in Croatian and Serbian user comments on online news articles: A study based on readers’ perceptions. Jezikoslovlje. ISSN 1331-7202. 23(1), p. 1–34. doi: 10.29162/jez.2022.1. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This study examines readers’ perceptions of impoliteness in user comments on online news articles in two daily newspapers: Croatia’s Jutarnji list and Serbia’s Večernje novosti. The study considers judgments by four younger study participants that did not participate in the online discussions as posters. These readers evaluated impoliteness from their own point of view, identifying impolite utterances in 668 user comments. Participants’ judgments are categorized and analyzed drawing on Culpeper’s (2011a) taxonomy of impoliteness formulae and triggers. The study focuses on utterances and language means judged impolite by the majority — that is, three or four participants — with the aim of identifying frequent impoliteness formulae and language means that are judged to be impolite. Among the phenomena judged impolite by three or four readers, predominant are conventionalized impoliteness formulae with terms from the domains of sexual activities and mental health, and referential terms with a historical burden. Cursing was regularly judged impolite, as well as expressions with words from the semantic domain of scatology, words evoking animal metaphors, and name modifications (blends) resulting in taboo or derogatory terms. There seems to be a strong correlation between the phenomena judged impolite and discursive identity construction — that is, establishing the border between “us” and “them” — which in the data often involved negative, and even stigmatizing, descriptions of those considered to belong to another national group. Keywords: impoliteness judgments, impoliteness interpretations, user comments, impoliteness formulae, Croatian and Serbian newspapers

• Saric, Ljiljana (2022). The Visualization of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ of 2015–2016: A Case Study of a Croatian Online News Source. In Ortega, Nelson Arturo Gonzalez & García, Ana Belén Martínez (Ed.), Representing 21st-Century Migration in Europe: Performing Borders, Identities and Texts. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781800733800. p. 109–130. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The 21st century has witnessed some of the largest human migrations in history. Europe in particular has seen a major influx of refugees, redefining notions of borders and national identity. This interdisciplinary volume brings together leading international scholars of migration from perspectives as varied as literature, linguistics, area and cultural studies, media and communication, visual arts, and film studies. Together, they offer innovative interpretations of migrants and contemporary migration to Europe, enriching today’s political and media landscape, and engaging with the ongoing debate on forced mobility and rights of both extra-European migrants and European citizens.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Kuna, Dubravka (2022). Engleski koordinacijski veznik both…and u akademskom (sociološkom) diskursu i njegovi hrvatski ekvivalenti. Jezikoslovlje. ISSN 1331-7202. 23(2), p. 337–359. doi: 10.29162/jez.2022.14. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  U engleskom su jeziku koordinacijski veznici (both…and, either…or, neither…nor i dr.) češći u pisanom nego u razgovornom diskursu, a osobito su uobičajeni u pisanom akademskom diskursu kojem osiguravaju karakterističnu preciznost (Biber i dr. 1999: 85). Ti veznici mogu povezivati fraze i rečenice. U ovom je radu pozornost usmjerena na koordinacijski veznik both … and u engleskom jeziku i njegove ekvivalente u hrvatskom jeziku. Materijal čine sve relevantne konstrukcije iz jednog terminološkog rječnika (The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology). Primjeri iz prakse u nastavi engleskog za akademske potrebe pokazuju da studenti često ne prepoznaju ovaj tip veznika, ili pak da njegov element both interpretiraju kao kvantifikator. Cilj je ovog rada utvrditi kojem tipu sintaktičke jedinice (fraza, rečenica) pripadaju strukture koje veznik both…and povezuje u engleskom jeziku te ih usporediti s njihovim ekvivalentima u hrvatskom jeziku. Također, rad pokušava utvrditi raspon sintaktičkih službi koje tako koordinirane strukture mogu imati. Konačno, ispituje se u kojoj se mjeri hrvatske inačice vezničkog para both…and razlikuju od izvornika, te koje su sintaktičke i semantičke razlike između koordiniranih struktura u engleskom i njihovih hrvatskih prijevodnih inačica. Key words: both...and; koordinacija; akademski diskurs; sintaktička jedinica; sintaktička služba.

• Saric, Ljiljana (2021). Secondary predicates. In Greenberg, Marc L. & Grenoble, Lenore (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004326897. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2021). Prepositions. In Greenberg, Marc L. & Grenoble, Lenore (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004326897. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana & Nedelcheva, Svetlana (2021). The semantic profile of the verbal prefix do- in Bulgarian and Croatian. Словѣне. ISSN 2304-0785. 10(2), p. 252–276. doi: 10.31168/2305-6754.2021.10.2.10. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This is a comparative study of the verbal prefix do- in two South Slavic languages, Bulgarian (Blg.) and Croatian (Cro.). Although these two languages show many similarities in the meaning of the verb stems and prefixation patterns, there are some unusual differences that may confuse foreign learners of Slavic, who expect identical or similar base verbs to combine with the same prefixes. The cognitive linguistics framework allows us to approach these differences systematically. We apply it to two databases of Blg. and Cro. prefixed verbs developed for the purposes of this research and extracted from reference books, dictionaries, and online corpora. We systematise do- verbs in a semantic network and account for both the overlapping meaning categories and the differences between the two languages studied, taking into consideration prefixes semantically similar to do- that combine with the same base verbs to form near-synonyms of do- verbs. We point to prefix variation as ensuing from different perspectives on the same event.

• Nedelcheva, Svetlana & Saric, Ljiljana (2021). Translating deictic motion verbs among Bulgarian, Croatian and Serbian: a corpus-based study. Russian Journal of Linguistics. ISSN 2687-0088. 25(67), p. 43–67. doi: 10.22363/2687-0088-2021-25-1-43-67. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article deals with translating South Slavic deictic verbs. Specifically, we consider translations among Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian. Deictic verbs are verbs whose interpretation is dependent on the location of speech-act participants (Fillmore 1997), such as come and go. In research on Slavic, certain motion verbs’ prefixes have been discussed as “deictic prefixes” (see Grenoble 1991, Filipović 2009, Łozińska 2018). Particular emphasis in this analysis is on the prefixed motion verbs dojda/doći, idvam/dolaziti, otida/otići, and otivam/odlaziti found in Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian literary texts and their translations. We present a brief quantitative overview and conduct a qualitative study of deixis-related meanings, paying necessary attention to other non-deictic meanings. Special attention is given to the constructional interplay of various deictic elements that co-occur with deictic verbs. Since we deal with literary texts and not everyday interaction, we consider the genre and context and apply the notion of viewpoint, which also covers the mental viewpoint adopted by the narrator, in addition to the “deictic” viewpoint of one of the speech participants. In the study, we observed shifts in point-of-view from deictic to non-deictic construal and vice versa, and from dynamic to static construal. These phenomena relate to the fact that in a text with a third person narrator, there is no innate deictic centre, while in casual conversation, the interlocutors create the deictic centre. The results show a preference for using come when motion towards a protagonist is described in a neutral context.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Horvat, Marijana (2021). Instrumental u hrvatskim gramatikama do kraja 19. stoljeća s naglaskom na komitativnosti i instrumentalnosti. Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje. ISSN 1331-6745. 47(2), p. 285–314. doi: 10.31724/rihjj.47.2.2. Full text in Research Archive
• Felberg, Tatjana & Saric, Ljiljana (2020). Chocolate, identity and extreme speech online: An analysis of linguistic means in online comments in Croatia and Serbia. FLEKS - Scandinavian Journal of Intercultural Theory and practice. 7(1). doi: 10.7577/fleks.4168. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article the phrase “extreme speech” is used to encompass both hate speech and impoliteness. Legislation against hate speech has been passed in many countries, while work on defining phenomena related to hate speech is still ongoing. As a rule, there is no legislation prohibiting impoliteness, and thus impoliteness is often perceived as a less serious verbal offence. There is, however, a grey zone between the two phenomena, which depends on contextual factors that must be constantly explored. In this article, we explore the gray zone between hate speech and impoliteness by looking at user-generated posts commenting on seemingly uncontroversial topics such as giving chocolate to children. The context we explore is the political relationship between Croatia and Serbia, two neighboring countries in the southwest Balkans with a history of recent military conflicts that ended in 1995. The relationship between these two countries can still be described as periodically troubled. The comments we analyze were posted on two online newspapers, the Croatian Jutarnji list and the Serbian Večernje novosti. Using impoliteness theory and Critical Discourse Analysis framework we identify and analyze various linguistic means that serve as extreme speech triggers, connect them to relevant contexts and highlight the grey zone that exist between hate speech and impoliteness. Our findings show that, in their discussions, the posters used a number of linguistic means for constructing national identities that at times resulted in extreme speech. The posters often targeted individual co-posters first and very quickly moved on to target ethnic groups, thus fluctuating between impoliteness and hate speech.

• Saric, Ljiljana (2020). Metaphorical conceptualization of hope (nada) in Croatian: A corpus-based study. Современа филологија. ISSN 2545-4765. 3(2), p. 7–27. doi: 10.37834/JCP202007sh. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This study examines the role of metaphor in the conceptualization of hope (nada) in the Croatian corpus hrWaC. Employing “metaphorical pattern analysis” (Stefanowitsch, 2006), I analyze metaphorical patterns with the target-domain word nada ‘hope’. These patterns were extracted from a random sample of 1000 citations and additional citations retrieved based on the collocation candidates’ list. The analysis shows that the conceptualization of hope in Croatian relates to approximately fifty metaphorical source domains. The most frequently utilized are object, container, and companion, which apply to many other emotions, dispositions, and states. The study builds on relevant research questions and findings on the conceptual representation of emotions and metaphors structuring emotions within cognitive linguistic research. It offers a basis for future qualitative studies about hope as a universal and culture-specific concept.

• Saric, Ljiljana (2019). How to do things with metaphors: The prison of nations metaphor in South Slavic online sources. In Saric, Ljiljana & Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan (Ed.), Metaphor, Nation and Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027202499. p. 287–319. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.82.12sar. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2019). Visual Presentation of Refugees During the “Refugee Crisis” of 2015–2016 on the Online Portal of the Croatian Public Broadcaster. International Journal of Communication. 13, p. 991–1015. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article examines the visual representation of refugees on the Croatian public broadcaster’s (HRT) online portal during the so-called European refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016. A content analysis of 887 images is linked to the main research question of how refugees were represented and what this means for framing the refugee situation. I examine how the visual presentation of refugees relates to the dominant discourses on migration: discourses of victimhood or threat. The analysis concentrates on both the macro and micro levels following some assumptions of social semiotics, as well as research in psychology, media, and migration studies. The study finds that the visual presentation is strongly linked to the local context. The humanitarian approach and the visibilities of biological life and empathy were most prominent. Keywords: visual representation, refugee crisis, Croatian public broadcaster’s online portal

• Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan & Saric, Ljiljana (2019). Metaphors in the discursive construction of nations. In Saric, Ljiljana & Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan (Ed.), Metaphor, Nation and Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027202499. p. 1–32. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.82.01sta. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana & Ristivojević-Rajković, Nataša (2019). From Heaven to Hell and Back: Representations of Scandinavia in South Slavic Online Sources. In Sanz, Álvaro Llosa & Khachaturyan, Elizaveta (Ed.), Scandinavia through Sunglasses: Spaces of Cultural Exchange between Southern/SouthEastern and Nordic Countries. Peter Lang Publishing Group. ISSN 9783631791608. p. 183–196. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2019). Pristup metafori u kognitivnoj lingvistici. In Molvarec, Lana & Piskovic, Tatjana (Ed.), Metafore u hrvatskome jeziku, književnosti i kulturi. Zbornik radova 47. seminara Zagrebačke slavističke škole. FF press, Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu. ISSN 9789531757843. p. 231–247. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana & Felberg, Tatjana (2019). Representations of the 2015/2016 “migrant crisis” on the online portals of Croatian and Serbian public broadcasters. In Viola, Lorella & Musolff, Andreas (Ed.), Migration and Media. Discourses about Identities in Crisis. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027202475. p. 203–238. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.81.10sar. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter investigates the verbal and visual representation of migration and migrants in Croatian and Serbian public broadcasters’ online portals during the “migrant crisis” in 2015/2016. The study shows that migrants are generally positively represented, which is congruent with the official policies of Croatia and Serbia. This positive representation was frequently used for positive self-evaluation of these countries’ influential social actors, and negative evaluation of neighboring countries. The chapter employs macro- and micro-linguistic analysis within the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis and multimodal analysis.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Demata, Massimiliano (2018). Discursive constructions of migrants. Verbal and visual images of "the other". I-LanD Journal - Identity, Language and Diversity. ISSN 2532-6368. p. 3–10. Full text in Research Archive
• Horvat, Marijana & Saric, Ljiljana (2018). THE DATIVE IN CROATIAN ŠTOKAVIAN AND KAJKAVIAN GRAMMARS UP TO 1860. Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje. ISSN 1331-6745. 44(133). doi: 10.31724/rihjj.44.1.5. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article deals with the approach to the dative case in Kajkavian and Štokavian grammars from 1604 to 1859. We concentrate on seventeen grammars, primarily focusing on their presentation of the meaning of the dative case. Remarks related to the meaning of the dative are mainly found in the parts of these grammars discussing syntax, and to a lesser extent in other parts. A significant feature of the majority of the grammars examined is their presentation of what modern grammars consider dative and locative (constructions) under the same umbrella of the dative case or the “third” case. The reason for this is a “morphology first” rule: the identical morphological form (in the singular) influenced grammarians’ conceptualization of what are considered typical dative constructions (e.g., those with the preposition k) and locative ones (e.g., those with the preposition u in static contexts) as dative constructions. Including the dative and locative prepositions in the scope of a single case in the singular led to an implicit assumption about the semantic profile of the dative: it occurs in static and dynamic constructions, and its semantic profile is different in the singular and plural.

• Vezovnik, Andreja & Saric, Ljiljana (2018). Subjectless images: visualization of migrants in Croatian and Slovenian public broadcasters’ online news. Social Semiotics. ISSN 1035-0330. doi: 10.1080/10350330.2018.1541117. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores how migrants were visually presented during the so-called migration crisis in southeast Europe in the fall of 2015. It considers photographs from two public broadcasters’ news portals: Slovenia's rtvslo.si and Croatia's hrt.hr. The focus is on a specific category of images we label subjectless images; that is, images visually representing migrants and migration that avoid showing migrants as subjects. In these images, subjects are substituted by objects that metaphorically, metonymically, or symbolically stand for migrants and migration. The article explores the ideological operation of subjectless images, which operates through the logic of substituting human subjects with metaphorical, metonymic, and symbolic objects. What is presented to viewers as a certain object's mimetic image is explored within the production of a specific narrative and signification.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Nedelcheva, Svetlana (2018). The verbal prefix u- in Bulgarian and Croatian. Languages in Contrast: International Journal for Contrastive Linguistics. ISSN 1387-6759. 18(2), p. 252–282. doi: 10.1075/lic.16015.sar. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This study compares the semantic networks of the verbal prefix u- in two South Slavic languages, Bulgarian (blg.) and Croatian (cro.), in a cognitive linguistics framework using two databases of prefixed verbs drawn from dictionaries and corpora. We point to similarities and overlapping categories in the semantic networks of u- in blg. and cro., as well as to differences. When accounting for the differences, we consider prefixes semantically similar to u- (within one language and in both languages) that combine with the same base verbs forming either prefixed near-synonyms (e.g., blg. uvehna, zavehna, izvehna ‘wither, fade’; cro. umastiti, omastiti, zamastiti ‘grease, stain’) or prefixed verbs that are only seemingly near-synonyms (e.g., blg. ukaža ‘indicate, show’, okaža se ‘turn out’; cro. ocrniti ‘denigrate, slander’, ucrniti (se) ‘color black, wear black’). We examine how the meaning networks of individual semantically related prefixes (e.g., u- and za-, iz-) overlap within one language and across the two languages, as well as how different construals of the same event affect the prefix choice.

• Alvestad, Silje Susanne & Saric, Ljiljana (2018). De-type discourse particles in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Turkish. Turcologica. ISSN 0177-4743. p. 11–31. doi: 10.2307/j.ctvh4zh3p.7. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2018). Bliskoznačni prefigirani glagoli: konstrukcija značenja i scenariji. In Kovacic, Mislav & Kosutar, Petra (Ed.), Od dvojbe do razdvojbe. Zbornik radova u čast profesorici Branki Tafri. Hrvatska sveucilisna naklada. ISSN 9789537997335. Full text in Research Archive

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• Saric, Ljiljana & Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan (2025). Evaluative Discourse Metaphor in Online Communities. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027228239. 284 p. doi: https:/benjamins.com/catalog/dapsac.106?srsltid=AfmBOoruyiH3r3kX0O2z86YyVUucckneSVRKuzlO5Bf5ZIDHqq2vYrQ9. Full text in Research Archive
• Koller, Veronika; Saric, Ljiljana; Borza, Natalia; Demata, Massimiliano; Filardo-Llamas, Laura & Gustafsson, Anna W. [Show all 11 contributors for this article] (2023). Voices of Supporters Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027213884. 327 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study, the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms, defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice, realised in discourse, that is based on a dichotomy between “the people”, who are unified by their will, and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people, with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties, what role national identities and values play in those motivations, and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters’ comments to serve as a voting motivation.

• Saric, Ljiljana & Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan (2019). Metaphor, Nation and Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 9789027202499. 363 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana & Brala-Vukanovic, Marija (2019). Slike jezika: Temeljne kognitivnolingvističke teme. Naklada Jesenski i Turk. ISBN 9789532228786. 310 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  U deset poglavlja ova knjiga približuje ključne teme suvremene kognitivne lingvistike, te nudi iscrpan prikaz kognitivnolingvističkih istraživanja u Hrvatskoj. Obrađene teme uključuju: konstruiranje značenja, kategorizaciju, metaforu, metonimiju, kao i teme kojima se pozornost počela pridavati tek posljednjih godina - primjerice, vizualnu metaforu. Knjiga je namijenjena studentima filoloških i komunikoloških usmjerenja, ali i širim krugovima čitatelja, odnosno svima onima koji se zanimaju za vezu jezika i mišljenja, te pitanje kako se u komunikaciji stvara značenje.

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• Saric, Ljiljana (2024). Andrey N. Sobolev, ed. Between Separation and Symbiosis: South Eastern European Languages and Cultures in Contact. Southeastern Europe. ISSN 0094-4467. 48, p. 470–472. Full text in Research Archive
• O'Dowd, Niamh Anna & Saric, Ljiljana (2024). “Hope, like a slinky, springs eternal”: A comparative analysis of metaphorical conceptualisations of hope/nada in Anglophone and Croatian online discourses about climate change. Full text in Research Archive
• Poldvere, Nele & Saric, Ljiljana (2022). A study of metaphorical cues of deception in fake news. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Fake news is an age-old problem, but it is only with the growth of digital communication in recent years that is has become a serious threat to national security. However, current language-based approaches to fake news detection have focused mainly on their topical trends rather than on the linguistic explanations for how and why the language of fake news differs from that of real news. This study seeks to fill this gap by drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) to (i) identify differences in metaphorical language use between fake and real news, and to (ii) provide tentative explanations for the occurrence of metaphorical cues of deception in fake news. Previous research has found metaphor to be a useful resource for describing personal experiences (Gibbs & Franks, 2002) and so it is reasonable to assume that this applies to lived experiences, too. Therefore, we expect fake news to be characterised by a more limited use of metaphor. The data are from the Jayson Blair corpus (Grieve & Woodfield, forthcoming), a collection of 36 fake news and 28 real news articles by the former New York Times journalist Jayson Blair. In the fake news articles, Blair lied about being on site and fabricated comments, among other things, which required him to write about events and places that he did not experience. The methodological approach is a combination of Cameron’s (2003) and Pragglejaz Group’s (2007) procedures. The texts were read in full to identify the full range of metaphorical expressions, which were then classified into source domains. The findings provide support for the above expectation. Moreover, the fake news articles contain more conventional domains of experience such as events are objects, as opposed to real news, which favours more creative instantiations of the war and sports domains. References Cameron, L. (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. Continuum. Gibbs, R. W. Jr., & Franks, H. (2002). Embodied metaphor in women’s narratives about their experiences with cancer. Health Communication, 14(2), 139–165. Grieve, J., & Woodfield, H. (forthcoming). The language of fake news. Cambridge Elements in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Press. Pragglejaz Group. (2007). MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 22(1), 1–39.

• Poldvere, Nele & Saric, Ljiljana (2022). How (not) to get away with deception: Metaphorical cues of deception in fake news. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Jayson Blair was fired from The New York Times in the early 2000s for writing news articles that contained intentionally false information, such as not being in the location where the news was reported. Grieve and Woodfield (forthcoming) have even noted that, in many ways, Blair “ushered in the modern era of fake news” (p. 31), a serious threat to today’s democracies. Moreover, the authors found Blair’s fake news articles to be grammatically distinct from his real news articles, a finding that contributes to the growing field of the language of fake news. This study explores further features of this genre through the study of metaphorical language in Blair’s articles. Metaphor (e.g., COVID-19 comes in waves) has been found to vary considerably depending on the discourse community to which the speaker/writer belongs, and conceptual metaphor, in particular (e.g., disease is a natural disaster), reveals a fundamental part of the way people think, reason and imagine (Gibbs, 2017). In this study, we explore the hypothesis that metaphor is more limited in Blair’s fake news articles compared to his real news articles due to the lack of perceptual information in such contexts. In other words, it might be difficult to recount real-life stories without being able to rely on one’s embodied experiences, such as having been in a place that one is writing about. The results of this study can have important implications, not only for the study of the language and psychology of fake news, but also for deception more generally. References Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (2017). Metaphor wars: Conceptual metaphors in human life. Cambridge University Press. Grieve, J., & Woodfield, H. (forthcoming). The language of fake news. Cambridge Elements in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.

• Felberg, Tatjana & Saric, Ljiljana (2022). Crisis Translation in the COVID-19 Context in Norway: The Case of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS). Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2021). Metaphor and National Identity. Alternative Conceptualization of the Treaty of Trianon. Metaphor and the Social World. ISSN 2210-4070. 11(1), p. 184–190. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2017). Impoliteness in Online Comments in Croatian and Serbian Newspapers. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2017). How to Do Things with Metaphors: The “Prison of Nations” Metaphor in South Slavic Online Sources. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2017). Jezik i prostor - komparativni i kontrastivni pristup glagolskim prefiksima. Full text in Research Archive
• Saric, Ljiljana (2017). Visual Representations of Migrants during the so-called 2015 and 2016 Refugee Crisis: An Analysis of the Online Portals of Croatian and Serbian Public Broadcasters. Full text in Research Archive

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