Professor of the Month - October

Professor Cristinel Munteanu, PhD, Dr. habil.

“Danubius” University of Galati, Romania

Faculty of Communication and International Relations

RECENT EXCELLENT ACHIEVEMENTS

In 2021 (in collaboration with Professor Klaas Willems from University of Ghent, Belgium), Cristinel Munteanu edited a fundamental book, Eugenio Coseriu. Past, Present and Future, published at De Gruyter (Berlin/Boston).

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110712391/html

About this book

The volume is published on the occasion of the birth centennial of Eugenio Coseriu (1921–2002). It is the first collective volume to appear in English in which various scholars present a variety of perspectives on Coseriu’s scholarly work and discuss its continuing relevance for the language sciences. Coseriu’s international reputation has suffered from his commitment to publish in languages such as Spanish, German, French, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, to the detriment of English. As a consequence, his work is less well-known outside Romance and German linguistics. The volume aims to raise the general awareness of Coseriu’s work among linguists around the world, in accordance with Coseriu’s own adage that it takes a constructive mindset (acknowledging “accomplishments and limitations”) to do justice to all scholarly work in the humanities. The articles are organized into three major thematic clusters: 1) philosophy of language, 2) history of the language sciences and 3) theory and practice of “Integral Linguistics”. The volume is essential reading for anyone working in these fields and for those seeking to gain deeper understanding of Coseriu’s goal to develop a unitary approach to language which takes as its point of departure the “activity of speaking”.

Biography

• Cristinel Munteanu is a graduate of the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology within the “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati, Romania (specialization: Romanian-English, in 2001; master’s degree in Theory and Practice of Text, in 2003).
• In 2006 he obtained the title of PhD in philology (magna cum laude) at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi, guided by Professor Stelian Dumistrăcel, with the thesis “Phraseological Synonymy in the Romanian Language from the Integral Linguistics Point of View” (published in 2007; frequently cited in the specialized studies). It refers to the first important application (in the Romanian science) of Coseriu’s linguistic theory to the lexico-phraseological field and of semantic relations.
• In 2017 (at the same university of Iasi), under the guidance of Professor Ştefan Afloroaei (corresponding member of the Romanian Academy), Cr. Munteanu defended his second PhD thesis, receiving the title of PhD in philosophy (summa cum laude). The chosen subject was“John Dewey and the Problem of Meaning. From the Theory of Inquiry to the Premises of an Integral Hermeneutics”, investigating a series of aspects connected to logic, theories of interpretation and philosophy of language.The respective doctoral thesis was published in 2019.
• In 2019 (at the University of Pitesti)Cr. Munteanu defended his habilitation thesis (From Phraseologisms to Discourse Traditions. Etymological and Stylistic Contributions) and was conferred the title ofhabilitation (post-doctoral qualification), i.e. Dr. habil. In 2020, he became a full professor at “Danubius” University of Galati. Since 2020, he has been the Director of the Center for Hermeneutics “Symbols and Texts” (CHeST) at the same university.
• Cr.M. has been working in the field of higher education for over 15 years, teaching mainly subjects from the sphere of communication/language sciences and journalism, and also from the domain of philosophy (Fundamentals of Communication, Introduction to Mass-media, Semiotics, Rhetoric, Journalistic Genres, Writing Techniques, Principles of Correct Usage, Critical Thinking, Ethicsetc.).

Research Areas

• Author of many studies and articles on the etymology, dynamics and stylistics of phraseologisms, coordinator, editor and co-author of a book devoted to set phrases and famous formulae (Discursul repetat între alteritate şi creativitate [“Repeated Discourse between Alterity and Creativity”], 2008), Cristinel Munteanu has become an authority thanks to his book Frazeologie românească. Formare şi funcţionare [“Romanian Phraseology. Its Forming and Functioning”] (2013), which led to him being selected as an author of chapter “Phraséologie du roumain” in the volume“Le Roumain” of the series “Manuals of Romance Linguistics”(soon to be published at the famous publishing house De Gruyter).
• At the same time, his constant preoccupation (of over 15 years) for the linguistic theory of the scholar Eugenio Coseriu (materialised, among others, in his books Lingvistica integrală coşeriană. Teorie, aplicaţii şi Interviuri[“The Coserian Integral Linguistics. Theory, Applications and Interviews”] (2012) and Traditions and Innovations in Language and Linguistics. A Coserian Perspective, 2017) led to him being invited at various international and national congresses, symposia and conferences. So far, Cr. Munteanu has participated in over 50 scientific events (from congresses to colloquiums), most of them international.
• He has published over 200 specialized articles, studies and reviews in Romanian research volumes and journals (“Meridian critic”, “Anadiss”,“Communication interculturelle et littérature”, “Limba română”, “Acta Universitatis Danubius. Communicatio”, etc.), as well as international ones (“Energeia”,“Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences”, “Romanistisches Jahrbuch”, etc.). Some of his articles have already been publishedin ISI journals, such as“Revue roumaine de linguistique”, “Philologica Jassyensia” and“Zeitschrift für romanisch Philologie”.

[https://univ-danubius.academia.edu/CristinelMunteanu]

• Other (acknowledged) contributions of Cr.M. refer to the field of anthroponomy (studies on the names of literary characters), rhetoric, functional stylistics and philosophy of language (with a special emphasis on Plato, Aristotle, Demetrios, Pseudo-Hermogeneset alii), semiotics (he restored and redefined the term “aberrant decoding”, launched by Umberto Eco), journalism (he has original approaches on either the stylistic virtues of journalistic text or the atypical headlines), text linguistics, hermeneutics etc.
• What is more, Cr.M.’s activity as an editor is also worth mentioning. In this respect, Cr.M. edited critically (in 2008), in a bilingual version (in collaboration with the classical philologist Cr. Bejan), the first PhD thesis in the world dedicated to journalism: Tobias Peucer, De relationibus novellis/Despre relatările jurnalistice[“On News Reporting”, Leipzig, 1690] –a reference text for the researchers interested in the history and theory of this domain. In 2013 he edited, from the impressive work of B.P. Hasdeu, a volume entitledStudii de ştiinţa limbii[“Studies in Language Sciences”], emphasizing some very modern ideas of the Romanian scholar (such as the ones about “noematology”). In 2016 he published, as a translator and editor, the book Orientări în semantica structurală [orig. version: E. Coseriu, H. Geckeler, Trends in Structural Semantics, 1981]. The same purpose, that of restoring the great thinkers’ conceptions, was aimed at when he translated (from English) some philosophical texts signed by John Dewey,R.G. Collingwoodet alii.