Social Values of Antiquities in Bulgaria: Anthropological Perspectives

This article analyses some aspects of the processes constructing values of the remote past and their role in the formation of national identity. The useful debate on “identity” provides a space to look at it not only as an analytical category but also as a practical one. As a category of practice it is concerned to be used by “lay” actors in some everyday settings to make sense of themselves and how they differ from others (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). I focus therefore on antiquities – material and non-material artifacts – which play active role in everyday life as identity marker. They are seen as anthropological terrain where the “eye of anthropology” makes possible to evaluate the nature of discourses on antiquities as cultural products in the context of the imagined nation. This supposes to look not only at the rhetoric of the national(ist) discourse but also at its content. In a “longue durée” perspective it becomes possible to be traced the uses of antiquities in Bulgaria with its complexities and beyond the dynamics of transformations within the academic fields and their research agenda. This perspective is useful as it introduces the needed sensitivity to different intensities of nationalism across time and space as well as within the same space (Todorova, 2015). Rooted in Romanticism the academic and non-academic research practices of antiquities are coupled with the doctrines of cultural survivals and continuity of the 19th century and enriched by the German Altertumswissenschaft. These trends provide sound basis for the advent of the Soviet theory of ethnogenesis and thus the national continuum seems monolithic and never broken even by the strong political perturbations in 1944 (the beginning of the communist regime) and 1989 (the beginning of democratic changes) in Bulgaria. After the changes some archaeological sites interpreted through ancient Greek imageries entered the marketplace as culture-historical “authentic” heritage.


Introduction
This text is based on a research project conducted in the Department of Anthropology at New Bulgarian University andpublished in 1916 (Lazova, 2016). Touching upon communities of people who are obsessed with the politics of the past the ethnographic writing as a method turned out as not always effective. The interviews concerning national past and its antiquity are saturated even polluted by ideological clichés produced mainly during the late socialism. It is therefore needed a contextualization of the archaeological practice studied by the fruitful approach called "archaeological ethnography". This research agenda pays attention to problems of how archaeological data of a site are acquired examining the social, political, and ideological contexts in which it is produced. It is an approach that tends to be realized by a "thick description", concerning a very wide range of documentation including various descriptions, publications, tourist guides, media products, interviews with different participants in archaeological excavations, exhibitions, internet publications etc. (Hamilakis & Anagnostopoulos, 2009). The approach evaluates the process of developing the site: how the knowledge about it is constructed, becomes popular, becomes integrated into national values and identity; how academics communicate with local experts to gain knowledge about ancient past; how this knowledge transmitted by different kind of media is internalized structuring our worldviews. Researching several case studies it became clear that antiquity is understood in terms of culture-historical methods focusing exclusively on historical "continuity" of an ethno-nation totality found on the territory of the modern Bulgarian state.
As a classical philologist my earlier studies were concerned with ancient texts as sources for Thracian history. It appeared however that the Thracians are viewed exclusively through Greek eyes therefore the notion of them is a matter of numerous speculative interpretations. A number of mythical figures (e.g. Orpheus) are represented as Greeks' notion of "otherness" and therefore mobilized by Bulgarian scholars to represent what might be isolated as non-Greek, i.e. Thracian. There is however no obvious and direct way to subtract a non-Greekness from ancient texts created in different contexts from different times. The absence of Thracian own literature and even script adds to the deficiencies in our knowledge about Thracians which generate speculations well serving national ideological projects. The serious shortcomings of the culture-historical method is therefore the inevitable binding together of archaeological materiality and ancient texts as interpretative instrument of the material data. Besides very few archaeological interpretations produced by more functionalist approaches in the context of some international projects, the culture-historical method is still omnipresent in Bulgaria.
The uses of culture-historical approaches are discussed in this text with the potentials of reflexive studies developed by anthropological discipline in the last few decades (Marcus & Fisher, 1986). Anthropology as a cultural critic gave way to researching the processes of constructing and using antiquity by national(ist) projects. The archaeological practice apart from its highly specialized and technological occupation is seen now as an important social practice. The relations between nation, nation-states, nationalism and antiquities of different kind as identity markers entered comparatively late the anthropological fieldwork. The reason of this absence is explained as resulting from the discipline's concerns with "primitive" peoples or "nonstate" societies. Thus the topic of the nations was imagined as too "Western" and too macro for the anthropological attention (Samah, 2007). This shortage was very quickly compensated by linking nationalism to traditionally anthropological interests as kinship and religion. B. Anderson's imagined communities opened up new possibilities for anthropological studies of nationalism. As a benchmark in the study of nation and nationalism it reinforced the focus on nation-building and produced valuable insights.
Today, nationalism is analyzed in a multitude of studies and is grouped in several rubrics containing a variety of different qualifiers -diachronic, geographic/territorial, typological as civic, democratic, popular, populist to mention only few of them (Todorova, 2015: 681-699). Among these categories is the so called cultural nationalism. This category is rarely separately treated as it is considered to be framed with the modern nationalism as the interests in cultural matters often ensure useful screening of political battles (Hutchinson, 1994). The cultural nationalists are described as intellectuals -scholars and artists who "imagine" the nation as differentiated community, united not by law or reason, but by passionate sentiments rooted in nature and history. In many Balkan countries they are politicians as well. Their imagination constructs the nations as primordial expressions of "spirituality" extracted from ancient "ethnic" and "autochthonic" ancestry. It ensures "national specificity" and historical "continuity". The national intellectuals therefore combine a romantic search for meaning with scholarly 3 methodology to establish a place for the nation in the civilized world. This quest has resulted in an explosion of research in sciences as archaeology, folklore, philology, topography. The aim of these ill-documented spheres is to recover the creative force of the national spirit from a cultural substratum (Hutchinson, 1994: 44-45). The success of their discourses is based mainly on outdated anthropological paradigm of cultural evolution with its doctrines of cultural survivals and cultural continuity (Danforth, 1984). The Balkan ethnologists are characterized also by a double insider syndrome as the ethnologist belongs to the group he studies, sharing its language, traditions, dominant values and interests i.e. he identifies himself with his object of study. His task is to consolidate and, if needed, to invent the identity of this group (Naumovich, 1998: 102).
The present text tends to add to the notion of cultural nationalism some valuable insights from the contemporary anthropology. The relevance of anthropology to the studies of nation-state and nationalism emphasizing its emotive power is revealed in Herzfeld's influential work on "cultural intimacy" (Herzfeld, 1997). It touches upon "the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality" (Herzfeld, 1997: 3). The notion of "cultural intimacy" can be traced in many nation-states with a variety of ways studying the relations between state ideologies and the intimacy of everyday social life. I appreciate the way it is developed by a number of Bulgarian scholars (Detchev, 2010). Basing their studies on Herzfeld's "cultural intimacy" the authors specify it as processes of "intimization" of various practices and discourses in everyday life as symbolic for their present being. The intimization processes include various components of everyday life -language, dress, songs, houses, rituals etc. which in ideological contexts of nationalism they become "ours" and therefore "Bulgarian". The approach of searching the essentially Bulgarian characteristics through outlining networks of national intimacy widens the scope of Herzfeld's cultural intimacy. It gives the chance for many pieces from the past (in my case from the remote past) to become static and in this sense unchangeable in the national imagination. It is important to note here that reification is a social process, not only intellectual practice. As such it becomes central to the politics of "ethnicity", "race", "nation" and other putative identities. It is important to seek to an account for the processes of reificationhow the "political fiction" of the nation can crystallize at certain moments as a powerful compelling reality (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). Therefore, I expect to join antiquity as important addition to the networks of national intimacy constructing the intimate space of the national belonging revealed by the Bulgarian scholars.
The role of antiquity in constructing and legitimizing of national identity is a quite new topic for the Bulgarian scholarship. The study of ancient Thrace and the ideological aspects of its institutionalization as Thracology is critically viewed in a reflexive study which outlines the context of the shared, connected, and entangled history of the Balkans (Daskalov & Vezenkov, 2015). It includes the study of ideological aspects of the construction of Thracian studies (Thracology) in Southeastern Europe which focuses on the modern imagination of antiquities in Bulgarian scholarship (Marinov, 2015: 10-117).
2. Approaching the production of antiquity: culture-historical paradigm In Bulgaria, as in most European countries, especially in Southeastern Europe, studies in antiquity belong to the historical sciences. After the fall of the communist regime real opportunities appeared for the Bulgarian scholars to reappraise the methods of studying antiquity and to discard the ideological burden imposed on it by the communist past. By that time very few academics took the opportunity to analyze critically the historiographical tradition in Bulgaria and the contexts of its shaping. Born in the age of nationalism Bulgarian historiography was developing in the context of nation-state formation as one of its important pillars. It has evolved according to the percepts of its duty -to shape the national consciousness fulfilling its important social function -to protect the "national interests". Thus the main concern in the historical studies remained the preservation of the national(ist) continuum of the 19 th and 20 th centuries. Therefore the noted large scale of theoretical isolation is due to the political setting in which the Bulgarian historical discipline is nourished (Todorova, 1992(Todorova, : 1105(Todorova, -1117. Archaeology and classical studies as integral part of Bulgarian historical scholarship has existed and developed in the same setting as an active ideological and political factor. Notwithstanding the critical approaches to the Bulgarian historiography the antiquity of the Bulgarian past remained perceived as a historical totality that can be uncovered by scrupulous study of sources of different kind combined under the rubric of interdisciplinarity. The image of antiquity is associated today with the Thracians considered to be representative for the so called paleo-Balkan (non-Hellenic) culture which form the foundations of the historical Balkan societies and cultures. Fabricated by academic scholarship of the late socialism this image was coined as ethno-national differentia specifica which shaped worldviews in the popular imagination. The Bulgarian scholarship of antiquity using outdated culture-historical approaches with its attendant doctrines of cultural survivals and cultural continuities coined narrative representations of the "spirituality" of the Bulgarians. They are actively marketed through the politics of commodification after the 1990s. The national imagination is fuelled mainly through the popular mass media and tourist commoditization policy (Lazova, 2014). Thus the image of the Thracian antiquity was produced as a "live message of ancient heritage". The ancient-ness of many material and non-material values were embedded in the national popular culture though different kinds of media which helped to enter as tangible or intangible heritage in the international list of UNESCO. This fact however deprived the education from contemporary notions about the ancient world as a whole.
Antiquity is mostly visualized by archaeology and its practice. As was already noted, European archaeology is the context of the development of the Bulgarian archaeology. The discipline is bounded to documentary outlined history and plays considerable role in cultivating ethnic identities, stimulating nationalist feelings usually flagged as patriotic. Nationally oriented archaeology began its formation about the end of the 19 th century when increasing interest in ethnicity begins to use the notion of archaeological culture. It is formed in the context of the Herder's assumption that every people has its own culture. The final touch to the concept of archaeological culture owes its popularity to Gustaf Kossinna (1858Kossinna ( -1931. As linguist and researcher of Indo-European culture, the professor of German archaeology developed the theory that a regionally determined ethnicity can be defined by material culture excavated from a site (Trigger, 2008: 232-241). The culture-historical approach supplies the emotional glue for the direct contact with valuable past through different tangible and intangible antiquities. This approach is also known as ethnic archaeology as it is associated primarily with ethnic identifications and "scholarly" methods active in appropriating ancient legacy from politically alien territories. This approach remains vital in many national schools as it is representative for the national narrative used to raise the national self-confidence and pride.
The potentials of culture-historical orthodoxy in Bulgaria were revealed by applying in my studies the "longue durée" perspective. It proved to be fruitful for the Bulgarian case as it helped to analyzing various tendencies of the communicative nature of the passing processes formative for the construction of national identity. Various kinds of antiquities -archaeological materiality or ancient imageries -reveal different dynamics in the contextualized relations between state policies and making sense of antiquity as formative element of the nation. The notions of the "deep" origins of the nation emerge and are adopted with different intensity depending on various factors. The basic characteristics of the national discourse of antiquity is outlined by the specificities of the historical discipline practiced in Bulgaria.
3. Activating the knowledge of antiquity from "outside" The National Revival project was activated from "outside" by a number of antiquarians attracted by the ancient times on the Balkans. "The Bulgarian XIX century" began to construct its antiquity comparing it with the Greek as a kind of "otherness". The interest in antiquities is recognized not only as important subject of the educational programs but also as ideological resource which stimulates the formation of collective identity (Lilova, 2003: 202). It becomes clear that classical antiquity means also humanistic Bildung and this is a possibility to endorse the European identity.
The period however is marked by an important deficiency -the general histories lack whatever image of the Bulgarians. This absence from the general histories is recognized as a problem of identification and the belonging of the Bulgarians to the civilized world. Looking at his image in the European mirror the Bulgarian sees that the European scholarship is not interested in his existence, he is "nobody" for Europe (Mishkova, 2006: 250-251). This deficiency will enter permanently the intellectual agenda striving for a constant policies to compensate it. Therefore everything potentially able to mobilize and legitimize the Bulgarians as belonging to the European civilized world has been activated. Antiquities now are recognized as a medium to provide the nation with prestigious past that might be presented to the outside world. Therefore the problematic interpretations of ancient artifacts always are able to make up for deficiency declaring that "we have also contributed to the world".
Recognizing antiquity as an instrument for tracing the "deep roots" of the nation is complicated by the Greek influential past. Some scholars realized that not the demonstration of the Greek superiority but the feeling of civilizational "shortage" in the Bulgarians will be difficult to overcome (Mishkova, 2006: 241). Something more, the notions of antiquity would be modeled in relation to the Greek patterns and at the same time competing with them. In the context of this split identity the earliest generation of national revival intelligentsia began to form the image of the national antiquity through the debates in language, ethnogenesis, and church independence. The research of this early interest in antiquity is however evaluated by the scholars as unsystematically and uncritically accumulation of data of various kind eager to represent them as Bulgarian. It is not clear for instance what are the sources for the Indo-European studies during this period shaped 100 years later with more scholarly image. The debate of the ethnogenesis is activated. Forcing the ethnicity as a research topic various regions are beginning to be described revealing the character of its population as autochthonous and thus legitimating its belonging to the past.
At the end of the 19 th century when the growing interest in ethnicity started using the concept of archaeological culture, this basic paradigm influenced the Bulgarian context from "outside". Moreover, these academic figures produced knowledge that activated the visibility of the Bulgarians. Among the intellectuals who entered Bulgaria is Konstantin Jirecek (1854-1918) a Czech scholar who came to Bulgaria in 1879 introducing the culture-historical orthodoxy. This was the leading formula for research in Central and Eastern Europe during the 1870s and 1880s. It was a response to the growing awareness of geographical variability in archaeological record and was accompanied by growing nationalism which made ethnicity to appear as most important factor shaping human history (Trigger, 2008: 211). K. Jirecek in practice territorialized the space through archaeological remains considering them to be Bulgarian according the Treaty of San-Stephano They were associated with historical events referring to this space in ancient Greek texts. This evidence is supplemented by a range of ethnographic and folklore observations outlining a territory impregnated with survivals which ensure the cultural continuity of the Bulgarians. Thus Jirecek constructed the communicative basis of the most important modern "national" European disciplines. Archaeology as formative for the historical canon is supposed to be considered as a mission to encourage different ethnic groups being part of multinational empires to become able to give meaning of their national belonging (Trigger, 2008: 215). According to the analytical model of Miroclav Hroch (1985) it might be noted that the development of the national idea in the space of the Balkans is asynchronic nevertheless it traces one and the same paths. In this context Bulgarian nationalism is considered to be defensive or weak. Its specificity is constructed in the context of already formatted nationalisms and competing with them at the same time (Todorova 2015).
Jirecek spent several years practicing in Bulgaria and organizing the structure of institutions supposing to produce the knowledge about the past in later times. He insisted on exposing the material culture from the past to evoke the national consciousness. Another scholar also from "outside" is W. Tomaschek (1841Tomaschek ( -1901 who builds up the compendium of the language of the Thracians. The linguistic heritage as crucial for the nation-building was studied in the context of the so-called German-Austrian diffusionism characteristic for the study of the German and Austrian anthropologists. Their expertise was in geography and the leading concept of the interaction of language and culture on a given territory. According to Tomaschek, the language of the Thracians belonged to Indo-European languages. He is considered now as founding father of the construction of Thracology in Bulgaria from the 1970s on.
4. The interwar period: in quest for Bulgarian Volksgeist through "resurrection" of antiquity From the end of the 19 th century till the end of the communist time the attempt to overcome the feeling of civilizational insufficiency is constantly filled with more and more valuable antiquities. The process of transformations of the" traditional space" which was being replaced by the self-imagining Bulgarians generates difficult questions. The political project for constructing and imagining Bulgaria is interwoven with the important question who are the Bulgarians. Answering this question the intellectual milieu produced a mass of writings. A self-stereotypes or "national traits" began to be fabricated in order to outline the "character" and the "spirituality" of the Bulgarians. In parallel it appeared the important question what have the Bulgarians given to the other nations. Antiquity became the main resource of supplying the national pride with the feeling that "we have also contributed to the world".
The first unfolded endeavor to study the National Revival was Ivan Shishmanov's contribution  who realizes that the Bulgarian "grand narrative" lacks a "resurrection of our ancient-ness" (Daskalov, 2013: 47), as it is valued in many European countries. Thus from the 1920s on a new trend appeared in the efforts the true "national character" to emerge. Accepting mainly German and French approaches to the study of the "psychology of the Bulgarian people" various folklore data enter the national narrative in order to create the image of the nation as organic (biological) body with physical and mental characteristics re-creating in time and space. In this process of substantializiation of culture as a meaningful essence was reified in such a way as to seem irreversible and unchanging in recreating the national identity. The time between the World War I and World War II is associated with the "two national catastrophes" as they were designated in Bulgarian historical science. It was activated by new and more spectacular search for heroes -this time the remote antiquity will become able to evoke feelings of dignity and proud.
The call for a "new revival of antiquity" brings to the stage a new reading of the ancient past. Nayden Sheytanov is among the intellectuals that evoke ancient Greek figures of Orpheus and Dionysos as archetypal deities which lay the foundations of the national philosophy. Influenced by the Romanian nationalism these figures became proclaimed as promoters of Christianity. Sheytanov is in line with the Jirechek's call for publicity of the knowledge of the past in order to evoke national consciousness. He calls for something more important -the knowledge of the past has to become "the bread and the salt" of the Bulgarian everyday life. He outlined also the need of institutionalization of particular studies on antiquity which might be called 7 "Trakistiks". His appeal was realized in full capacity by the communist regime of the 1970s and 1980s as a field research of Thracology was institutionalized by the institute of Thracology (Lazova, 2016: 150-159).

The interwar period: The Bulgarian Altertumswissenschaft
During this period another process became visible: professionalization of archaeology and classical studies. This is a separate research topic but it is important to note here that the professionalized scholarly developments are closely linked with the German Altertumswissenschaft which influenced the whole interwar academic developments. In this context emerged the figures of Bulgarian scholars as Bogdan Filov, Gavrail Katsrov, Ivan Velkov, Janko Todorov, Georgi Michailov etc. At the beginning of the 20 th century emerged clearly outlined local areas where scholarly standards were applied in accumulation of data from antiquity and its interpretation. The study of antiquities by that time is from one side accorded with the international standards and from the other side they have to be framed in wider political context. In the beginning of Balkan wars during 1912 the Ministry of Education delegates a task to B. Filov to take the lead of a scholarly mission in Macedonia and in Edrine (Adrianople) district to collect and describe archaeological and ethnographical data. Archaeologist work is associated with that of the ethnologists, historians, linguists. The research is conducted with the assistance of the Bulgarian Army Stuff. In 1915 The Staff organizes a research mission in Macedonia and the Aegean region. During 1917 it organizes a scientific mission in Dobrudja region also. The expeditions lay particular stress on the importance of these territories for the Bulgarian national history. The political context outlined after the World War I is characterized by the Bulgarian lost territories in Western Thrace and its outlet on the Aegean Sea. This fact adds fuel to the Bulgarian-Greek dispute on the Thracian and Greek pasts (Marinov, 2015: 85-86;Lazova, 2016: 162-163).
The academic publications on antiquity activated processes of regional studies in different areas -Northeastern Bulgaria (Ludogorie or Deliorman region), eastern part of the Rhodope mountains and Strandzha region. Antiquity with its materiality and ancient imagery (Orpheus and Dionysos) outlined territories whose antiquities became inseparable from the national narrative. The research practice was mastered by the Bulgarian scholarly milieu educated primarily in German and Austrian universities and then transferred to the native terrain. The studies made visible some regions forming local symbolic meanings which ensures the national uniformity.

The "new" rhetoric in search for origins
In the second half of the 1940s and in the 1950s the strong modernizing impulse of the communist national(ist) project intensified the production of knowledge of the remote past. Antiquities -archaeological findings and ancient imageries -started to gain a crucial role in the representative values of the nation. A critical assessment of this transformation is needed as it is realized in the context of the sovietization and marxisation of the Bulgarian historical science including the field of antiquity. Thus alongside with the criticism of the "bourgeois" nationalistic approaches to antiquities, the declared "new" methods of research are framed with the inevitable ideological formulae of the communist regime. Bulgarian scholars criticizing the "bourgeois" methodology of the pre-war scholarship highly appreciated their "love for national history". Thus the Marxist criticism does not alter the notion of the high status of antiquity in the system of national values. The "national(ist) continuum" institutionalized by Bulgarian Altertumswissenschaft in the context of outlining the "national character" in the interwar period now is remarkably reinforced by the "new" rhetoric nourished actively by the Soviet theory of ethnogenesis (Lazova, 2016: 110-124). Methodologically, it re-animated the symbiosis of the romantic ideas and the positivistic approaches of the 19 th century typical for the culture-historical 8 approaches. It stabilized the ethnic model and ethnicity remained the main focus of research. Thus the coined "new" rhetoric does not change the nature of the social function of antiquity -to supply the nation with prestigious past and unbroken continuity to the present days.
By that time the Soviet conception of ethnos characterized as primordialist and essentialist was officially sanctioned as unproductive in many critical studies (Kohl 1998: 231). It contrasted sharply with the more situational and relational concepts of ethnic identities developed by most Western anthropologists (Barth, 1969;Eriksen, 2010: 1-22). All methodological devices in Bulgaria during the communist regime were supposed to be coordinated with the Soviet scholarship as "the true science" and thus the Bulgarian studies in antiquity remained isolated from the contemporary debates and the new methodological instruments produced by Western scholarship.
During the 1960s the historical science is obsessed by the notion of expert knowledge revealing "the true history" of the Bulgarians in order to be understood the "essentially Bulgarian" characteristics. This "new" rhetoric includes the notion of reconsidering the "continuity in the Bulgarian historiography". Stigmatizing the pre-war nationalism the communist national(ist) project changed the rhetoric but not the discourse. The need to reveal the ancient-ness of the Bulgarians in its entire capacity appeared. Therefore in the 1960s the Thracians were canonized as one of the three components of the Bulgarian nation together with the Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians (Iliev, 1998;Marinov, 2015). The production of valuable antiquity for the nation was intensified by research programs of academic institutions sponsored by the state. These new trends in the development of the disciplines producing knowledge about ancient past are stimulated by the so called complex national expeditions. They were accomplished in the Rhodope mountains, Dobrudzha region, Strandzha mountain and Western Bulgaria but antiquity was a small section of these research programs. The activities of the complex expeditions are situated in the bordering regions which tended to outline the space of "our national culture". Following older territorializing markers as symbols of antiquity these activities are associated with territories populated by Bulgarians in the beginning of the 20 th century. The ambition of encroaching on a fixed geographical and historical locations becomes visible. The crossing of political boundaries and extending the territory of "the Bulgarian culture in antiquity" with "scholarly" methodology becomes a mechanism for promoting nationalistic claims. It is paralleled with another important branch of the Bulgarian scholarship as the linguistic maps in the second half of the 20 th century (Guentcheva, 2003). The "new" rhetoric clearly declares our studies as "patriotic", "loyal" and "objective" restricting the "nationalist" discourses to the neighbors (Billig, 1995). Its concerns are to show the "genuine" characteristics of the Bulgarian culture and its remote past. This ambition of the cultural nationalists in practice implicitly imagined the contours of Great Bulgaria framed by the San-Stephano chimera. The transgression of the political borders is in fact evading the official norm. This is a case of "cultural intimacy" which undermines and at the same time implicitly maintains the prestige of the nation-state which tolerates it. This notion opens up the possibility to trace this process of intimization turning the imagined Great Bulgaria into "structural nostalgia" which allows people to protect their collective secrets -the basis of cultural intimacy.
The professionalization of the archaeological research accompanied with interpretative models needed official periodicals and publications. So, Archeologia issued its first number in 1959. The introductory chapters declared two trends to be followed in this professionalization: the "correct formation of true patriotism" and "the investigation and study of archaeological artifacts turning them into attractive tourist projects" (Archeologia, 1960, 1-2). This is the time when the export of ancient Thracian art began in organized exhibitions abroad.
This model of nationally programmed research started its realization when many theoretical paradigms criticize the incapacity of the primordial and essentialist culture-historical approaches to explain various social or cultural processes. The new approaches in humanities and social sciences appear in order to discuss wider range of relations between social structures and individuals. The study of antiquity began to move from a ubiquitous culture-historical orthodoxy to more innovative theoretical insights which managed to reveal in reflexive manner how the knowledge about the deep antiquity is produced and how this knowledge is used by the national state. These debates affect by no means the Bulgarian study of antiquity and its culture-historical approaches. Moreover, the research programs carried out by the Bulgarian Academy of Science lavishly sponsored by the state in the 1970s and the 1980s focuses on an extremely active ideological image. It activated the production of the Bulgarian culture as unity of the "pastpresence-future". It was based exclusively on the culture-historical methodology continuing to search for the "deepest" roots of the "spirituality" of the Thracians which naturally transcended the "essential" Bulgarian culture. Activated by the Soviet theories of ethnogenesis ethnicity gains now a leading position: the academic approaches have to produce ethnically homogeneous community with inherited language, religion and territory -"revivals" that are constantly maintained by the intellectual elite (Hutchinson, 1994).
The period of 1970s and 1980s might be defined as floruit of the Bulgarian culturehistorical methodology: The professionalized archaeology needs an interpretative model. It was called "complex studies" producing a compilation of various data from history, linguistics, ethnology supposed to uncover the Thracian culture. The "complex" methodology required unprecedented centralized institutionalization where a United Center of History was established. A separate Institute of Thracology (1972) and a specialized section of Thracian archeology as part of the Archaeological institute with museum (1983) were organized. Thus in practice the Bulgarian archaeology was gradually becoming archaeology of the Thracians. The intensive historicization of the cultural characteristics of the Bulgarians rooted in the Thracian culture was realized by enormous book production about antiquity as important part of historical studies.
This institutionalization outlines a process leading to embedding the high status of the Thracian antiquity in everyday life and in the habitus of the Bulgarians. It turned into powerful resource for national identity and proud of the prolonged national being. A number of publications, congresses, conferences, exhibitions of "Thracian Gold" abroad, spectacular archaeological discoveries marked a process of ubiquitous embedding the values of remote antiquity into everyday popular life. A lot of municipality emblems appeared. The uses of culturehistorical methodology allowed in many cases freely to associate the archaeological findings with ancient imageries produced by ancient Greek authors. It began to be revealed some tendencies of capsulation of a "scientific truth" that a lot of Thracian ancient imageries were "unjustly separated and appropriated" by the Greeks.
The model of regional studies in the 1970s and the 1980s follows the mapping of the territories studied by the complex national programs from the 1960s. It was improved however by the centralized state sponsoring of the large scaled investigations. The period was marked by numerous anniversaries among which the most spectacular of them -the 1300 th anniversary of the establishment of the Bulgarian state. The intensive work on "resurrection" of antiquity institutionalized by several academic institutions has to reveal the "unbroken continuum" infusing a new creative spirit of the nation. The state and the academics gave way to a strategy which broadened the complexity of the expeditions from the 1960s focusing exclusively on antiquities producing the continuity of nation's life. Activating older practices the regions of Dobrudzha, (named now with the ancient name Getica), Strandzha-Sakar area and Rhodope mountains they are being revitalized. Eclectic and outdated methodology refreshed with new rhetoric activated the archetypal figures of Orpheus and Dionysos from the pre-war period. They are now associated with a Thracian-Mycenaean period as a sediment in the Homers poetry where Thracians are mentioned. The revitalized figures initiated a quest for royal doctrines, residences, palaces as differentia specifica of the Thracian culture compared with the polis-based society. These findings developed a discourse on the uniqueness of Thracian culture extracted basically from literary ancient texts dating from different periods of time. The imagined uniqueness of the Thracians as a centralized territorial monarchy was valorized as closed aristocratic society accessible only to initiates differing in this way from the rest of the known classical world. The imagined uniqueness of the Thracians is constructed mainly in few books -Trakiyskiyat orfizam (Fol, 1986) and Trakiyskiyat Dionis (Fol, 1991; in two volumes and in a multitude of publications. In practice this book production tolerated by the state politics deprives the academic studies from alternatives. It even deepens the "cultural intimacy" enlarging the scope of the Thracian-ness which produced the image of the "Bulgarian lands in antiquity". This image became representative for the territory inhabited by the Thracians and divided nowadays by multiple modern national states with their own political boundaries. All of them have the right to share the antiquity as "Bulgarian, Rumanian, Albanian lands in antiquity". The production of this kind of knowledge was controlled by academic figures patronized by the state. They activated also the search for Thracian-ness among the local experts of antiquities. Publishing a lot of their knowledge they supported them by prefacing their publications. This mutual collaboration between local and national experts deprived the publicity from alternative versions of the remote past. A unified collective memories of the past are achieved framing the national consciousness and national identity. The proclaimed notion of supplying the historical studies of antiquity with "truly scientific" methods in fact produced an ideological context for this kind of research. The established in this way authoritarian production of knowledge about ancient past practically enters the role of state control over scholarly activities. Thus every uncertainty or doubt in this continuum is interpreted as threatening the national interests (Hertzfeld, 2005).
The intensive "resurrection" of antiquity and the processes of imbedding it in popular culture paralleled with a total isolation of the Bulgarian study of antiquity from the dynamics of multiple theoretical innovations in the historical studies as a whole. The unreflexive uses of culture-historical approach revealed a new trend in the representations of antiquities which can be seen in the 1990s. The so called changes in Bulgaria after 1989 gave chance to a number of "free" media to be captured by academic "speakers of the past" whose position may be situated between academic rhetoric and political activism. This control in practice deprived the publicity from the critical views of historical sciences including archaeology and classical studies. The omnipresent image of Orpheus provoked even a "social drama" arising from the belief that he is a Thracian hero deprived unjustly from the Bulgarians. The archaeological sites identified through Greek texts as imbued with Thracian essence are included in the heritage industry (Lazova, forthcoming). The increasing interest in the material and non-material past of different communities including the nation contributes to the development of tourist industry. Some influential ethnographies of the heritage show the appearance of ambivalent unions between the market economy and nationalism in various cultural variants (Hamilakis & Duke, 2009: 15-40).
To conclude, the constructions of "grand discoveries" which fuelled the "grand narratives" useful for the national pride and for the marketing of the ancient heritage, raise many questions. They are mainly on how ancient places are selected for consumption by the state, by the academy, by individuals; in what ways archaeology and classical imageries became heritage which is by its nature a social activity and how they enter the marketplace. If antiquity is nationalized and commodified by the state how do we participate in the contemporary debates in archaeology and classical studies in general. The questions on how to use disciplinary power of professionalization to provoke the ethical debates in these fields are also very important. Enlarging the reflexivity in the studies of our remote past opens up a space for discussing contemporary methods and practices which will contribute easily to draw a line between ideology and epistemology. Therefore as scholars we can and should adopt a critical and self-reflexive stance towards our categories (Brubaker, 2013: 6;Todorova, 2015). It might be noted also that a scholarship of antiquity obsessed with the past distanced the people from their own time denying them a place in our world, denying their coevalness, their right to speak for themselves (Fabian, 1983;Danforth, 1984).

Introduction
This study carries out a critical discourse analysis of Wonder Woman in her appearance in All Star Comics No. 8 following Fairclough's (1995;2001; three-dimensional model. The first level of this model is the analysis of language texts -in this case visual and textual language. This portion of the analysis takes from Halliday's (2004) systemic functional linguistics. Second, is the analysis of discourse practices in which I discuss the characterization of female and male characters, as well as Wonder Woman (Chu & Coffey, 2015). Third, is the analysis of discursive events which according to Fairclough (2003: 10) links both textual and discursive analysis and "shows where a text is located with respect to the social network of order of discourse". The overall objective is to uncover ideologies through a poststructuralist feminist lens by carrying out a critical discourse analysis of Wonder Woman's first comic book appearance.

Comic books in America
Without a doubt, the comic book we now know has evolved over time. Moving from a newspaper and single-panel format to a magazine and strip format in 1929 by George Delacorte known as The Funnies (Gabilliet, 2010) comics have indeed influenced many generations of readers. However, their status as a form of culture has been stigmatized (Lopes, 2006) and until recently this view has begun to shift as graphic novels such as Maus written by Art Spiegelman have obtained prominent awards such as the Pulitzer Prize.
• The text analysis revealed evidence of intersemiosis, in which image and text worked together in creating meaning for the reader.
• Evidence of intersemiosis, calls for a further analysis which would include features of multimodality. • Radical feminist ideologies were uncovered in which femininity and masculinity were portrayed as opposite binary entities.

Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman first appeared in the pages of All Star Comics No. 8, published in 1942 in her own original story as the protagonist. She was created by William Moulton Marston also known as Charles Moulton, a psychologist and proclaimed feminist with advice from his two co-wives, Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne (Matsuuchi, 2012). From that point, Wonder Woman gained popularity and appeared in her own comic book and since then, she has been seen as a symbol of femininity and a reference for the feminist movement.

Poststructuralist feminist theory
Contrasting with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in which Marxist theories are predominant, poststructuralist feminism does not reduce everything to class or capital-labor relationships (Weedon, 1997). Instead, subjectivity plays a major role in the relationship between language, social institutions, and individual consciousness. To support such argument, comic books if seen from Foucauldian theories, are a type of discursive field which "consist of competing ways of giving meaning to the world and of organizing social institutions and processes [offering] the individual a range of modes of subjectivity" (Ibid.: 34).
In addition, through such lens, language is not a fixed entity, therefore, notions of femininity in Wonder Woman's first appearance shall be contested. Adhering to such theory, discourses are not extreme dichotomies of the powerful and powerless, they are "tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations" (Foucault as cited in Weedon, 1997: 107) (e.g. class, race, gender, religion, and age). In addition to the view described above, Weedon (Ibid.) identifies different views of feminism.
Perspectives on feminism portray varied ideologies whose impact on society vary. These are: liberal feminism, radical feminism, social feminism, and she differentiates these from poststructural feminism. Liberal feminism "aims to achieve full equity of opportunity in all spheres of life without radically transforming the present social and political systems" (Weedon, 1997: 4). Radical feminism "envisages a new social order in which women will not be subordinated to men, and femininity and femaleness will not be debased and devalued" (Ibid.: 4). Such ideology hopes to achieve complete separate from all which is male. Social feminism or socialist feminism adheres more to Marxist theories in that "patriarchy is […] tied in with class and racial oppressions and can only be abolished through a full transformation of the social system" (Ibid.: 4). These ideologies are the foci of this project and an attempt to identify them is made.

Discussion of data
The next section follows Fairclough's (1995;2001; framework for critical discourse analysis. The goal of critical discourse analysis is to denaturalize everydayness through critique which is "essentially making visible the interconnectedness of things" (Fairclough, 1995: 36). This is achieved through the analysis of: (1) texts, (2) discursive practices, and (3) social practices.
First, I begin with the analysis of the text, following Halliday's systemic function linguistics. Second, I analyze the discursive practices. Finally, I bring the last two layers of analysis together with the analysis of social practices.

Text
The analysis of text involves three areas. First, an analysis of the ideational meaning and its processes is given. Second, interpersonal meaning which includes mood, modality, and writer attitudes is described. Third, textual meaning and the elements which comprise it are laid out.

Ideational meaning
The ideational meta-function refers to the "process and things of the real world" (Halliday, 2003: 97). Relating it to the speaker/writer, it is where she "embodies in language [her] experience of the phenomena of the real world; and this includes [her] experience of the internal world of his own consciousness: [her] reaction, cognition, and perceptions, and also [her] linguistic acts of speaking and understanding" (Halliday as cited in Wang, 2010: 255). Such function is represented by the transitivity process. Transitivity is a "basic semantic system, which construes the world of experiences into a manageable set of process types" (Ibid.: 257). Transitivity consists of six processes (e.g. material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process, verbal process, and existential process). From Table 1, it is evident that the processes relied on the most by the writer are the material process and the relational process. In the following two sub-section I discuss these dominating processes in detail.

Material process
Material process refers to "intentional or spontaneous performance of an animate or inanimate, externalized and concrete embody an action verb of doing or happening" (Haratyan, 2011: 261). The components of the material process are actor (e.g. subject), process (e.g. verb), and goal (e.g. object). Table 2. presents examples taken from Wonder Woman. The examples above are taken from three different cohesive devises found in comics which rely on text: speech bubbles, caption or text box, and a full-page text panel. As seen in the examples, the material process is utilized as a way of narrating and explaining what is happening or has happened in the images. To reinforce this argument, take Image 1 2 . and relate it to the examples above. We can most likely conclude that the only possible choice is example 3. "That night, Steve Trevor drives to a hidden airfield not far from an Army Air base…" (Moulton, 1942: 5). For the reader, it is quite easy to relate "drives" with the vehicle behind Steve Trevor. Here we see an example of intersemiosis (Ravelli, 2000) in which the textbox and the image found within the panel co-op in explaining the process of doing. Image 1. Material process. Copyright © 1938, 2016 DC Comics.

Relational process
The relational process can be described as the process of "being" (Wang, 2010: 258). These can be classified into attributive and identifying. Table 3 provides examples for each. Table 3. Relational process Attributive Identifying 1. You will be indeed be a "Wonder Woman" 2. From all parts of Paradise Island come the Amazon contestants! 3. It is lovely! 4. He is that captain Trevor who has been giving us so much trouble. 5. She is in love! 6. I was afraid of that! 7. Sensational feats are outstanding.
The relational process in Wonder Woman, helps the writer explain complex, abstract ideas, such as, love (see example 5 from Table 3). Although this line was said in a panel in which Wonder Woman is not present, the idea that she is in love with Steve Trevor is reinforced in other panels portraying her actions toward him. So, here the action sequences which are also related to material process outlined above, reinforce the abstraction provided by the relational process. Therefore, in comic books, the relational meaning helps the reader make a relationship between the character's actions and abstractions.

Interpersonal meaning
The system of person analyzes who is speaking, to whom, and how these are referred to by extracting the pronouns in a text. From the use of pronouns, we can identify issues such as social distance, however, following in a post-structuralist feminist lens, we can look at the role of gender. In Table 4, we can identify which pronouns were used the most by the writer.  Table 4, we can say that the first person was utilized the most by Moulton, in total 36% of all pronouns. However, from those 78 first person I's, only seven come from Wonder Woman within two panels of a total of 47 panels. What this tells us is that agency and attribution for actions is taken away from Wonder Woman. The characters who use the first person I are the Queen Hippolyte and Steve Trevor. These characters use it to take credit for their actions and to attribute feats for themselves. Both characters possess a great level of responsibility within their institutions; Steve Trevor is a captain within the intelligence services, and Hippolyte a queen in Paradise Island. The third most used pronoun is the first person we, in which social distance is shortened and gives a sense of inclusion. This pronoun is utilized the most by Hippolyte to close distance between the Amazons and herself, and to allude to her membership as one. The second most mentioned pronoun is the third person He, with a total of 15%. In its majority, He is used to refer to Steve Trevor. This places him as a central character as he is the source of Wonder Woman's and Hippolyte's dilemma -whether to remain on paradise island and continue to be immortal or save Steve Trevor and help America with its war.

Mood
Within the interpersonal function, mood system has only three options; these are, interrogative, declarative, and imperative (Thompson, 2014). The mood component follows either Subject + Finite (Declarative) or Finite + Subject (Interrogative) structures (see Eggins, 2004;Thompson, 2014). On the other hand, imperatives do not possess the mood component as they do not have either a subject or a finite.
In the comic book, there are a total of 266 clauses analyzed and as presented by Table  5, most of the clauses are declarative (78%) followed by imperative (16%). Although these are the two most recurring clause types, there is still a vast difference between both. In declarative clauses, the subject is typically transmitting information. This means that most clauses in this comic book possess the mood component of both the Subject + Finite structure. A reason for this may be that comic books as a form of sequential art (Eisner, 1985) and in order for the writer to incorporate this element of sequence and movement he or she must make this explicit to the reader through both text and images. This is specifically achieved by the writer's use of text boxes or captions which narrate actions or events within or prior to the image in the panel. Image 2, taken from page two, panel 1, shows Wonder Woman carrying Steve Trevor into the city after his accident.

Image 2. Declarative mood. Copyright © 1938, 2016 DC Comics
Here the image is accompanied by a caption containing a declarative clause which first describes off-panel action (her going through the dense vegetation to get into the city) and the onpanel action which is her carrying the man amidst the bewildered reactions of other Amazons. The effect that this has on the reader is that she or he perceives motion and transition between one panel to another. Thus, the declarative mood is used the most by the writer to establish this relationship between the text/image and the reader characteristic of comic books.

Modality
Modality looks specifically at the finite, which as we saw above is only found in declaratives and interrogatives. Here we explore the level of polarity of the finite found within these clauses. Modality enables us to make claims regarding the interlocuters' level of certainty or authority. Here we shall focus on levels of authority. Table 6, depicts polarity as either positive or negative, however, there are some degrees in between which range from low to high politeness. As seen in Table 6, the modality and polarity lay mostly in positive median and high politeness. What this tells us in levels of certainty is that the characters executing such illocutionary acts portray middle to high levels of certainty. This is interesting because this coincides with authority. Characters in Wonder Woman who demonstrate the most certainty are also those who possess the most authority. Image 3, for example, along with the speech bubbles portrays Hippolyte giving orders (also one of the panels with the most imperatives) through both positive high politeness and negative median and high politeness (see Table 7) to the Amazon Doctor and Wonder Woman.  From the speech bubble above in panel 4 of page 2, we can observe the Queen exerting her authority over her subjects; the Doctor and Wonder Woman. This is a recurring event throughout the comic in which she exerts authority over the rest of the Amazons.

Writer attitudes
This section analyzes the use of nouns and adjectives in relation to femininity and masculinity as portrayed by Charles Moulton in Wonder Woman's appearance in All Star Comics No. 8. This analysis takes from Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and White (2005). The appraisal framework operates within the interpersonal meta-function in that "it presents speakers/writers as revealing their feelings, tastes, and opinions" (White, 2015: 1). These feelings, tastes, and opinions are represented through attitudinal meanings which are divided into three subtypes: (1) Positive/negative assessment presented as emotional reactions (labeled "affect"), (2) Positive/negative assessments of human behavior and character by reference to ethics/morality and other systems of conventionalized or institutionalized norms (labeled "judgement"), and (3) Assessments of objects, artifacts, texts, states of affairs, and processes in terms of how they are assigned value socially (labeled "appreciation") (White, 2015: 2).
Here, the focus will be on the second subtype (judgement) because of an apparent dichotomy between femininity and masculinity as presented by Moulton. This separation became clear after the analysis of both nouns and adjectives which Moulton associated with either man or woman. From this sample list, we can see all positive judgements are directed toward femininity and all negative judgements toward masculinity. For example, nouns related to femininity are: power, doctor, agility, strength, peace, queen, and knowledge. The adjectives related to the same are: stronger, quick, young, outstanding, sensational, wiser, and best. For masculinity we have: problems, child's play, child, deceit, wars, hatreds, injustice, and rats. The adjectives are: vain, angry, unbearable, unconscious, fiercest, and dangerous.
To reinforce this argument, we can look at the images from two different panels which compare femininity and masculinity. These two images coincide with the nouns and adjectives seen in the text analysis above, in which masculinity is presented as belligerent and oppressive (see Image 5) and femininity as stronger (see Image 4). However, there are some contradiction as the Amazons carry out a contest in which one of the games is to shoot at each other with a laser gun (see Image 6).

Image 6. Amazons fighting. Copyright © 1938, 2016 DC Comics
From the above, Charles Moulton seems to project radical feminist ideologies through the pages of Wonder Woman in which masculinity and femininity must be separated for social change.

Textual meaning
Through the textual meta-function, we "see how speakers construct their messages in a way that makes them fit smoothly into the unfolding language event" (Thompson, 2014: 145). In essence, we look at how, in this case, the comic book is held together with both images and text. This is known as cohesion, or the "non-structural text-forming relations" (Halliday & Hasan, 1976: 7) or cohesive devises such as, referencing, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. These devises, in a comic book, can be found within panels in speech bubbles, captions or narrative boxes and through the use of images and splash pages. Here I only focus on referencing as a cohesive devise of comic books.
Referencing can be classified into homophoric, exophoric, and endophoria categories "referring to cultural shared information, immediate situation context, and textual information, referencing identifies presupposed information throughout the text" respectively (Eggins, 1994: 95). These can be further divided into other types. Here, I provide examples of referencing both in text and image.
To illustrate an anaphoric reference, a sub-category of endophoric referencing, see Images 7 and 8. Image 7 occurs on page one, panel two and depicts Steve Trevor's plane crashing on Paradise Island. Image 8, presents the Queen making reference to the plane crash. This is evident through the speech bubble and the image seen in the Magic Sphere. Here the author is using textual and visual elements to create an anaphoric reference.

Discourse practice
This section aims to discuss how Wonder Woman is part of the discursive practice of comic books. This is achieved by adhering to the concept of intertextuality. Intertextuality holds the argument that "texts […] are inherently intertextually, constituted by elements of other texts" (Fairclough, 1992: 102). To support my argument of textuality, I compare "Presenting: Wonder Woman" with the other comic found within the pages of All Star Comics No. 8, titled "Two New Members Win Their Spurs".
Regarding the discursive intertextuality of the comic in reference to the genre of superhero comic books, Wonder Woman follows the general conventions with the only difference that the protagonist is a female super hero. This would lead to a major shift in the representation of women in superhero comic books as discussed in the next section. As a genre, super hero comic books during the "The Golden Age of Comic Books" (1930's -1950's) (Kelly, 2009) represented the battle between good and evil, in which good always triumphed. Although evidence exist that comic books reached a wide demographic population (see Vanderbilt, 1945), comic books at this time they were primarily aimed at children, specifically male.
In superhero comics, the discursive practice is typically that of storytelling. The writer and illustrator work together to create a coherent story line. Together, they enable the process of intersemiosis in which text and image work together to tell the story to the reader. The text is written as if spoken and thus the reader perceives as if the story is being told to her or him.
From the first level analysis, we can infer that the transitivity from previous comic books is present in Wonder Woman. However, the role of a female superhero most definitely had an impact on the social practice.

Social practice
This section will focus on the impact of Wonder Woman within the institution of comics during and after its publication. Furthermore, the impact of interpersonal meaning specifically how femininity and masculinity are represented is discussed in terms of social transformation within the comics industry. To begin the discussion, I shall take a quote from Emad (2006: 964): In Marston's Wonder Woman, an independent, empowered woman (vs. a "weak girl") is constructed in the service of nationalism and "the good fight" of a nation at war. The "Rosie the Riveter" context and Marston's reformist notions of women's empowerment contextualize the character's star-spangled costume as well as forays into revisionist history that call on essentialized categories of "woman" and "American".
In Wonder Woman's first appearance the feminist ideologies of Marston become clear (as seen in the first level of analysis) and these are accompanied by the role of women during World War II. Through the first level of analysis, I concluded that Marston projected radical feminist ideologies in which all that is masculine is binary to what is feminine. In fact, there is evidence that Marston's views were deeply rooted in his relationship with his two co-wives who are often credited with the creation of Wonder Woman (Matsuuchi, 2012).
Wonder Woman entered a genre which was dominated by male superheroes, and from the beginning there was conflict with her image. Marston envisioned a character who possessed all the powers of Superman, but also feminine traits. This would soon create conflict as seen in Fredrick Wertham's 1954 Seduction of the innocent which later led to the censoring of comic books with the creation of the Comics Code Authority also in 1954. Wertham's claims were that Wonder Woman instilled ideologies of lesbianism in children. Despite having been in comic books for over a decade, Wonder Woman along with other superhero comics found themselves criticized due to social problems such as juvenile delinquency to which they were with by Seduction of the innocent. Despite these criticisms, Wonder Woman remains an iconic superhero as she has become a symbol for feminism and also for breaching the comic book industry and bringing in new readers.

Conclusion
Through Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, I have uncovered the feminist ideologies of Wonder Woman's first comic book appearance. In summary, I uncovered that through the use of language, Moulton and his co-wives were able to shed their feminist ideologies which mostly represented radical feminism. Masculinity was typically portrayed as negative and femininity as the opposite. Also, insights into the devises which hold together text and image in comic books was discussed. In addition, I touched on the element of intersemiosis in which text and image work together to create meaning. However, to delve deeper into this process of intersemiosis, I suggest that for further research a multi-modal critical discourse analysis be carried out following Kress & van Leeuwen's (2006) framework along with Fairclough's three-dimensional model. This would require the design of a grammar for comic books which, superficially, would include the relationship between text and image.

Introduction
In different societies and different communities, people speak differently; these differences in ways of speaking are profound and systematic, they reflect different cultural values, or at least different hierarchies of values; different ways of speaking, different communicative styles, can be explained and made sense of in terms of independently established different cultural values and cultural priorities (Wierzbicka, 1991: 69).
People in different societies or cultures speak differently because understanding of appropriate linguistic behaviour varies from one place to another. The purpose of this paper is to explore different cultural values related to language use, particularly I will examine the examples of sociopragmatic failure in Ukrainian and Mexican Spanish. I will first provide some theoretical information about the concept. I will then analyse the examples of sociopragmatic failure in the mentioned languages. Lastly, I will offer some implications for this concept in the area of language teaching.
My motivation for choosing this particular topic stems from my personal experiences of sociopragmatic failure. I am from Ukraine and my mother tongue is Ukrainian. I also learnt several foreign languages and I felt quite confident speaking them. However, I have never received any pragmatic instruction from my language teachers that could help me behave linguistically correctly in those languages. Therefore, when I went abroad, I experienced many cross-cultural differences related to language use which impeded successful communication. Thus, through showing my personal experiences of sociopragmatic failure, I aim to suggest the importance of helping students to acquire pragmatic competence in language classrooms. Having expressed the aim of this paper and my interest in this topic, I will now explain what a sociopragmatic failure is.
 The norms of appropriate linguistic behaviour differ from one culture to another.  If language learners are not aware of cultural norms placed on language use, they may experience a sociopragmatic failure speaking a foreign language with native speakers.  Sociopragmatic failure can often lead to a breakdown in intercultural communication.
 In order for language learners to avoid sociopragmatic failure, it is important that they receive pragmatic instruction in their language classes.

Sociopragmatic failure: Theoretical background
Before I discuss a sociopragmatic failure per se, it is important to define the area of pragmatics. The term pragmatics refers to language in use (Dash, 2004;Thomas, 1983). To be more precise, it is the meaning that our utterances receive in a particular context. Dash (2004) argues that the discrepancy between what we mean and what we actually say is at the heart of pragmatics. Let us look at this example, it is customary to say to a newborn in Ukraine "How ugly" or "How bad". It does not mean that we intend to communicate that a baby looks ugly. We actually say it in order not to jinx a baby and to protect it from evil. Thus, if in any other situation one hears "how ugly" or "how bad", that will be offensive. However, in this particular context with a newborn, this utterance has a good intention.
I assume that if one foreigner comes to Ukraine and hears this phrase, he/she is likely to be surprised (or angry if it refers to his/her baby) and to misinterpret it. That will be a pragmatic failure. It can occur "on any occasion in which H [the hearer] perceives the force of S's [the speaker's] utterance as other than S intended he/she should perceive it" (Jaworski, 1994, p. 42). It may happen due to different cultural knowledge that we have about the world or due to the way we utter it linguistically. It was Thomas (1983) who distinguished two types of pragmatic failure: (1) Pragmalinguisic failure. It occurs when a pragmatic force placed on an utterance by S differs from a force that is usually assigned to it by native speakers, or when "speech act strategies are inappropriately transferred from L1 to L2" (Thomas, 1983: 99).
(2) Sociopragmatic failure. It is defined as "social conditions placed on language in use" (Thomas, 1983: 99). Pragmalinguistic failure is considered easier to overcome because it is a linguistic problem and can be corrected as a simple grammatical error. However, sociopragmatic failure is not as easy to correct as a pragmalinguistic one because it "stems from cross-culturally different perceptions of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behaviour" (Thomas, 1983, p.99). Thus, overcoming it means changing one's beliefs and values system (Jaworski, 1994). The example mentioned above would refer to sociopragmatic failure. It is grammatically correct but it may be misinterpereted by non-Ukrainian speakers due to their cultural perceptions of appropriate linguistic behaviour.
According to Thomas (1983), sociapragmatic failure can be caused by cross-cultural differences in the assessment of the following: (1) The size of imposition. This refers to the notion about free and non-free goods. Free goods are those that anyone could ask without any elaborate politeness strategies. Thomas (1983) provides an illustration of the Soviet Union, where cigarettes were almost free and anyone could ask for them without being extremely polite. This example can apply to Ukraine as a post-soviet country, too. I still remember when I was a child and men would come to my grandfather for some cigarettes because they knew he was a big smoker. I wonder if that would be the case in Western Europe where cigarettes were quite expensive. If one Russian or Ukrainian asks a random European person on the street for one cigarette, it will be a sociopragmatic failure as it is not appropriate there.
(2) Power and social distance. It refers to different styles of communication between people of different power and social status: for example, employers and employees, senior and young people, teachers and students, etc.
(3) Making references to what is considered taboo topics in L2 but can be freely discussed in L1. Taboos are topics that are inappropriate for discussions and they can vary from one country to another. The most common ones are sexual, racial, religious, etc. issues. For example, it is not common to ask about a salary in Ukraine.
(4) Cross-culturally different pragmatic ground rules. Pragmatic rules do not operate in the same way in different languages and the same utterance can be interpreted differently in different cultures. To illustrate, Jaworski (2008) describes the case of Polish and American English. It is common for Americans to say Let's do lunch as a polite farewell formula. However, Polish interlocutors perceive it as an invitation and are offended when Americans do not really come for a lunch. I must admit that similar situations happen with me in Mexico as well. I often hear from Mexicans We need to have a lunch/party one day or we must get together. I take it seriously and understand it as an invitation. However, it never happens, which disappoints me.
We have seen some examples from the literature which make it clear that sociopragmatic failures can not only affect linguistic production but also lead to a communication breakdown. This is because we interpret utterances, according to our cultural norms and understanding of the world. That is why something that sounds appropriate for speakers of one language may be rude or impolite for speakers of other languages, and vice versa. The concept of sociopragmatic failure is tightly connected with the notion of face-threatening act, briefly discussed in the next sub-section.

Sociopragmatic failure and the concept of face
According to Brown and Levinson's (1978) politeness theory, everyone has a face, which is his/her "emotionally invested" image (as cited in Vilkki, 2006: 324). A person has positive and negative face. Positive face is one's desire that his/her wants be appreciated in social interaction. Negative face is one's desire for "freedom of action and freedom from imposition" (Vilkki, 2006: 324). If one's positive or negative face is threatened, a face-threatening activity occurs. The theory assumes that most speech acts, such as requests, offers, compliments, etc. are face-threatening. Cook (1989) asserts that the nature of face varies from society to society. These differences often cause misunderstanding between people from different cultures and/or speakers of different languages. Similarly, Beebe and Takahashi (1989) suggest that face-threatening acts are a source of many cross-cultural failures. It is due to different social norms of speaking in different languages and lack of pragmatic knowledge of how to perform face-threatening acts. Aiming at redressing face-threatening acts, different politeness strategies are involved. The main politeness principles are discussed in the next sub-section.

Pragmatic principles: Cooperation and politeness
Spencer- Oatey and Jiang (2003) argue that people's communication is influenced by pragmatic principles. One of them is cooperative principle proposed by Paul Grice in 1975. The main point of this principle is that it is "known and applied by all human beings" (Cook, 1989: 29). It does not mean that people explicitly formulate them and apply in communication but rather that they speak as if they knew these rules. According to the cooperative principle, human beings obey four maxims in communication (Cook, 1989: 29): (1) be true (the maxim of quality), (2) be brief (the maxim of quantity), (3) be relevant (the maxim of relevance), and (4) be clear (the maxim of manner). Cook (1989) notes that it is not necessary to obey all four maxims at once. For example, quality and quantity maxims do not always coincide because it is quite difficult to be brief and true at the same time. Furthermore, sometimes meanings derive from deliberate violations of the cooperative principle. For example, if I say "I have tones of exams to grade", my intention is not to lie but to explain to my interlocutor that I have much work to do; and the interlocutor understands it as such without blaming me as being untruthful.
Communication can be also explained by looking at Leech's (1983) politeness principle. Its main points can be conveyed as follows (Cook, 1989: 33): (1) do not impose, (2) give options, and (3) make your receiver feel good. Cook (1989) admits that the politeness principle and the cooperative principle usually conflict with each other. This is because politeness and truth as well as politeness and brevity are often mutually incompatible. To provide a personal example, I live in Mexico, which is thousands kilometres away from Ukraine and from my parents. If they ask me how I am, I do not describe them in details all the difficulties that I may have. I would rather use a "white lie" because I know they cannot solve all my problems in Mexico being far away; they will only be preoccupied. I prefer violating the cooperative principle and make my parents feel calm.
The politeness principle is accompanied by six politeness maxims (Leech, 1983: 132): (1) Tact maxim: minimize cost to other; maximize benefit to other.
The tact maxim is applied when S politely convinces H to do something that is beneficial to S. For example: one may use affirmative "Someone is knocking the door" instead of imperative "Open the door!". The first example is just a more polite way of asking the second one.
(2) Generosity maxim: minimize benefit to self; maximize cost to self.

This maxim can be explained in the following examples:
-You can lend me your bicycle (impolite); I can lend you my bicycle (polite).
-We must come to you for lunch (impolite); you must come to us for lunch (polite).
The offer and invitation are recognized as polite because they imply benefit to H (to get a bicycle; to be invited for a lunch) and cost to S (to lend a bicycle; to make a lunch).
The approbation maxim states: "Avoid saying unpleasant things about others, and more particularly, about H" (Leech, 1983: 135). We prefer to praise others or, if we cannot do so, to remain silent. To illustrate, "You are an excellent cook" is an appropriate and polite utterance as compared to "You are an awful cook". The second represents violation of the approbation maxim and should be avoided.
This maxim is the other side of the approbation maxim. Breaking the modesty maxim equals boasting, which is usually considered impolite. Compare: A: You were so kind. B: Yes, I was, wasn't I. It is not common to response to praise as in B.
(5) Agreement maxim: minimize disagreement between self and other; maximize agreement between self and other. Disagreement is considered impolite; it is a dispreferred second because it is less common (Cook, 1989). Thus, we always try to mitigate it. For example, compare: A: This book is very interesting, isn't it? B: Oh no, it is so boring vs. A: This book is very interesting, isn't it? B: Yes, it is. But there are some boring parts. Disagreement in the first example is impolite. In the second example, H mitigates it by performing partial disagreement. Leech (1983) describes a situation, in which an English speaker compliments a garden of a Japanese woman. However, the woman keeps on denying a compliment that denotes violation of the agreement maxim as well as shows that the modesty maxim is more powerful in Japanese societies.
(6) Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and other; maximize sympathy between self and other.
This maxim is applied in speech acts, such as congratulation, commiseration and expressing condolences. To illustrate, instead of saying "I am terribly sorry to hear that your dad died", it is more preferable and typical for human conversation to say "I am terribly sorry to hear about your dad". Both examples sound correct. However, referring to the propositional context of the death in the first sentence might carry a note of impoliteness because it is unfavourable to H.
Using the cooperative principle and the politeness principle as well as general knowledge about the world in our communication, makes it possible for a person to interpret pragmatic meaning of an utterance (Cook, 1989). These two principles work differently in different countries. A failure to apply them in our language use, according to socio-cultural norms in a particular country, may lead to a sociopragmatic failure. I will illustrate personal examples of sociopragmatic failure in the following section.

Examples of sociopragmatic failure
As I have mentioned before, I am originally from Ukraine but currently I live in Mexico. Before coming to Mexico, I had visited some other countries. Thus, I experienced several sociopragmatic failures, especially in Mexico because the cultures are fairly different. In crosscultural communication, people usually rely on the knowledge of social norms and politeness principles that operate in their L1. In my case, I also make use of my previous cultural experiences, which sometimes helps and sometimes makes the matters even worse. I this section, I will discuss a few sociopragmatic failures that I faced in my cross-cultural interactions.
(1) Failure to perceive Spanish Qué tal / Cómo estás? or English 'How are you?' as a greeting Jaworski (1994) discussed in his article that Polish learners of English perceive a greeting 'How are you?' as an actual question for information. So they answer how they really feel, be it awful, sick or happy. In this aspect Ukrainian is similar to Polish. We ask 'How are you?' only when we really want to know it and interlocutors usually respond honestly how they feel. Nevertheless, the question 'How are you?' in English and Qué tal / Cómo estás? in Spanish are used as phatic functions [macro-function of language focused on opening the channel of communication (Cook, 1989)]. My previous experience with English helped me to avoid sociopragmatic failure in Spanish. However, it is still difficult for me to perceive it as a greeting. I sometimes do not even answer because I know that an interlocutor is not interested in how I actually feel. My avoidance of response might be perceived as a face-threatening act. This example also shows that the politeness principle is more powerful in Mexico while the cooperative principle is in Ukraine. Ukrainians value being true more than applying elaborate politeness strategies in communication.
(2) Misinterpretation of Mexican "ahorita" Mexican ahorita, which could be literally translated into English as "right now", is the most mysterious word in Mexican Spanish for me. It is not clear if it means now, in a minute, in an hour or never. I first heard ahorita in one language school where I used to work as an English teacher. It was a response to my request to receive some materials. I assumed that my interlocutor was going to fulfil the request immediately. Instead she just looked at me puzzled and I figured out that she did not intend to give me the required materials at that particular moment. This sociopragmatic failure illustrates that the concept of time is treated differently in both cultures. Ukraine could be regarded as a monochronic culture as compared to polychronic Mexico. Monochronic cultures are the ones that view time as linear, keep schedules and accurate planning while polychronic cultures treat time as a philosophical concept and are engaged in several activities at a time (Prykarpatska, 2008). (

3) Avoidance of refusal by Mexican Spanish speakers
This example is related to the previous one. Refusal like many other speech acts is a face-threatening act because it is a dispreferred response to an offer or invitation. Mexican Spanish speakers prefer to be polite and to mitigate it. Instead of saying 'no', they may just answer ahorita, más tarde [later] or use any other strategies to avoid refusal. Ukrainian as well as English speakers would rather perform a face-threatening act and refuse, violating the agreement maxim. Mexicans prefer to ignore the quality maxim but to be polite.

(4) Different way to express phatic function in Mexican and Ukrainian culture
Another sociopragmatic failure usually occurs to me in Mexico when I see acquaintances passing by. In Ukraine, I would greet them with 'Hi', even though I know that we will not have a conversation. However, it appeared that it is appropriate linguistic behaviour in Mexico to say Adios [bye] if you know that your conversation will not go further than greeting each other. In Ukraine, it would mean that you do not wish to see that person and that would definitely be a sociopragmatic failure.
(5) Failure to be brief Mexican culture is quite expressive and people tend to describe some situations emotionally and in many details. One time my student came to me after a class and started to tell me a long history about an adventure that occurred to him and his family the day before. I was confused and irritated, and could not understand why he was telling me this story. So I asked him to go directly to the point. At the end I figured out that it was an explanation of his reason for being absent in a previous class. Instead of going directly to the point, the student provided too many details before actual explanation. In Ukraine, it would be inappropriate linguistic behaviour in an academic context. Here we can observe violation of quantity maxim, whose main point is to be brief. My irritation can be seen as threat to my student's positive face because his want of being excused for the absence has not been appreciated.

(6) Different understanding and linguistic expression of power and social distance in Mexican and Ukrainian culture
In Ukraine, the distinction between formal and informal 'you' is taken quite seriously. Young people always use formal 'you' with senior people as well as students with teachers and teachers with students or when you meet someone for the first time, etc. It is a way of being polite and failure to do it is absolutely inappropriate. However, the distinction between two forms of addressing is not so strictly followed in Mexico. It would not be a socipragmatic failure if you address someone tú [informal 'you'] in an official institution or in any other public place. Besides, social norms related to teacher-student relationship in both countries are rather different. Students are more familiar and uninhibited with teachers in Mexico but in Ukraine the social distance between both sides is larger. To illustrate, it is highly rude to address a teacher in Ukraine with informal 'you' while in Mexico it would be quite appropriate.
Second example for this category refers to performing requests in Ukrainian and Spanish. In Ukraine, it is not customary to use 'please' in informal requests to close people. If one says 'can/could you please…?' to close friends or family members, he/she diverges and sets a large social distance. We use this formula mostly in formal contexts. We may say 'please' in imperative requests rather than in interrogative ones with familiar people. Nonetheless, in Mexico it is considered quite impolite or even rude if you do not use the formula 'can/could you please…?' or especially if you perform an imperative request. This means that the tact maxim is valued differently in both cultures. Two examples, described here, show that Ukraine values social distance more than Mexico.

(7) Different taboo topics
In the previous section, I stated that taboo topics can vary from one country to another. One taboo topic in Ukraine which can be freely discussed in Mexico is health problems, especially the ones related to stomach. Once, one of my students told me that he missed a class because he had diarrhoea. It would be absolutely inappropriate and quite embarrassing in Ukraine. I often face this sociopragmatic failure with my boyfriend, who is Mexican. When I feel sick, he usually asks me many personal questions, which I do not feel free to discuss with anyone. However, this behaviour offends him because he thinks that I do not trust him. In this situation, I threaten his positive face because his wish to help me is misunderstood. At the same time, he threatens my negative face because my desire for freedom from imposition is not respected.
In this section, I illustrated a few sociopragmatic failures that I experienced in my cross-cultural interactions. We could see that they impede our understanding and consequently can lead to a breakdown in communication. In order to reduce the possibility of occurrence of this phenomenon, we should learn social norms and politeness principles that operate in L2. It does not mean that we need to change our way of expressing different macro functions of language because there is no right or wrong way to do it. It depends on socio-cultural norms placed on language use that differ from one country to another. However, we do need to adjust our discourse when using L2 according to what is considered appropriate linguistic behaviour in that language. Concerning me, I figured out most of pragmatic principles in the foreign languages I know by myself, having experienced several failures. In order for learners to be more prepared for crosscultural communication, I propose some implications of the concept of sociopragmatic failure for the area of language teaching in the following section. 4. Implications for the area of language teaching Dash (2004: 12) states that pragmatics is "indispensable part of language learning and which has received insufficient attention in acquisition". The primary goal for learning a language is communication and ability to convey meaning which is central to the area of pragmatics. In spite of this, pragmatics is usually neglected in the language classrooms. Several authors agree upon the importance of teaching pragmatics to language learners (Dash, 2004;Eslami-Rasekh, Eslami-Rasekh, & Fatahi, 2004;Fernandez, 2008;Jaworski, 1998;Thomas, 1983).
According to Thomas (1983), linguistic knowledge consists of grammatical competence and pragmatic competence. The former is the knowledge of phonology, syntax and semantics. The latter refers to "the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context" (Thomas, 1983: 92). Nevertheless, the author argues that language teachers focus only on grammatical competence. Therefore, students lack pragmatic skills and cannot communicate fluently. Then a question arises: Why do we teach languages if at the end of the day learners are not able to interact? Thomas (1983) notes two reasons for leaving pragmatics aside in language teaching: (1) Pragmatic description has not received the exactness level of grammar, describing linguistic competence.
(2) It is a delicate area and it is not completely clear how to teach it.
It is worth mentioning that Thomas wrote this in 1983; however, little has changed since that time. Language teaching does not seem to be progressing in terms of pragmatic instruction. To provide an example, I work in the institution which claims to follow communicative language teaching. Nonetheless, there is no place for teaching pragmatics in its language syllabus. Then it appears that it cannot be really called communicative language teaching because successful communication is at the heart of pragmatics. I agree that it is rather difficult to teach pragmatics and to explain the importance of it to the students because there is lack of materials dedicated to developing pragmatic competence. Most of the textbooks focus only on grammatical competence. Thus, teaching pragmatics demands much effort from language teachers, but trying something new is the only way to improve. Eslami-Rasekh et al. (2004) show in their study that pragmatic instruction works. Their research was conducted with 66 Iranian advanced learners of English and focused on three speech acts: request, apology and complaint. The participants were divided into two groups: a control group receiving normal instruction and an experimental group that additionally received pragmatic instruction. About 30 minutes of each two hour class were dedicated to pragmatically oriented tasks, such as descriptions, explanations, teacher-fronted discussions, cooperative grouping and role-plays. At the beginning of the study, a multiple choice pragmatic awareness test with 26 situations was administered to the participants. At the end of the course, a similar questionnaire was given to the learners in order to compare the results. The findings showed that pragmatic instruction facilitates students' pragmatic development and contributes to their speech act comprehension processes.
So, how to help language learners to acquire pragmatic competence? Researchers give some recommendations. Dash (2004) proposes applying role-plays and dramas in classes with proper description of different contexts. He even suggests adding pragmatic instruction in teaching L1 in order for learners to understand that people of varying cultural backgrounds can understand certain utterances differently. Jaworski (1994) mentions three ideas of teaching pragmatics in language classes: (1) Demonstrating the role of phatic communion and linguistic routines; (2) Pointing out specific nature of formulaic expressions; (3) Discussing the potential problems of miscommunication as a result of transfer of pragmatic knowledge from L1 to L2. An interesting exercise is described by Bardovi-Harlig (1992). The author recommends bringing to a class different L2 speech acts and asking students to record similar speeches in their L1 in order to analyse possible pragmatic similarities and differences in L1 and L2. This type of activity would be more relevant to the students' context and raise their pragmatic awareness.
Thus, it is highly significant for course designers to find some spare space in language syllabi for pragmatics classes. Moreover, I think pragmatics must be taught starting from beginning levels so that students understand the importance of knowing cross-cultural differences in communication. Also, I would argue that pragmatic instruction should be given not only to language learners but also in teacher-training programmes in order for future teachers to have necessary tools for raising pragmatic awareness among their students.

Conclusions
This essay explored sociopragmatic failure, analysing some examples in Ukrainian vs. Mexican Spanish, and several other concepts related to it, such as face-threatening act and the pragmatic principles. To summarize, we generally tend to avoid face-threatening acts, applying different cooperation and politeness maxims in our communication. These politeness maxims have different power in various cultures. If we apply them incorrectly in a particular language/culture, a sociopragmatic failure occurs.
I examined seven examples of performing different speech acts in Ukrainian and Mexican Spanish. The discussion allows me to conclude that the cooperative principle is more valued in Ukraine while the politeness principle is more powerful in Mexico. Ukrainian speakers, on the one hand, generally tend to be true even if it means performing a face-threatening act. Mexican speakers, on the other hand, prefer to mitigate face-threatening acts by applying elaborate politeness strategies. All the examples explained in this paper were faced by me and they often led to breakdowns in my cross-cultural communication. In order to avoid this, I believe language learners need to receive pragmatic instruction in language classes and learn how to be polite in a foreign language. We do not need to become different persons learning a second language. But we should know cultural norms that operate in this language in order to be able to fully express ourselves and not to get into embarrassing situations.