This paper is an attempt to present an overview of the most common and notorious consonant-related mispronunciations committed by Polish learners of English, which result mainly in a foreign accent, but also occasionally cause confusion or misunderstandings. Apart from identifying the errors, I will try to indicate possible sources of the “favoured” substitutions, as well as suggest a number of practical solutions to solve these errors. Making improvements in the areas discussed below is of paramount value if a near-native pronunciation is to be attained, since at the segmental level it is the consonants that are the basis of a native speaker’s pronunciation. For this and other reasons, I will argue that the consonants should be given the greatest care at least by professionals such as English teachers and interpreters, whose English should be near-native not only for the benefit of their students and clients, but also for greater ease and better quality of communication among the entire English speaking community.
{"title":"Towards a near-native speaker’s pronunciation: The most challenging aspects of English pronunciation for Polish learners and ways of dealing with them: The consonants","authors":"Z. Czaja","doi":"10.26881/bp.2019.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2019.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is an attempt to present an overview of the most common and notorious consonant-related mispronunciations committed by Polish learners of English, which result mainly in a foreign accent, but also occasionally cause confusion or misunderstandings. Apart from identifying the errors, I will try to indicate possible sources of the “favoured” substitutions, as well as suggest a number of practical solutions to solve these errors. Making improvements in the areas discussed below is of paramount value if a near-native pronunciation is to be attained, since at the segmental level it is the consonants that are the basis of a native speaker’s pronunciation. For this and other reasons, I will argue that the consonants should be given the greatest care at least by professionals such as English teachers and interpreters, whose English should be near-native not only for the benefit of their students and clients, but also for greater ease and better quality of communication among the entire English speaking community.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115145836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A prospectus, as a kind of self-description of the organization, is specified as one of the attributes of an organization. A university, as a type of organization, makes its prospectus accordingly. A prospectus – as a genre of organizational discourse – has a constructive mechanism. With the synergy of the discoursehistorical approach (DHA) and the corpus discourse approach, this article will analyze – using WordSmith – the discursive strategies involved in the construction of the organizational identity of the world’s top universities. The analysis reveals that the prospectuses of the world’s top 100 universities mainly employ the referential/nomination strategy and predication strategy to construct an identity for themselves as world-renowned, diversified, reputable leading universities which will participate positively in the global market.
{"title":"Organizational identity construction of the world’s top universities: A discourse analysis of university prospectuses","authors":"Mei-Chi Yang","doi":"10.26881/bp.2019.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2019.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"A prospectus, as a kind of self-description of the organization, is specified as one of the attributes of an organization. A university, as a type of organization, makes its prospectus accordingly. A prospectus – as a genre of organizational discourse – has a constructive mechanism. With the synergy of the discoursehistorical approach (DHA) and the corpus discourse approach, this article will analyze – using WordSmith – the discursive strategies involved in the construction of the organizational identity of the world’s top universities. The analysis reveals that the prospectuses of the world’s top 100 universities mainly employ the referential/nomination strategy and predication strategy to construct an identity for themselves as world-renowned, diversified, reputable leading universities which will participate positively in the global market.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115196072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The present paper sets out to gauge the post-Brexit referendum attitudes of Gibraltarians concerning language and political outlooks. A survey was created in order to gather the necessary qualitative and quantitative data. It was spread using Facebook groups and a total of 38 questionnaires were collected. The results of the research suggest that Gibraltar is still highly conflicted over Brexit, there is an ongoing attrition of Spanish, and English seems to be continuously gaining linguistic ground. More detailed research is, however, needed to evaluate the ongoing changes with greater certainty.
{"title":"Brexit – and now what? A post-referendum survey into linguistic and national attitudes in Gibraltar","authors":"Tomasz Paciorkowski","doi":"10.26881/bp.2019.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2019.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"The present paper sets out to gauge the post-Brexit referendum attitudes of Gibraltarians concerning language and political outlooks. A survey was created in order to gather the necessary qualitative and quantitative data. It was spread using Facebook groups and a total of 38 questionnaires were collected. The results of the research suggest that Gibraltar is still highly conflicted over Brexit, there is an ongoing attrition of Spanish, and English seems to be continuously gaining linguistic ground. More detailed research is, however, needed to evaluate the ongoing changes with greater certainty.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128208145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Norway has two official written language varieties: Bokmål (DanoNorwegian) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian). Normally, all Norwegian pupils must learn both varieties of the written Norwegian language in school, and at the end of secondary school, they obtain two separate grades in written Norwegian. However, one of the varieties is considered to be and is taught as the main written language, whereas the other variety is the second or alternative written language. Approximately 85 percent of the pupils in school have the DanoNorwegian variety as their main written language and many of these pupils develop antipathies toward the other variety with the result that they do not master it very well at the end of secondary school. In fact, many pupils achieve better results in English than in the alternative variety of their own so-called mother tongue. In this paper, I will discuss some of the challenges that are related to learning Nynorsk in the Norwegian educational system and society. With reference to Norton (2013) and others, I will argue that these challenges may actually be best understood from the perspectives of identity, social power, motivation, investment and second language acquisition.
{"title":"When the first language feels like a second language: Challenges for learners of Norwegian Nynorsk","authors":"J. Haugan","doi":"10.26881/bp.2019.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2019.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"Norway has two official written language varieties: Bokmål (DanoNorwegian) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian). Normally, all Norwegian pupils must learn both varieties of the written Norwegian language in school, and at the end of secondary school, they obtain two separate grades in written Norwegian. However, one of the varieties is considered to be and is taught as the main written language, whereas the other variety is the second or alternative written language. \u0000Approximately 85 percent of the pupils in school have the DanoNorwegian variety as their main written language and many of these pupils develop antipathies toward the other variety with the result that they do not master it very well at the end of secondary school. In fact, many pupils achieve better results in English than in the alternative variety of their own so-called mother tongue. \u0000In this paper, I will discuss some of the challenges that are related to learning Nynorsk in the Norwegian educational system and society. With reference to Norton (2013) and others, I will argue that these challenges may actually be best understood from the perspectives of identity, social power, motivation, investment and second language acquisition.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115857323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The figurativeness of language expressions is not always obvious. While in rhetoric such unobtrusiveness may be a welcome quality, in linguistic studies, which have proved the important epistemological function of metaphor, it is vital that a reliable method for detecting metaphoricity in language be developed. The MIP proposed by the Pragglejaz group of researchers into metaphor, whose main concern is determining whether the sense represented by a given unit in a specific context contrasts or not with its basic, primary, typically “physical” meaning, does not seem to be always reliable since the contrast between a current and a basic meaning is not always evident and may be disputable in the case of words whose meaning is co-determined by context, as, e.g., the sense of the noun collectors in the phrase collectors of stories referring to the Grimm brothers. This method is also likely allow for the so-called grammatical metaphors, identified by Panther and Thornburg (2009) going unnoticed, since in their case the words involved represent their basic, physical senses. An example of the latter is the peculiar inflection of brand names marked for the masculine gender in Polish. Specifically, this is the issue of obligatory applying the declensional pattern characteristic of masculine animate nouns to masculine brand names referring to commercial products, such as cars, watches, computers, etc. The point is that the accusative case form of such words functioning as objects of verbs like buy, see, have is equal to the genitive, as is normal of animate nouns, rather than to the nominative, which is typical of animate ones – a group, to which brand names, after all, belong. This peculiar behaviour of a specific category of nouns may be interpreted as a symptom of construing their referents in a way in terms of living creatures, which seems to be confirmed by the fact that many owners develop emotional attitudes to objects of personal use. It is the metaphorical construal that seems to determine the grammatical form of certain nouns referring to them.
语言表达的具象性并不总是很明显的。虽然在修辞学中，这种不显眼性可能是一种受欢迎的品质，但在已经证明隐喻重要的认识论功能的语言学研究中，开发一种可靠的方法来检测语言中的隐喻是至关重要的。Pragglejaz研究小组对隐喻提出的MIP，其主要关注的是确定特定语境中给定单位所代表的意义是否与其基本的、主要的、典型的“物理”意义形成对比，似乎并不总是可靠的，因为当前意义和基本意义之间的对比并不总是明显的，并且在意义由语境共同决定的单词的情况下可能存在争议，例如:名词collectors在短语collectors of stories中的意义，指的是格林兄弟。这种方法也可能会让Panther和Thornburg(2009)发现的所谓的语法隐喻被忽视，因为在他们的案例中，所涉及的单词代表了他们基本的身体感官。后者的一个例子是波兰语中标记为男性性别的品牌名称的特殊变化。具体来说，这是一个强制性地将男性动画名词的变化规律特征应用于商业产品(如汽车、手表、电脑等)的男性品牌名称的问题。问题的关键是，这些词的宾格形式作为buy、see、have等动词的宾语，与一般的有生命名词的属格相等，而不是与典型的有生命名词的主格相等，毕竟品牌名称属于这一组。一类特定名词的这种特殊行为可以被解释为一种症状，即在某种程度上用有生命的生物来解释它们的指涉物，这似乎被许多所有者对个人使用的物品产生情感态度的事实所证实。似乎是隐喻性的解释决定了指代它们的某些名词的语法形式。
{"title":"Detecting metaphor – what case forms may reveal about a conceptualization","authors":"Olga Sokołowska","doi":"10.26881/bp.2019.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2019.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"The figurativeness of language expressions is not always obvious. While in rhetoric such unobtrusiveness may be a welcome quality, in linguistic studies, which have proved the important epistemological function of metaphor, it is vital that a reliable method for detecting metaphoricity in language be developed. The MIP proposed by the Pragglejaz group of researchers into metaphor, whose main concern is determining whether the sense represented by a given unit in a specific context contrasts or not with its basic, primary, typically “physical” meaning, does not seem to be always reliable since the contrast between a current and a basic meaning is not always evident and may be disputable in the case of words whose meaning is co-determined by context, as, e.g., the sense of the noun collectors in the phrase collectors of stories referring to the Grimm brothers. This method is also likely allow for the so-called grammatical metaphors, identified by Panther and Thornburg (2009) going unnoticed, since in their case the words involved represent their basic, physical senses. An example of the latter is the peculiar inflection of brand names marked for the masculine gender in Polish. Specifically, this is the issue of obligatory applying the declensional pattern characteristic of masculine animate nouns to masculine brand names referring to commercial products, such as cars, watches, computers, etc. The point is that the accusative case form of such words functioning as objects of verbs like buy, see, have is equal to the genitive, as is normal of animate nouns, rather than to the nominative, which is typical of animate ones – a group, to which brand names, after all, belong. This peculiar behaviour of a specific category of nouns may be interpreted as a symptom of construing their referents in a way in terms of living creatures, which seems to be confirmed by the fact that many owners develop emotional attitudes to objects of personal use. It is the metaphorical construal that seems to determine the grammatical form of certain nouns referring to them.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134498811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It is stipulated that the model of writing typically implemented in the academic context, with its traditional delineation of the respective roles of teacher as expert and student as imitator, demonstrates considerable limitations. Advocated in the article is its replacement through a paradigm of instruction which shifts its emphasis from the presentation of writing forms, genres and conventions of writing, and the evaluation of students’ texts with reference to the input models, to the teacher’s assistance, mediation and co-authorship in the students’ writing process. In this model, the aims of instruction go beyond the solitary pursuit of academic excellence to tap into learner creativity in a dynamic interactive classwork environment which acts as a stimulus to their individual composing and editing endeavours. Two pedagogic instruments underpin the model: the first is the student-executed Portfolio, comprising records of writing in the form of drafts and re-drafts, and the teacher’s interventions in and feedback on them; the second - the teacher-developed Class File, chronicling significant classroom activities and students’ written or spoken contributions, made available to the students after the lessons and serving as a link between the texts which have been generated and those which are still in the making.
{"title":"Revising canons of writing skills development in the academic setting: Towards a synergy of teacher and student creative effort","authors":"Krzysztof Karaś","doi":"10.26881/bp.2019.1.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2019.1.08","url":null,"abstract":"It is stipulated that the model of writing typically implemented in the academic context, with its traditional delineation of the respective roles of teacher as expert and student as imitator, demonstrates considerable limitations. Advocated in the article is its replacement through a paradigm of instruction which shifts its emphasis from the presentation of writing forms, genres and conventions of writing, and the evaluation of students’ texts with reference to the input models, to the teacher’s assistance, mediation and co-authorship in the students’ writing process. In this model, the aims of instruction go beyond the solitary pursuit of academic excellence to tap into learner creativity in a dynamic interactive classwork environment which acts as a stimulus to their individual composing and editing endeavours. \u0000Two pedagogic instruments underpin the model: the first is the student-executed Portfolio, comprising records of writing in the form of drafts and re-drafts, and the teacher’s interventions in and feedback on them; the second - the teacher-developed Class File, chronicling significant classroom activities and students’ written or spoken contributions, made available to the students after the lessons and serving as a link between the texts which have been generated and those which are still in the making.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"217 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133677216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates the narrative voice employed by Thomas Harris in Red Dragon as a source of knowledge about the fictional universe, more particularly about the main villain, Francis Dolarhyde. Confronting important epistemological notions (knowledge, justification and their sources) with literary theoretical concepts (narrative voice and points of view), I analyse alternating modes of representation. Harris’ narrator shifts between three modes: the quasi-perceptual one – sense-based, rich in descriptive elements; the quasi-introspective narration carried out from a close subjective angle, using free indirect speech or stream of consciousness; and the testimonial mode – telling (rather than showing) the story through exposition resting on the principle of cause and effect. Employing a vast array of inter-textual pragmatics, the narrative remains ambiguous. In consequence, any proposition about Dolarhyde can be empirically and rationally challenged and all propositional knowledge regarding the character is merely fragmentary.
{"title":"The strange case of Francis Dolarhyde and the Dragon: Alternating narrative points of view and the source of knowledge in Thomas Harris’ 'Red Dragon'","authors":"Justyna Stiepanow","doi":"10.26881/bp.2018.4.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2018.4.03","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the narrative voice employed by Thomas Harris in Red Dragon as a source of knowledge about the fictional universe, more particularly about the main villain, Francis Dolarhyde. Confronting important epistemological notions (knowledge, justification and their sources) with literary theoretical concepts (narrative voice and points of view), I analyse alternating modes of representation. Harris’ narrator shifts between three modes: the quasi-perceptual one – sense-based, rich in descriptive elements; the quasi-introspective narration carried out from a close subjective angle, using free indirect speech or stream of consciousness; and the testimonial mode – telling (rather than showing) the story through exposition resting on the principle of cause and effect. Employing a vast array of inter-textual pragmatics, the narrative remains ambiguous. In consequence, any proposition about Dolarhyde can be empirically and rationally challenged and all propositional knowledge regarding the character is merely fragmentary.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129869832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper focuses on the sense of sight and seeing in the selected texts of American literature from the late 18th century to the 1930s, i.e. from William Bartram to H. P. Lovecraft. Adopting a perspective of changing “scopic regimes” – conventions of visual perception presented in a number of literary and non-literary works, the author analyzed a passage from Bartram’s Travels to reveal a combination of the discourse of science with that of the British aesthetics of gardening. In Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes (1843) the main factor is the work of imagination dissatisfied with the actual view of Niagara Falls, while in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature substantial subjectivity is reduced to pure seeing. In Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Ktaadn” the subject confronts nature that is no longer transparent and turns out meaningless. In American literature of horror from Charles Brockden Brown through Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, the narrator’s eye encounters the inhuman gaze of a predator, a dehumanized victim of murder, or a sinister creature from the out-er space. To conclude, the human gaze was gradually losing its ability to frame or penetrate nature, bound to confront the annihilating evil eye from which there was usually no escape.
{"title":"The eye looks back: Seeing and being seen from William Bartram to H.P. Lovecraft","authors":"M. Wilczyński","doi":"10.26881/BP.2018.4.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/BP.2018.4.08","url":null,"abstract":"The paper focuses on the sense of sight and seeing in the selected texts of American literature from the late 18th century to the 1930s, i.e. from William Bartram to H. P. Lovecraft. Adopting a perspective of changing “scopic regimes” – conventions of visual perception presented in a number of literary and non-literary works, the author analyzed a passage from Bartram’s Travels to reveal a combination of the discourse of science with that of the British aesthetics of gardening. In Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes (1843) the main factor is the work of imagination dissatisfied with the actual view of Niagara Falls, while in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature substantial subjectivity is reduced to pure seeing. In Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Ktaadn” the subject confronts nature that is no longer transparent and turns out meaningless. In American literature of horror from Charles Brockden Brown through Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, the narrator’s eye encounters the inhuman gaze of a predator, a dehumanized victim of murder, or a sinister creature from the out-er space. To conclude, the human gaze was gradually losing its ability to frame or penetrate nature, bound to confront the annihilating evil eye from which there was usually no escape.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"117 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133722135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article addresses the issue of truth and its treatment in the fiction of Muriel Spark (1918–2006), who with her first novel, The Com-forters, made her name as a distinctly post-modern novelist. The publication of The Comforters coincided with her conversion to Roman Catholicism, and Spark was explicit about the vital influence which her newly-embraced religion had upon her becoming a writer of fiction. The major point in the following argument is Spark’s overt declaration that her writing of novels, which she defines in terms of lies, represents her quest for absolute truth. This apparently para-doxical admission is reflected in Spark’s creative output, which combines most unlikely features: postmodernist leanings, commitment to religious belief and a deep-seated conviction on the part of the author about the irrefutable validity of absolute truth. The article focuses mainly on two of Spark’s novels: The Only Problem and Symposium, which demonstrate the postmodernist perspective with its in-sistence on the relativity of truth or its outright negation in the form of the concept of “post-truth”. The presented analysis shows how Spark’s narratives pursue truth across the multiplicity of continually undermined meanings jointly generated by the text and the reader as its recipient. The discussion emphasises the irony which Muriel Spark proposes as the most effective strategy for getting an inkling of absolute truth, which remains for Spark a solid though evasive value, hidden under the multiplicity of meanings.
{"title":"Truth and meaning in the maze of irony: A glance at Muriel Spark’s fiction","authors":"A. Walczuk","doi":"10.26881/BP.2018.4.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/BP.2018.4.06","url":null,"abstract":"The article addresses the issue of truth and its treatment in the fiction of Muriel Spark (1918–2006), who with her first novel, The Com-forters, made her name as a distinctly post-modern novelist. The publication of The Comforters coincided with her conversion to Roman Catholicism, and Spark was explicit about the vital influence which her newly-embraced religion had upon her becoming a writer of fiction. The major point in the following argument is Spark’s overt declaration that her writing of novels, which she defines in terms of lies, represents her quest for absolute truth. This apparently para-doxical admission is reflected in Spark’s creative output, which combines most unlikely features: postmodernist leanings, commitment to religious belief and a deep-seated conviction on the part of the author about the irrefutable validity of absolute truth. The article focuses mainly on two of Spark’s novels: The Only Problem and Symposium, which demonstrate the postmodernist perspective with its in-sistence on the relativity of truth or its outright negation in the form of the concept of “post-truth”. The presented analysis shows how Spark’s narratives pursue truth across the multiplicity of continually undermined meanings jointly generated by the text and the reader as its recipient. The discussion emphasises the irony which Muriel Spark proposes as the most effective strategy for getting an inkling of absolute truth, which remains for Spark a solid though evasive value, hidden under the multiplicity of meanings.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126593373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The essay proposes that Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2013) is a work animated by the principles of American Indian epistemology. First, a model of Native philosophy is outlined after Native philosopher Thomas Norton-Smith. Secondly, four dimensions of Miranda’s work – its ethical and procedural purpose, generic location, metalinguistic strategy, narrative as a vehicle of knowledge – are analyzed in the light of Norton-Smith, Roland Barthes, California historians, American Indian literary studies, decolonial theory, and auto-ethnography. In conclusion, it is posited that Miranda’s story is an animated entity enacting ontological, intersubjective, historical difference, and that it intervenes into the genre of memoir/autobiography.
{"title":"American Indian epistemology in Deborah A. Miranda’s 'Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir'","authors":"Grzegorz Welizarowicz","doi":"10.26881/bp.2018.4.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26881/bp.2018.4.07","url":null,"abstract":"The essay proposes that Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2013) is a work animated by the principles of American Indian epistemology. First, a model of Native philosophy is outlined after Native philosopher Thomas Norton-Smith. Secondly, four dimensions of Miranda’s work – its ethical and procedural purpose, generic location, metalinguistic strategy, narrative as a vehicle of knowledge – are analyzed in the light of Norton-Smith, Roland Barthes, California historians, American Indian literary studies, decolonial theory, and auto-ethnography. In conclusion, it is posited that Miranda’s story is an animated entity enacting ontological, intersubjective, historical difference, and that it intervenes into the genre of memoir/autobiography.","PeriodicalId":345953,"journal":{"name":"Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122200468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：