The goal of this paper is to study several YA novels by Chicana writer Gloria Velásquez, the Roosevelt High School series (1994-2018), as an educating tool within the framework of multicultural education. The analysis takes into account Velásquez’s choice of problematic situations (related to racism, sexism, or homophobic harassment, among others) and the solutions her novels propose, which include both individual responses and community-organized measures. Special attention is given to the criticism according to which Velásquez’s Latinx and multi-ethnic characters are steeped in stereotypes, which would cancel the books’ potential capacity to inspire social change. In contrast with this negative vision, this paper proves that Velásquez’s series offers empowering role models for teen Latinxs of various ethnic backgrounds and effectively calls for the neutralization of race, class and gender stereotypes, thus contributing to the implementation of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 proposal that ethnic minorities should form a “rainbow coalition”.
{"title":"Gloria Velásquez’s Roosevelt High School series: towards quality multicultural literature through rainbow coalitions","authors":"C. Fernández Rodríguez","doi":"10.18172/jes.4406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4406","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this paper is to study several YA novels by Chicana writer Gloria Velásquez, the Roosevelt High School series (1994-2018), as an educating tool within the framework of multicultural education. The analysis takes into account Velásquez’s choice of problematic situations (related to racism, sexism, or homophobic harassment, among others) and the solutions her novels propose, which include both individual responses and community-organized measures. Special attention is given to the criticism according to which Velásquez’s Latinx and multi-ethnic characters are steeped in stereotypes, which would cancel the books’ potential capacity to inspire social change. In contrast with this negative vision, this paper proves that Velásquez’s series offers empowering role models for teen Latinxs of various ethnic backgrounds and effectively calls for the neutralization of race, class and gender stereotypes, thus contributing to the implementation of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 proposal that ethnic minorities should form a “rainbow coalition”.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67716895","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 journal article follows the research line opened on the search for semantic primes’ exponents in Old English within the frame of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (Goddard 1997, 2012; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002). The aim of this study is to complete the line of research on prime identification opened on the category Actions, events, movement, contact by establishing the Old English exponent of the prime DO. With this purpose, this paper discusses the adequacy of different OE verbs as possible prime exponent on the basis of textual frequency, morphology, semantics and syntactic complementation. Relevant data of analysis have been retrieved mainly from the lexical database of Old English Nerthus, the Dictionary of Old English (Healey et al. 2018) and the Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Healey et al. 2009).
本文沿袭了在自然语义元语言理论框架下寻找古英语语义质数指数的研究思路(Goddard 1997, 2012;Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002)。本研究的目的是通过建立古英语“DO”的指数来完成对“动作”、“事件”、“运动”、“接触”等范畴展开的“启动识别”研究。为此，本文从语篇频次、词法、语义和句法互补等方面探讨了不同英语动词作为可能的素指数的充分性。相关分析数据主要来源于古英语Nerthus词汇数据库、古英语词典(Healey et al. 2018)和古英语语料库词典(Healey et al. 2009)。
{"title":"Semantic primes in historical languages. The identification of the Old English exponent for DO","authors":"Raquel Mateo Mendaza","doi":"10.18172/jes.4467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4467","url":null,"abstract":"This journal article follows the research line opened on the search for semantic primes’ exponents in Old English within the frame of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (Goddard 1997, 2012; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002). The aim of this study is to complete the line of research on prime identification opened on the category Actions, events, movement, contact by establishing the Old English exponent of the prime DO. With this purpose, this paper discusses the adequacy of different OE verbs as possible prime exponent on the basis of textual frequency, morphology, semantics and syntactic complementation. Relevant data of analysis have been retrieved mainly from the lexical database of Old English Nerthus, the Dictionary of Old English (Healey et al. 2018) and the Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Healey et al. 2009). ","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78265020","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 terminology used to describe people living in socially or legally ambiguous housing conditions is contradictory and contested in often unpredictable ways. Homeless people, as well as the laws and government discourses designed to limit their behavior, frequently choose language that is at odds with what their bodies are actually doing in the spaces they occupy. In this essay I will discuss the oxymoronic verbal formulations for how transients, especially transient women, move through and live in social space by looking at two texts that focus on homeless women and their social power, Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, and the biblical Book of Ruth (on which it is partially based). By placing these works in the context of the legal discourses of homelessness and squatting, and gender analyses of mobility, I hope to identify a mode of gendered embodiment based in the language of motion.
{"title":"Language in motion in Marilynne Robinson’s \"Housekeeping\" and the Book of \"Ruth\"","authors":"James Krasner","doi":"10.18172/JES.3647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/JES.3647","url":null,"abstract":"The terminology used to describe people living in socially or legally ambiguous housing conditions is contradictory and contested in often unpredictable ways. Homeless people, as well as the laws and government discourses designed to limit their behavior, frequently choose language that is at odds with what their bodies are actually doing in the spaces they occupy. In this essay I will discuss the oxymoronic verbal formulations for how transients, especially transient women, move through and live in social space by looking at two texts that focus on homeless women and their social power, Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, and the biblical Book of Ruth (on which it is partially based). By placing these works in the context of the legal discourses of homelessness and squatting, and gender analyses of mobility, I hope to identify a mode of gendered embodiment based in the language of motion.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44561281","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}
Don DeLillo’s White Noise is often taught as an exemplar of postmodern literature because of its concern with the postmodern themes of identity and spectacular commodification. There is much in the text, however, to suggest that DeLillo’s central characters are searching for certainties, some of which are related to earlier cultural paradigms. This paper argues that Don DeLillo’s novel explores ways to overcome the persistent displacement of meaning in postmodern texts by establishing death as one concept outside the systems of signs which is irreducible, certain and universal. DeLillo’s characters are in search of a “transcendental signified” (Derrida) able to bring a halt to the potentially infinite postmodern regressions of late twentieth century American culture. Here I argue that in White Noise it is death which provides this exterior metaphysical principle.
{"title":"“The boundary we need”: Death and the Challenge to Postmodernity in Don DeLillo’s \"White Noise\"","authors":"Mark Brown","doi":"10.18172/JES.3873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/JES.3873","url":null,"abstract":"Don DeLillo’s White Noise is often taught as an exemplar of postmodern literature because of its concern with the postmodern themes of identity and spectacular commodification. There is much in the text, however, to suggest that DeLillo’s central characters are searching for certainties, some of which are related to earlier cultural paradigms. This paper argues that Don DeLillo’s novel explores ways to overcome the persistent displacement of meaning in postmodern texts by establishing death as one concept outside the systems of signs which is irreducible, certain and universal. DeLillo’s characters are in search of a “transcendental signified” (Derrida) able to bring a halt to the potentially infinite postmodern regressions of late twentieth century American culture. Here I argue that in White Noise it is death which provides this exterior metaphysical principle.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47734032","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 aim of this essay is to analyse Sarah Waters’s novel Affinity (1999) from the perspective of the panoptical system of surveillance, based on the controlling power of the gaze, that was widely employed as a system of represión in Victorian society. It seeks to explore Milbank prison as a perfect example of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon and Michel Foucault’s ideas about punishment and imprisonment. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s notion of scopophilia, the essay goes on to explore the characteristics of the interaction and mutual attraction felt by two of the main characters, with the aim of proving that the gaze can be a powerful weapon to subjugate another person. Finally, it tackles the relevance of the third protagonist, Ruth Vigers, a lady’s maid whose job makes her invisible both to the readers and to other characters in the novel. The analysis shows that it is precisely her social invisibility that allows her to escape the gaze of this panoptical society and become the master puppeteer controlling everything from the shadows.
{"title":"“Darkness is different for me now. I know all its depths and textures”: the panoptical gaze in Sarah Waters’s \"Affinity\"","authors":"Elsa Adán Hernández","doi":"10.18172/jes.3762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.3762","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this essay is to analyse Sarah Waters’s novel Affinity (1999) from the perspective of the panoptical system of surveillance, based on the controlling power of the gaze, that was widely employed as a system of represión in Victorian society. It seeks to explore Milbank prison as a perfect example of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon and Michel Foucault’s ideas about punishment and imprisonment. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s notion of scopophilia, the essay goes on to explore the characteristics of the interaction and mutual attraction felt by two of the main characters, with the aim of proving that the gaze can be a powerful weapon to subjugate another person. Finally, it tackles the relevance of the third protagonist, Ruth Vigers, a lady’s maid whose job makes her invisible both to the readers and to other characters in the novel. The analysis shows that it is precisely her social invisibility that allows her to escape the gaze of this panoptical society and become the master puppeteer controlling everything from the shadows.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67716605","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 discusses information structure-based strategies that could be used in translating from English to Spanish. It is widely observed that many problems arise in translation when establishing the theme/topic and providing the focus content in the target language, given the grammatical instruments available in the source language. It is extremely important to use similar discourse mechanisms to present the same message in exactly the same terms from an information-structure point of view. This means that the syntactic configuration may be different in the source and target texts. I focus on three information structure phenomena, namely Passive, Topic Fronting and Negative Preposing in the two languages, to analyse the preservation of the discourse flow in various translations for the optimal use of the relevant constructions.
{"title":"Information-structure strategies in English/Spanish translation","authors":"Ángel L. Jiménez-Fernández","doi":"10.18172/jes.4195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4195","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses information structure-based strategies that could be used in translating from English to Spanish. It is widely observed that many problems arise in translation when establishing the theme/topic and providing the focus content in the target language, given the grammatical instruments available in the source language. It is extremely important to use similar discourse mechanisms to present the same message in exactly the same terms from an information-structure point of view. This means that the syntactic configuration may be different in the source and target texts. I focus on three information structure phenomena, namely Passive, Topic Fronting and Negative Preposing in the two languages, to analyse the preservation of the discourse flow in various translations for the optimal use of the relevant constructions. ","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47854933","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}
Izaskun Villarreal, Esther Gómez Lacabex, Francisco Gallardo del Puerto, M. Adrián, Juncal Gutiérrez Mangado
Few studies have gauged the effects of Computer Assisted Language Learning –CALL– on the verbal accuracy of students. The current study explores the use of Hot Potatoes JCloze-type exercises as supplementary classroom work to enhance the English tense accuracy of university students enrolled in three EFL proficiency level courses -high-intermediate (B2) and advanced (C1 and C2). Tense marking was measured before and after a period of autonomous, self-paced CALL work in which students could access theoretical information and practiced with Hot Potatoes exercises. The comparisons revealed that the experience was mainly beneficial for the C1 level course group, the other two experimenting non-significant gains. Results only partially support a boosting effect of CALL additional practice. They also suggest that proficiency should be taken into consideration as it can affect the effect of treatment as not all the proficiency level courses experienced advantages. Alternatives to improve effectiveness are then suggested.
{"title":"Hot Potatoes activities to improve grammatical accuracy across different proficiency courses","authors":"Izaskun Villarreal, Esther Gómez Lacabex, Francisco Gallardo del Puerto, M. Adrián, Juncal Gutiérrez Mangado","doi":"10.18172/jes.3969","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.3969","url":null,"abstract":"Few studies have gauged the effects of Computer Assisted Language Learning –CALL– on the verbal accuracy of students. The current study explores the use of Hot Potatoes JCloze-type exercises as supplementary classroom work to enhance the English tense accuracy of university students enrolled in three EFL proficiency level courses -high-intermediate (B2) and advanced (C1 and C2). Tense marking was measured before and after a period of autonomous, self-paced CALL work in which students could access theoretical information and practiced with Hot Potatoes exercises. The comparisons revealed that the experience was mainly beneficial for the C1 level course group, the other two experimenting non-significant gains. Results only partially support a boosting effect of CALL additional practice. They also suggest that proficiency should be taken into consideration as it can affect the effect of treatment as not all the proficiency level courses experienced advantages. Alternatives to improve effectiveness are then suggested.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48178305","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}
L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and Victor Fleming’s film The Wizard of Oz (1939) play an important intertextual role in Margaret Atwood’s critical and fictional writings. Atwood has often been inspired by both versions of this modern fairy tale and has drawn attention to the main issues it raises (e.g. the transformative power of words, gendered power relationships, the connection between illusion and reality, the perception of the artist as a magician, and different notions of home). She has creatively explored and exploited themes, settings, visual motifs, allegorical content and characters (Dorothy, her three companions, the Wizard and the witches, especially Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West), subversively adapting her literary borrowings with a parodic twist and satirical intent. Parts of Life Before Man (1979) may be interpreted as a rewrite of a story defined by Atwood as “the great American witchcraft classic”.
{"title":"Margaret Atwood’s Visions and Revisions of \"The Wizard of Oz\"","authors":"Teresa Gibert","doi":"10.18172/JES.3578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/JES.3578","url":null,"abstract":"L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and Victor Fleming’s film The Wizard of Oz (1939) play an important intertextual role in Margaret Atwood’s critical and fictional writings. Atwood has often been inspired by both versions of this modern fairy tale and has drawn attention to the main issues it raises (e.g. the transformative power of words, gendered power relationships, the connection between illusion and reality, the perception of the artist as a magician, and different notions of home). She has creatively explored and exploited themes, settings, visual motifs, allegorical content and characters (Dorothy, her three companions, the Wizard and the witches, especially Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West), subversively adapting her literary borrowings with a parodic twist and satirical intent. Parts of Life Before Man (1979) may be interpreted as a rewrite of a story defined by Atwood as “the great American witchcraft classic”.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43385961","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}
ARTEMIS (Automatically Representing Text Meaning via an Interlingua-based System), is a natural language processing device, whose ultimate aim is to be able to understand natural language fragments and arrive at their syntactic and semantic representation. Linguistically, this parser is founded on two solid linguistic theories: the Lexical Constructional Model and Role and Reference Grammar. Although the rich semantic representations and the multilingual character of Role and Reference Grammar make it suitable for natural language understanding tasks, some changes to the model have proved necessary in order to adapt it to the functioning of the ARTEMIS parser. This paper will deal with one of the major modifications that Role and Reference Grammar had to undergo in this process of adaptation, namely, the substitution of the operator projection for feature-based structures, and how this will influence the description of function words in ARTEMIS, since they are strongly responsible for the encoding of the grammatical information which in Role and Reference Grammar is included in the operators. Currently, ARTEMIS is being implemented for the controlled natural language ASD-STE100, the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe Simplified Technical English, which is an international specification for the preparation of technical documentation in a controlled language. This controlled language is used in the belief that its simplified nature makes it a good corpus to carry out a preliminary testing of the adequacy of the parser. In this line, the aim of this work is to create a catalogue of function words in ARTEMIS for ASD-STE100, and to design the lexical rules necessary to parse the simple sentence and the referential phrase in this controlled language.
ARTEMIS (automatic representation Text Meaning via a Interlingua-based System)是一种自然语言处理设备，其最终目的是能够理解自然语言片段并得到它们的句法和语义表示。在语言学上，这个解析器建立在两个坚实的语言学理论基础上:词汇结构模型和角色和指称语法。尽管角色和参考语法丰富的语义表示和多语言特性使其适合于自然语言理解任务，但为了使其适应ARTEMIS解析器的功能，对模型进行一些更改已被证明是必要的。本文将讨论角色和参考语法在这一适应过程中必须经历的主要修改之一，即用算子投影代替基于特征的结构，以及这将如何影响ARTEMIS中虚词的描述，因为它们强烈负责编码角色和参考语法中包含在算子中的语法信息。目前，ARTEMIS正在为受控自然语言ASD-STE100(欧洲航空航天和国防工业协会简化技术英语)实施，这是一种用受控语言编写技术文档的国际规范。使用这种受控语言的理由是，它的简化性质使其成为执行解析器充分性初步测试的良好语料库。在这一行中，本工作的目的是为ASD-STE100在ARTEMIS中创建一个功能词目录，并设计在这种受控语言中解析简单句和参考短语所需的词汇规则。
{"title":"Designing the Lexical Rules for the Parsing of ASD-STE100 Function Words in ARTEMIS from a Role and Reference Grammar Perspective","authors":"M. C. Fumero-Pérez, A. Díaz-Galán","doi":"10.18172/JES.3935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/JES.3935","url":null,"abstract":"ARTEMIS (Automatically Representing Text Meaning via an Interlingua-based System), is a natural language processing device, whose ultimate aim is to be able to understand natural language fragments and arrive at their syntactic and semantic representation. Linguistically, this parser is founded on two solid linguistic theories: the Lexical Constructional Model and Role and Reference Grammar. Although the rich semantic representations and the multilingual character of Role and Reference Grammar make it suitable for natural language understanding tasks, some changes to the model have proved necessary in order to adapt it to the functioning of the ARTEMIS parser. This paper will deal with one of the major modifications that Role and Reference Grammar had to undergo in this process of adaptation, namely, the substitution of the operator projection for feature-based structures, and how this will influence the description of function words in ARTEMIS, since they are strongly responsible for the encoding of the grammatical information which in Role and Reference Grammar is included in the operators. Currently, ARTEMIS is being implemented for the controlled natural language ASD-STE100, the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe Simplified Technical English, which is an international specification for the preparation of technical documentation in a controlled language. This controlled language is used in the belief that its simplified nature makes it a good corpus to carry out a preliminary testing of the adequacy of the parser. In this line, the aim of this work is to create a catalogue of function words in ARTEMIS for ASD-STE100, and to design the lexical rules necessary to parse the simple sentence and the referential phrase in this controlled language.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41981119","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}
Based on insights from sociology and critical discourse analysis, this study examines how religion enables persons and institutions to legitimise power and social control in a traditional African society. It shows that religion, besides being an instrument of social cohesion and harmony, can also serve the interest of the dominant group in the curtailment of the rights of the weak and the minority. This is built on the framework that the authorisation exercised by religious institutions and their agents is essentially derived from custom, tradition and conformity. The authorities of tradition and conformity ensure that agents sustain the cultural pattern irrespective of its consequences on human rights. This paper therefore examines how religious agents in Wole Soyinka’s “The Strong Breed” (1973) use the authorities of tradition and conformity to entrench tyranny. Analyses indicate that the social contradictions and conflicts that are immanent in the society of the play are functions of distinct ideological categories/cultural frames in dramatic conflicts which make social change inevitable.
{"title":"Leadership and cultural frames in Wole Soyinka’s “The strong breed”","authors":"Ifeyinwa Obiegbu","doi":"10.18172/JES.3286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18172/JES.3286","url":null,"abstract":"Based on insights from sociology and critical discourse analysis, this study examines how religion enables persons and institutions to legitimise power and social control in a traditional African society. It shows that religion, besides being an instrument of social cohesion and harmony, can also serve the interest of the dominant group in the curtailment of the rights of the weak and the minority. This is built on the framework that the authorisation exercised by religious institutions and their agents is essentially derived from custom, tradition and conformity. The authorities of tradition and conformity ensure that agents sustain the cultural pattern irrespective of its consequences on human rights. This paper therefore examines how religious agents in Wole Soyinka’s “The Strong Breed” (1973) use the authorities of tradition and conformity to entrench tyranny. Analyses indicate that the social contradictions and conflicts that are immanent in the society of the play are functions of distinct ideological categories/cultural frames in dramatic conflicts which make social change inevitable.","PeriodicalId":35112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43877445","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}
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