Abstract American mystery writer Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) achieved wide readership both within the United States and abroad, and, significantly, within the US both among white Americans and Native Americans. This article discusses Hillerman’s detective fiction firstly within the tradition of the genre and then focuses on particular themes and literary means the writer employs in order to disseminate knowledge about the Southwestern nations (tribes) among his readers using the framework of mystery (crime) fiction. Hillerman’s two literary detectives Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee, both of the Navajo Tribal Police, are analyzed and contrasted with female characters. Finally, the article analyzes the ways in which Hillerman makes the detectives’ intimate knowledge of the traditions, beliefs and rituals of the southwestern tribes and of the rough beauty of the landscape central to the novels’ plots, and how he presents cultural information.
{"title":"Ethnicity and Social Critique in Tony Hilleman’s Crime Fiction","authors":"Šárka Bubíková","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract American mystery writer Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) achieved wide readership both within the United States and abroad, and, significantly, within the US both among white Americans and Native Americans. This article discusses Hillerman’s detective fiction firstly within the tradition of the genre and then focuses on particular themes and literary means the writer employs in order to disseminate knowledge about the Southwestern nations (tribes) among his readers using the framework of mystery (crime) fiction. Hillerman’s two literary detectives Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee, both of the Navajo Tribal Police, are analyzed and contrasted with female characters. Finally, the article analyzes the ways in which Hillerman makes the detectives’ intimate knowledge of the traditions, beliefs and rituals of the southwestern tribes and of the rough beauty of the landscape central to the novels’ plots, and how he presents cultural information.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122893835","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}
Abstract As a novelist, Louise Erdrich is unique in receiving both popular and critical acclaim. Strangely, her popular appeal has discouraged study of her novels as experimental narrative texts. This is unfortunate, since innovations in Erdrich’s novels rival much “experimental” contemporary American fiction. This study outlines a convention of a three-level hierarchy of characters in novels and compares this convention with two experimental American novels: Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon. The study then addresses Erdrich’s first novel, Love Medicine (1984), to show that it is unique in not having a main character. Although the other two experimental novels try to do without a main character, neither of them succeed at getting beyond this convention. Love Medicine innovates in at least one major narrative convention in a way that other experimental novels cannot do. This is one way in which Louise Erdrich and Love Medicine compare favorably to some of the most respected experimental contemporary American novels. Erdrich’s novels should take their place alongside other experimental American novels, being studied in similar ways, regardless of whether they are also read by a broad public audience.
{"title":"Louise Erdrich’s Place in American Literature: Narrative Innovation in Love Medicine","authors":"Richard T. Stock","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As a novelist, Louise Erdrich is unique in receiving both popular and critical acclaim. Strangely, her popular appeal has discouraged study of her novels as experimental narrative texts. This is unfortunate, since innovations in Erdrich’s novels rival much “experimental” contemporary American fiction. This study outlines a convention of a three-level hierarchy of characters in novels and compares this convention with two experimental American novels: Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon. The study then addresses Erdrich’s first novel, Love Medicine (1984), to show that it is unique in not having a main character. Although the other two experimental novels try to do without a main character, neither of them succeed at getting beyond this convention. Love Medicine innovates in at least one major narrative convention in a way that other experimental novels cannot do. This is one way in which Louise Erdrich and Love Medicine compare favorably to some of the most respected experimental contemporary American novels. Erdrich’s novels should take their place alongside other experimental American novels, being studied in similar ways, regardless of whether they are also read by a broad public audience.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114764892","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}
Abstract Tanith Lee was a “highly decorated writer” (Chappell 1) whose work ranged from science-fiction, through fantasy and children’s literature to contemporary and detective novels. Although she published more than ninety novels and three hundred short stories, her audience has diminished through the years, affecting also the academic interest in her works. The aims of this article are to provide a literary analysis of one of her most famous novels, Night’s Master, and answer the question of why readers describe her prose as “lush” and “poetic”; and also interpret the recurring symbolism and themes of beauty, sexuality and metamorphosis in the work. This article also highlights the similarities between the novel and fairy tales in regard of numeric symbolism and morals.
{"title":"A Journey Beyond Reality: Poetic Prose and Lush Imagery in Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master","authors":"Barbora Vinczeová","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Tanith Lee was a “highly decorated writer” (Chappell 1) whose work ranged from science-fiction, through fantasy and children’s literature to contemporary and detective novels. Although she published more than ninety novels and three hundred short stories, her audience has diminished through the years, affecting also the academic interest in her works. The aims of this article are to provide a literary analysis of one of her most famous novels, Night’s Master, and answer the question of why readers describe her prose as “lush” and “poetic”; and also interpret the recurring symbolism and themes of beauty, sexuality and metamorphosis in the work. This article also highlights the similarities between the novel and fairy tales in regard of numeric symbolism and morals.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132755925","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}
Abstract The aim of this corpus-based study is to identify the functions that selected expressions of futurality can express in professional economic texts. The classification of functions is established on the corpus of seven economic books. Excerpted instances of futural constructions are analysed with respect to textual and interpersonal functions as defined by Halliday. Futurality is interpreted broadly to include all lexical and grammatical means referring to the future. This approach makes it also possible to analyse futurality as a means of text coherence. Hence the core grammatical means are interpreted along with co-occurring lexical means under the two categories of functions to provide a comprehensive model of text coherence with regard to futurality. Frequency analysis shows that core futural expressions are not distributed equally throughout the corpus. While some expressions (e.g., will and the present simple tense) dominate, others prove to be rather insignificant (e.g., be on the point/verge of, the present progressive tense). In addition, both lexical and grammatical constructions regularly co-occur in clusters, contributing to the coherence of the economic texts.
摘要本研究以语料库为基础，探讨未来性在专业经济语篇中所能表达的功能。在七本经济专著的语料库上建立了功能分类。本文从韩礼德所定义的语篇功能和人际功能两方面分析了将来式的节选实例。未来性被广泛地解释为包括所有涉及未来的词汇和语法手段。这种方法也可以分析未来性作为文本连贯的一种手段。因此，在两类功能下对核心语法手段和共现词汇手段进行了解释，从而提供了一个关于将来性的综合语篇连贯模型。频率分析表明，核心将来式在语料库中的分布并不均匀。虽然一些表达(例如，will和一般现在时)占主导地位，但其他表达被证明相当无关紧要(例如，be on the point/verge of，现在进行时)。此外，词汇和语法结构经常在集群中共同出现，有助于经济文本的连贯性。
{"title":"Functions of Expressions of Futurality in Professional Economic Texts","authors":"M. Mikulas","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The aim of this corpus-based study is to identify the functions that selected expressions of futurality can express in professional economic texts. The classification of functions is established on the corpus of seven economic books. Excerpted instances of futural constructions are analysed with respect to textual and interpersonal functions as defined by Halliday. Futurality is interpreted broadly to include all lexical and grammatical means referring to the future. This approach makes it also possible to analyse futurality as a means of text coherence. Hence the core grammatical means are interpreted along with co-occurring lexical means under the two categories of functions to provide a comprehensive model of text coherence with regard to futurality. Frequency analysis shows that core futural expressions are not distributed equally throughout the corpus. While some expressions (e.g., will and the present simple tense) dominate, others prove to be rather insignificant (e.g., be on the point/verge of, the present progressive tense). In addition, both lexical and grammatical constructions regularly co-occur in clusters, contributing to the coherence of the economic texts.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132029490","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}
Abstract Focusing on the hotel imagery and, more precisely, the hotel Majestic featured in J.G. Farrell’s 1970 novel Troubles, this article provides a spatial contextualization of the historical downfall of the British Empire. In an attempt to establish the concept of the “colonial hotel”, this particular type of hotel is theorized as a fictional means of questioning the sustainability of the imperial project of colonialism. The theoretical framework for considerations of the Majestic in Troubles as a representative of the “colonial hotel” concept is based on Foucault’s heterotopology, as well as on the concepts of liminality and dislocation taken from postcolonial studies. Reading Troubles as an allegory of the Troubles in Ireland and, more broadly, a symptom of the disintegration of the British Empire, the article shows that the hotel, modelled after the historical concept of the Anglo-Irish big house, provides a proper setting where the deconstruction of the binary oppositions of colonial discourse can be played out. While the Majestic represents a mirror-image of the imperial centre, or rather a dislocated centre, its destruction is brought about by its tendency towards constancy and perpetuation of the illusion of grandeur. Similarly, the British Empire refuses to acknowledge the socio-political and historical changes of the early twentieth century and denies the existence of interstitial spaces between its firmly defined structures, whereby it inevitably meets its end.
{"title":"Other Spaces of the Empire: A Colonial Hotel in J.G. Farrell’s Troubles","authors":"T. Parezanović","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Focusing on the hotel imagery and, more precisely, the hotel Majestic featured in J.G. Farrell’s 1970 novel Troubles, this article provides a spatial contextualization of the historical downfall of the British Empire. In an attempt to establish the concept of the “colonial hotel”, this particular type of hotel is theorized as a fictional means of questioning the sustainability of the imperial project of colonialism. The theoretical framework for considerations of the Majestic in Troubles as a representative of the “colonial hotel” concept is based on Foucault’s heterotopology, as well as on the concepts of liminality and dislocation taken from postcolonial studies. Reading Troubles as an allegory of the Troubles in Ireland and, more broadly, a symptom of the disintegration of the British Empire, the article shows that the hotel, modelled after the historical concept of the Anglo-Irish big house, provides a proper setting where the deconstruction of the binary oppositions of colonial discourse can be played out. While the Majestic represents a mirror-image of the imperial centre, or rather a dislocated centre, its destruction is brought about by its tendency towards constancy and perpetuation of the illusion of grandeur. Similarly, the British Empire refuses to acknowledge the socio-political and historical changes of the early twentieth century and denies the existence of interstitial spaces between its firmly defined structures, whereby it inevitably meets its end.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115968683","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}
Abstract The article employs critical concepts from sociology and anthropology to examine the stereotype of the Vanishing Indian and disclose its contradictory character. The article argues that in James Fenimore Cooper’s late novels from the 1840s a type of American Indian appears who can be regarded as a Vanishing Indian in many respects as he displays some slight degree of assimilation but at the same time he can be found to reveal a surprising amount of resistance to the process of vanishing and marginalization. His peculiar mode of survival and his mode of living demonstrate a certain degree of acculturation, which comes close to Gerald Vizenor’s survivance and for which I propose a term critical integration. I base my study on Susquesus (alias Trackless), Cooper’s less well-known character from The Littlepage Manuscripts, a three-book family saga.
摘要本文运用社会学和人类学的批判性概念来审视“消失的印第安人”的刻板印象，揭示其矛盾性。文章认为在James Fenimore Cooper 19世纪40年代后期的小说中出现了一种类型的美国印第安人他在很多方面都可以被看作是一个正在消失的印第安人因为他表现出了某种程度的同化但同时他也表现出了对消失和边缘化过程的惊人的抵抗。他独特的生存方式和他的生活方式表现出一定程度的文化适应，这与杰拉尔德·维齐诺的生存方式很接近我提出了一个术语，关键整合。我的研究基于Susquesus(别名Trackless)， Cooper在《Littlepage手稿》中不太知名的角色，这是一部由三本书组成的家庭传奇。
{"title":"Assimilating American Indians in James Fenimore Cooper’s Novels?","authors":"M. Peprník","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article employs critical concepts from sociology and anthropology to examine the stereotype of the Vanishing Indian and disclose its contradictory character. The article argues that in James Fenimore Cooper’s late novels from the 1840s a type of American Indian appears who can be regarded as a Vanishing Indian in many respects as he displays some slight degree of assimilation but at the same time he can be found to reveal a surprising amount of resistance to the process of vanishing and marginalization. His peculiar mode of survival and his mode of living demonstrate a certain degree of acculturation, which comes close to Gerald Vizenor’s survivance and for which I propose a term critical integration. I base my study on Susquesus (alias Trackless), Cooper’s less well-known character from The Littlepage Manuscripts, a three-book family saga.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132451072","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}
Abstract The following article deals with the transformation of the Petrachan idea of love in the work of Lady Mary Wroth (1587-1631), the first woman poet to write a secular sonnet sequence in English literature, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. The author of the article discusses the literary and historical context of the work, the position of female poets in early modern England and then focuses on the main differences in Wroth’s treatment of the topic of heterosexual love: the reversal of gender roles, i.e., the woman being the “active” speaker of the sonnets; the de-objectifying of the lover and the perspective of love understood not as a possessive power struggle, but as an experience of togetherness, based on the gradual interpenetration of two equal partners.
本文探讨了英国文学史上第一位创作世俗十四行诗《Pamphilia》到《Amphilanthus》的女诗人玛丽·沃斯夫人(Lady Mary Wroth, 1587-1631)对彼得拉坎式爱情观念的转变。本文首先探讨了作品的文学和历史背景，以及近代早期英国女性诗人的地位，然后着重分析了劳斯在处理异性恋主题方面的主要差异:性别角色的逆转，即女性成为十四行诗的“主动”说话者;爱人的去物化和爱的视角不被理解为一种占有欲的斗争，而是一种团结的体验，基于两个平等伙伴的逐渐相互渗透。
{"title":"“The True Forme of Love”: Transforming the Petrarchan Tradition in the Poetry of Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1631)","authors":"Tomáš Jajtner","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The following article deals with the transformation of the Petrachan idea of love in the work of Lady Mary Wroth (1587-1631), the first woman poet to write a secular sonnet sequence in English literature, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. The author of the article discusses the literary and historical context of the work, the position of female poets in early modern England and then focuses on the main differences in Wroth’s treatment of the topic of heterosexual love: the reversal of gender roles, i.e., the woman being the “active” speaker of the sonnets; the de-objectifying of the lover and the perspective of love understood not as a possessive power struggle, but as an experience of togetherness, based on the gradual interpenetration of two equal partners.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116388437","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}
S. Hosseinpour, Nahid Shahbazi Department of English Language and Literature, Sem
Abstract Magical realism, as a narrative mode or genre in adults’ literature, has been in vogue since its revivifying with the publication of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). However, the depiction of the genre in children’s and juvenile literature is a new trend; the presence of its elements have been traced and proved feasibly applicable in the interpretation of recent children’s fiction such as David Almond’s Skelling (1998). In this regard, the main concern of the present article is to sift the characteristic features of magical realism within Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002) through the application of Wendy B. Faris’s theoretical framework of the genre therewith Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic in order to introduce the novel as an exemplar of magical realism in the domain of children’s literature.
魔幻现实主义作为成人文学的一种叙事方式或类型，自1967年马尔克斯的《百年孤独》问世后重新流行起来。然而，在儿童文学和青少年文学中，体裁描写是一种新的趋势;在最近的儿童小说中，如大卫·阿尔蒙德(David Almond)的《斯克林》(Skelling, 1998)，其元素的存在已被追踪并证明是可行的。在这方面，本文主要关注的是通过运用Wendy B. Faris的流派理论框架以及Tzvetan Todorov对奇幻的定义，筛选尼尔·盖曼的《卡洛琳》(2002)中魔幻现实主义的特征，以介绍这部小说作为儿童文学领域魔幻现实主义的典范。
{"title":"Magical Realism in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline","authors":"S. Hosseinpour, Nahid Shahbazi Department of English Language and Literature, Sem","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Magical realism, as a narrative mode or genre in adults’ literature, has been in vogue since its revivifying with the publication of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). However, the depiction of the genre in children’s and juvenile literature is a new trend; the presence of its elements have been traced and proved feasibly applicable in the interpretation of recent children’s fiction such as David Almond’s Skelling (1998). In this regard, the main concern of the present article is to sift the characteristic features of magical realism within Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002) through the application of Wendy B. Faris’s theoretical framework of the genre therewith Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic in order to introduce the novel as an exemplar of magical realism in the domain of children’s literature.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120834659","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}
Abstract Hedges and boosters are important metadiscoursal devices contributing to the construal of persuasion in academic discourse as they enable academic writers to distinguish facts from opinions, evaluate the views of others and convey a different degree of commitment to their assertions (cf. Hyland 1998a, Hyland 2004, 2005). This study explores cross-cultural variation in the use of lexical hedges and boosters in the academic discourse of non-native writers. The study is carried out on a specialized corpus of linguistics research articles published in the international journal Applied Linguistics and the national Czech English-medium journal Discourse and Interaction. The main purpose of the cross-cultural investigation is to analyze variation in the rate, distribution and choice of hedges and boosters across the rhetorical structure of research articles in order to shed light on ways in which Anglophone and Czech writers express different degrees of commitment in their assertions when striving to persuade their target readership to accept their views and claims.
{"title":"Cross-Cultural Variation in the Use of Hedges and Boosters in Academic Discourse","authors":"Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Hedges and boosters are important metadiscoursal devices contributing to the construal of persuasion in academic discourse as they enable academic writers to distinguish facts from opinions, evaluate the views of others and convey a different degree of commitment to their assertions (cf. Hyland 1998a, Hyland 2004, 2005). This study explores cross-cultural variation in the use of lexical hedges and boosters in the academic discourse of non-native writers. The study is carried out on a specialized corpus of linguistics research articles published in the international journal Applied Linguistics and the national Czech English-medium journal Discourse and Interaction. The main purpose of the cross-cultural investigation is to analyze variation in the rate, distribution and choice of hedges and boosters across the rhetorical structure of research articles in order to shed light on ways in which Anglophone and Czech writers express different degrees of commitment in their assertions when striving to persuade their target readership to accept their views and claims.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125668352","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}
Abstract This paper reports on the findings of a study that aimed to identify the linguistic items which act as hedges in the speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan, as well as to examine the pragmatic functions of these devices. Twenty-five political speeches of King Abdullah II, randomly selected from the official website of King Abdullah (see Appendix), were analyzed adopting Salager-Meyer’s (1994) taxonomy. The study revealed that the most frequently used hedging device in King Abdullah’s speech is modal auxiliaries, and the most frequently used hedging device subcategory is the modal auxiliary “can”. The findings suggest that these hedging devices fulfil several pragmatic functions. These findings contribute to understanding that speaking a second language (Arabic, in the case of King Abdullah II) neither affects the types of hedging devices nor the functions these devices perform. Moreover, contrary to scientific discourse (e.g., medicine), the research concludes that political discourse as a non-scientific genre resorts to hedging devices to express indirectness, politeness, lack of commitment and probability.
{"title":"Hedging in Political Discourse: Evidence from the Speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan","authors":"Ghaleb Rabab’ah, Ronza Abu Rumman","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2015-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2015-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper reports on the findings of a study that aimed to identify the linguistic items which act as hedges in the speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan, as well as to examine the pragmatic functions of these devices. Twenty-five political speeches of King Abdullah II, randomly selected from the official website of King Abdullah (see Appendix), were analyzed adopting Salager-Meyer’s (1994) taxonomy. The study revealed that the most frequently used hedging device in King Abdullah’s speech is modal auxiliaries, and the most frequently used hedging device subcategory is the modal auxiliary “can”. The findings suggest that these hedging devices fulfil several pragmatic functions. These findings contribute to understanding that speaking a second language (Arabic, in the case of King Abdullah II) neither affects the types of hedging devices nor the functions these devices perform. Moreover, contrary to scientific discourse (e.g., medicine), the research concludes that political discourse as a non-scientific genre resorts to hedging devices to express indirectness, politeness, lack of commitment and probability.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131894613","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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