‘Yae, Nae, or Dinnae Ken’: Dramatic Responses to the Scottish Referendum and Theatre Uncut

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-385
Author(s):  
Sıla Şenlen Güvenç
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Political Satire ◽  
English Drama ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Verbal Violence ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
First Time

In this paper Sıla Şenlen Güvenç surveys the key plays staged in the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum of September 2014, with special emphasis on the six Theatre Uncut plays – Rob Drummond's Party Pieces, A. J. Taudevin's The 12.57, and Lewis Hetherington's The White Lightning and the Black Stag (composed in 2013), and Davey Anderson's twin plays, Fear and Self-Loathing in West Lothian and Don't Know, Don't Care, and Kieran Hurley's Close from 2014. Written prior to the referendum and performed together for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014, these plays became even more meaningful with developing events in the United Kingdom, especially Brexit and the potential for a second independence referendum in Scotland. The plays reflect many of the issues discussed in both the ‘Yes Scotland’ and ‘Better Together’ campaigns. Sıla Şenlen Güvenç is currently Associate Professor at Ankara University's Department of English Language and Literature. Besides articles and theatre reviews on English drama, she is the author of ‘Words as Swords’: Verbal Violence as a Construction of Authority in Renaissance and Contemporary English Drama (2009) and ‘The World is a Stage, but the Play is Badly Cast’: British Political Satire in the Neo-classical Period (in Turkish, 2014).

scholarly journals Contributors

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dougal McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Graduate Student ◽  
English Language ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
The University

Introduction  Dougal McNeill is a Senior Lecturer, School of English, Film, Theatre, and Media Studies Shintaro Kono is an Associate Professor at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. Alistair Murray is a graduate student in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

scholarly journals RUSSIA IN THE DISCOURSE OF BREXETEERS AND BREMAINERS IN THE UK

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-444
Author(s):  
E.V. Ananieva
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
The Government ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

The UK EU membership referendum (2016) brought a confused result not giving the Brexiteers or the Bremainers decisive preponderance. This led to sharp divisions in the society at large, and a prolonged political crisis in Britain. Bremainers as early as at the stage of the pre-referendum campaign accused Brexiteers of being under the influence of Russia, meddling on the part of Brexit. The Bremainers initiated a series of inquiries into Russian interference to discredit the Brexiteers, putting under question the results of the referendum and the mandate of the UK government to conduct negotiations with Brussels. This confrontation went through lines of interparty divisions, and its methods went beyond the traditions and unwritten rules of the United Kingdom's political culture. The vicissitudes of inter- and intra-party infighting around the Parliamentary Intelligence and Defence Committee's report “Russia” showed that the government feared the report would influence voters in the run-up to the 2019 early general election. The investigation found no evidence of Russian interference in the referendum, nor in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum or the 2017 and 2019 parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, the “Russia” report became the basis for mutual accusations of the parties in the 2019 election campaign. London's focus on the concept of "Global Britain" indicates that the United Kingdom, regardless of the outcome of negotiations with the EU, views Russia as a strategic adversary.

Old English and Old Norse Studies to the Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Timothy Graham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Language ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Early English ◽  
First Time ◽  
Collaborative Efforts

This chapter examines the committed scholarship that facilitated the recovery of Old English language and literature from the mid-sixteenth century and, about a hundred years later, applied itself to the study of Old Norse texts, including the Poetic and Prose Edda and the sagas. Varying impulses—religious, legal-historical, and nationalistic—motivated the initial investigation and publication of Anglo-Saxon texts. Early English interest in Old Norse coincided with a growth in correspondence with continental scholars and found full expression in explorations of the Germanic origins of the English that drew extensively upon vernacular material published in Scandinavia. The chapter concludes with an appraisal of the work of the Oxford Saxonists and their collaborative efforts on the monumental Thesaurus of George Hickes, in which, for the first time in England, Old English and Old Norse texts were analysed and discussed together, providing a rich fund of material upon which subsequent generations could draw.

Borrowing As A Tool To Fill The Ideological Thoughts: The Role Of Code-Mixing In An American Brat By Bapsi Sidhwa And The Escape By Qaisra Shiraz

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (II) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Native People ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Bapsi Sidhwa ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Language And Literature

This research article highlights the temperament, inference, scope, and motives of code-mixing in Pakistani English works. One novel from Pakistani English novels namely, An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa, and one short story namely, The Escape by Qaisra Shehraz are being selected as an illustration of this reading. In this novel and short story, the writers have already dealt with the characteristics of postcolonialism. English language and literature pierced into the privileged civilizations of the sub-continent, after the end of British Imperialism. Pakistani writers in English are the best interpreter of the post-colonial communal language. In this study, I have hit upon code-mixing in English works written by Pakistani authors to a bigger echelon. These works are paragons of arts and the unbelievable mixture of rhetorical and fictitious study. In these works, the writers have not abased the confined diversities. They have tinted the value of Pakistani English in order to achieve the chatty desires of native people. These borrowings from the native languages are used to fill the lexical fissures of ideological thoughts. The reason of these borrowings is not to represent the English as a substandard assortment. Through the utilization of native words, we conclude that the significance of native languages has been tinted to question mark the dialect as well. The words of daily use also have an area of research for English people without having any substitute in English. That’s why in English literature innovative practices and ideas of code-mixing have been employed.

Borrowing As A Tool To Fill The Ideological Thoughts: The Role Of Code-Mixing In An American Brat By Bapsi Sidhwa And The Escape By Qaisra Shiraz

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Native People ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Bapsi Sidhwa ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Language And Literature

This research article highlights the temperament, inference, scope, and motives of code-mixing in Pakistani English works. One novel from Pakistani English novels namely, An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa, and one short story namely, The Escape by Qaisra Shehraz are being selected as an illustration of this reading. In this novel and short story, the writers have already dealt with the characteristics of postcolonialism. English language and literature pierced into the privileged civilizations of the sub-continent, after the end of British Imperialism. Pakistani writers in English are the best interpreter of the post-colonial communal language. In this study, I have hit upon code-mixing in English works written by Pakistani authors to a bigger echelon. These works are paragons of arts and the unbelievable mixture of rhetorical and fictitious study. In these works, the writers have not abased the confined diversities. They have tinted the value of Pakistani English in order to achieve the chatty desires of native people. These borrowings from the native languages are used to fill the lexical fissures of ideological thoughts. The reason for these borrowings is not to represent the English as a substandard assortment. Through the utilization of native words, we conclude that the significance of native languages has been tinted to question mark the dialect as well. The words of daily use also have an area of research for English people without having any substitute in English. That’s why in English literature innovative practices and ideas of code-mixing have been employed.

Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy: Politics in the Vernaculars

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernice Schrank
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Great Variability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Autobiographical Fiction ◽  
Literature And Language

This essay examines the political uses to which Behan puts language in his autobiographical fiction, Borstal Boy, both as an instrument of domination and a means of liberation. Identifying Standard English language and literature as important components of the British imperial project, Behan creates, as a linguistic alternative, ‘englishes’, a composite language in which differences of geography, class, age, education, and occupation create a demotic speech of great variability and expressive force. In so doing, Behan sabotages the cultural assumptions and justifications for colonial exploitation embedded and validated in Standard English literature and language.

The Annals of the Parish: Referendum Year 2014

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Eberhard Bort
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Scottish Parliament ◽  
National Conversation ◽  
Scottish Independence

The decisive No vote in the Scottish independence referendum on 18 September 2014 was not a vote for the constitutional status quo, although it confirmed that Scotland would remain part of the United Kingdom. The referendum outcome is likely to have far-reaching consequences for the power relations between London and Edinburgh and, perhaps more than expected, for the constitutional future of the entire UK. A tight timetable for the delivery of extra powers for the Scottish Parliament is in place, and the ‘elephant in the room’, the constitutional status and governance of England, is now firmly on the agenda. There is also pressure for decentralisation in Scotland itself. And the huge ‘democratic awakening’ which characterised this ‘national conversation’ about Scotland's future, with massive democratic participation and a record turnout, demands that these changes will have to be brought about in a participative way – and not ‘top-down’, as a Westminster or Holyrood ‘stitch-up’.

More Christian Apocrypha

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Tony Burke
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
North American ◽  
English Language ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time ◽  
Medieval Christianity

Scholars interested in the Christian Apocrypha (CA) typically appeal to CA collections when in need of primary sources. But many of these collections limit themselves to material believed to have been written within the first to fourth centuries CE. As a result a large amount of non-canonical Christian texts important for the study of ancient and medieval Christianity have been neglected. The More Christian Apocrypha Project will address this neglect by providing a collection of new editions (some for the first time) of these texts for English readers. The project is inspired by the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project headed by Richard Bauckham and Jim Davila from the University of Edinburgh. Like the MOTP, the MCAP is envisioned as a supplement to an earlier collection of texts—in this case J. K. Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1991), the most recent English-language CA collection (but now almost two decades old). The texts to be included are either absent in Elliott or require significant revision. Many of the texts have scarcely been examined in over a century and are in dire need of new examination. One of the goals of the project is to spotlight the abilities and achievements of English (i.e., British and North American) scholars of the CA, so that English readers have access to material that has achieved some exposure in French, German, and Italian collections.

A ‘Sound Investment’? British Cultural Diplomacy and Overseas Students: The British Council's Students Committee, 1935–1939

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283
Author(s):  
Alice Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Overseas Students ◽  
British Council ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Run Up ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Second World

This article explores the UK government's first foray into cultural diplomacy by focusing on the activities of the British Council's Students Committee in the run-up to the Second World War. Students were placed at the heart of British cultural diplomacy, which drew on foreign models as well as the experience of intra-empire exchanges. While employing cultural internationalist discourse, the drive to attract more overseas students to the United Kingdom was intended to bring economic and political advantages to the host country. The British Council pursued its policy in cooperation with non-state actors but ultimately was guided by the Foreign Office, which led it to target key strategic regions, principally in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document