Generating, weaving and curating: disciplinary processes for reading literary text

2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Reynolds ◽  
Leslie S. Rush ◽  
Jodi Patrick Holschuh ◽  
Jodi P. Lampi
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Disciplinary Literacy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Reading Processes ◽  
Novices And Experts ◽  
First Year College Students

Purpose The purposes of this study is to expand on previous work in English language arts (ELA) disciplinary literacy and to unpack literary text reading processes across three different participant groups. Design/methodology/approach The authors recruited literary scholars and first-year college students to read literary texts aloud and voice their thoughts. Transcripts were collaboratively coded and analyzed using a priori and emergent coding. Findings This study presents the findings in two ways. First, this study grouped the codes into four categories, namely, background knowledge, comprehension, disciplinary knowledge and building an interpretation. This described the differences in frequencies among the participants’ strategy use. Next, to more fully describe how participants read literary texts, this study presents the data using three processes, namely, generating, weaving and curating. These findings indicate a continuum of strategies and processes used by participants. Practical implications The study suggests using the ELA heuristic for instruction, which includes moving students beyond generating and weaving by asking them to do their own interpretive work of curation. This potential roadmap for instruction avoids a deficit mindset for students by recommending low-stakes opportunities that meet students where they are as they build their capacity for interpretive moves. Originality/value The findings help the field to gain an understanding of what novices and experts do when they read literary text, including both strategies and processes. This study also provide an ELA heuristic that has instructional implications. This study adds to the body of knowledge for disciplinary literacy in ELA in both theoretical and practical ways.

Beyond censorship: politics, teens, and ELA teacher candidates

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Dávila ◽  
Meghan E. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
English Language ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The Body ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Secondary English ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Practical Experiences

Purpose Grounded in the scholarship addressing teacher self-censorship around controversial topics, this paper aims to investigate a three-part research question: How do secondary English language arts (ELA) teacher–candidates (TCs) in the penultimate semester of their undergraduate teacher education program position political texts/speeches, interpret high school teens’ political standpoints and view the prospects of discussing political texts/speeches with students? The study findings provide insights to the ways some TCs might position themselves as novice ELA teachers relative to political texts/speeches, students, colleagues and families in their future school communities. Design/methodology/approach Audio-recorded data from whole-class and small-group discussions were coded for TCs’ positioning of political texts/speeches, interpretations of teens’ political standpoints and viewpoints on discussing with students President Obama’s speech, “A More Perfect Union” (“A.M.P.U.”) The coded data set was further analyzed to identify themes across the TCs’ perspectives. Findings The data set tells the story of a group of TCs whose positionalities, background knowledge and practical experiences in navigating divergent perspectives would influence both their daily selection and censorship of political texts/speeches like “A.M.P.U.” and their subsequent willingness to guide equitable yet critical conversations about controversial issues in the secondary ELA classroom. Originality/value In advance of the 2018 midterm elections, this paper considers how the common core state standards’ (CCSS) recommendations to include more nonfiction documents in ELA instruction positions ELA teachers to provide interdisciplinary support in helping students think critically about political issues. It expands on the body of scholarship that, thus far, has been primarily grounded in the research on social studies instruction.

Educational policy borrowing in a globalized world

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Van Huy ◽  
M. Obaidul Hamid
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Education ◽  
The Body ◽  
Policy Document ◽  
Policy Borrowing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Grass Root Level ◽  
Global Language

Purpose – This paper aims to shed light on the process of adopting and accommodating a global language education framework, namely the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages, in the context of Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach – The data to develop the argument of the paper are obtained from a doctoral research project that aims to understand the reception, interpretations and responses of key stakeholders in the process of enacting the CEFR in a Vietnam public university. The study was designed as a qualitative case study with data being collected using policy document analysis, classroom observation and in-depth interviews with 21 purposively sampled participants, including school administrators, English language teachers and students over a period of six months. Findings – The paper argues that the adoption of the CEFR, as it currently stands, can be seen at best as a “quick-fix” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004, p. 58) solution to the complex and time-consuming problem of improving the quality of English language education in Vietnam, which fails to address some critical issues in the practice of teaching and learning the language in the country. Originality/value – The study speaks to the body of literature on the CEFR as a contemporary global language policy borrowing phenomenon in developing countries. It contributes to a better understanding of how a global language policy is adopted and appropriated at the grass-root level.

The call of ambiguity: lingering over uncertainty as classroom practice

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cori Ann McKenzie ◽  
Geoff Bender
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Classroom Practice ◽  
English Language ◽  
Disciplinary Literacy ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Support Students

Purpose This paper encourages teachers and scholars of English Language Arts to engage deliberately with literary ambiguity. Design/methodology/approach Through close attention to ambiguous moments in commonly taught texts, the essay argues that explicit attention to ambiguity can support four enduring goals in the field: fostering social justice, developing students’ personal growth, cultivating dispositions and skills for democracy and engendering disciplinary literacy skills. Findings The readings suggest the following: first, wrestling with ambiguities in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird may foster critical orientations needed in the fight for social justice; second, ambiguities in Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese may support students’ personal development; third, questions generated by Walter Dean Myers’ Monster invite readers to practice skills needed for democracy; finally, exploring divergent interpretations of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak may develop students’ disciplinary literacy skills. Originality/value In an era marked by standardization and accountability, it may be difficult for teachers and scholars to linger with literary ambiguity. By underscoring the instrumental potential of literary ambiguity, the essay illustrates why and how teachers might reject this status quo and embrace the indeterminacy of literary ambiguity.

SEMANTIC COUNTERPOINT AND THE POETRY OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Dennis Sobolev
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Practical Criticism

IT IS WELL KNOWN that both traditional, historically orientated, literary criticism and new-critical studies were inseparable from a belief in the “unity” of meaning – a belief in the existence, below the multicolored surface of the literary text, of a single semantic center, which unifies the text and turns it into an “organic whole.” Similarly, Russian Formalists and Prague Structuralists, though critical of the notion of the “organic whole” and its use in art criticism by the Neo-Romantics and the Symbolists, never questioned the alleged semantic unity of the literary text. An alternative approach to the problem of meaning was developed in the early books of Michel Foucault and conceptualized in his Archeology of Knowledge; he described meaning as “dispersal” and “dissemination.” A little later, in Dissemination and On Grammatology, Jacques Derrida radicalized Foucault's position by questioning the existence of clear-cut boundaries for Foucault's semantic “dissemination,” and he applied this notion in both philosophy and literary criticism. The resultant polemics between the two major approaches to the problem of the organization of meaning in the literary text caused the extreme polarization of literary studies; moreover, this polemics was often based on the tacit assumption that there exist only these two possibilities of the formal description of such organization: it should be described as either “unity” or “dissemination.” At the same time, from the logical, a priori, point of view, these terms describe only the poles of possible organization of meaning; moreover, practical criticism tends to show that both pure “unity” of meaning and its pure “dissemination” are very rarely found in literary texts. Thus, it seems to me, that those scholars who work in the field of literary criticism and cultural theory should attempt to create more complex and more precise models of the organization of meaning, which will transcend the dichotomy of “unity” and “dissemination.” One of these such models, the model of “semantic counterpoint,” is described and exemplified in this paper.

scholarly journals Projections of Intermediality in a Literary Text

wisdom ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
Ganna PRIHODKO ◽  
Oleksandra PRYKHODCHENKO ◽  
Halyna MOROSHKINA
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Visual Texts ◽  
Semiotic Systems ◽  
Artistic Image ◽  
Different Levels

The article is devoted to the study of linguistic manifestations of intermediality in English-language literary texts of the 20th – 21st centuries. Intermediality is understood as a special type of structural interconnections within a work of art, based on the interaction of various types of art-languages in a system of single literary text. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of such figurative structures that enclose information about another type of art. In the course of the analysis, it was established that the implementation of intermedial connections of literary, musical and visual texts interacting in the space of the semiosphere is carried out by borrowing of compositional-structural and plot-shaped means, which leads to the creolization of the transmitted message, providing a pragmatic effect on the recipient with a combination of verbal-iconic elements . The intermedial mechanism of combining codes of different semiotic systems contributes to the transfer of an artistic image in the text at different levels of abstraction.

THE LINGUO-COGNITIVE ASPECT OF EKPHRASTIC REFERENCES IN A LITERARY TEXT (BASED ON THE WORKS BY D. RUBINA AND M. ATWOOD)

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-79
Author(s):  
Polina I. GAVIN ◽  
Olga B. PONOMAREVA
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Cognitive Analysis ◽  
Resonance Model ◽  
Art Object ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
Visual Construction

The following article explores ekphrasis as a literary device in the context of the Russian and English language literary texts. The phenomenon of ekphrasis is regarded to be a relatively researched area in the literary criticism. However, the majority of the existing research focuses on the visual representations in the verbal medium, thereby neglecting the aspect of the reader’s possible interpretation of an ekphrastic description and its stylistic expression in a literary text. Thus, the aim of this article is to identify the specific language patterns constructing ekphrastic references in the Russian and English language literary texts by conducting a comparative linguo-cognitive analysis of ekphrastic intertextual references in Dina Rubina’s ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’ (2006) and Margaret Atwood’s ‘Cat’s Eye’ (1988). The research is based on the comparative linguo-cognitive analysis combining the following cognitive poetic techniques: the ‘figure — ground’ dichotomy, the model of literary resonance, and the narrative interrelation theory. The analysis of the figure-ground relations in ekphrastic descriptions has shown that the main character takes the figure position and becomes a pronounced attractor, thereby exerting an affective influence on the reader’s perception. The application of the literary resonance model confirms this claim by identifying typical semantic, syntactic and stylistic features (attractors) of the character in the analysed ekphrastic passages. The comparison of an ekphrastic description to a passage which it is based on has revealed the characteristic parallelism of their syntactic and semantic patterns. In part, parallel constructions contain specific intertextual references that create links to an art object, thus actualising the representation of a picture in the reader’s perception. A comparative linguo-cognitive analysis of ekphrastic references in Russian and English literary texts has shown the possible intratextuality of ekphrastic references, which establish the relationships between plots within the narrative. Additionally, in both literary texts, ekphrastic references imitate the visual construction of an object of art at the semantic, syntactic and textual levels and, as a result, accentuate the metaphorical realisation of the presented artefact.

Sustainability and engagement: strange bedfellows in the undergraduate textbook

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 1053-1074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Larkins ◽  
Wynne Wright ◽  
Shari Dann
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
English Language ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Sustainable Society ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose This paper aims to examine the textual coverage of the topic of public engagement in leading English language sustainability textbooks. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors’ findings are based on a content analysis of 12 textbooks published between 2005 and 2015. The authors generated the sample through three sources: a review of the offerings of five major academic publishers, title searches of academic databases and an examination of the syllabi compiled by AASHE. Texts that displayed a high degree of disciplinarity or those that were narrowly focused were rejected. A list of a priori codes was established in which the authors expected to find in the indices of the texts. This resulted in 21 expected a priori codes for which the authors assessed the sample texts to gauge the place of engagement in these materials. Findings The authors find that only two textbooks contained ten or more references to engagement. Overall, very little attention was paid to the ways in which individuals, groups or institutions can engage in action for a sustainable society. The authors argue that substantive changes in the writing of textbooks are necessary to provide students with comprehensive training on why engagement is critical. More diverse writing teams, attention to cultural obstacles and mindfulness of the politics of difference are recommended. Practical implications Practical implications include pedagogical methods aimed at better-informed students knowledgeable of the importance of public engagement in the sustainability transition. Social implications Social implications include a more dynamic socially sustainable educational experience for students, which is aligned with cutting-edge scholarship. Originality/value The authors know of no other research devoted to the analysis of engagement in contemporary sustainability textbooks. The authors hope to encourage writers of sustainability textbooks and their editors to incorporate more robust social science scholarship on pivotal topics such as how social change and action intersects with sustainability. Second, the authors seek to broaden a conversation about the role of public engagement in sustainability-focused textbooks and curricula.

scholarly journals Archaisms in D. Lyndsay’s play of the Early Modern English period “A Satire of the Three Estates”: problem of identification and stylistic assessment

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
Alina Alekseevna Khavronich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Statistical Interpretation ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Approximate Frequency ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment

The subject of this research is the method of identification and problem of statistical interpretation of archaic lexis in literary texts of the Early Modern English period, namely in D. Lyndsay’s play “A Satire of the Three Estates”. The article discusses the capacity of attracting the data from diachronic corpus and corpus-based dictionaries for determination of archaic elements in literary works of the XVI century. Leaning on the commentaries of reputable philologists of the Early Modern English period and modern research, the article explores the trends of relevant perception pertaining to introduction of archaisms into the literary text by the authors of that time. An algorithm is proposed for identification of outdated units in literary material, created on Scottish (considering the obsolescent character of this dialect), based on juxtaposition of the approximate frequency indexes of reproduction of the element in the Early Modern English and Scottish sections of Helsinki corpus, as well as data from the corpus-based dictionaries of Middle English and Scottish. For stylistic assessment of archaisms in the play of D. Lyndsay, the author applies the method of linguo-stylistic analysis, in which linguistic element is viewed from the contextual perspective. The scientific novelty is substantiated by the fact that for solution of the problem of analysis of archaisms in the texts of Early Modern English period, the author elaborates an algorithm that allows clarifying if a unit is obsolescent in a specific moment of development of the English language. It is established that the prevalent proportion of words in Lyndsay’s play was not archaic within the framework of Scottish dialect; and only few of the involved units were outdated at the moment of creation of text in the standard Early Modern English. The archaisms determined in the play allows stating the Lyndsay considered archaisms a part of elevated lexis. The practical values of this work is defined by the possibility to apply the proposed algorithm for detecting archaisms in any literary text of the Early Modern English period, as well as conduct stylistic assessment of archaisms from the perspective of the trends of their perception by the authors of the XVI century.

scholarly journals Translator’s notes as a form of linguistic localization of literary works (the case of D. Mitchell’s novels)

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 34-54
Author(s):  
I.D. Volkova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
English Language ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Cloud Atlas

The purpose of the present article is to describe the significance of translator's notes from the point of view of localization of English works of fiction for Russian readership, as well as to identify the types of lexical units that become object of adaptation and the degree of their explication. The theoretical and methodological basis of this study is made up of the key provisions of translation studies, the study of linguistic localization and the study of literary discourse. Within the framework of the present research, a comparative analysis of the concepts of adaptation (pragmatic adaptation) and localization has been carried out to substantiate the advisability of using a new term to name culturally determined modifications of the original text. The characteristics of a literary text have been established, which make it possible to classify works of fiction as objects of localization. Content analysis of the English and Russian versions of the novels Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Slade House by the British writer D. Mitchell has been carried out. The original English-language and translated Russian-language versions of the specified literary works are analyzed, in particular, a comparative analysis of the English-language lexical units and phrases, accompanied by translator's notes in the secondary texts, has been conducted. The advantages of notes as a form of localization of literary texts are indicated. They consist in the possibility of a more detailed and quick description of foreign cultural units in comparison with intra-text transformations.

Shakespeare’s Dancing Bodies

2019 ◽  
pp. 172-196
Author(s):  
Brandon Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Somatic Psychology ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Early Modern Times

Romeo’s well-known excuse that he cannot dance because he has soles of lead is demonstrative of the autonomous volitional quality Shakespeare ascribes to body parts, his utilization of humoral somatic psychology, and the horizontally divided body according to early modern dance practice and theory. This chapter considers the autonomy of and disagreement between the body parts and the unruliness of the humors within Shakespeare’s dramas, particularly Romeo and Juliet. An understanding of the body as a house of conflicting parts can be applied to the feet of the dancing body in early modern times, as is evinced not only by literary texts, but dance manuals as well. The visuality dominating the dance floor provided opportunity for social advancement as well as ridicule, as contemporary sources document. Dance practice is compared with early modern swordplay in their shared approaches to the training and social significance of bodily proportion and rhythm.

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