scholarly journals How Do Female and Male Characters Speak in the Japanese Translation of English Crime Novels?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Shigeko Okamoto
Keyword(s):  
Social Variables ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Japanese Translation

Abstract The repertoire of linguistic expressions that index sociopragmatic meanings differs considerably from language to language. This difference becomes particularly noticeable when one language is translated into another. As an example, this study examines dialogs in the Japanese translations of two English crime novels to see how the translator deals with normatively gendered morphological forms in Japanese for which no corresponding forms exist in English. The analysis shows that although the same imperative, declarative, and interrogative forms are used for female and male characters in the English originals, in the translations, gendered forms are used not simply based on the gender of the characters but on the interaction of gender with other social variables, in particular class and age. The results and their theoretical implications are discussed, employing the notions of indirect indexing, double-voiced discourse, and cultural filter.

Social Variables and Speech Disorders

1961 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-78
Author(s):  
Lonnie L. Emerick
Keyword(s):  
Speech Disorders ◽  
Social Variables

Performing Masculinity and the Crisis of Transclass Man in August Wilson’s Drama

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan ◽  
Owen Seda
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Great Cost ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
North End

Feminist critics have identified the social constructedness of masculinity and have explored how male characters often find themselves caught up in a ceaseless quest to propagate and live up to an acceptable image of manliness. These critics have also explored how the effort to live up to the dictates of this social construct has often come at great cost to male protagonists. In this paper, we argue that August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone present the reader with a coterie of male characters who face the dual crisis of living up to a performed masculinity and the pitfalls that come with it, and what Mazrui has referred to as the phenomenon of “transclass man.” Mazrui uses the term transclass man to refer to characters whose socio-economic and socio-cultural experience displays a fluid degree of transitionality. We argue that the phenomenon of transclass man works together with the challenges of performed masculinity to create characters who, in an effort to adjust to and fit in with a new and patriarchal urban social milieu in America’s newly industrialised north, end up destroying themselves or failing to realise other possibilities that may be available to them. Using these two plays as illustrative examples, we further argue that staged masculinity and the crisis of transclass man in August Wilson’s plays create male protagonists who break ranks with the social values of a collectively shared destiny to pursue an individualistic personal trajectory, which only exacerbates their loss of social identity and a true sense of who they are.

From Culturazing Nature to Naturalizing Culture: The Differing Function of Animal Imagery in Defining Bodies from Homer’s Odysseus to Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Begüm Tuğlu
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Male Voice ◽  
Women Authors ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Animal Imagery ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
History Of

Feminist authors have long been trying to alter the patriarchal structure of the Western society through different aspects. One of these aspects, if not the strongest, is the struggle to overcome centuries long dominance of male authors who have created a masculine history, culture and literature. As recent works of women authors reveal, the strongest possibility of actually achieving an equalitarian society lies beneath the chance of rewriting the history of Western literature. Since the history of Western literature relies on dichotomies that are reminiscences of modernity, the solution to overcome the inequality between the two sexes seems to be to rewrite the primary sources that have influenced the cultural heritage of literature itself. The most dominant dichotomies that shape this literary heritage are represented through the bonds between the concepts of women/man and nature/culture. As one of the most influential epics that depict these dichotomies, Homer's Odysseus reveals how poetry strengthens the authority of the male voice. In order to define the ideal "man", Homer uses a wide scope of animal imagery while forming the identities of male characters. Margaret Atwood, on the other hand, is not contended with Homer's poem in that it never narrates the story from the side of women. As a revisionist mythmaker, Atwood takes the famous story of Odysseus, yet this time presents it from the perspective of Penelope, simultaneously playing on the animal imagery. Within this frame, I intend to explore in this paper how the animal imagery in Homer's most renowned Odysseus functions as a reinforcing tool in the creation of masculine identities and how Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad defies this formation of identities with the aim of narrating the story from the unheard side, that of the women who are eminently present yet never heard.

Mummified Fragments: Characters and Themes in Hariharan’s Novel The Ghosts of Vasu Master

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 827-835
Author(s):  
R. Ramakrishnan
Keyword(s):  
School Teacher ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Male Characters

Hariharan’s versatility as an author with a mission to subvert the entire tradition can be recognized in every work of fiction she has created. For this purpose in her second novel, The Ghosts of Vasu Master she experiments with a male protagonist and a host of other male characters. Vasu is the protagonist of the novel. He is a retired school teacher from P.G. Boys’ school, Ellipettai. He leads a lonely widower’s life with two of his sons employed and settled away from home. This article scrutinizes the life of an idower is all aspects.

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