Literary dynamics in The.PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

2021 ◽  
pp. 096394702110592
Author(s):  
Irene O’Leary

Interaction between text and reader is a prominent concern in stylistics. This paper focusses on interactions among stylistic processes and subconscious microcognitive processes that generate changes to narrative and interpretation during reading. Drawing on process philosophy and recent neuroscientific research, I articulate this dynamism through analysis of a brief narrative moment from each of The.PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I argue that high densities of stylistic and microcognitive perturbations lead to frequent narrative and interpretive changes in the two moments. The analyses reinforce portrayals of reading as intensely complex, dynamic and changeable. Complexity, dynamism and mutability also characterise the stylistic changes in the two narrative moments. This paper advocates greater attention to the role of volatile stylistic and cognitive microdynamics in shaping the reading of prose fiction.

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lounsbury ◽  
Christopher W.J. Steele ◽  
Milo Shaoqing Wang ◽  
Madeline Toubiana

In this article, we take stock of the institutional logics perspective and highlight opportunities for new scholarship. While we celebrate the growth and generativity of the literature on institutional logics, we also note that there has been a troubling tendency in recent work to use logics as analytical tools, feeding disquiet about reification and reductionism. Seeding a broader scholarly agenda that addresses such weaknesses in the literature, we highlight nascent efforts that aim to more systematically understand institutional logics as complex, dynamic phenomena in their own right. In doing so, we argue for more research that probes how logics cohere and endure by unpacking the role of values, the centrality of practice, and the governance dynamics of institutional logics and their orders. Furthermore, we encourage bridging the study of institutional logics with various literatures, including ethnomethodology, phenomenology, professions, elites, world society, and the old institutionalism, to enhance progress in these directions. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 47 is July 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


Author(s):  
Déborah Salves ◽  
Paolla Wanglon ◽  
Ubiratã Kickhöfel Alves

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of familiarity with Brazilian-accented English (L2) in the intelligibility of speech samples when judged by native English listeners. Speech samples were collected from five native Brazilian Portuguese individuals from Southern Brazil, with a pre-intermediate level of proficiency in English. Following a Complex Dynamic Systems account (De Bot et al., 2007), this is a longitudinal study in which a group of four British listeners participated in weekly intelligibility transcription tasks, applied over the course of five weeks. This group was comprised of individuals who had recently arrived in Brazil. Results suggest that familiarity with a speaker’s L1 and accented-L2 has an effect on the intelligibility of what is heard. From the perspective of Complex Dynamic Systems, we argue that there is an alteration of a listener’s perception of his/her own language system due to exposure to it as an L2.


1998 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Lynch

Research into listening over the past three decades has, above all, highlighted the fundamental intricacy of the processes involved. In order to make sense of spoken messages, listeners may need to integrate information from a range of sources: phonetic, phonological, prosodic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. The fact that we achieve all this in real time as the message unfolds makes listening “complex, dynamic, and fragile” (Celce-Murcia 1995:366). In this review I consider research into four aspects of these complexities: processes (e.g., speech recognition, discourse comprehension, and memory); the role of context; factors influencing listening; and the relationship of listening with other language skills. Finally I suggest likely directions for future research into listening.


Author(s):  
Robert W. Holt ◽  
Edward Meiman ◽  
Thomas L. Seamster

Accurate assessment of team performance in complex, dynamic systems is difficult, particularly teamwork such as Crew Resource Management (CRM) in aircraft. Seventy pilots from two fleets were evaluated as two-person crews by a Maneuver Validation (MV), which focused on proficiency on separate maneuvers, and by a Line Operational Evaluation (LOE), which focused on the crew flying a simulated line flight. Instructor/Evaluator (I/E) pilots helped design LOE content and a structured evaluation worksheet. I/E reliability training resulted in high evaluator agreement (average rwg = .80) and acceptable inter-rater correlations (average r = .54). Path analysis supported the assessment flow from Observable Behaviors to Technical and CRM performance to Captain (PIC), First Officer (SIC), and Crew evaluations for each event set. Fleet evaluations were different on the LOE assessment, but equivalent on the MV assessment. Detailed analysis of assessments also indicated a different role of the SIC across fleets. One fleet assessed SIC more on CRM performance and weighted SIC performance more in evaluating Crew performance. The other fleet assessed SIC on technical performance and weighted SIC performance less in evaluating Crew performance.


2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jovian Parry

AbstractRecent years have seen the development of a new trend in gastronomic discourse toward acknowledging and even valorizing the role of animal slaughter in meat production. This development problematizes some of the ideas of influential theorists of meat such as Fiddes (1990) and Adams (1991): namely, that the animal in (post)modernity has been rendered invisible in the process of meat production and consumption (Adams, 1991), and that meat itself is a commodity with a declining reputation (Fiddes, 1990). This paper analyzes the role of nostalgia in this trend toward do-it-yourself (or at least witness-it-yourself) slaughter, and takes these developments in cultural tastes and feelings as a context within which to analyze the special significance of meat in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. In identifying this burgeoning nostalgia for meat and contextualizing it within a risk-reflexive, consumer-driven, dystopian near-future society of the author's own devising, Oryx and Crake foregrounds and illuminates these real-world developments in the meanings of meat.


Gragoatá ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (35) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Marks de Marques

O presente trabalho almeja problematizar o recente ressurgimento de narrativas literárias distópicas nas literaturas de língua inglesa, sugerindo que as mesmas devam ser lidas a partir de uma perspectiva que considere a centralidade do corpo distópico, corpo este que deve ser entendido como uma entidade transumana. A partir das discussões de transumanismo e pós-humanismo, do impacto do desenvolvimento científico na construção do desejo e do papel do pensamento teológico na pós-modernidade, almeja-se discutir as formas como tais ideias aparecem e são apresentadas na obra Oryx and Crake, da escritora canadense Margaret Atwood.---Artigo em inglês


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (81) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Gábor Attila Csúr

Gábor Attila Csúr: “The Inclination to the Supernatural in the Middle Ages – A Critical Reading of Medieval Religiousness in Danish Historical Novels” The article focuses on Danish historical prose fiction from the last two centuries and analyzes how the phenomenon ‘medievalism’, i. e. the interpretation, reception and recreation of the Middle Age, has changed during this period. Stereotypes about medieval religious thought and belief and the role of the church have always been popular features of historical novels. By analyzing the depictions of religiousness, the article attempts to draw a line of development in understanding medieval culture and everyday life.


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