Soundscapes, evocalization and poetics of the everyday in ‘An Epiphany Tale’ by George Mackay Brown

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 145-160
Author(s):  
Halszka Leleń
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
The Everyday

The article traces the orientation of ‘An Epiphany Tale’ (published in 1983) by George Mackay Brown on establishing and maintaining the contact with the reader through the development of multiple aesthetic and aural techniques that are rooted in the tradition of modernism, but expanding and transposing it to a considerable degree. Brown adopts a quasi-philosophical way of narrating a story that anticipates the contemporary existential, phenomenological and aesthetic theoretical insights. The aim of the discussion is to present the text’s semiotic patterns and relate them to the phonetic devices that contribute to what Garrett Stewart called the principle of evocalization. This helps to determine how Brown functionalizes the evoked soundscapes (as theorized by Schafer) and connects them with philosophical and anagogic orientation in reception so as to exploit the story’s thematic focus on a series of epiphanies that reveal the underlying semiotic and aesthetic aspects of ordinary existence. The short story reveals a variety of direct and indirect techniques that create an opposition between what is suggested of reality and what is demonstrated on the level of artistic, literary communication.

scholarly journals The Archive: Digital Art and an Unsustainable Future

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tallulah Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Environmental Disaster ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ecological Implications ◽  
The Face ◽  
Rising Sea Levels

This short story, “The Archive”, grew out of the eco-critical research I underwent during my postgraduate degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. In recent years, literary studies have become increasingly invested in environmentalism. The damaging consequences of human endeavour are now widely regarded within environmentalist and scientific communities, and by environmental literary theory or “ecocriticism”, as a shift from the Holocene (the geological epoch that provided the appropriate conditions for mammals to thrive), to the “Anthropocene” (the epoch in which human activity has become the dominant driving force of climatic change). The ecological implications of the Anthropocene prompt questions regarding human enterprise and responsibility; fuelling dystopian or apocalyptic end of the world narratives and anxieties towards technology, capitalism and post-humanism. This short piece explores the current problems facing climate change activists, namely the inconsistencies between the scientific community’s attitude towards ecological degradation and popular culture’s. Slajov Zizek suggests that public denial and the disassociation from environmental disaster is not caused by a lack of scientific knowledge, but because we as individuals fail to corroborate what we already know about climate change with our sensory experience of the everyday: ‘We know it, but we cannot make ourselves believe in what we know’. The Archive questions this pervasive delusion, one that denies climate change even in the face of dwindling resources, increasing natural disaster and rising sea levels. We as a society consume natural resources excessively, without any regard for the consequences.  My work draws attention to the suicidal nature of this desire, and encourages its readers to take responsibility for their actions, for the sake of humanity’s survival.

Scenes of Argument

PMLA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (5) ◽  
pp. 995-1001
Author(s):  
Nijah Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Short Story ◽  
The Political ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Political Message

In a crucial moment from Henry Dumas's short story “strike and fade” (C. 1965-68), an unnamed narrator observes what is left of a city in the immediate aftermath of an urban uprising: “The word is out. Cool it. We on the street, see. Me and Big Skin. We watch the cops. They watch us. People comin and goin. That fire truck still wrecked up side the buildin. Papers say we riot, but we didn't riot. We like the VC, the Viet Cong. We strike and fade” (111). The staccato established by the short phrasings, fragments, and use of the vernacular evokes a sense of anxiety, contributing to what Carter Mathes aptly describes as Dumas's “aural portrait of black urban space under siege” (91). Dumas's careful attunement to the rhythmic feelings, or grooves, of the everyday adds texture to that opening pronouncement, “The word is out,” which, in this instance, registers a temperate disposition simultaneously alert and giving off the impression that one is maintaining the order of things. Everything will have changed by the time the phrase returns in the short story's penultimate paragraph, when the narrator and Big Skin are no longer eyeing the police but are instead woven into the collective action of an indeterminate “we.” Dumas writes, “The word is out. Burn, baby, burn. We on the scene. The brothers. Together. Cops and people goin and comin. Some people got good loot, some just hoofin it. A police cordon comin. We shadows on the wall. Light comin towards us. We fade” (115). The political message seems obvious. It's the post-Watts 1960s and disenchantment with the civil rights movement is setting in. For an emerging generation of radical black artists and activists, the time has come for people to . . . confer on the possibility of Blackness and the inevitability of Revolution. (Giovanni)

scholarly journals Sameness and difference in narrative modes and narrative sense making: The case of Ramsey Campbell’s “The Scar”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
Mari Hatavara ◽  
Jarkko Toikkanen
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Narrative Studies ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
The Everyday

AbstractThe article discusses basic questions of narrative studies and definitions of narrative from a historical and conceptual perspective in order to map the terrain between different narratologies. The focus is placed on the question of how fiction interacts with other realms of our lives or, more specifically, how reading fiction both involves and affects our everyday meaning making operations. British horror writer Ramsey Campbell’s (b. 1946) short story “The Scar” (1967) will be used as a test case to show how both narrative modes of representation and the reader’s narrative sense making operations may travel between art and the everyday, from fiction to life and back. We argue that the cognitively inspired narrative studies need to pair up with linguistically oriented narratology to gain the necessary semiotic sensitivity to the forms and modes of narrative sense making. Narratology, in turn, needs to explore in detail what it is in the narrative form that enables it to function as a tool for reaching out and making sense of the unfamiliar. In our view, reading fictional narratives such as “The Scar” can help in learning and adopting linguistic resources and story patterns from fiction to our everyday sense making efforts.

scholarly journals Short Stories: Analyzing Preservice Language Teachers’ Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Peter Clements
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Teaching Practicum ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
The Everyday

Short story analysis is a technique in which extracts from qualitative data such as interviews and diary entries are examined for their narrative elements (people, place, time) and then connected to increasingly larger scales of context. I argue that this technique can positively inform research and teaching involving preservice language teachers because it encourages participants to systematically reflect on experience and what makes it meaningful. I exemplify the analysis by applying it to extracts from interviews with two preservice teachers about a teaching practicum, which demonstrates how contextual issues related to language learning and teaching can impact the everyday lives of prospective teachers. I conclude by discussing some of the implications of this approach for research and teaching involving preservice language teachers. ショートストーリー分析は、インタビューや日記などから抽出した質的データの中のナラティヴな要素（人、場所、時間）を調べ、それを徐々に、より大きな広がりのある文脈へと結び付ける分析方法である。この方法では、調査の参加者に自分の体験がどういう意義をもつか系統だった振り返りをさせることができるので、特に言語教師を目指している学生に関わる研究や教育には有用であると思われる。分析方法を例示するために2人の教職課程在籍の学生へのインタビューから実習科目についての抜粋を分析し、結果として、語学学習と教育に関する課題が将来の教師の日常生活にどのような影響を与えるかを示すことができた。最後に、言語教師を目指している学生についての研究と教育に対するこのアプローチの示唆を示して結論とした。

Democratic curiosity in times of surveillance

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jef Huysmans
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday

AbstractTaking my cue from feminist curiosity and literature on the everyday in surveillance studies, I am proposing ‘democratic curiosity’ as a tool for revisiting the question of democracy in times of extitutional surveillance. Democratic curiosity seeks to bring into analytical play the social and political power of little nothings – the power of subjects, things, practices, and relations that are rendered trivial – and the uncoordinated disputes they enact. Revisiting democracy from this angle is particularly pertinent in extitutional situations in which the organisation and practices of surveillance are spilling beyond their panoptic configurations. Extitutional surveillance is strongly embedded in diffusing arrangements of power and ever more extensively enveloped in everyday life and banal devices. To a considerable degree these modes of surveillance escape democratic institutional repertoires that seek to bring broader societal concerns to bear upon surveillance. Extitutional enactments of democracy then become an important question for both security and surveillance studies.

Video Games and Emotion Regulation

GeroPsych ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ossenfort ◽  
Derek M. Isaacowitz
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Interactive Media ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Media Preferences

Abstract. Research on age differences in media usage has shown that older adults are more likely than younger adults to select positive emotional content. Research on emotional aging has examined whether older adults also seek out positivity in the everyday situations they choose, resulting so far in mixed results. We investigated the emotional choices of different age groups using video games as a more interactive type of affect-laden stimuli. Participants made multiple selections from a group of positive and negative games. Results showed that older adults selected the more positive games, but also reported feeling worse after playing them. Results supplement the literature on positivity in situation selection as well as on older adults’ interactive media preferences.

The Relationship of Interrogative Suggestibility to Memory and Attention

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.C. Howard ◽  
A. Chaiwutikornwanich
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Memory Processes ◽  
Memory And Attention ◽  
Irrelevant Distractors ◽  
Alternative Hypotheses ◽  
Visual Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Interrogative Suggestibility ◽  
Task Irrelevant

This study combined an individual differences approach to interrogative suggestibility (IS) with ERP recordings to examine two alternative hypotheses regarding the source of individual differences in IS: (1) differences in attention to task-relevant vis-à-vis task-irrelevant stimuli, and (2) differences in one or more memory processes, indexed by ERP old/new effects. Sixty-five female participants underwent an ERP recording during the 50 min interval between immediate and delayed recall of a short story. ERPs elicited by pictures that either related to the story (“old”), or did not relate to the story (“new”), were recorded using a three-stimulus visual oddball paradigm. ERP old/new effects were examined at selected scalp regions of interest at three post-stimulus intervals: early (250-350 ms), middle (350-700 ms), and late (700-1100 ms). In addition, attention-related ERP components (N1, P2, N2, and P3) evoked by story-relevant pictures, story-irrelevant pictures, and irrelevant distractors were measured from midline electrodes. Late (700-1100 ms) frontal ERP old/new differences reflected individual differences in IS, while early (250-350 ms) and middle latency (350-700 ms) ERP old/new differences distinguished good from poor performers in memory and oddball tasks, respectively. Differences in IS were not reflected in ERP indices of attention. Results supported an account of IS as reflecting individual differences in postretrieval memory processes.

Modifying the Everyday Spatial Behavioral Questionnaire

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Y. Czarnolewski ◽  
Carol Lawton ◽  
John Eliot
Keyword(s):  
The Everyday
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