scholarly journals The Words Change Everything: Haunting, Contagion and The Stranger in Tony Burgess’s Pontypool

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-76
Author(s):  
Evelyn Deshane ◽  
R. Travis Morton

In 2018, O Canada ’s lyrics were made gender neutral. This change comes at a time when certain key public figures refuse to use gender neutral language. The linguistic tension and ideological divide within Canada creates a haunted feeling around certain minority groups, leaving everyone feeling out of place. This article examines how viral ideas and word choices spread through media technologies via the ‘word virus’. We use the figure of the zombie to show how the word virus becomes bad ideology, one that spreads and takes over certain spaces and enacts the presence of the insider/outsider. To reflect on ‘word viruses’ gone awry, we borrow and build on scholarship from the emerging field of hauntology made popular by Jacques Derrida and Avery Gordon. Ultimately, we present Tony Burgess’s horror novel Pontypool Changes Everything turned Canadian horror film Pontypool as a speculative case study, since Burgess’s texts suggest that what is more infectious than the zombie-outsider is the insider’s own language, which identifies and labels the outsider. By positing a possible cure for the word virus within Pontypool , the film adaptation suggests that the ways in which we cease becoming infected with bad ideas is not to stop speaking or isolate ourselves through quarantine, but deliberately seek out the stranger in order to challenge and change the meaning of words.

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Bernard A. J. Jap

<p>Research in children with normal language development has shown that there is a certain order in the production and learning of pronominal forms. To one’s knowledge, there has yet to be a study on the pronoun development of Indonesian speaking children whose native language do not distinguish<br />between the nominative-accusative form (e.g. in English, I/me – Indonesian, <em>saya</em>/<em>saya</em>) and at the same time being gender neutral (e.g. in English, he/she – Indonesian, <em>dia</em>/<em>dia</em>). The present study follows the personal pronoun development of a (Jakarta) Indonesian-speaking child from 24 months to 46 months of age.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 19-24
Author(s):  
Basanti Roshan Pradhan Shrestha

This study tries to understand how female instructors perceive use of gender neutral language in the workplace. Traditionally there had been stratification in male and female on the basis of work and also on the basis of language; but lately, a number of efforts have been made to remove stratification on the basis of gender. Still many reports argue that there is bias on the basis of gender language in the workplaces. The traditionally built stereotype on job roles of males and females given by the society people may not support and go in line with the practice of using gender neutral language. Therefore, this paper had aimed to explore the use of gender neutral language in technical schools of Nepal. To begin the study, eight female instructors from different technical schools of Nepal with different occupations were purposively selected. A case study research design was implied to understand the perception of female instruction with regards to gender neutral language in their work place.


Author(s):  
Ana Brígida Paiva

As works of fction, gamebooks offer narrative-bound choices – the reader generally takes on the role of a character inserted in the narrative itself, with gamebooks consequently tending towards being a story told in the second-person perspective. In pursuance of this aim, they can, in some cases, adopt gender-neutral language as regards grammatical gender, which in turn poses a translation challenge when rendering the texts into Portuguese, a language strongly marked by grammatical gender. Stemming from an analysis of a number of gamebooks in R. L. Stine’s popular Give Yourself Goosebumps series, this article seeks to understand how gender indeterminacy (when present) is kept in translation, while examining the strategies used to this effect by Portuguese translators – and particularly how ideas of implied readership come into play in the dialogue between the North-American and Portuguese literary systems.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 486-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett R. Caraway

This article outlines a socio-political theory appropriate for the study of the ecological repercussions of contemporary media technologies. More specifically, this approach provides a means of assessing the material impacts of media technologies and the representations of capitalist ecological crises. This approach builds on the work of ecological economists, ecosocialist scholars, and Marx’s writings on the conditions of production to argue that capitalism necessarily results in ecological destabilization. Taking Apple’s 2016 Environmental Responsibility Report as a case study, the article uses the theory to analyze Apple’s responses to ecological crises. The article asserts that Apple’s reactions are emblematic of the capitalist compulsion for increasing rates of productivity. However, unless the matter/energy savings achieved through higher rates of productivity surpass the overall increase in the flow of matter/energy in production, ecological crises will continue. Ultimately, capital accumulation ensures continued ecological destabilization.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Shannon Said

It has taken many years for different styles of music to be utilised within Pentecostal churches as acceptable forms of worship. These shifts in musical sensibilities, which draw upon elements of pop, rock and hip hop, have allowed for a contemporisation of music that functions as worship within these settings, and although still debated within and across some denominations, there is a growing acceptance amongst Western churches of these styles. Whilst these developments have taken place over the past few decades, there is an ongoing resistance by Pentecostal churches to embrace Indigenous musical expressions of worship, which are usually treated as token recognitions of minority groups, and at worst, demonised as irredeemable musical forms. This article draws upon interview data with Christian-Māori leaders from New Zealand and focus group participants of a diaspora Māori church in southwest Sydney, Australia, who considered their views as Christian musicians and ministers. These perspectives seek to challenge the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations within a church setting and create a more inclusive philosophy and practice towards being ‘one in Christ’ with the role of music as worship acting as a case study throughout. It also considers how Indigenous forms of worship impact cultural identity, where Christian worship drawing upon Māori language and music forms has led to deeper connections to congregants’ cultural backgrounds.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-354
Author(s):  
Søren Blak Hjortshøj

AbstractIn recent cosmopolitan work, scholars such as Julia Kristeva, Zygmunt Bauman, Jacques Derrida, and Ulrich Beck have represented the stranger as a universal ideal for our global age and Georg Simmel’s stranger in the Exkurs über den Fremden has been emphasized as a model for this ideal. While these uses can be justified by generalized passages in Simmel’s essay, they still omit the problem of European Jewish historical exemplarity. Thus, in the decades before Simmel’s essay, this stranger type was already a well-developed figure related to the so-called Jewish question. Georg Brandes and Henrik Pontoppidan used the Jewish stranger to evaluate the societal changes of the fin-de-siècle period and questions of progress vs. decay. Yet, their work limited the stranger to a specific type of Jewishness not including other marginal existences. Hence, reading Simmel with Brandes and Pontoppidan outlines the boundaries of this stranger type as it raises questions regarding recent cosmopolitan uses of Simmel’s stranger.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franco Masciandaro

The principal aim of this study is to participate in the current renewed discourse on the meaning of friendship, initiated in 1994 by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida with his Politics of Friendship, by combining the philosophical method of inquiry with the hermeneutical approach to poetic representations of friendship in the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, and the Decameron. It examines friendship not only as the unique love between two persons based on familiarity and proximity, but as the love for the one who is far away, the stranger, for this is a natural extension of the implicit love of the distant other, of the other-as-stranger – what Emmanuel Levinas has called "the infinity of the Other" – which is concealed in our friend, and which, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, puts us "authentically in relation" with him or her.


Prologia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Johanna Ruthllianie ◽  
Diah Ayu Candraningrum

This research attempts to adopt the individual motivation behind the decision in purchasing an idol merchandise. In addition the resources focused on the concept of consumer motivation and the consumer decision making process. The concept of motivation includes sources of motivation, divided into motivational intrinsic and motivation extrinsic. While the consumer decision-making process is divided into five steps which are recognized the need, looking for information, evaluation of decision, buying decision, and the consumer behavior after purchasing. The researcher uses a case study of the shirt Uniqlo X BT21 with qualitative method. The results of the research which is the consumer motivation lead to purchasing a Uniqlo X BT21 shirt. Parasocial interaction in fact can influence consumers to purchase merchandise. The more closely the relation between society can lead to higher motivation to purchase the needs. The collaboration between Uniqlo and BTS succeeds in attracting the fans. The results of collaboration between brand and public figures now is a strategy for creating promotional products. Entrepreneurs, who also use this strategy need to see the opportunity by using this phenomenon. Penelitian ini mengangkat tentang motivasi individu dalam keputusan pembelian merchandise idola. Konsep yang digunakan yaitu motivasi dan keputusan pembelian. Konsep motivasi meliputi sumber motivasi, yaitu melalui motivasi intrinsik dan motivasi ekstrinsik. Sedangkan untuk keputusan pembelian melalui lima tahapan yaitu, mengenali kebutuhan, pencarian informasi, evaluasi alternatif, keputusan pembelian dan perilaku pasca pembelian. Penelitian ini menggunakan studi kasus terhadap kaos Uniqlo X BT21 dengan metodologi kualitatif. Hasil penelitian ini yaitu motivasi yang menyebabkan pembelian kaos Uniqlo X BT21. Interaksi parasosial terbukti mampu untuk mempengaruhi pembelian merchandise. Semakin lekat sebuah hubungan parasosial, maka akan semakin tinggi motivasi minat beli. Kolaborasi yang diadakan Uniqlo dengan BTS dapat dikatakan berhasil menarik minat penggemar. Sehingga kolaborasi merek dan public figure kini merupakan sebuah strategi yang dapat dilakukan untuk mempromosikan produk. Pebisnis perlu melihat peluang yang hadir dalam fenomena tersebut.


Author(s):  
Michael R. Cohen

The conclusion reaffirms how the history of Jewish merchants in the American cotton industry is not only a story of American Jewish success that accounts for a golden age for Jews during the Reconstruction era. It is also a more universal case study that speaks to niche economies and minority entrepreneurship more broadly, revealing the ways in which ethnicity mattered in the development of global capitalism. It suggests that the economic milieu in which a niche economy emerged was critical, and any explanation of how niche economies function must begin with a rigorous understanding of that particular capitalism. But within the confines of those structural factors, ethnicity fostered trust in the economic transactions upon which a particular capitalism relied. These forces worked together to provide minority groups such as Jews a competitive advantage that fueled their niche economies.


Author(s):  
Mack Hagood

The medical mediation of bodily differences can be fraught, and many scholars have shown how the combination of media and medicine can produce disablement according to biopolitical norms. Mack Hagood proposes a framework for the study of biomediation that disentangles medical uses of media technologies from the medical model of disability. Using tinnitus as his case study, he demonstrates the value of this framework for understanding the complex role of media in both biological and political struggles over disability and disabled identities.


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