scholarly journals Phraseological motifs for Distinguishing Between Literary Genres. A Case Study on the Motifs of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication

Kalbotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 160-181
Author(s):  
Iva Novakova

The present paper is based on the assumption that the language of the novel is characterized by a statistically relevant overrepresentation of certain linguistic units (e.g. lexemes, key words, collocations and colligations, Siepmann 2015). First steps towards checking the validity of this hypothesis had been undertaken in pioneering works in the 1990s/2000s (e.g. Stubbs & Barth 2003). These studies were however limited by the small size of their (exclusively English) corpora. The present study explores the role of some patterns (phraseological motifs) in distinguishing French literary subgenres. It also proposes a case study of some motifs related to the verbal (dire avec sourire ‘to say with a smile’) and non-verbal communication (adresser un sourire ‘to send a smile’). Unlike traditional corpus-stylistic analyses, which frequently focus on the style of a single author, our corpus-driven approach identifies lexico-syntactic constructions in literary genres which are automatically extracted from the corpora.The main purpose is to show the relevance of the notion of phraseological motif (Legallois 2012; Longrée & Mellet 2013; Novakova & Siepmann 2020) for the distinction of literary subgenres. Linking form and meaning, these ‘multidimensional units’ fulfil pragmatic as well as discursive functions.The data has been extracted from large French corpora of the PhraseoRom research project https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr. They are accessible on http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/phraseobase/index.html and contain 1000 novels (published from the 1950s to the present), partitioned into six sub-corpora: general literature (GEN), crime fiction (CRIM), romances (ROM), historical novels (HIST), science fiction (SF) and fantasy (FY).The results of our study reveal some unexpected differences between the literary subgenres: e.g. the motif dire d’une voix ‘to say in a voice’ in HIST compared to GEN. In FY, expressions of verbal communication are related to shouting and screaming. Expressions related to the non-verbal communication (prendre dans ses bras ‘to take in one’s arms’) are specific to ROM, where body language is overrepresented. In SF, there is a very limited number of these types of expressions. More generally, the motifs provide the link between the micro level (phraseological recurrences) and the macro level (the fictional script).

GeoJournal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Gabellieri

AbstractScholars have been investigating detective stories and crime fiction mostly as literary works reflecting the societies that produced them and the movement from modernism to postmodernism. However, these genres have generally been neglected by literary geographers. In the attempt to fill such an epistemological vacuum, this paper examines and compare the function and importance of geography in both classic and late 20th century detective stories. Arthur Conan Doyle’s and Agatha Christie’s detective stories are compared to Mediterranean noir books by Manuel Montalbán, Andrea Camilleri and Jean Claude Izzo. While space is shown to be at the center of the investigations in the former two authors, the latter rather focus on place, that is space invested by the authors with meaning and feelings of identity and belonging. From this perspective, the article argues that detective investigations have become a narrative medium allowing the readership to explore the writer’s representation/construction of his own territorial context, or place-setting, which functions as a co-protagonist of the novel. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the emerging role of place in some of the later popular crime fiction can be interpreted as the result of writer’s sentiment of belonging and, according to Appadurai’s theory, as a literary and geographical discourse aimed at the production of locality.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fann Oudah Aljohani

This study explores the identity formation and mobility of the role of Antoinette in the novel "Wide Sargasso Sea" from the perspective of the cultural and human geography. In general, it is a space and place study. The thesis suggests that, Antoinette has some conditions and circumstances that she developed in an autonomic manner with different experiences in order to navigate and recognize the dangerous and safe spaces around her. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, elaborates a self-sacrifice experience that the protagonist went through in her search for identity, which she lost due to the circumstances around her. In this research, a psychological analysis of Antoinette's personality will be taken, moreover; an attempt is made to find out the reasons for her schizophrenic behavior. The research focuses on Antoinette's shattered identity and the specters she faced in her life, which ultimately played a huge role in her madness. Also, the visible opposite aspects of black/white, rationality/unconsciousness, male/female, and sanity/madness are conceived by her conscious mind, and it causes the frantic thoughts of insanity, womanhood, and blackness. Also, it sheds light on Antoinette's journey in life to figure out where she belongs and her struggle in this search. Antoinette's personality and identity crisis as a Creole girl will be discussed in depth. There are different areas that are explored in this paper; such as the interpretation of how the surrounding spaces affect Antoinette and the reasons behind the absence of a loving mother in Wide Sargasso Sea. Furthermore, Rochester's character is also examined to find out how the masculine space differs from feminine space, and to what extent Mr. Rochester's cruelty harms Antoinette. Another important thing that is discussed in the paper is the effect of family relationships on a person's identity, and how it becomes a reason of mental disorder.


Slovene ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia V. Urzha

This research focuses on the functioning of praesens historicum forms which Russian translators use to substitute for English narrative forms referring to past events. The study applies the Theory of Grounding and Russian Communicative Functional Grammar to the comparative discourse analysis of English-language adventure stories and novels created in the 19th and 20th centuries and their Russian translations. The Theory of Grounding is still not widely used in Russian translation studies, nor have its concepts and fruitful ideas been related to the achievements of Russian Narratology and Functional Grammar. This article presents an attempt to find a common basis in these academic traditions as they relate to discourse analysis and to describe the role of praesens historicum forms in Russian translated adventure narratives. The corpus includes 22 original texts and 72 Russian translations, and the case study involves six Russian translations of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, focusing on the translation made by Korney Chukovsky, who employed historic present more often than in other translations of the novel. It is shown that the translation strategy of substituting the original English-language past forms with Russian present forms is realized in foregrounded and focalized segments of the text, giving them additional saliency. This strategy relates the use of historic present to the functions of deictic words and words denoting visual or audial perception, locating the deictic center of the narrative in the spacetime of the events and allowing the reader to join the focalizing WHO (a narrator or a hero). Translations that regularly mark the foreground through the use of the historic present and accompanying lexical-grammatical means are often addressed to young readers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-259
Author(s):  
Valentina E. Vetlovskaya

<p>The article explores the role of logical connections in an epic text. It is these connections, according to the author of the article, that connect the individual components of the narrative (motifs, complexes of motifs) and make up in the reader&rsquo;s perception for the missing elements. The reticence and failures to mention, common in fiction, appear in the narrative for various reasons. Sometimes due to the aesthetic principles of the writer who prefers ambiguity to a completed statement depriving readers of the opportunity to finish thinking over a vague idea. And sometimes, due to the author&rsquo;s conviction that there is no need to explain the idea implied by what has been earlier said. But it also happens that the omissions in the narrative are engendered by the requirements for the presentation of a chosen topic, for example in crime fiction. But these reasons may go together as it occurs in Crime and Punishment. These ideas are illustrated by the analysis of one of the themes of the novel Crime and Punishment.</p>


Desertion ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 38-48
Author(s):  
Théodore McLauchlin

This chapter develops the account of desertion primarily in the context of the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, which clarifies the role of several variables through Spain. It looks at many different organizations on both the rebel side and the Republican side in order to examine the impact of different armed group characteristics on desertion. It uses the Spain case study to understand desertion dynamics in a particularly fascinating civil conflict. The chapter focuses on the Republican side, analyzing the dynamics of its relatively high rate of desertion at various points in the conflict. It demonstrates norms of cooperation and coercion at the micro level to statistically assess individual soldiers' decisions to fight or to flee.


2020 ◽  
pp. 095624782095902
Author(s):  
Caroline O N Moser

This paper describes the role of intergenerational processes in increasing or reducing multidimensional inequality in Indio Guayas, a low-income peripheral settlement in Guayaquil, Ecuador. It also examines the importance of family social capital, irrespective of spatial location, as against household social capital in these processes. This longitudinal case study included a dataset on trends from 1978 through 1992 to 2004, in-depth studies over the decades, and further comparative research in 2018. The anthropological narrative is provided by the voices of three women and their families over 40 years. In 2018, interviews my son and I undertook for the documentary film Calle K demonstrated the importance of family social capital in the intergenerational reciprocity among mothers, daughters, fathers and sons, while illustrating different intergenerational trajectories addressing the challenges of inequality at this micro-level. The postscript points to the likely critical importance of family social capital in the context of the appalling COVID-19 pandemic.


2013 ◽  
Vol 57 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Strambach ◽  
Benjamin Klement

AbstractProfound insights into why some regional paths remain dynamic over several decades while others follow a bumpy road and become stuck in the past are still scarce. This paper addresses this gap by contributing to a deeper understanding of dynamics within territorial paths. It focuses on organizational and institutional changes connected with so-called combinatorial knowledge dynamics. We claim that especially innovations based on the transversal combination of separated knowledge bases are connected to the gradual transformation, recombination or creation of institutions at the microlevel. This contribution explores the dynamics within the automotive industry of Baden-Württemberg by providing a meso-level overview of the trajectory of its technological and institutional development as well as an analysis of a case study that illustrates the gradual institutional change on the micro-level in the course of knowledge combination.


2021 ◽  
pp. 163-181
Author(s):  
Dan Paranyuk

Based on the methodological proposals of literary anthropology, in particular on the conceptual ideas of C. Levi-Strauss (structural anthropology), J. Ortega y Gasset (“dehumanization of arts”), J.-M. Schaeffer (“the end of human exceptionality”), M. Foucault (the fall of a human being from the humanistic pedestal of culture), the article under studies emphasizes the violation of the anthropological dominant in science fiction, which is very typical of the fantasy genre. Consequently, there arise new principles of constructing personosphere of a literary text. On the example of the novel “City” (1953) by an American science fiction writer Clifford Simak, the article traces the way a human being shifts from the center of personosphere to the “outskirts” of narration, whereas its image acquires fictional parameters. This all happens due to the phenomenon of “anthropocene” (the term by G. Canavan), which implies the harmful consequences of the human reigning over the nature. In addition, the author of the article introduces the notion of “phantasoid’ – a character of the fictional world of fantasy (outlined by the narrator) that functions exceptionally in the imagination of a certain fantastic character and is somehow related to his previous experience. The novel by C. Simak outlines a gradual shift of the anthropological vector: the heterogeneous image of a human turns into a counter-image, whereby particular significance is attached to the change in the attitude towards mankind. In the text, human culture is perceived as something alien, while Simak’s image of a human being ruins the so called imagological stereotype, along with the reader’s receptive expectations. The role of the attractor in the novel is assigned to “antromorphized” and “humanized” creatures (plants, animals, objects, robots, mutants), which indicates the drastic breach with the previous genre tradition, as well as higlights a peculiar polemic connection with classical literary science fiction. This all proves the metamorphic nature of science fiction and its transition into the hyperreal dimensions of fantasy, where different artificial forms of life and mentality can peacefully coexist with each other.


Author(s):  
Louisa Ellen Stein

This essay looks at genre as a complex set of discursive threads running unevenly through production, TV text, and fan reception. Through a case study of the reception of fan favorite Roswell, this essay interrogates the role of genre in spectatorship. In its mixing of teen and science fiction elements, Roswell trod upon contested generic spaces, eliciting strong reaction from its viewers. Connections between genre and gender came to the fore, as producer commentary linked science fiction with male audiences and teen romance with female audiences. Fans responded with analyses that greatly complicated and at times overtly rejected industrial suppositions regarding the gendered work of genre. Through these fan conversations, we can witness the complexity of genre as discursive thread moving through not only TV texts but also multivariant fan responses. I intend this essay to work at two levels. My analysis of fan responses to Roswell models the possibilities of a close study of genre discourse. At the same time, my case study probes the nature of genre in fan engagement, as genre discourses intersect with other fan concerns such as character identification, perceptions of textual quality, and questions of gender representation. While we cannot necessarily look to fan accounts for proof of how viewers engage with genre, they do tell us how fans frame their engagement with genre, how they incorporate genre into their performance of fannishness, and how they perform and thus enact genre itself as a shared cultural process.


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