scholarly journals Narrating Chaos: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s "DICTEE" and Korean American Fragmentary Writings

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
Dominika Ferens

In The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, sociologist Arthur Frank uses narratology to typologize the stories people tell about illness. Next to teleological stories of survival, which “reassure the listener that however bad things look, a happy ending is possible”, Frank discusses “the chaos narrative” in which “events are told as the storyteller experiences life: without sequence or discernible causality” 97. While the storytellers discussed by Frank mostly suffer from physical ailments and traumas, I would argue that the chaotic mode of telling also characterizes texts that explore other kinds of traumas, including those related to displacement and shaming experienced by several generations of Koreans and Americans of Korean descent. Drawing on affect studies, I analyze Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s DICTEE 1982 alongside two essays, by Grace M. Cho and Hosu Kim published in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social 2007, all of which use the collage form to challenge the expectation that “in life as in story, one event [leads] to another” Frank 97. The speech act is foregrounded in all three texts; it is de-naturalized, deformed, shown as a recitation of prescribed language, and repeatedly interrupted. Nonetheless, as Frank suggests, “the physical act becomes the ethical act” because “to tell one’s life is to assume responsibility for that life.” It also allows others to “begin to speak through that story” xx–xxi.

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azweed Mohamad ◽  
Radzuwan Ab Rashid ◽  
Kamariah Yunus ◽  
Shireena Basree Abdul Rahman ◽  
Saadiyah Darus ◽  
...  

This paper discusses the speech acts in Facebook Status Updates posted by an apostate of Islam. The Facebook Timeline was observed for a duration of two years (January 2015 to December 2016). More than 4000 postings were made in the data collection period. However, only 648 postings are related to apostasy. The data were classified according to the types of speech acts. Expressive speech act is the most frequent speech act (33%, n=215), followed by the directive (27%, n=177), assertive (22%, n=141), and commissive (18%, n=115), respectively. Based on the speech acts used, it is discernible that the apostate attempts to engage other Facebook users and persuade them into accepting her ideology while gaining their support. This paper is novel in the sense that it puts forth the social actions of an apostate which is very scarce in literature. It is also methodologically innovative as it uses social media postings as a tool to explore the apostate’s social actions in an online space.


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-192
Author(s):  
Rita Akele Twumasi

Death is part of human existence. When a person hears the news of someone’s death, it is very common for that person to express their feelings about it. This feeling is in the form of condolences which express the speaker’s sorrow, and condolences fall into the category of speech act. Semantically, condolences have a social meaning which refers to language use. Identities are created in relationships with others, and condolences are major platforms for the construction of identities, in that, existing relationships are, clearly, manifested in the messages that sympathizers expressed. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyzed twenty condolence messages which were purposely sampled from condolence messages posted in the portals of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), when one of its members passed away. The analysis of the data revealed two main identity types enacted for the deceased: role identity and Social Identity. The major Role identity enacted, metaphorically, was Father while the least role was Achiever. Second, identity as an International Figure was dominant with the Social roles, but Good Personality was used less frequently. The present study adds to studies in identity construction, in general, and studies in condolence messages, in specific.


PARADIGM ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Widdya Syafitri

<p>This research is conducted based on two purposes; they are to identify the types of expressive speech act found in the statuses of the Facebook users, and to explain the modes of expressive utterance used in the statuses. Therefore, the data source is the social network that is Facebook and the data are the statuses of the Facebook users. The data are collected by using observational method, followed by non-participant observational technique and taking-note technique. The data analysis is based on pragmatic identity method proposed by Sudaryanto (2015) which is also supported by the theory of the types of expressive speech act by Ronan (2015), and theory about the modes of utterance from Alwi, et al (2000). The analysis result shows that there are fourteen types of expressive speech act in the statuses. They are the expression of agreement, disagreement, apology, gratitude, sorrow (sadness), exclamation (complaint), volition (hope), anger, disappointment, encouragement, satire, annoyance, pride, and congratulation. Meanwhile, the modes of expressive speech act that are used consist of declarative mode, interrogative mode, and exclamative mode. The importance of this research is to reveal or show that there is something else the Facebook users want to say behind their statuses. Sometimes, they do not really state what they mean in their statuses. They use indirect way and there lies the use of expressive speech act which can be stated in different way.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-418
Author(s):  
Claudia Bianchi

According to Mitchell Green, speech act theory traditionally idealizes away from crucial aspects of conversational contexts, including those in which the speaker’s social position affects the possibility of her performing certain speech acts. In recent times, asymmetries in communicative situations have become a lively object of study for linguists, philosophers of language and moral philosophers: several scholars view hate speech itself in terms of speech acts, namely acts of subordination (acts establishing or reinforcing unfair hierarchies). The aim of this paper is to address one of the main objections to accounts of hate speech in terms of illocutionary speech acts, that is the Authority Problem. While the social role of the speaker is the focus of several approaches (Langton 2018a, 2018b; Maitra 2012; Kukla 2014; Green 2014, 2017a, 2017b), the social role of the audience has too often been neglected. The author will show that not only must the speaker have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to perform speech acts of subordination, but also the audience must typically have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to either license or object to the speaker’s authority, and her acts of subordination.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xymena Kurowska ◽  
Anatoly Reshetnikov

This article considers the significance of trolling for security processes through a contextual analysis of industrialized pro-Kremlin trolling in the Russian blogosphere. The publicity surrounding Russia’s hacking activities in international politics conceals the significance of the domestic trolling culture in Russia and its role in the ‘trolling turn’ in Russia’s foreign policy. We contextually identify the practice of ‘neutrollization’ – a type of localized desecuritization where the regime adopts trolling to prevent being cast as a societal security threat by civil society. Neutrollization relies on counterfeit internet activism, ostensibly originating from the citizenry, that produces political disengagement by breeding radical doubt in a manner that is non-securitizing. Rather than advocating a distinct political agenda, and in contrast to conventional understandings of the operations of propaganda, neutrollization precludes the very possibility of meaning, obviating the need to block the internet in an openly authoritarian manner. It operates by preventing perlocution – that is, the social consequences of the security speech act. This prevention is achieved through the breaking or disrupting of the context in which acts of securitization could possibly materialize, and is made possible by a condition of ‘politics without telos’ that is different from the varieties of depoliticization more familiar in Western societies.


1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Lowe

This article examines the speech act of confession in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, and the differing conditions under which the act occurs. By examining the confession of a black female slave which is pivotal to the plot of the play, I will argue that under Austin's rules for ‘happy’ performatives the confession is void, and that the social status of the individuals involved affects the constitutive rules governing the act of confession itself.


1986 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 37-46
Author(s):  
Erika Niehaus

Communication has at least two different aspects: the propositi-onal aspect and the social aspect. Any utterance in a face-to-face-interaction therefore has the function to give information and to indicate how the ralation to the other participant is interpreted. In order to establish his communicative goal, the speaker has to analyse the social situation and the preceding context. Depending on this interpretation he selects between the different verbal patterns to perform a certain speech act. This involves for instance the choice of direct/indirect speech act realizations, the selection of certain linguistic elements (modality markers) for downtoning or upgrading the illocutionary force of speech acts. The contrastive analysis of the realizations of the speech act REQUEST in three different dialogue batteries elicited via role play from Dutch learners of German, native speakers of Dutch and native speakers of German has shown 1. that Dutch native speakers use modality markers in different communicative functions than German native speakers, 2. that Dutch learners of German mostly choose the same social strategies when speaking the target language as they do when speaking the mother tongue, 3. that the learners are not always able to establish their modal goal, that is, the are not able to communicate their intentions on an interpersonal level. The reason for this seems to be that in the Netherlands the teaching of German as a second language is mainly a matter of teaching grammatical rules and linguistic expressions without taking into consideration that the meaning of these expressions is pragmaticalley conditioned and that their usage is motivated by the relevant characteris-tics of such social situations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margreth Lünenborg ◽  
Tanja Maier

This editorial delivers an introduction to the thematic <em>Media and Communication </em>issue on “The Turn to Affect and Emotion in Media Studies”. The social and cultural formation of affect and emotion has been of central interest to social science-based emotion research as well as to affect studies, which are mainly grounded in cultural studies. Media and communication scholars, in turn, have especially focused on how emotion and affect are produced by media, the way they are communicated through media, and the forms of emotion audiences develop during the use of media. Distinguishing theoretical lines of emotion theory in social sciences and diverse traditions of affect theory, we reflect on the need to engage more deeply with affect and emotion as driving forces in contemporary media and society. This thematic issue aims to add to ongoing affect studies research and to existing emotion research within media studies. A special emphasis will be placed on exploring structures of difference and power produced in and by media in relation to affect and emotion.


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