Male-Female Characters’ Tenor of Discourse in Akachi Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 167
Author(s):  
Innocent Sourou Koutchade ◽  
Severin Mehouenou

<p class="1"><span lang="X-NONE">This article attempts to explore male-female characters’ tenor of discourse in the novel entitled: <em>The Last of the Strong Ones</em> by Akachi Ezeigbo. According to Halliday’s (1978), the tenor of the discourse is the social role relationships played by interactants. It is associated with the grammar of interpersonal meanings which is, in turn, realized through the mood patterns of the grammar. The paper, through the analysis of mood system, modality and vocatives, reveals how male and female characters establish relationships between each other. The tenor of their discourse unveils how women are oppressed by patriarchy on the one hand, as well as how they fight against the system, on the other. From these linguistic choices, the work concludes that there exists an atmosphere of tension, distance, aggression and dominance between some characters of the novel. </span></p>

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Urbaniak

In the institutionalized life course transition from work to retirement is the transition that culturally defines the beginning of later life. However, there is no universal way of experiencing retirement or understanding retirees’ social roles. Especially in the context of the post-communist, liquid modern reality in Poland. The social role of the retiree, defined as a set of rules and expectations generated for individuals occupying particular positions in the social structure, is constructed at the intersection of what is culturally defined and individually negotiated. Therefore, the way in which individuals (re)define term “retiree” and “do retirement” reflects not only inequalities in individual resources and attitudes, but also in social structure in a given place and at a given time. In this contribution, I draw upon data from 68 qualitative interviews with retirees from Poland to analyze retirement practices and meanings assigned to the term “retiree.” Applying practice theory, I explore the inequalities they (re)produce, mirror and reinforce at the same time. Results show that there are four broad types of retirement practices: caregiving, working, exploring and disengaging. During analysis of meanings assigned by participants to the term “retiree,” two definitions emerged: one of a “new wave retiree” and the other of a “stagnant retiree.” Results suggest that in the post-communist context, retirement practices and meanings assigned to the term “retiree” are in the ongoing process of (re)negotiation and are influenced on the one hand by the activation demands resulting from discourses of active and productive aging, and on the other by habitus and imaginaries of retirement formed in the bygone communist era. Retirement practices and definitions of the term “retiree” that emerged from the data reflect structural and individual inequalities, highlighting intersection of gender, age and socioeconomic status in the (re)production of inequalities in retirement transition in the post-communist context.


2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 293-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kingston

AbstractThis essay examines the social role played by, and social reasons for, violence in the Islamic Middle East. In doing so, it aims to counteract a persistent tendency in the literature to igreore the complexity of the relationship between religion and violence, on the one hand, and larger issues of socio-political and economic change, on the other, in favor of a more simplistic approach that views so-called militant or radical Islam primarily as a cause of violence in the region. The essay argues that explanations of "religious" violence can never be divorced from a thorough understanding of the historical formation and present social dynamics of the various nation-states in the region.


Author(s):  
Ana Cecilia Prenz Kopušar

This work analyses some female characters present in the novel Luminarias de Janucá by Rafael Cansinos Assens. The dimension of the escape is analysed from different perspectives taking into account its double meaning that, on the one hand, can be understood as persecution and, on the other, as escape. Other meanings of the term are also considered. The female characters are analyzed within the problems posed by the historical context to which the novel refers, that is, the philosephardic campaign promoted by Senator Ángel Pulido at the beginning of the 20th century. Dalila and Miriam as well as the other treated female characters personify real women: Miriam is the author’s sister, Dalila is Carmen de Burgos, known as Colombine.


Perichoresis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
Éva Antal

AbstractMary Shelley in her writings relies on the romanticised notions of nature: in addition to its beauties, the sublime quality is highlighted in its overwhelming greatness. In her ecological fiction, The Last Man (1826), the dystopian view of man results in the presentation of the declining civilization and the catastrophic destruction of infested mankind. In the novel, all of the characters are associated with forces of culture and history. On the one hand, Mary Shelley, focussing on different human bonds, warns against the sickening discord and dissonance, the lack of harmony in the world, while, on the other hand, she calls for the respect of nature and natural order. The prophetic caring female characters ‘foresee’ the events but cannot help the beloved men to control their building and destroying powers. Mary Shelley expresses her unmanly view of nature and the author’s utopian hope seems to lie in ‘unhuman’ nature. While the epidemic, having been unleashed by the pests of patriarchal society and being accelerated by global warming, sweeps away humanity, Mother Nature flourishes and gains back her original ‘dwelling place’.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 126-145
Author(s):  
Virginie Fernandez

L’Argent des autres (1873) is not a “true” detective novel like Monsieur Lecoq (1868) written by the same author, Émile Gaboriau. The novel appeared in print eight years after the publication of L’Affaire Lerouge, the first French detective novel; however, there is no police investigation; the culprit is known from the first pages. Like his previous novels, La Dégringolade (1871–1872) and La Corde au cou (1872–1873), L’Argent des autres shows an evolution towards the novel of manners in which Gaboriau reveals the failures of the society of his time. Thus, the novel depicts a dark picture of Parisian finance. Furthermore, if there is a criminal in this serial novel, it is a woman! Gaboriau takes his reader into the viscera of the world of money and discloses the social mechanics of those who live off the money of others. Gaboriau denounces the appetites of the morally corrupt society through the description of fictional spaces, such as the Comptoir de crédit mutuel, the office of the newspaper Le Pilote financier, the office of the speculator Lattermann, on the one hand, and of actual emblematic places such as the Bourse, the large boulevards or the Bois de Boulogne on the other


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (138) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Huda Aziz Muhi Al-shammari ◽  
Nidaa Hussain Fahmi Al-Khazraji

The abuse of women is an issue that persists throughout the ages till the present time because people are still living in a world of a dominated idea which is known as man is the self and woman is the other. So the objective of this research paper is to argue this global issue using Van Dijk's Ideological Square (1998) as a framework so as to examine the ideologies that underline the use of language in The Handmaid’s Tale. It is hypothesized that the ideology of oppression is exposed in the novel throughout using the ideological strategies of positive- self presentation and negative-other presentation. Ultimately, it concludes that the novelist employs both, male and female, characters to consistently ridicule and offer negative coverage about women and to increasingly align and offer favorable comments about men to present the world of patriarchy from a different perspective.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Kaniowska

This paper on engaged anthropology is focused on several issues which, on the one hand, define the characteristic features of this current of anthropology, and, on the other, allow us to reflect on how the social role of an anthropologist can be understood today. The author begins her remarks by pointing to the ambiguity of the term “commitment” and to some of the consequences. She compares Norbert Elias’s position with the ways of understanding commitment adopted by contemporary anthropologists. She draws attention to the basic epistemological problems of engaged anthropology in regard to understanding cognition processes, and above all in regard to understanding the position of the researcher and the subject. She is then able to comment on contemporary attempts to establish the nature of an anthropologist and his or her potential social role. At the same time, she points to similarities with earlier sociological and anthropological concepts, stressing that the project of engaged anthropology shows a particularly clear link between methodology and ethical reflection.


2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (04) ◽  
pp. 286-293
Author(s):  
Hachani LOUIZA

French-speaking Algerian writers find themselves forced to situate themselves in relation to French literature and their representation of Algerian reality. They are writers who have been specific in their distinction from the literature of the West because they have allowed the reader to discover the national heritage as well as the culture of their country. In order to highlight the richness and the multiplicity of the romantic forms of Africa, our major concern will be center on the sociocritical study of the novel of Dib "The Fire" with the aim of highlighting the social anchoring of the text and extract traces of Algerian culture. This cultural richness is manifested through the anchoring of Islam, the use of expressions referring to the culture of Algerians. Originality is also reflected in the picture he paints of his society in his daily life. The structure of Dib's work reveals close relations with Algerian culture, on the one hand, on the other hand, this orientation of the writing gives it an aesthetic particularity, The return to the sources and the valuation of its identity gives to the Dibien text its authenticity and originality.


2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tahir Wood

AbstractThis article situates the semantics of fictional characters within a broader framework of authorial communication. It argues that theories of character in the novel will be deficient to the extent that characters are not conceptualised as motivated creations of an author. The influential approach of Georg Lukács effectively excluded the point of view of the author in favour of a direct relationship between the fictional work and processes of history, as an instance of the particular related to the universal. But here it is argued that the notion of the typical should rather be seen as a relation between the social milieu of the authorial experience on the one hand and the figure-ground construction of character on the other. This constitutes part of a project to examine the question of realism on a renewed basis, particularly in terms of the authorial presence within the fictional world, and the case is argued with specific reference to a novel by John Fowles.


2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Besin Gaspar

This research deals with the development of  self concept of Hiroko as the main character in Namaku Hiroko by Nh. Dini and tries to identify how Hiroko is portrayed in the story, how she interacts with other characters and whether she is portrayed as a character dominated by ”I” element or  ”Me”  element seen  from sociological and cultural point of view. As a qualitative research in nature, the source of data in this research is the novel Namaku Hiroko (1967) and the data ara analyzed and presented deductively. The result of this analysis shows that in the novel, Hiroko as a fictional character is  portrayed as a girl whose personality  develops and changes drastically from ”Me”  to ”I”. When she was still in the village  l iving with her parents, she was portrayed as a obedient girl who was loyal to the parents, polite and acted in accordance with the social customs. In short, her personality was dominated by ”Me”  self concept. On the other hand, when she moved to the city (Kyoto), she was portrayed as a wild girl  no longer controlled by the social customs. She was  firm and determined totake decisions of  her won  for her future without considering what other people would say about her. She did not want to be treated as object. To put it in another way, her personality is more dominated by the ”I” self concept.


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