Why are we doing this? Teacher and student perspectives on literary reading

Purpose This paper aims to examine the extent to which students’ experiences and perceptions of their literature classroom align with their teacher’s instructional goals for literary inquiry and what teachers can learn from gaining access to students’ perspectives on their classroom experiences. Design/methodology/approach Thematic analyses were used to examine the data sources: mid-year and end-of-year interviews with six students, audio recordings of the teacher’s rationale for her instructional designs and a reflective discussion with the teacher upon reading the student interviews three years later. Findings Much of what the teacher intended students to get out of her instruction was what they expressed learning and experiencing in the class, yet some understood the purpose of the class to be far from her intentions. All the interviewed students had deeply personal and varied ways of relating what they learned in class to the world and their own lives. The teacher’s reflection on the interviews highlighted the importance of making space for multiple meanings and perspectives on literary works. Originality/value This paper speaks to the importance of surfacing students’ individual and varied ways of making sense of literary texts as part of instruction that values students’ thinking as well as the epistemic commitments of literary reading.

The Horrors of War in the History of German Literature: From Heinrich Wittenwiler and Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen to Rainer Maria Remarque

As terrible as wars have always been, for the losers as well as for the winners, considering the massive killings, destruction, and general horror resulting from it all, poets throughout time have responded to this miserable situation by writing deeply moving novels, plays, poems, epic poems, and other works. The history of Germany, above all, has been filled with a long series of wars, but those have also been paralleled by major literary works describing those wars, criticizing them, and outlining the devastating consequences, here disregarding those narratives that deliberately idealized the military events. While wars take place on the ground and affect people, animals, objects, and nature at large, poets have always taken us to imaginary worlds where they could powerfully reflect on the causes and outcomes of the brutal operations. This paper takes into view some major German works from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century in order to identify a fundamental discourse that makes war so valuable for history and culture, after all. Curiously, as we will recognize through a comparative analysis, some of the worst conditions in human history have produced some of the most aesthetically pleasing and most meaningful artistic or literary texts. So, as this paper will illustrate, the experience of war, justified or not, has been a cornerstone of medieval, early modern, and modern literature. However, it is far from me to suggest that we would need wars for great literature to emerge. On the contrary, great literature serves as the public conscience fighting against wars and the massive violence resulting from it.

Generating, weaving and curating: disciplinary processes for reading literary text

Purpose The purposes of this study is to expand on previous work in English language arts (ELA) disciplinary literacy and to unpack literary text reading processes across three different participant groups. Design/methodology/approach The authors recruited literary scholars and first-year college students to read literary texts aloud and voice their thoughts. Transcripts were collaboratively coded and analyzed using a priori and emergent coding. Findings This study presents the findings in two ways. First, this study grouped the codes into four categories, namely, background knowledge, comprehension, disciplinary knowledge and building an interpretation. This described the differences in frequencies among the participants’ strategy use. Next, to more fully describe how participants read literary texts, this study presents the data using three processes, namely, generating, weaving and curating. These findings indicate a continuum of strategies and processes used by participants. Practical implications The study suggests using the ELA heuristic for instruction, which includes moving students beyond generating and weaving by asking them to do their own interpretive work of curation. This potential roadmap for instruction avoids a deficit mindset for students by recommending low-stakes opportunities that meet students where they are as they build their capacity for interpretive moves. Originality/value The findings help the field to gain an understanding of what novices and experts do when they read literary text, including both strategies and processes. This study also provide an ELA heuristic that has instructional implications. This study adds to the body of knowledge for disciplinary literacy in ELA in both theoretical and practical ways.

The Grammaticalization of Catalan anar (‘to go’) + Infinitive for the Expression of Perfective Past: A Diachronic, Corpus-Based Perspective

This study constitutes an exploratory analysis of the grammaticalization cline of anar (‘to go’) + infinitive in Catalan to express perfective past (e.g., va arribar ‘s/he arrived’). Our research interest primarily lies in diachronically tracing the evolution of this grammatical change, which appears to be unprecedented in other Romance languages (e.g., Spanish, French), in which the construction has instead led to the expression of a near and/or intentional future. A gap in research is found in the fact that there have been few corpus-based, pragmatic approaches to the matter. We base our theoretical framework on the definition of grammaticalization by Hopper and Traugott (2003) and a number of related publications (Alturo 2017, Pérez-Saldanya & Hualde 2003). Critical items (N=346) were retrieved from the diachronic corpus CICA (11th-18th c.) and subsequently analyzed in the light of pragmatic factors, establishing a three-stage cline based on Segura (2012). Results show how informative bridging contexts are in shaping grammaticalization processes, as they highlight the challenges of tracing a grammaticalization process based on corpora of literary texts. A discussion follows on the identification of potential next steps that might be useful in complementing our own research.

The Voice of Learners on English Literary Texts: Passing on the Mantle

This study examines how pre-service teachers assess the appropriateness of literary texts used by high school students in terms of learners’ age, linguistic needs, and language proficiency. It also aims to determine the relevance of the texts used to learners’ cultural understanding. The participants in this study were five pre-service teachers who participated in a content analysis study of five literary texts. They analyzed the content of the texts using the four categories of textbook evaluation criteria proposed by Tomlinson (2001), namely, media-specific criteria, content-specific criteria, learner-specific criteria, and language criteria. The evaluation results were positive. All participants agreed that all five texts were appropriate for high school learners, with average levels of compliance ranging from moderate to appropriate. In addition to selecting texts that are appropriate for the learners’ language level, the topics and issues addressed in the texts should also be appropriate for the learners’ interest, so the selection of literary texts is crucial. Finally, more local texts should be selected for the English literature curriculum to highlight local cultures and practices. It is expected that this study will contribute to English language teaching as the findings of this study will provide necessary information to those who are concerned with the selection of appropriate literary texts for schools. In addition, this study will raise awareness among teachers and curriculum designers of the need to consider learners’ level of competence when evaluating and selecting from the many literary texts available.

Cultural Images of Labor Conflict and Coordination Literature and the Evolution of Industrial Relations Systems

Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have different historical patterns of industrialization, but developed similar patterns of industrial coordination and cooperation. Theories accounting for industrial relations systems (economic structure, power resources, and party/electoral systems) have difficulty accounting for the similarities among these cases. Therefore, we explore the historical depictions of labor appearing in literature to evaluate whether cross-national distinctions in cultural conceptions of labor have some correspondence to distinctions between coordinated and liberal industrial relations systems. We hypothesize that historical literary depictions of labor are associated with the evolution of industrial systems, and apply computational text analyses to large corpora of literary texts. We find that countries (Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands) with coordinated, corporatist industrial relations in the 20th century share similar cultural constructions about labor relations dating back to at least 1770. Literary depictions found in modern coordinated/corporatist countries are significantly different from those found in Britain, a country with liberal/pluralist industrial relations systems. The research has significance for our understanding of the role of culture in the evolution of modern political economies.

‘When most I wink, then’ – what? Assessing the comprehension of literary texts in university students of English as a second language

This article introduces a test for literary text comprehension in university students of English as a second language. Poetry is especially suited for our purpose since it frequently shows features that offer challenges to comprehension in a limited space. An example is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43, on which our test is based: it is suited for assessing not only if a text has been understood but also the ability of respondents to reflect on their own comprehension skills. We show that the test’s psychometric properties are satisfactory, and we demonstrate its validity by analysing relevant external indicators. Thus, we can show a direct link between general reading experience and text comprehension as tested: the more students read, the better do they perform. The collaboration of literary studies with psychometrics moreover allows for a statistically valid identification of specific challenges to comprehension and thus advance our knowledge of what readers find difficult. This will be of interest not only in a hermeneutic and linguistic perspective but also with a view to addressing those difficulties in an educational context. For example, asking someone whether they have understood an utterance (in this case: a line of poetry) does not elicit reliable answers. Being able to say how one has established the meaning of a line seems to be a more reliable indicator of actually having understood it.

Dangers, Delights, Development: Female Travel in The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Turkish Embassy Letters

This paper examines the portrayal of travel for women in two eighteenth-century literary texts by women writers: The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and The Turkish Embassy Letters by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. With a focus on the mental, emotional, and psychological effects of female travel that each author depicts, it analyzes both the dramatic dangers and pleasures faced by Radcliffe’s Gothic heroine and the more mild, cerebral ones experienced by the historical Montagu. Drawing on the work of Marianna D’Ezio, Adam Watkins, and Mary Jo Kietzman, it argues that both Radcliffe and Montagu ultimately endorsed the idea of travel for women through their work, portraying the pleasure, experience, and self-cultivation it afforded as outweighing its dangers. Finally, it posits that this position resisted both Enlightenment and Romantic ideas of appropriate female behaviours and desires by encouraging women readers to experience the world outside of the domestic sphere.

Rythm-forming, functional and pragmatic potential and immanence of repetitions in the modern Spanish language

This article offers the results of the investigation of repetitions in the modern Spanish language. To understand the role of the repetitions in a certain text, first of all, it’s necessary to determine whether they are immanent in the language or culture, and, therefore, unmarked, or, on the contrary, carry some charge: stylistic, rhythmic or pragmatic. Such differentiation is carried out by means of the analysis and synthesis of the theoretic material (А. Аlonso, E. А. Llorach, J. Nogeira, V. Iovenko, V. Vinogradov, etc.), contrastive and comparative analysis. The results show the redundancy of the Spanish language in comparison with Russian, which accounts for the numerous unmarked repetitions in Spanish. On the other hand, the frequent use of repetitions as stylistic, semantic or rhythmic device becomes evident too. For the analysis, we chose some official documents, characterized by the absence of stylistic devices, and some appellative and literary texts (poetry by A. Carvajal, a novel by S. Puertolas, etc.), which are apriori aimed at the form and pragmatic effect. This approach helps achieve the most objective conclusions concerning the nature of the repetitions in a text. We considered lexical and grammar repetitions, grammar, semantic and concept repetitions. Phonetic and lexical repetitions, as the basic stylistic devices, have not been subjected to analysis, as their markedness is evident. The results of the research, presented in the article, may be useful both for the people studying the Spanish language in order to speak it correctly and to understand the pragmatic function of repetition, and for translators to decide whether to follow the structure and rhythm of the text if repetitions are marked, or to omit them when they are in the original text, should they be immanent in the language and the culture.

On introducing free indirect speech in Russian translation despite the absence of corresponding structures in the English original

The article analyzes the most typical cases of introducing free indirect speech in the Russian translation where there are no corresponding structures in the English original. Typical non-free-indirectspeech structures and contexts in the source text are explored, such as may materialize as free indirect speech in the target text. The study employs qualitative methods including lexical-semantic, contextual and comparative analysis of the source text and the target text. As for the structure, this paper has been divided into two parts. First, a theoretical background for the problem is established, involving the theories by Ia. I. Retsker and D. V. Psurtsev. The paper then goes on to examine translators’ choices to generate new interference of the narrator’s text and the character’s text. The cases when free indirect speech may arise in the Russian translation are typically based on kindred forms of the character’s speech representation in the English original, long descriptions of a situation where the character acts, complex sentences with content clauses, containing the character’s thoughts and emotions. The analysis suggests that the decision to introduce free indirect speech patterns into translation can be based on the typological differences between the languages in question, or on logical and stylistic “inclinations” of a given fragment. Therefore, the decisions to introduce free indirect speech fall into two groups, obligatory and possible respectively. If such choices by Russian translators constitute a tendency, a certain correlation of syntactic patterns and contexts may be established. The results obtained in the study may be used by translators of literary texts.