Individual Responsibility for the Common Cause? Everyday Preservationism in the Interwar Russian Émigré Newsmagazine Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya

This article considers the approach of the popular Russian émigré newsmagazine Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya [Illustrated Russia] to so-called preservationism — simply put, the tendency to preserve prerevolutionary Russian culture in exile. More specifically, this article studies preservationism in the everyday life of the Russian interwar diaspora. Due to its long run, broad scope, and large readership, the magazine is a unique and invaluable document, offering significant insight into the social and cultural life of Russian émigrés. In order to gain an understanding of preservationism in Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya, a close reading of the periodical will be conducted, centred around questions such as whether the magazine covered any aspects of prerevolutionary Russian culture at all, and, if so, which and how? Focusing on three key elements of Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya’s editorial content, this article demonstrates that preservationism in popular and everyday culture as presented in this periodical differs markedly from its high-culture counterpart (such as highbrow literature and visual arts, for example). What stands out in Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya’s approach is that prerevolutionary Russian life and culture are rarely covered and, more importantly, never truly glorified. Instead, coverage of the Russian émigré community itself makes up a central part of the magazine’s content. When it comes to preserving Russian culture and identity, Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya pleads for finding a middle ground between preserving the home culture and adapting to the host culture. In doing so, the magazine frequently stresses readers’ individual responsibility to seek connection with their Russian identity instead of relying on leading émigré figures and institutions.

Trust and Distrust

The book offers the first overview of Britain’s history of corruption in office in the pre-modern era, 1600–1850. As such, it is intended to appeal to historians but also to political and social scientists, whose work is extensively cited in an expansive and evaluative bibliography. Another distinctive feature of the book is the interaction of the domestic and imperial stories of corruption in office—a key argument is that these were intertwined and related. Linking corruption in office to the domestic and imperial state has not been attempted before, and the book makes extensive use of material relating to the East India Company as well as other colonial officials in the Atlantic world and elsewhere in Britain’s emerging empire. Both ‘corruption’ and ‘office’ were evolving concepts during the period 1600–1850 and underwent very significant but protracted change which the book charts and seeks to explain. To do so, the book makes innovative use of the concept of trust, which helped to shape office in ways that underlined principles of selflessness, disinterestedness, integrity, and accountability of officials. The reader’s report suggested that ‘no historian of this long period can afford to ignore the book, and it will certainly appeal to a large readership not only among historians of Britain and its empire but among political scientists more generally’. There is a brief concluding section highlighting policy implications.

LEXICAL BORROWING IN MALAYSIAN ONLINE NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH

Lexical borrowing is words that have been transferred from the native language and integrated into a different language (Hamdi, 2017). Studies on newspaper editorials have drawn a large readership, yet it is not been given enough coverage in terms of borrowed words used by the editors in English language newspapers. This paper examined the types and frequencies of lexical borrowing. This paper used both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Haugen's (as cited in Annab, 2019) pioneering work of lexical borrowing was used in this research. Three forms of lexical borrowing, namely loanwords, compound blends, and loan transitions/claque were found. In this paper, four months of editorials from The Star Online were transferred into a text files by using Microsoft Word and imported into WordSmith Tool version 6 (henceforth WST 6) to generate the data. Results reflect that the highest frequency of lexical features identified was loanwords (84%), followed by compound blends (9%), and loan transitions (7.5%). The top three highest borrowed words used by editors were the words Pakatan, Datuk, and Barisan. Conclusively, as large amounts of borrowed words exist in English editorials, this phenomenon should be eliminated. This is because one of the ways to elevate Malaysian English (henceforth ME) to meet and sustain with the International level is to uphold the quality of the English language in newspapers. Besides, relevant stakeholders should work together to increase the quality of editorials as newspapers are part of authentic materials used in education.

Shaping a Weekly ‘For Everyone’: Italian Rotocalchi Entre-Deux-Guerres

In the years between the two World Wars, Italian publishing houses Rizzoli, Mondadori, and Vitagliano worked on the model of a specific ‘popular’ weekly. They built up a combination of periodicals constituting a complete and integrated offer, experimenting marketing strategies — such as frequency, distribution, price, and advertising message — and editorial formulae capable of attracting a large readership. This article analyzes these strategies and formulae in weeklies, so-called rotocalchi, such as Il Secolo Illustrato, Novella, Lei (by Rizzoli), Le Grandi Firme, Grazia (by Mondadori) and Excelsior (by Vitagliano). As the analysis shows, their publishers and editors focused on a product based on both a precise interpretation of the concept of ‘popularity’ and an interpretation of the expression ‘popular culture’ that was different from that of the past, when ‘popular’ cultural products were such because they were destined for the uneducated and less well to-do classes. Rizzoli, Mondadori, and Vitagliano abandoned this static view and the hierarchy of cultural systems and adopted a different, more modern, more flexible, and more dynamic approach. In their case, rather than being associated with a distinct sector of the audience, the popular cultural product looked towards an undifferentiated group of readers: it was ‘for everyone’. In this meaning, ‘popular’ no longer had a qualitative significance — ‘for the people’ — but a quantitative one: ‘as widespread as possible’. By the same token, they did not limit themselves to pleasing an audience that already existed, but tended to ‘build’ their own, winning over those who were not yet part of it.

Post-war fashion tips in the popular fashion press in Poland: A source of psychological support in the 'struggle for femininity'

Social conditions in Poland were harsh at the conclusion of World War II. Surprisingly, interest in fashion revived quickly after the war, giving rise in 1945 to a hugely popular fashion press, avidly read by Polish women. The independent magazine Fashion and Practical Life (Moda i Życie Praktyczne), launched in December 1945, was the first of its kind in Poland after the war, and quickly gained a large readership of urban and rural women (and significant numbers of men). It centred on fashion tips ‐ from practical advice on how to remodel existing material into new clothing to more aspirational ideas, crossing over from the necessities of dress or clothing into the more imaginary realm of 'fashion'.Unlike readers of the fashion press before the war, the readership of this magazine was not leisured or highly literate, but largely 'ordinary' women trying to deal with the realities of their circumstances and to find relief from them. Letters from readers were the centre of the magazine in its early years. They shared their experiences and solutions. This article explores the phenomenon of a genre of publishing for women in Poland through analysis of Fashion and Practical Life from its inception into the early 1950s. It examines the contexts in which it operated and its role in the representation and self-identity of Polish women within this time of transition. The article identifies two key typologies for fashion tips: 'poor fashion' (how to make available materials into liveable garments) and 'imaginary fashion' (the aspirations that Polish women had but could not attain at that time). It also shows that apparently emancipatory trends for women were short-lived. By the early 1950s the narrative of the fashion press reinscribed Polish women back in the home, as housewives.

Dementia and detectives: Alzheimer’s disease in crime fiction

Fictional representations of dementia have burgeoned in recent years, and scholars have amply explored their double-edged capacity to promote tragic perspectives or normalising images of ‘living well’ with the condition. Yet to date, there has been only sparse consideration of the treatment afforded dementia within the genre of crime fiction. Focusing on two novels, Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing and Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind, this article considers what it means in relation to the ethics of representation that these authors choose to cast as their amateur detective narrators women who have dementia. Analysing how their narrative portrayals frame the experience of living with dementia, it becomes apparent that features of the crime genre inflect the meanings conveyed. While aspects of the novels may reinforce problem-based discourses around dementia, in other respects they may spur meaningful reflection about it among the large readership of this genre.

Faculty awareness, use and attitudes towards scholarly open access: A Pakistani perspective

Open access is a new scholarly publishing model that aims to provide free access to scholarly information to all members of society. This study analyzes the awareness, use and attitudes of Pakistani faculty members towards scholarly open access. A structured questionnaire was designed to collect data from the respondents by using an online survey tool, Google Forms. The population of the study was the faculty members of 21 universities and higher education institutions located in Islamabad. A sample of 3000 faculty members were invited, through email, to participate in the study; of which 616 completed the survey, with a response ratio of 20.53%. Descriptive statistics and (SPSS) version 21.0 were used for data analysis. The findings of the study reveal that, although majority of the Pakistani faculty members (71.5%) were aware of the scholarly open access before this survey, their awareness level about open access-related resources and initiatives was very low. The Pakistani faculty members used open access venues more frequently to access scholarly contents rather than to publish their own research works. A lack of awareness to publish in open access venues, and publication fees of open access journals were the key challenges faced by the Pakistani faculty members. The attitudes of faculty members towards open access were very positive in all contexts. Large readership, impact factor, free access to readers and no publication fee were the key motivational factors for the faculty members to publish in open access journals.

Romance Languages in Sub-Saharan Africa and Postcolonial Literary Discourse

The book deals with the study of functioning of Romance languages in sub-Saharan Africa, namely in the francophone and lusophone countries as well as Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea. It offers a detailed description of the sociolinguistic profile of this area, studies the state of the relationship between the Romance and local languages from a historic and modern perspective, analyzes the language politics in these African countries in the postcolonial period. A special emphasis is made on the issue of identity in the African states on the background of the process of decentrement of the geocultural spaces, the key mechanisms thereof being miscegenation and creolization. The literary discourse is regarded as the area of manifestation of the new postcolonial cultural matrix. It involves diverse speech and discursive strategies – those of indigenization and rhetoric modus. The monograph is based on the new illustrative material, that has not been subjected to a detailed research. The book may be used for teaching different disciplines such as linguistics, literary studies, ethnology, sociology, theory of communication, ethnolinguistics. It may be of interest to a large readership.

“Prospector and Jeweler”: Ayn Rand on the Relationship between Politics and Literature

The novels by Russian immigrant writer Ayn Rand (1905–82) still attract a large readership, not least thanks to a recent renaissance of libertarian ideas in the US. Was it Rand's intention, when writing her novels, to construct political tracts, as many insinuate, or was she indeed trying to imitate her literary idols, as she herself claimed? The answer is complicated due to Rand's own contradictory statements on fiction's impact. Although Rand suggested that it was the reader who gave text meaning, she also believed her books to have an unambiguous message that should have a distinct effect on the reader.

Gender Stereotypes in Media Business Discourse: Variations in Identities, Contexts and Cultures

This paper is meant to discuss two diverse but mutually entailed goals, underpinning the analysis of media business discourse. On the one hand, it promotes a critical understanding of how gender marks discourse and encodes power in business discursive communities, thus playing a key role in “shaping the expectations about people’s behaviours” (Koller 2004: 178). On the other, it promotes an interdisciplinary approach so as to disambiguate the discursive and argumentative strategies in the construction of media content by focusing on the symbolic organization and interaction between citizens and the discursive communities, in terms of male/female representations, given the way they throw global challenges and/or replicate stereotypes and particular ways of perceiving (Carter 1994: 5) the business discourse in terms of enunciation. The contrastive analysis of a corpus of magazine texts, covering news in April and May 2011, with a large readership in the global scenario, in Portuguese and in English (Sábado, Visão, Time and Newsweek), uncovers the power imbalance created when media texts pass on stereotypical patterns of behaviour in business and everyday discursive communities.