Interaktivnost britanskih univerzitetskih predavanja

Univerzitetska predavanja pripadaju kategoriji govornih akademskih žanrova i imaju veoma važnu ulogu u tercijalnom obrazovanju. Predstavljaju unaprijed pripremljene govore i služe studentima kao primarni izvor informacija i sticanja znanja tokom studija. Predavanja su u određenom stepenu i neformalna jer sadrže karakteristike svakodnevne komunikacije, tako da se svaki segment predavanja ne može unaprijed isplanirati. Uzimajući ovo u obzir, u radu se iznosi pretpostavka da predavanja odlikuje određeni stepen interaktivnosti i ispituje se kakav stepen preovladava u britanskim univerzitetskim predavanjima iz lingvistike. Za potrebe rada analizira se 12 univerzitetskih predavanja iz lingvistike na engleskom jeziku ili ukupno 94,242 riječi. Transkripti predavanja preuzeti su iz Korpusa britanskog govornog akademskog engleskog jezika (British Academic Spoken English (BASE))3, Britanskog nacionalnog korpusa (British National Corpus (BNC))4 i sa Univerziteta u Redingu (University of Reading). Analiza pokazuje da najveći broj predavanja odlikuje srednji i visoki stepen interaktivnosti. Iako su tri predavanja monološkog tipa, zaključuje se da interaktivnost postepeno postaje karakteristika britanskih univerzitetskih predavanja iz lingvistike. Dobijeni rezultati mogu poslužiti kao osnova za dalje ispitivanje kategorije interaktivnosti u korpusu predavanja iz drugih naučnih disciplina, kao i za kontrastivnu analizu ove kategorije u korpusima predavanja na drugim jezicima.

Tower of Myriad Mirrors: The first BL ‘quick transmigration’ novel?

Journey to the West is adulated as one of the Four Great Classical Novels in China, which has inspired a veritable cornucopia of sequels and adaptations. Tower of Myriad Mirrors (aka A Supplement to Journey to the West) composed during late Ming (1368-1644) is one of the three most illustrious sequels in pre-modern literature, in that it is characterised by vivid imagination and creativity, Buddhist ethos and philosophical thoughts, as well as biting satire on political reversals and societal predicaments in the 17th century. More significantly, Tower of Myriad Mirrors manifests psychological insights and features enigmatic dreams, which might have inspired a subgenre dubbed as ‘Quick Transmigration’ in China’s online literature. To be more specific, Tower of Myriad Mirrors is parallel to web-based BL (Boys Love) fiction under the category of Quick Transmigration, in terms of their analogous settings, storylines and characters. In this sense, Tower of Myriad Mirrors can be regarded as a prototypical BL novel concerning ‘quick transmigration’.

La Chine de Judith Gautier : Une etude du chapitre “La Vallee du daim blanc” du Dragon imperial

Après la publication de la traduction des poèmes traditionnels chinois sous le titre Le Livre de Jade, Judith Gautier fait connaître au lecteur français son talent dans le domaine romanesque. Son premier roman Le Dragon impérial au sujet chinois est différent des œuvres précédentes grâce à son originalité dans plusieurs aspects, comme la description détaillée du paysage taoïste, ses réflexions profondes sur la philosophie taoïste. De plus, elle inclut ces réflexions dans la construction et le déploiement de l’intrigue. Cette recherche fondée sur la lecture attentive du chapitre “La Vallée du daim blanc” du Dragon impérial, vise à révéler l’originalité de sa représentation littéraire de la Chine.

Duality in novels and films about pandemics

Both literature and films have been dealing with a disease outbreak for a long time. This paper will deal with the metaphorical aspect of viruses especially in the view of today’s pandemics. First, a brief overview of such novels and films will be given starting with Daniel Defoe and his A Journal of the Plague Year and films such as Twelve Monkeys, Contagion, Outbreak. The emphasis will not be on the virus itself but on its metaphorical meaning and the duality in novels and films – e.g. between good and evil, order and chaos. The paper will mostly focus on the novels The Stand by Stephen King, and the film Twelve Monkeys. The main idea which connects them all would be a virus as a metaphor, the end of humanity, and everlasting fight between good and evil.

The use of whereas and whereas-clauses in Swift's The Drapier's Letters

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was actively involved in the political affairs of the Ireland of his life-time. Even though he belonged to the higher social classes, namely, the Anglo-Irish ruling minority, he sought to make the whole of the Irish population aware of their economic and political conditions, so that his “Countrymen” or “Fellow-Servants” (as he addressed the whole of the Irish) may pursue to improve their situation. In order to become closer to his intended audience, he decided to use several personae or fictional characters. One of these was the drapier, as the identity chosen in most of the series of seven Letters known as The Drapier’s Letters (1724). Although he adopted many colloquial expressions and the register that a shop-keeper would employ, he was fully aware of the legal implications both of the whole issue at large and also of the particular proposals that he was making. This apparent inconsistency was meant to provide the Irish with the tools which he found necessary for them in their struggle to attain better political and economic conditions. It may be hypothesized that one of the aspects illustrating Swift’s use of both colloquial language and the legal register is the connector whereas: on the one hand, as a discourse marker with its everyday meanings; on the other hand, with legal senses. The present paper seeks to explore and systematise these uses.

Evaluative aspects of print media texts

This paper revisits the concept of macrostructure, i.e. the thematic and organizational structure of texts, in this case that of the news discourse and its link with Critical Discourse analysis (CDA). Special focus is put on the Evaluation as a part of the news story macrostructure. The paper presents the author’s model of news structure in print media, based on the models of van Dijk (1988a, 1988b) and Bell (1994). The following parts of the macrostructure are identified: (1) Headline, (2) Lead, (3) Main Event(s), (4) Background of the Event, (5) Verbal Comment(s), (6) Evaluation, and (7) Results of the Event. The author also points out that pure linguistic analysis itself cannot lead to proper interpretation of news discourse. Based on these two aspects, the paper specifically focuses on Evaluation as a part of the macro structure and its linguistic exponents on the microstructure level. Evaluation includes attitudes, opinions or the evaluation of the event by the journalist or the newspaper he/she writes for. It is the Evaluation that gives sense or meaning to the text. Evaluation will be discussed in terms of its explicit presence in the text, as a distinctive unit in the schematic structure of news, but also in its implicit form, very often hidden behind other parts of macrostructure such as Headline, Lead, Main Event or Verbal Comments. The examples of Evaluation will be taken from a corpus comprising examples from three British and three Montenegrin dailies reporting on the NATO airstrikes against former Yugoslavia.

Language – audibility – marginalisation: On dying tongues and creative participation

The paper is dedicated to the problems of linguistic revitalisation and the dynamics leading to language death. Among such factors as colonial oppression and policies of state centralisation, a special attention is paid to the causes of language relinquishment and the situations in which minor languages are abandoned in favour of major ones. The author muses on the lure of larger, more attractive speech communities and the importance of language choice in building global solidarity and networks of exchange of ideas. The main question asked is how to foster the participation and visibility of creators and intellectuals representing minor ethnolinguistic communities, making the diversity of outlooks and cognitive modalities associated with minor languages available and enriching for global majorities.

Mapping the journey: A study of maturing femininity in Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women

Opposed to the anxiety of influence supposedly suffered by male writers with regard to their predecessors, Gilbert and Gubar (2000) propounded the concept of anxiety of authorship to hold true for female writers. According to this theory, women joined in a sorority with their literary foremothers in their efforts to prove their worthiness in taking up the male vocation of writing. In Alice Munro’s short story collection Lives of Girls and Women, the mother is ever-present in her daughter’s mind, and their relationship is instrumental in her maturation as a woman and a writer. In this paper, the relationship between the two women is explained in terms of some of the notions put forth in Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic, namely the angel/monster dichotomy, the anxiety of authorship, female double consciousness, infection in the sentence, and the parable of the cave. Using these concepts, it is aimed to show that although these notions were proposed as a model for 19th century woman writers, the modern-day Del is yet to come to terms with the anxiety of authorship and its accompanying problems.

Thematic selection and progression patterns in L2 theses abstracts from humanities and science

This paper discusses the internal logico-relations of the theses abstracts from humanities and science, written in English as a second language (ESL). A research abstract is an academic text designed to attract and get the readers to read the research study which it summarises; thus, the coherence of ideas presented in it presumably affects the possible evaluations from the readers. Previous studies have examined the Theme/Rheme constructs as important cohesive elements at the level of discourse, with less attention to the sentential analysis of the thematic selection and the progression patterns in second language (L2) theses abstracts. Therefore, this paper aims at investigating and comparing the thematic markedness and its progression patterns as sources of the cohesive information in L2 humanities and science theses abstracts. In this paper, 60 PhD theses abstracts from the Premier University, Nigeria, are analysed. Quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis are applied. The abstracts from humanities and sciences (30 abstracts each) were purposefully selected and syntactically analysed, in terms of the Systemic Functional Linguistics’ model of textual metafunction. The findings show that the theme unmarkedness, as well as the constant theme progression pattern, prevail in the two disciplines, although they feature varying frequencies.

Franz Kafkas "Ein Landarzt" als komplexes Deutungsbeispiel der modernen Parabel – ein gattungsgeschichtlicher Abriss

Seit der Antike gilt die Parabel als eine der beliebtesten literarischen Formen. Jedoch hat sich ihre Funktion und Wirkung durch die verschiedenen Epochen geändert. In der griechischen Antike diente sie als rhetorische Figur schlechthin. Später erscheint sie als Illustration in der religiösen Literatur. In der Aufklärung kommt es zur Wiederbelebung der Parabel. Es ist der Verdienst der Aufklärer, dass die Parabel aus dem religiösen Kontext losgelöst und zum Ziel der „Belehrung“ verwendet wurde. In der modernen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts dient sie als hermeneutische, rätselhafte Figur und hat eine erkenntniskritische Wirkungsabsicht. Diese Arbeit versucht einen Überblick über die Komplexität der Gattung zu verschaffen sowie deren geschichtliche Entwicklung und Wandlung. Weiters wird anhand von Franz Kafkas Erzählung „Ein Landarzt“ versucht, die Deutungsproblematik der modernen Parabel darzustellen. Die Frage, die diese Arbeit zu beantworten versucht, lautet: Inwiefern kann man Kafkas Erzählung „Ein Landarzt“ als „moderne Parabel“ klassifizieren? Obwohl sie keine Grundmerkmale der klassischen Parabel in sich trägt, lassen sich Züge der modernen Parabel erkennen. Der rätselhafte Charakter der Erzählung veranlasst dazu, sie als Beispiel der Komplexität der Deutung der modernen Parabel heranzuziehen.