The Grotesque World in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

This article is going to explore the reasons leading the figures grotesque and the way out of such world, with the help of Bakhtin’s theory of grotesque realism, via linking the duality of physical part with the grotesque to analyze the three main characters’ physical characteristics, social relationships and mental world. Singer, Mick and Biff are the distinct characters in Carson McCullers’s novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Their lives are shot through with frustration and discouragement and the intense privacy of their inner lives gives the reader the impression that they are isolated, lonely beings. They try to build connections with others but eventually they fail. The following are the reasons: Firstly, they cannot identify themselves with the majority due to their physical problems, which further lead to their mental crisis. Secondly, they are alienated from the majority in society while they communicate with the ones who cannot end their isolation, which enforces their alienation. Finally, loneliness grips them so powerfully that they cannot come out of their grotesque dreaming world centering on the truth or idea or purpose they have created for themselves. Therefore the way out is to experience the social reality, to express ideas, share care and love with others. Through the interpretation of this novel, the point of this article is to explain the reasons and the ways out of alienation, the keyword in the grotesque world.

The Commentary of City Promotional Films Based on Transitivity Theory: A Case Study of Xi’an and San Francisco

Based on Halliday’s theory of ideational function, this paper selects the commentary of city promotional films of Xi’an and San Francisco and analyzes them from the perspective of the transitivity system. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the language skills of the two commentaries and to provide ideas and methods for the audience to understand such explanatory texts. This paper focuses on the following two questions: 1) How do the six processes of the transitivity system distribute in the two commentaries? 2) What are the specific functions of the six processes in the two commentaries? The results show that 1) there are two kinds of processes frequently used in explanatory texts, namely material process and relational process; 2) the frequency of mental, verbal and existential processes is relatively low; 3) behavioral process has no occurrence. The reason may be that although the textual structure and description focus of the two commentaries are different, they both belong to the applied style of oral explanation, so that they share the same social functions of shaping the city image, highlighting the city connotation and managing the city brand.

Zhou Zuoren’s “Human Literature” View and Christianity: An Encounter and Departure

Zhou Zuoren’s “Human Literature” view which was raised by Zhou before and after “May 4th” Movement, was influenced by Christianity and therefore had a scent of “humanitarian love”. Zhou Zuoren was then dazzled by humanitarian love, but there was still a distance between his thought and Christian thought. This article aims at a discussion about the distance in the spirit of Zhou Zuoren’s “Human Literature” view and Christian humanitarianism which is represented by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and about the reasons for Zhou’s departure from the education of the masses.

Reviewer Acknowledgements for English Language and Literature Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4

Reviewer Acknowledgements for English Language and Literature Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2021.

Insulting in English and Iraqi-Arabic: A Pragmatic Study

Crimes are committed by uttering words or expressions, writing or signifying in a public way like insulting which is one of the crimes against public welfare. This crime has been dealt with and compared legally but its linguistic aspect has not been given much attention. This study tries to emphasize this crime pragmatically and contrastively in English and Arabic. No study has shed light on such aspects concerning the study under investigation. The researcher has not found any previous related study to get a benefit from about this topic. The aim of this study is to shed light on the points of similarity and difference in strategies of insulting in terms of speech act, implicature and impoliteness theories between English and Arabic. The present study hypothesizes the following: In terms of the three theories mentioned above, English and Arabic have points of similarities in strategies of insulting. To support or refute the hypothesis of the study, data consisting of 20 complaints in English and Arabic were collected from Courts of Appeal in Iraq, Britain and the United States. They are analyzed in terms of an eclectic model. The results arrived at are: English and Arabic are different in insulting in terms of the locutionary acts and illocutionary acts. Concerning impoliteness, the same strategies are applied to insulting in both languages. As far as implicature is concerned, the two languages are different in insulting.

Personal Experience Narrative Structure in “Al-ikhlas” Hadith

Using personal experience narrative in different forms of teaching and preaching is so common that it is unsurprising that it has been the object of scholarly attention and research. The present study aims to apply Labov’s model of narrative structure to the personal experience narratives (PENs) in the sincerity hadith. Sincerity—“Alikhlas”—is defined as being deeply devoted to Allah by heart and actions. According to Islamic teachings, a sincere person not only has a deep fear of Allah, but his intentions in all actions are mainly to please Him. Drawing on Labov’s work on PEN structures (1972; initially Labov & Waletzky, 1967, 1981, 1997), the study attempts to answer two key questions: a) whether or not the Labovian model applies to the PENs in the hadith and b) how effective the model is in establishing the link between what was said (i.e., the stories told), how the narratives were structured and the Islamic concept the hadith was meant to teach. The analysis shows that though the hadith belongs to a different language with assumedly different socio-linguistic narrative practices, the Labovian model works as an effective tool of analysis as it sheds light on how the overlapping layers of the narratives were structured to define the Islamic concept of “sincerity”.

“What a Man Does Not Know Is Greater than He”: Analyzing Noos, Thymos and Akrasia in Achebe’s Arrow of God

This paper is an exposition of how Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God (1964) is engaged with philosophical concepts of thymos, noos, eros, and akrasia. The focus of this study is principally on Ezeulu’s thymos. To achieve this end, Francis Fukuyama’s notion of thymos or “desire for recognition” has been considered to provide a more tangible description of the term. This study explores that when a person’s body formation is mostly dominated by thymos, which has run out of control, the result is akrasia. Subsequently, it will be discussed that Ezeulu’s akrasia or “weakness in will” is the result of his ambivalent quest for self-worth. This article also seeks to examine the ways in which Ezeulu, the Chief Priest of Ulu, struggles to maintain his dignity to remain Umuaro’s cynosure. Ezeulu’s old age, his poor eyesight, his conflicts with his people, his insistence on revenge, and his desire for higher values provide some of the major sources of akrasia. By applying these aforementioned philosophical concepts to this novel, it is hoped that this article will contribute to a new conceptualization in terms of psychic disposition in Achebe’s Arrow of God.

A Comparative Study of Postcolonial Aspects in T. Salih’s Season of Migration to the North and C. Achebe’s No Longer at Ease

This study aims at investigating aspects of coloniality in both novels of the title. The two works expose a number of the evils of coloniality like masked colonisation, stereotyping and hybridity. The coloniser’s appointing of national agents to run the country in the coloniser’s stead, raising nonentities on the political hierarchy and sowing seeds of hatred among citizens of the same nation will be discussed under the first subtitle, masked colonisation. Under the second, stereotyping and misrepresenting Africans will be investigated. The paper will discuss ideas of language, culture and religion when dealing with hybridity, the third concept in such a trichotomy, to show how these have been affected by colonisation. The paper will respond to the following questions: how do Achebe’s No Longer at Ease and Salih’s Season of Migration to the North question the credibility of achieving independence? How (and why) did the (British) coloniser persistently stereotype African nations? How did the evil aftermaths of British colonialism reach and spoil the different aspects of the lives of the colonised nations, as shown in both?

An Analysis of Mark Twain’s Ecological Narratives

American writer Mark Twain has witnessed changes of American environment of the 19th century, which changes his sense of place. Urbanization and industrialization separate human beings from nature, leading to various conflicts. City is always regarded as the symbol of order, reason, crime and degeneration, while nature means freedom and happiness. Twain advocates the return to nature to lead a simple life. He tries to reveal the ecological crisis in the 19th century and express his ecological concepts through redefining “place”, “space” and son on.

The Fall of the House of Usher: The Collapse of Roderick’s Nostalgia Mechanism

As an attractive Gothic tale of Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher creates a mysterious and violent fall, leaving multiple interpretations on why the house of Usher collapsed suddenly. From the perspective of Roderick, the last inheritor of aristocratic Usher, the fall of Usher is more like his shaky nostalgia mechanism in front of discontinued situation. In his seemingly stable nostalgia mechanism, Mansion Usher, the narrator and Lady Madeline play core roles in meeting the needs of avoidance, attachment and idealization to construct a seemingly stable nostalgia mechanism. With the weird fall of Usher, Poe probes into the irrational nature of human, permeating his attention to warn the significance of balancing comfortable dream and reality.