Munda Folktales of Jharkhand

The present study aims at discourse analysis of Mundari Folktales of Jharkhand using sociocultural features. Discourse Analysis acts as an umbrella term for a rapidly growing field of research covering a wide range of different theoretical approaches and analytical emphases. It is assumed that different constructions of the world are represented in a number of ways. To understand different constructions, one needs to understand the factors that drive and shape the behavior of the people as individuals and collectively. The sociocultural discourse analysis focuses on the use of language as a social mode of thinking. The work of sociocultural theory is to explain how individual mental functioning is related to cultural, institutional, and historical context. This method will not only analyze words, sentences, expression, form and meaning but also analyze all kinds of social and cultural factors related to discourse. The intention behind the study is contribution to the repertoire of knowledge on Mundari folktales as an area which has remained unexplored over years. Despite being one of the major tribes of Jharkhand, these indigenous lives have not been a part of scholarly research yet. The tales are collected by different people and they are translated also but discourse study of the tales has not been dealt yet. Through the study of the tales one can learn their customs, culture, rituals, social activities and way of living. The emphases will be on analyzing people, their culture and society through the language used in the text.

Writing in the Twenty-First Century

Writing is one of the most important courses to take within higher education in the twenty-first century, especially when aligning education that will meet individual career goals. According to the Nation's Report Card on Writing, in 2011 alone, only about a quarter of young people can write proficiently. There is a need to institute change to developing and increasing the amount and quality of writing students are expected to produce. There is a need for greater collaboration for student learning by using innovative pedagogies that maintain the complexity and importance of pioneering work while showing that it is, in some cases, negotiable with traditional classroom practices. There are three specific examples: teaching point of view with multicultural studies, incorporating language awareness/critical theory into the composting process, and considering prescriptive suggestions in the workshop. Discussions of large-scale structural change should and will continue, but this article—which reviews how some theorists situate and enact innovation, include narratives of student resistance, and discuss practices that reframe more traditional activities—invites instructors to reflect on recent scholarship and consider larger educational goals for their classrooms.

Writing War, Wronging the Person: Representation of Human Insecurity in War Literature

This paper presents a survey of literature written in response to wars throughout the world. The paper argues that plays, poems, memoirs and novels have been written to celebrate combatants as heroes; war literature has also been written to overcome the trauma of war while other literature has been written to underscore the effects of war and to speak out against wars. The paper also discusses the rationale for studying war literature and argues that as creative expression, literature allows us, through the imagined world of the author, to identify social trends and structures that shape the world, in particular, the factors that lead to and sustain conflict, as well as experiences of war and its long term individual and general effects. Also, literature's aesthetic quality and its capacity to engage its audience makes it easier to transmit war time experience, and hopefully the wisdom gained from that experience, from one generation to another.

Developing a Voice through Literature. An Analysis of Pandemic Writing

Literature during a pandemic provides meaning to the reader by using storytelling to shape the way that we understand and experience illness, disease, and health. Narratives are an attempt to bring closure to what is meaningless. During the void that is found during a pandemic, literature is able to serve a purpose and make sense of plagues. Pandemic literature exists not only to be analyzed, but also to tell stories. It is used as a reminder that sense still exists somewhere within society. Literature gives readers an escape outside of quarantine through invented stories. It is a reclamation against what illness represents, that the world is not our own. Literature and writing are necessary in the aftermath of a pandemic. It is through literature and writing, which has the ability to teach readers about the effects of the deadly manifestations on humanity, and how they shape what it means to be human.

Observation and Reflection of English Intensive Reading Classroom from the Perspective of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

The application of Multimodal Discourse Analysis to language teaching classroom adapts to the requirements put forward by the multimodality environment in modern social life, since various multimodal teaching strategies are employed to enhance students' language skills. However, problems exist in the efficient collocation between various modes. Classroom observation is employed to collect the data, and the framework proposed by Zhang Delu (2016) is followed to conduct the Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Intensive Reading class of the juniors of English majors in North China Electric Power University. Finally, the problems from the aspects of cultural context, contextual context, interactive context, modal and media are identified, and the suggestions to improve language teaching practice are raised accordingly in terms of teachers' employment of modality and the teaching design.

Postcolonial reading of select poems of A.K.Ramanujan

The proposed paper will attempt at making a close scrutiny of A.K.Ramanujan’s poems ‘Snakes’, ‘A poem on particulars’, and ‘Small-scale reflections on a great house’, in the light of postcolonialism . Though many attempts have already been made at highlighting postcolonial and postmodern traits, in many Indian poems in English, they have not fore grounded the points of deviation, while applying these theories to Indian poems written in English. The present paper will take up the use of the English language and projection of macrocosmic self (nation) through the microcosmic self (family) for analysis and demonstrate how A.K.Ramanujan’s poems mentioned above can be seen as exemplifying them in clear-cut as well as concrete terms. Besides showing the scope for interpreting these three poems from this perspective, the proposed paper also argues that it is the interplay of binary opposites such as the colonizer and the colonized in terms of handling the form and individual self and the collective self in terms of the content that makes possible the postcolonial reading of these three poems.

Journey to Ancestry: Reclaiming of Identity and Home in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

Journeys play a vital role in the lives of African Americans insofar as their quest for home in America is concerned. These journeys substantially contribute to their understanding of the impact of slavery and racism on themselves and their ancestors without which they are not in a position to materialize their dream for a viable home and identity. ‘Memory’ and ‘re-memory help them to evoke traumas that their ancestors had undergone and compare the same with their firsthand traumas in the present. These journeys thus enable them to get matured and knowledgeable so that they can adapt themselves to the new condition. The paper is an attempt to explore in a better way Toni Morrison’s representation of pain and pleasure of such journeys in her novel Song of Solomon, which enable her black characters to reconstruct their identities and regain self-esteem so that they find themselves in a position to make home possible.

Mahakavi Devkota: a Myth-taker & a Myth-maker

Laxmi Prasad Devkota is simply hailed as the Mahakavi in Nepal that means he is the greatest poet of Nepal. He had a romantic inclination that a reader may easily notice while going through his writings. Of course, he had an immense knowledge of the romantic tradition of the West but at the same time he was a great scholar of English, Hindi, Sanskrit, and Nepali literature. Due to his vast range of knowledge, he has been able to draw numerous mythologies from various places and use them in his writings. But he is not just a taker of foreign myths because he even twisted them at many places. He was very playful of his subject matters and styles. Another interesting thing about Devkota is that his writings do not just take and break foreign myths; he also makes new myths in his own way. This is why this paper argues that Devkota is a taker, breaker, and a maker of myths.

A Lacanian Interpretation of Chopin's The Story of An Hour &Storm

Any Psychoanalytical interpretation focuses primarily on the inner workings of human mind. Freud originated psychoanalysis and Lacan reoriented it. Freud found the term ‘unconscious’ which Lacan modified and made the most essential subject of his Psychoanalytical theory. He believed that the desire is formed through the Symbolic Other and Imaginary other in the formation of Jouissance. He maintained that desire exists due to the presence of the Other. In naming it, the subject goes on attaining newer forms and shapes or roles. In fact, desire hides itself in discourse which never presents it fully or never gives it a full expression and as such there remains a leftover – a surplus of desire is invariably present in the discourse. This notion made Lacan to shape his faith and belief that desire is the desire of / for the Other. For him, desire is central to all human roles, endeavors or activities. It gives birth to almost all Lacanian concepts and as such is named in the presence of the Other. It is generally believed that Chopin’s fiction is highly pregnant with Lacanian realm of desire or symbolic and almost all her stories seem an exploration of the self, other and social assertion of individuality.

The Nickel Boys’ Elwood through the Scope of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey

This paper examines The Nickel Boys’ main character Elwood, explaining that his story is an accurate representation of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey or “monomyth.” It explains the stages of the hero’s journey and compares them to moments in Elwood’s story.