The Malthusian Alternative and Overpopulation in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame

This article examines the depiction of the environmental problem of overpopulation in the two Marvel films Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame through the analysis of the character Thanos and his Malthusian theory and his cornucopian thinking counterpart, The Avengers. The article investigates how these two theories affect and form the subject of overpopulation in the two films and what signal the films send in relation to environmental alternatives. It suggests that the films hinder the contemplation of all environmental alternatives through their depiction of the Malthusian alternative as a villainous and unwarranted ideology.

Old English Syntax and Its Relation to German

At first glance, the syntax of ancient Old English appears reminiscent of the syntax of the Present-Day German language. A number of shared syntactic traits such as Subject Object Verb constituent order, Verb Second, and a complicated inflectional system have caused the two languages to be compared by scholars, who often have referred to German as simply a present-day version of the now far-gone Old English. Exploring both similarities and dissimilarities of the two languages, this article examines the relationship between the two languages’ syntax to show that although structurally similar once, modern-day English has lost most of the syntactic traits linking it to the German language and their common Proto-Germanic roots. These syntactical differences not only show that Old English was never just a modern-day variant of German but also show that the two languages are developing in separate directions – or at least in separate paces.

When Podcast Met True Crime

This MA thesis examines the connection between the rise of the podcasting medium and the rise of the true crime genre. The ways in which true crime and podcasting have influenced each other reflect the dynamic relationship between media, genre, technology, and audience behavior, which is ultimately useful in better understanding contemporary American popular culture. The true crime genre helped popularize the podcasting medium, and today, true crime podcasts hold a significant place within popular culture. Together, they went from niche to mainstream, and we might refer to this process as genre-medium coevolution. Throughout this thesis, it will become evident that neither genre nor medium is static, and whereas the two might have benefitted from each other at an early stage of development, they might not continue to.

From Independent Publishers to Literary Festivals

This article examines the complex nature of cultural policy, economy and labour and their importance to the creative industries. Through an exploration of the publishing industry and the rising popularity of literary festivals and events, the article considers the challenges and the future of modern publishing and the role of funding and local policy in creating a diverse and inclusive literary identity. Furthermore, the article considers the role of publishers and literary festivals in facilitating and enabling this by creating sites for cultural and literary engagement in the face of a constantly changing industry dominated by algorithms, ebooks and new forms of production and distribution. The article therefore takes a closer look at the potential for literary festivals to fit into a modern publishing culture and the literary field as a whole, and uses local literary festival LiteratureXchange as an example of the potential of these events.

The Zoopoetics of Les Murray

Today, the Western world is extensively centred around human language and the natural sciences. The transformative powers of poetry, such as they can bring forth the presence of nonhuman animals, have thus been marginalized in several respects. This article investigates how the animal poems of Presence, a poetic sequence in the poetry collection Translations from the Natural World by the Australian poet Les Murray, re-sensitizes the reader to the expressive bodies of nonhuman animals and establishes the notion of a more-than-human world. By introducing Aaron M. Moe’s concept of zoopoetics, a theory and practice that links the nonhuman animal as a maker, subject and individual to the art of writing and reading poetry, Murray’s animal poems can be understood as deeply attentive texts that use human language to explore how nonhuman bodies and minds exist outside of anthropocentric binaries, and shape not only our physical realities, but also our imagination.

Post-Intensifying

Language is a “moving target”; the meaning and use of elements of a language can change so that former understandings and explanations become insufficient. The contemporary, American English colloquial use of the ass-intensifier, such as in “a grown-ass man”, is an example of that. This article is an examination of the ass-intensifier and a comparison with its Danish counterpart røv, exploring the similarities and dissimilarities. It will be argued that the English intensifier is post-intensifying and has two distinct meanings; furthermore, that intensification by a grammaticalized version of a lexical item for posterior is not exclusively an English phenomenon, showing a cross-linguistic link.

What Do You Meme?

Users of the Internet have established a unique form of communication tool commonly used on social media platforms; these are referred to as Internet memes. The term meme, however, was conceived many years before its appropriation into an Internet sphere. Where memes are units of cultural information propagated like a virus from brain to brain, Internet memes are dynamic digital artifacts that can easily be created and quickly distributed to a large social group with the intention of communication. Internet memes are not static; rather their format inspires social interactions that allow them to be modified and reworked with an infinite amount of communicative outcomes. This paper offers an exploration of the different features of Internet memes, which are identified as creational/distributional, social, as well as communicative. When combined, these features in relation to each other constitute a sociolinguistic potential.

The Ambiguous Portrayal of Nature in Annihilation

This article examines how Alex Garland’s science fiction horror film Annihilation (2018) works as a form of eco-media, and how it has potential to influence its audience in a positive direction. I argue that the portrayal of nature in the film, from the different horror genres at play, to the themes of disease, destruction and renewal, and the stunning but eerie visuals, challenge the conceptions we have of the environment and climate change, and invites the audience to rethink the relationship between nature and humans.

Linguistic Profiling and Discrimination in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

This article examines the linguistic profiling in the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with an interest in its possible useful appliance for a large gaming community with little knowledge of a fantasy world such as The Witcher’s. I work with the phenomenon of linguistic profiling as proposed by John Baugh, which will be used in conjunction with the dialects and accents used in The Witcher 3. Besides this, I use an interview of the translation and adaptation team from the game developers (CD Projekt Red) to showcase what considerations they made when choosing and distributing accents and dialects in the English version of the game. This paper concludes with detailing the problematic uses of accents and dialects in the game, while also highlighting the benefits to new players when orienting them in the Witcher world, which is the overall advantageous result from the accent distribution in the game.

The Beef Between Men and Animals

Fast-food companies often rely on images objectifying women in their advertising as a way to sell their products. Following Carol J. Adams’ work on absent referents, this article argues that they rely on ideas and images objectifying animals as well. However, the use of these ideas and images is problematic because the normalization of the objectification of non-human animals and women in fast-food advertising can have consequences for both as it perpetuates animal exploitation and gender inequality. This article analyzes three examples of fast-food advertising from Arby’s, Carl’s Jr., and Burger King which arguably contribute to the normalization of the objectification of animals and women through their perpetuation of the problematic notion that eating animals is both natural and masculine. The analysis illustrates links between women and non-human animals in advertising and supports the linked oppression theory.