Дисертації з теми "English language – Prepositions – Fiction"
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1
Blom, Liane. "Swedish problems with English prepositions." Thesis, Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-779.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
English prepositions cause problems for learners of English. The way prepositions are taught has impact on how students learn. Using corpora in teaching makes it possible for teachers and pupils to explore language together and is a good alternative to filling in missing prepositions on worksheets. Sometimes linguistic errors are caused by mother tongue interference. Little research has been made earlier with a Swedish contrastive approach to prepositions but a great deal of literature concern language transfer and mother tongue interference. This essay is written on the assumption that Swedish as a first language interferes with English and causes prepositional mistakes.
Two classes of ninth graders participated in my investigation. I wanted to find out if students performed better when they had given answers to choose from or when they had to produce the preposition themselves. My study proved that pupils had a better knowledge of prepositions perceptively than productively. It also proved that learners resorted to Swedish when they did not know the correct answer. Many learners fail to recognise prepositions as parts of multiword expressions. By teaching students how to notice grammatical collocations and lexical chunks we can help them to achieve acceptable levels of language proficiency and accuracy.
2
Jansson, Hanna. "Native Swedish Speakers’ Problems with English Prepositions." Thesis, Örebro University, Department of Humanities, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-958.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This essay investigates native Swedish speakers’ problems in the area of prepositions. A total of 19 compositions, including 678 prepositions, written by native Swedish senior high school students were analysed. All the prepositions in the material were judged as either basic, systematic or idiomatic. Then all the errors of substitution, addition and omission were counted and corrected. As hypothesised, least errors were found in the category of basic prepositions and most errors were found in the category of idiomatic prepositions. However, the small difference between the two categories of systematic and idiomatic prepositions suggests that the learners have greater problems with systematic prepositions than what was first thought to be the case. Basic prepositions cause little or no problems. Systematic prepositions, i.e. those that are rule governed or whose usage is somehow generalisable, seem to be quite problematic to native Swedish speakers. Idiomatic prepositions seem to be learnt as ‘chunks’, and the learners are either aware of the whole constructions or do not use them at all. They also cause some problems for Swedish speakers. Since prepositions are often perceived as rather arbitrary without rules to sufficiently describe them, these conclusions might not be surprising to teachers, students and language learners. The greatest error cause was found to be interference from Swedish, and a few errors could be explained as intralingual errors. It seems as if the learners’ knowledge of their mother tongue strongly influences the acquisition of English prepositions.
3
Davy, Belinda. "A cognitive-semantic approach to the acquisition of English prepositions /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9998029.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-296). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9998029.
4
Nicholas, Katrina Elizabeth. "Children's Omission of Prepositions in English and Icelandic." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/145453.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
The purpose of this dissertation is to empirically test the hypothesis that children's omission of functional elements reflects performance factors (McKee, 1994; McKee & Iwasaki, 2001), rather than lack of knowledge (Felix, 1987; Radford, 1990, 1995; Tomasello, 2000). The multi-level production system treats content and function morphemes differently (Garrett, 1982). Further, a function morpheme's free or bound status and the independence of the content stem affect the likelihood that a function morpheme will be omitted. Four experiments each employed production and comprehension tasks testing English- and Icelandic-speaking children's and adults' production and comprehension of different prepositional phrases. The English experiments tested prepositional phrases with content prepositions and content/function preposition combinations. The Icelandic experiments tested prepositional phrases with prepositions and their associated case markings. Function prepositions in English and case markings in Icelandic both convey information about case, with the former being a free function morpheme, and the latter a bound function morpheme. Both English- and Icelandic-speaking children showed comprehension of prepositions that they do not produce. Further, Icelandic-speaking children produced case markings but English-speaking children did not produce function prepositions. These findings support a performance-based hypothesis with omission attributable to coordination issues among elements in the multi-level production system. These findings also show the importance of cross-modality and cross-linguistic research in studying the competence of children before, during, and after the telegraphic speech stage.
5
Thibeau, Tully Jude. "English prepositions in phrasal verbs: A study in second language acquisition." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/284018.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This study examines whether grammar instruction treatment, input processing, facilitates in learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) a distinction among sets of phrasal verbs containing prepositions. Input processing emphasizes difficult grammatical forms and provides a model for the behavior of the varying roles of phrasal verb prepositions. Such instruction follows three steps: (i) explaining the relation between a grammatical form and its meaning, (ii) informing learners of language processes that adversely influence the form-meaning relation, and (iii) implementing "structured input" activities that target the form in linguistic input, facilitating form-meaning relations. Prepositions in phrasal verbs perform specific roles for exclusive purposes, for instance in verb-particle constructions eat up, clean out, send on where prepositions mark aspectual properties for "completion-of-activity" (telicity) as well as "affectedness" of phrasal verb objects. ESL students were selected for the control and treatment groups. Each group participated in a pretest and posttest. Each test included three tasks: one comprehension (yes/no multiple choice) and two production (sentence completion and written narration). Time (pretest/posttest) and instruction (informal IP/formal explanation) were independent variables. Scores were the dependent variable. Preposition use is difficult for ESL learners, yet no generalizations explain learning difficulty nor has instruction addressed this difficulty. Input Processing furnishes needed instruction and is consonant with current linguistic theory (Minimalism): Word-order phenomena obey "frame alternations" that shift meaning by varying syntactic configuration (movement to alternate sites in phrase structure). Language acquisition centers on mapping functions linking semantics with syntax; thus, pedagogical practice and linguistic theory are united. Structured input activities are likened to natural input that children are exposed to when they acquire language. Acquisition processes link meaningful items in a mental lexicon to grammatical patterns constructed by a mental computer. Second language learners create links between meaning and form because they make decisions about meaning in input structured to highlight the form in which meaning is conveyed. Statistical analyses show treatment effect for input processing instruction on the comprehension task, so subjects' ability is improved through attention to mapping. Production task data were inconclusive yet revealed significance of frequency of prepositions' functions.
6
Lindahl, Leonard. "Problematic Prepositions for Swedish Students of English." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-35086.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This study investigates prepositional errors that Swedish 16-year-old students of English produce. The study attempts to understand why English L2 students in Sweden struggle with prepositions by looking at research within the SLA field regarding transfer, interlanguage transfer, implicit and explicit learning. The only extra-linguistic variable included in the study is the variable of gender. The method used to investigate students’ prepositional errors was to hand out a two-part test on prepositions to the students in one Grade 9 class in Sweden. The data was then analyzed and categorized to identify in what construction (PP as adjectival complements, PP as verb complements or PP as adverbials) Swedish students of English produce the most errors. The first part of the test was a fill-in-the-blanks test investigating the students’ productive knowledge. The second part of the test was a grammatical judgement test (GJT) assessing the students’ receptive knowledge. The test was divided into two different parts not to favor one particular test form. The test included a total of 22 students from one class, including 12 male and 10 female students. 8 out of the 22 students answered that they had another L1 than Swedish. A majority of these have lived in Sweden their whole lives, and only two answered that they arrived later in life. In contrast with earlier research and statistics, which show that female students perform academically better than male students, the test showed a clear advantage by the male students in the class. The male students performed better on both parts of the test. The most problematic PP construction for both genders was PP functioning as adjectives. The most common prepositional error that the students performed in the test was negative transfer from Swedish to English.
7
Rahman, Zuheir A. Abdul. "An analytic study of errors made by Iraqi students in using English prepositions of place relation." Thesis, Connect to e-thesis, 1990. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1010/.
Повний текст джерела
8
Pocock, Simon James. "Prepositions, syntax and the acquisition of English as a foreign language." Thesis, University of London, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.243437.
Повний текст джерела
9
Jaworska, Ewa. "Aspects of the syntax of prepositions and prepositional phrases in English and Polish." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f5aaca25-2abc-412c-aa1e-a97f743d885b.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
The present thesis focusses on the structure of PP's in English and Polish, and the occurrence of PP's in subject and object positions. The main theoretical references are the X-bar Theory of syntactic categories and the Government Binding framework (GB). A consideration of English data corroborates Jackendoff's and Emonds' claim that apart from an NP, prepositions can take a PP and an S′ complement or no complement at all, though details of Jackendoff's analysis are revised. Polish prepositions allow the same range of complements, including no complement, although,with a greater variety of complex prepositions and with intransitive prepositions modified by relative and appositive clauses, the P-PP and the P-S′ structures are less common in Polish than in English. Subject and object PP's have so far received little attention. Like PP objects of prepositions, they are used if the intended meaning cannot be expressed by a suitable NP. The appearance of subject PP's in raising and passive sentences poses a problem for classical Transformational Grammar, though not for a slightly revised version of GB – another category-based framework. The analysis proposed here involves a particular view of the representation of Case, and a revised Case Filter. The Case Filter rules out not merely any lexical NP with no Case but any lexical XP which requires Case but has not been assigned Case. Thus, the properties of being an NP and requiring Case are independent of each other. It emerges from the investigation (i) that prepositions in English and Polish are more alike than one might expect, given the obvious differences between the two languages; (ii) that prepositions and PP's are like verbs and VP's – as Jackendoff emphasizes – but in some respects they show greater resemblance to other categories; and (iii) that syntactic categories are less important for the distribution of phrases than is commonly assumed, and that the meaning of phrases is of central importance for their distribution.
10
Knox-Shaw, Peter. "The explorer in English fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22436.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Although there have been a number of critical works on the novel given over to topics such as adventure, colonization or the politics of the frontier, a comparative study of novels in which an encounter with unknown territory holds central importance has till now been lacking. My aim in this thesis is to analyse and relate a variety of texts which show representatives of a home culture in confrontation with terra incognita or unfamiliar peoples. There is, as it turns out, a strong family resemblance between the novels that fall into this category whether they belong, like Robinson Crusoe, Coral Island or Lord of the Flies, to the "desert island" tradition where castaways have exploration thrust upon them or present, as in the case of Moby Dick, The Lost World or Voss, ventures deliberately undertaken. There are frequent indications, too, that many of the novelists in question are aware of working within a particular, subsidiary genre. This means, in sum, even when it comes to texts as culturally remote as, say, Captain Singleton and Heart of Darkness that there is firm ground for comparison. The emphasis of this study is, in consequence, historical as well as critical. In order to show that many conventions which are recurrent in the fiction inhere in the actual business of coming to grips with the unknown, I begin with a theoretical introduction illustrated chiefly from the writings of explorers. Travelogues reveal how large a part projection plays in every rendering of unvisited places. So much is imported that one might hypothesize, for the sake of a model, a single locality returning a stream of widely divergent images over the lapse of years. In effect it is possible to demonstrate a shift of cultural assumptions by juxtaposing, for example, a passage that tricks out a primeval forest in all the iconography of Eden with one written three centuries later in which - from essentially the same scene - the author paints a picture of Malthusian struggle and survival of the fittest. And since the explorer is not only inclined to embody his image of the natural man in the people he meets beyond the frontiers of his own culture, but is likely also to read his own emancipation from the constraints of polity in terms of a return to an underlying nature, the concern with genesis is one that recurs with particular persistence in texts dealing with exploration. With varying degrees of awareness novelists have responded, ever since Defoe, to the idea that the encounter with the unfamiliar mirrors the identity of the explorer. Their presentations of terra incognita register the crucial phases of social history - the institution of mercantilism, the rise and fall of empire - but generally in relation to psychological and metaphysical questions of a perennial kind. The nature of man is a theme that proves, indeed, remarkably tenacious in these works, for a reason Lawrence notes in Kangaroo: "There is always something outside our universe. And it is always at the doors of the innermost, sentient soul".
11
Cabuk, Sakine. "The Use Of Emglish Prepositions In Second Language Acquisition Process." Master's thesis, METU, 2009. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12611383/index.pdf.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
THE USE OF PREPOSITIONS IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION PROCESS
This thesis investigates the use of three most frequent prepositions by Turkish learners of English at intermediate level of proficiency. The aim of the present study is to find out which differences between prepositions and their corresponding postpositions or case suffixes constitute difficulty on the part of second language learners. This study also examines the possible reasons of the errors/ mistakes pertaining to &lsquoin&rsquo
, &lsquo
on&rsquo
, &lsquo
at&rsquo
by native speakers of Turkish with intermediate level of proficiency in English. To fulfill the purpose of the study the participants of the study were recorded in natural classroom environment and the recorded data were transcribed. The compiled corpus was examined by two native speakers of English and the researcher. The data was classified under four main categories for each preposition inquired: (i) correct usage, (ii) misuse (i.e., instead of &lsquo
on&rsquo
, for instance, students use &lsquo
in&rsquo
or &lsquo
at&rsquo
e.g., in television ), (iii) overuse (i.e., no preposition is required in the context but the students use one, e.g., I am going at home now), (iv) omission (i.e., a preposition is needed but the students do not use one, e.g., We go holiday). At the end of these analyses, the problematic contexts related to the use of the prepositions &lsquo
in&rsquo
, &lsquo
on&rsquo
, &lsquo
at&rsquo
for TIME and PLACE were identified. For detailed analysis of each category two tools - the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPPS) and the Computerized Language Analysis Child Language Data Exchange System (CLAN CHILDES) were used. Results indicate that Turkish learners of English produce erroneous forms of prepositions in second language acquisition process and the underlying reasons of these errors/mistakes is the interference of native language.
12
Al-Alami, Suhair. "Utilising fiction to promote English language acquisition." Thesis, Aston University, 2012. http://publications.aston.ac.uk/18726/.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Towards the end of the university stage, students residing in the United Arab Emirates and specialising in subjects other than English are expected- amongst other university requirements- to have acquired adequate communicative competence as well as a repertoire of critical thinking skills. Despite the efforts made within the field of teaching English to EFL university students in the country, the output gained in terms of acquired skills and competencies is still below expectations. The main concerns of the current thesis are, therefore, a) to investigate the factors which inhibit EFL university students’ progress in the areas of acquiring adequate communicative competence as well as critical thinking skills, and b) to propose a course book and pedagogic methods to improve students’ progress in the areas of acquiring adequate communicative competence as well as critical thinking skills. Believing in the essential role literature plays in enhancing critical thinking and promoting communicative competence on the part of EFL learners, the current study introduces a course, designed and implemented by the researcher: LEARN AND GAIN. The proposed course is fiction-based language teaching, adopting the view that literature is a resource rather than an object, thus advocating the use of literature as one of the main resources in foreign/second language acquisition. Investigating whether or not the proposed course was effective in promoting EFL university students’ communicative competence as well as enhancing their critical thinking skills, a study sample taken from the study population was selected. Adopting an experimental design, the research project involved two groups: experimental and control. The experimental group students were exposed to the proposed course whilst the control group students were exposed to a general English language course. To examine treatment effectiveness, the researcher set and administered a pre-post test. Divided into two main parts, communicative critical reading competence and communicative critical writing competence, the pre-post test measured subjects’ communicative critical reading competence and subjects’ communicative critical writing competence. In addition, a pre-post questionnaire was administered and a semi-structured interview was conducted involving the experimental group students, to gain an awareness of students’ attitudes towards learning literary texts in general, and the proposed course in particular. To examine issues of interest and relevance, gender differences: male vs. female, and university major: science vs. non-science, were also examined for enrichment purposes. For the purpose of gathering sufficient data about subjects’ achievements on the pre-post, the following statistical tests were conducted: Mann-Whitney test, and paired data t-test. Based on the statistical findings, the experimental group students’ performance on the communicative critical reading competence pre-post test and the communicative critical writing competence pre-post test was significantly better than their counterparts of the control group students. Speaking of gender differences in relation to language performance on the communicative critical reading competence pre-post test and the communicative critical writing competence pre-post test, no significant differences were cited. Neither did the researcher cite any significant performance differences between science/non-science students on the communicative critical reading competence pre-post test and the communicative critical writing competence pre-post test. As far as the questionnaire’s findings are concerned, the experimental group students’ responses to the post-questionnaire’s items were more positive than those of their responses to the pre-questionnaire’s, thus indicating some positive attitudes towards literature, which students possibly gained throughout the course of implementation. Relating the discussion to the interview’s results, students conveyed their satisfaction with the proposed course, emphasising that promoting English language skills through the use of literary texts was rewarding. In the light of findings and conclusions, a number of recommendations as well as implications have been proposed. The current study aimed to arrive at some appropriate suggestions to a number of enquiries, yet concluding with some areas of enquiry to be explored for further research.
13
Ursini, Francesco-Alessio. "The Language Of Space : The Acquisition And Interpretation of Spatial Adpositions In English." Doctoral thesis, Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-85019.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This thesis by publication presents a study on English adpositions (e.g. to, in, at, from, in frontof, through). It attempts to offer a solution to the following three outstanding problems, whichare presented in each of the three parts making up the thesis, preceded by a general introduction(chapter 1) and followed by the general conclusions (chapter 7). The first part includes chapter2, and discusses the problem of What is the relation between adpositions and the non-linguistic,visual content they represent. The second part includes chapters 3 and 4, and discusses theproblem ofwhat is a proper compositional theory of the Syntax and Semantics of adpositions.The third part includes chapters 5 and 6, and discusses the problem of what is the psychologicalreality of this theory, regarding adults and children’s data.The following three solutions are suggested. First, the relation between adpositions and theircorresponding visual information is an isomorphism: adpositions capture how we “see” possiblespatio-temporal relations between objects, at a flexible level of fine-grainedness. Second, aproper compositional treatment of adpositions treats each syntactic unit (in front, of ) as offeringa distinct semantic contribution, hence spelling out a restricted instance of a spatio-temporalpart-of relation. Third, this compositional treatment of adpositions can also stand as a theory ofon-line interpretation in adults and a theory of their acquisition in children.These three answers are couched within a single theoretical approach, that of Discourse Representation Theory, and offer a unified solution to three apparently distinct problems regardingspatial adpositions and their linguistic properties.
14
Stephenson, Tamina C. "Towards a theory of subjective meaning." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41695.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-212).
This dissertation develops a form of relativism in which propositions are treated as sets of world-time-individual triples, in contrast to standard views that treat them as sets of worlds or world-time pairs. This builds on existing proposals for predicates of personal taste such as fun and tasty, and has ties to approaches to de se attitudes involving centered worlds. I develop an accompanying pragmatic view in which the context set is similarly construed as a set of world-time-individual triples. The semantic and pragmatic systems together are used to account for the behavior of predicates of personal taste, epistemic modals, indicative conditionals, and a variety of attitude reports, including control constructions. I also explore ways that this account can help solve puzzles related to Moore's paradox. To give one concrete example, I propose that the proposition expressed by the sentence it might be raining is the set of world-time-individual triples
(cont.) In Chapter 3, I extend the analysis to indicative conditionals, showing that this solves longstanding puzzles involving the relationship between conditionals and disjunction. In Chapter 4, I extend the approach to certain control constructions, with a special emphasis on capturing their de se interpretation. In Chapter 5, I look at two puzzles related to Moore's paradox, with special attention to the meaning of imagine.
by Tamina C. Stephenson.
Ph.D.
15
Van, Pletzen Ermina Dorothea. "The language of painting in nineteenth-century English fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21770.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Bibliography: pages 322-332.This thesis examines the material and aesthetic sustenance which the novel as developing genre drew from the burgeoning popular interest in the visual arts, particularly the pictorial arts, which took place during the course of the nineteenth century in Britain. The first chapter develops the concept of the language of painting which for the purposes of the thesis refers to the linguistic transactions occurring between word and pictorial image when writers on art formulate their impressions in language. This type of discourse is described as governed by conceptual repetition and firmly established techniques of ekphrasis, as well as by indirect and peripheral modes of reference, not to the concrete stylistic features of the works of art under consideration, but to their effect on the viewer, the metaphors they call to mind, and the processes which can be inferred about their conception. The first chapter also gives a survey of the most important thematic strains and structural developments which had been imported into literature by the end of the eighteenth century. A chapter is then dedicated to each of five nineteenth-century novelists, Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Henry James, mapping out their individual grasp and knowledge of pictorial art in their particular circumstances, their experience of the art world, and the extent to which their experience of art is mediated by current painterly discourses. Each chapter next considers how pictorial material is appropriated in these novelists' fiction and whether the fiction draws structural support and meaning from pictorial concepts. The thesis furthermore investigates the inverse question of how the fiction itself becomes a context which not only reflects, but also shapes and alters inherited languages of painting. The second chapter approaches Austen's social satire against the background of the aesthetic traditions which she inherits from the eighteenth century. It is argued that her own novelistic aesthetic gains more from the discourses surrounding the practice of picturesque landscape appreciation (and related forms) than from Reynolds's doctrine of the general and ideal dominating the mid to late eighteenth century.
16
Dunwell, Lara Dalene. "We make fiction because we are fiction : authorities displaced in the novels of Russell Hoban." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21400.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Russell Hoban, born in Pennsylvania in 1925, is the author of fifty children's books and eight novels. This thesis provides a critical reading of his novels Kleinzeit (1974), The Medusa Frequency (1987), Riddley Walker (1980) and Pilgermann (1983). The thesis argues that the alienation of the protagonist from his society -- a theme common to the novels above -- is the result of the operation of the Derridean process of displacement. Hoban's novels work deconstructively to undermine binary oppositions (such as "reality" versus "fantasy"). I argue that the novels aim to recuperate the marginal by displacing the centre. In Kleinzeit and The Medusa Frequency, reality itself is figured as an absent centre. Through a discussion of magical realism, I show how Hoban questions the idea of a "consensus reality". I argue that by denying authority to the authors in these texts, Hoban privileges the uncertain authority of language itself. Using Derrida's concept of différance, I show that language in Kleinzeit is figured as an endless deferral of meaning. In Chapter II, I turn to an analysis of the invented post-atomic language of Riddley Walker, and examine how the neologisms and futuristic orthography of the text contribute towards significant wordplay. I argue that Riddley's attempts to read his culture's past offer a critique of the contemporary reader's assumptions, both about her present and about reading itself. I rely on Mircea Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return (1965) in discussing the nature of myth-making in Riddley Walker. In the final chapter, I discuss in detail the mechanism of displacement in Pilgermann. By examining the role of the grotesque in the novel, I argue that Pilgermann can be read hymeneutically. Derrida's figure of the hymen becomes the emblem of marginalisation. Using the example of the mode of the grotesque {which is prominent in the novel), I argue that the marginal is always already present in the very centre which would expel it. Pilgermann is read as an attempt to recuperate the margin in spite of "the confusion between the present and the non-present" (Derrida, 1984: 212) which is the hymen. Finally, I conclude that Hoban's works, while focussing on displacement, unwittingly displace women, by figuring them as absences whose existence is primarily metaphorical.
17
Hokari, Tomohiro. "Null prepositions in A-and A'-constructions by French and Japanese second language learners of English." Thesis, University of Essex, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.701967.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This thesis investigates the nature of optional preposition omission in L2 English extraction constructions known as null prepositions, e.g. *Who did you speak? (Klein, 1993b). Although null prepositions are found among learners with different LIs, their properties have not yet been fully understood, because many properties and possible sources have been left unexplored. To advance our understanding of null prepositions (and ultimately of L2 optionality), this study examined (a) null prepositions in different constructions (wh-questions, relative clauses, and passives), (b) the relation between null prepositions and the structure of L2 extraction constructions., ( c) the role of learners' LIs, and (d) task effects, by administering four experiments (an acceptability judgment task, an elicited imitation task, and two self-paced reading tasks) to French-speaking and Japanese-speaking learners of English as well as to native English controls. While the results of the four experiments corroborate the claim in existing studies that null prepositions are universal properties of the L2 grammars of learners from different LIs, it is also demonstrated that whether null prepositions are observed depends upon several factors such as the distinction between A- and A'-extractions, learners' Ll, and task differences. Specifically, the results of the four experiments consistently indicate that null prepositions in passives are particularly persistent for both L2 groups. By contrast, it is shown that null prepositions in wh-questions and relative clauses are subject to differences in learners' Ll and task. To explain these results, three sources for null prepositions are proposed: the difficulty in suppressing the Case feature from prepositions; covert pied-piping (Klein, 2001); influence from the syntax of Ll extraction constructions. It is also argued that these sources are not random but may be constrained by more general properties of L2 (null) prepositions: L2prepositions seem to be represented as Case markers without interpretative/semantic properties (Perpifian, 2010).
18
Hensley, Martin. "The Green World of Dystopian Fiction." TopSCHOLAR®, 2006. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/276.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Northrop Frye was the first theorist to develop the green world archetype; Frye used the term to refer to a recurring motif in Shakespearean comedy. In several of Shakespeare's comedies, the protagonists leave the civilized world and venture into the green world, or nature, to escape from the irrational law of society, which is the case in such comedies as As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Elements of the green world can also be found in Shakespearean tragedy, where the natural retreat serves as a temporary escape for the protagonists. Such a green world exists in three of the most well known examples of dystopian fiction: George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. In these three novels, the protagonists take flight from the repressive dystopia and journey into nature. In the green world, the protagonists attain individual freedom and identity and experience emotions, passions, beauty, the past, and the power of language. Each of these elements, which are associated with the green world, stand in opposition to the dystopian society's doctrine. The green world, then, becomes an escape, a place where the protagonists can temporarily live a free life away from the tyrannical powers of the dystopic society. The dystopian green world experience follows a pattern of flight, immersion, and departure. In the first segment, the protagonists flee from the oppressive society and into nature; in the second, they immerse themselves within the green world where they experience new sensations, emotions, and gain new insights and understanding; in the third, the protagonists depart the green world and return to the civilized world in order to confront it with the knowledge they have gained while immersed in the green world. This pattern can also be viewed as a symbolic cycle that moves from death to rebirth to death. The first death is the death-like stasis of the dystopia and of the protagonist, who is just a part of the whole and not truly an individual. The symbolic rebirth conies when the protagonists depart the green world as individuals with new know ledge and experiences. Lastly, the second symbolic, or sometimes literal death, comes when the protagonists confront the dystopia with their new knowledge, have that knowledge challenged by an agent of the dystopia, usually in the form of a trial, and, finally, are symbolically or literally destroyed by the dystopian agent.
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Alvarez, Heidi Lee. "Regional aspects of Miami crime fiction." FIU Digital Commons, 1999. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1263.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This thesis argues that forces of literary regionalism and postmodern culture are behind the explosion of crime fiction being written in and about South Florida by a growing number of resident authors.
Research included four methods of investigation: 1. A critical reading of many of the novels that make up the sub-genre. 2. A study of the theories of regionalism, postmodernism and the genre of the crime fiction. 3. Interviews with a number of the authors and a prominent Miami book seller. 4. Sociological studies of Miami in terms of historical events and their cultural significance.
Today's South Florida crime fiction authors cast their narratives in the old genre of the detective novel where characters are delineated according to traditional definitions of good and evil. Evil characters threaten established order. What makes South Florida crime fiction different from traditional detective fiction is its interest in the exotic, postmodern culture and setting of South Florida. Like the region, the villains are exotic and the order that they threaten is postmodern. There is less of an interest in attributing a larger social meaning to the heroes. Rather, there is an ontological interest in the playing out of good against evil in an almost mythical setting that magnifies economic, environmental and racial issues. There is a unique cultural diversity of the city due to the geographical location of Miami in relationship to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the political forces at work in the region. South Florida's subtropical climate, fragile ecosystem, and elements of frontier life in a cosmopolitan city work to support Miami crime fiction. The setting personifies the unpredictability and pastiche of a postmodern world and may call for a new definition for literature that relies on non-traditional regional characteristics.
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Oehling, Richard. "Contemporary Irish Fiction: Lavin and Trevor." W&M ScholarWorks, 1985. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625307.
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Versteeg, Kathleen Gray. "An investigation of the effect of using varying stimuli to assess normal children's comprehension of five locative prepositions." PDXScholar, 1988. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3849.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
The questions posed in this study were: Are there significant differences among various tasks for eliciting five locative prepositions, and, if so, do tasks vary in their effectiveness according to the age of the children?
Sixty children, ten within each of six age groups, aged eighteen to forty-eight months, participated in the study. All the children had normal language and hearing abilities. An investigator-developed assessment, the Test for Comprehension of Five Locative Prepositions, was administered to each child by the investigator. The Test for Comprehension of Five Locative Prepositions involved picture contexts and object contexts of varying sizes, and required manipulation, pointing and self action response modes.
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Encinas, Arquero Pablo. "Literal and figurative meanings of Spanish spatial prepositions in Chinese students' acquisition of Spanish as a third language." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/4873.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This thesis investigates the acquisition of the spatial and figurative meanings of five Spanish spatial particles, namely sobre, encima, debajo, bajo and en, by a group of Chinese university students of Spanish as a foreign language at intermediate and upper-intermediate language levels. More specifically, this study aims to answer two questions. The first question considers the order of acquisition of prepositional meanings, that is, whether this is similar to a native language, with literal and more primary meanings acquired first and figurative ones later or, conversely, whether the pattern of acquisition is different to that found in a first language (Kemmerer, 2005; Lam, 2010). The second question of this research is to determine whether there are observable differences between the degree of acquisition and use of these prepositions in English compared to Spanish, and if so, what the characteristics of these differences are. To try to answer these questions, the performance of this group of participants in four behavioural tests is compared. The tests were a lexical identification task, a picture fill-in-the- blank task, a sentence generation task and a truth value judgment task. These tests were conducted both in Spanish, which the participants had begun to study at undergraduate level and English, which they had first been exposed to in school in a pre-puberty period. The results of this study indicate, first, that the acquisition of the literal and figurative meanings of the spatial particles in this study does not follow a pattern similar to that found in a native language. That is, meaning acquisition in a foreign language occurs in a parallel or simultaneous pattern. Furthermore, in a non-immersion context such as that of this study, the age at which students begin the study of a foreign language is not a decisive factor in determining the degree of mastery that students can obtain. The quantity and quality of the input students are exposed to; together with an appropriate methodology appear to be the most important factors in predicting the level of proficiency that can be reached.
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Malton, Sara. "Commanding language, linguistic authority and female autonomy in Thomas Hardy's fiction." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ58482.pdf.
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Breaux, Brooke O. "On Grounding Metaphors in Space| The Role of Metaphorical Connections in Accessing the Abstract Meanings of English Prepositions." Thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3589960.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Indirect metaphors are pervasive in everyday language: People talk about long vacations, short tempers, and colorful language. But, why do we use concrete lexical items that are associated with the physical world when we talk about abstract, or non-physical, concepts? A potential answer is provided by proponents of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), who propose that only a small set of the concepts which make up our conceptual system emerge directly from physical experience, and it is this small number of concepts that serves to structure the ways in which we think and talk about abstract concepts (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). This key assumption in cognitive linguistics—that our understanding of concrete concepts serves to ground our understanding of abstract concepts—is the focus of my research. Although indirect metaphors are thought to be the result of grounded conceptual connections, motivated by experiential knowledge and flowing from the physical to the non-physical (Grady, 1999), it is unclear whether people access these grounded connections when processing the meanings of indirect metaphors.
The prepositions in and on are an interesting test case for grounded connections: Both lexical items are used frequently by speakers not only to identify the location of one object relative to another but also to refer to more abstract relationships. Therefore, I experimentally investigated the possibility that grounded connections are available for use in tasks requiring on-line processing of these prepositions: Would participants make use of conceptual connections, and if so, would the characteristics associated with these conceptual connections be consistent with the CMT grounding assumption? Although the results for in were consistent with the CMT grounding assumption, the results for on were not. In fact, differences between in and on were found throughout stimulus development, and these differences were used to help explain this discrepancy. The patterns observed throughout this dissertation suggest that in may be more metaphorically active than on , meaning that in's potential to participate in indirect metaphors is higher than on's, and that one consequence of this higher metaphorical activity is an increase in the availability of grounded connections during on-line processing.
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De, Felice Rachele. "Automatic error detection in non-native English." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2008. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5192f0cb-6e4d-4730-bb54-a97a73d603ed.
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This thesis describes the development of Dapper (`Determiner And PrePosition Error Recogniser'), a system designed to automatically acquire models of occurrence for English prepositions and determiners to allow for the detection and correction of errors in their usage, especially in the writing of non-native speakers of the language. Prepositions and determiners are focused on because they are parts of speech whose usage is particularly challenging to acquire, both for students of the language and for natural language processing tools. The work presented in this thesis proposes to address this problem by developing a system which can acquire models of correct preposition and determiner occurrence, and can use this knowledge to identify divergences from these models as errors. The contexts of these parts of speech are represented by a sophisticated feature set, incorporating a variety of semantic and syntactic elements. DAPPER is found to perform well on preposition and determiner selection tasks in correct native English text. Results on each preposition and determiner are discussed in detail to understand the possible reasons for variations in performance, and whether these are due to problems with the structure of DAPPER or to deeper linguistic reasons. An in-depth analysis of all features used is also offered, quantifying the contribution of each feature individually. This can help establish if the decision to include complex semantic and syntactic features is justified in the context of this task. Finally, the performance of DAPPER on non-native English text is assessed. The system is found to be robust when applied to text which does not contain any preposition or determiner errors. On an error correction task, results are mixed: DAPPER shows promising results on preposition selection and determiner confusion (definite vs. indefinite) errors, but is less successful in detecting errors involving missing or extraneous determiners. Several characteristics of learner writing are described, to gain a clearer understanding of what problems arise when natural language processing tools are used with this kind of text. It is concluded that the construction of contextual models is a viable approach to the task of preposition and determiner selection, despite outstanding issues pertaining to the domain of non-native writing.
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Long-Innes, F. A. V. "Stranger than fiction : the case histories of Sigmund Freud." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10821.
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Bibliography: leaves 201-209.The general aim of this study is to arrive at a critical assessment of the cultural-historical significance of Freud' s major case histories, through a close examination of three of the most famous: the cases of "Dora", "Schreber" and the "WolfMan". My investigation of the case histories themselves is prefaced, in Chapter One, by a selective review of some major strands in the recent critical tradition.
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Altmaier, Catherine. "The Gospel of Cosmopolitanism: Conflict Resolution in Barbara Kingsolver's Fiction." TopSCHOLAR®, 2006. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/439.
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Despite Barbara Kingsolver's ability to create unique characters and storylines, two factors remain constant throughout each of her novels: strong female protagonists and conflict resolution. Though conflict exists in almost all fiction, the way that Kingsolver's characters deal with their situations often speaks louder than any other aspect of her writing. Moreover, though her characters often vary wildly from story to story, their methods of conflict resolution seem to undoubtedly connect them. Through her continuing desire to emphasize "the question of individualism and communal identity," {Reading Group Guides) Kingsolver often promotes the ideas of cosmopolitanism, which have recently been articulated by Kwame Anthony Appiah in his book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Appiah argues that cosmopolitanism can be represented by two main ideas: "One is the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship," while the other is "that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance" {Cosmopolitanism xv). Though Appiah presents a compelling rationale for cosmopolitanism in postcolonial international relations, Kingsolver applies the same theories not only to global relationships but to personal conflict as well. While each of Kingsolver's novels could be explored for the theories of cosmopolitanism they demonstrate, The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer provide the best foundation for an examination of their broad applications of cosmopolitanism. Within The Poisonwood Bible, Orleanna, Leah, Rachel, and Adah Price are forced to deal with the international issues concerning the United States and the Congo, which directly affect their lives, as well as personal conflicts that range from quarrelling sisters to death and divorce. Throughout each struggle they face, they regularly apply at least one aspect of cosmopolitanism. Moreover, their most effective moments of conflict resolution come when they more precisely adhere to the tenets of cosmopolitanism. In Prodigal Summer, however, Kingsolver is primarily exploring the use of cosmopolitanism in more personal matters through the story of Lusa Landowski Widener. Though Lusa is not involved with any kind of international politics, it is the ideologies behind cosmopolitanism that allows her to reclaim her life after the loss of her husband while taking responsibility for her choices and becoming more accepting of those she does not understand. Appiah argues that, "A tenable global ethics has to temper a respect for difference with a respect for the freedom of actual human beings to make their own choices" ("Case" 30). Though Kingsolver would agree, she would further contend that such an idea should be more than a doctrine of "global ethics." Instead, cosmopolitanism should be applied to common, every day decisions in order to make greater change in the world. In The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver demonstrates the efficacy of such an application of cosmopolitanism.
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Nicholls, Brendon Lindley. "Problems of representation and representativeness in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's fiction." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18706.
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Using a nexus of discourse theory, the French Feminism of Helene Cixous and the deconstructive Marxist Feminism of Gayatri Spivak, this work examines the production of the sign 'woman' in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's fiction. I locate Ngugi's semiotics of the feminine in the conflicting discursive formations of two historical junctures of Kenyan resistance to colonial rule (the female circumcision debate and the Mau Mau insurgency) , in which 'woman' is mobilized as a metaphor for the Kenyan social matrix by Gikuyu nationalist/traditionalist discourses. Following Spivak, I find in female circumcision a metonym of the silencing of the subaltern woman as an agency in insurgency. Ngugi's silencing of the historical struggles of Kenyan women obtains in his association of the female characters (or 'mothers') with the land throughout his fiction. The women in Ngugi's narratives are thus located outside of an historical present, inasmuch as they represent either an idyllic past (prior to the colonial incursion) or an harmonious future utopia. Further, Ngugi' s gender representations enable the political vision of his novels and contradict the socio-political convictions which he has elaborated outside of his fiction. By refusing to engage the vestiges of the Gikuyu patriarchy, Ngugi consolidates his privileged position within the Kenyan elite and proclaims to represent worker/peasant constituency transparently. Reading 'against the grain' of the later novels, I iocate in the prostitute or 'fallen woman' a figure which unsettles the economy of gender difference constituted by Ngugi's patriarchal master-narrative, and which therefore disrupts Ngugi' s androcentric historiography. Bibliography: pages 208-213.
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Elkafri, Linda. "The Effect of Transfer on Arab and Portuguese Learners' Use of the English Prepositions to and for." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för språkstudier, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-144651.
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The researcher has studied, in this paper, the effect of transfer on the Arabic and Portuguese learners’ using prepositions during their process of learning English as a second language. The prepositions that the study deals with are to and, for. The aim of the study is to show the influence of the learner’s first language on the target language. The study draws upon literary sources such as Littlewood’s book Foreign and Second Language Learning (Littlewood, 1984), as well as practical experiments which are divided into a multiple choice test and a translation test. Through the analysis of the results of these tests, the study shows the extent of influence of the first language on the process of learning a second language. The answers of the students are analyzed by comparing the rules of using prepositions in the learner’s first language and English. The participants in this study are students in ACS international school in Qatar. The study also includes interviews with two teachers. The interviews are done in order to provide additional information on the effect of the learner’s first language on learning a second language. The teachers express their views which was formed after many years of teaching experience.
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Abberley, William Harrison. "Language under the microscope : science and philology in English fiction 1850-1914." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/4472.
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This study explores how Anglophone fiction from the mid-Victorian period to the outbreak of the First World War acted as an imaginative testing-ground for theories of the evolution of language. Debates about the past development and the future of language ranged beyond the scope of empirical data and into speculative narrative. Fiction offered to realize such narratives in detail, building imaginative worlds out of different theories of language evolution. In the process, it also often tested these theories, exposing their contradictions. The lack of clear boundaries between nature and culture in language studies of the period enabled fictions of language evolution to explore questions to which contemporary researchers have returned. To what extent is communication instinctive or conventional? How do social and biological factors interact in the production of meaning? The study traces two opposing tendencies of thought on language evolution, naming them language ‘progressivism’ and ‘vitalism’. Progressivism imagined speakers evolving away from involuntary, instinctive vocalizations to extert rational control over their discourse with mechanical precision. By contrast, language vitalism posited a mysterious, natural power in words which had weakened and fragmented with the rise of writing and industrial society. Certain genres of fiction lent themselves to exploration of these ideas, with utopian tales seeking to envision the end-goals of progressive theory. Representations of primitive language in imperial and prehistoric romances also promoted progressivism by depicting the instinctive, irrational speech from which ‘civilization’ was imagined as advancing away. Conversely, much historical and invasion fiction idealized a linguistic past when speech had expressed natural truth, and the authentic folk origins of its speakers. Both progressivism and vitalism were undermined through the late nineteenth century by developments in biology, which challenged claims of underlying stability in nature or purpose in change. Simultaneously, philologists increasingly argued that meaning was conventional, attacking models of semantic progress and degradation. In this context, a number of authors reconceptualized language in their fiction as a mixture of instinct and convention. These imaginative explorations of the borderlands between the social and biological in communication prefigured many of the concerns of twenty-first-century biosemiotics.
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Steiner, Christina. "Translated people, translated texts : language and migration in some contemporary African fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8100.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-215)This thesis examines contemporary migration narratives by four African writers living in the diaspora and writing in English: Leila Aboulela and Jamal Mahjoub from the Sudan, now living in Scotland and Spain respectively and Abdulrazak Gurnah and Moyez G. Vassanji from Tanzania now residing in the UK and Canada. Focusing on how language operates in relation to both culture and identity, this study foregrounds the complexities of migration as cultural translation. Cultural translation is a concept which locates itself in postcolonial literary theory as well as translation studies. The manipulation of English in such a way as to signify translated experience is crucial in this regard. The thesis focuses on a particular angle on cultural translation for each writer under discussion: translation of Islam and the strategic use of nostalgia in Leila Aboulela's texts; translation and the production of scholarly knowledge in Jamal Mahjoub's novels; translation and storytelling in Abdulrazak Gurnah's fiction; and finally translation between the individual and old and new communities in Vassanji's work. The conclusion of the thesis brings all four writer's texts into conversation across these angles. What emerges from this discussion across the chapter boundaries is that cultural translation rests on ongoing complex processes of transformation determined by idiosyncratic factors like individual personality as well as social categories like nationality, race, class and gender. The thesis thus contributes to the understanding of migration as a common condition of the postcolonial world as well as offering a detailed look at particular travellers and their unique journeys.
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Geertsema, Johan Hendrik. "Irony and otherness : a study of some recent South African narrative fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17592.
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Bibliography: pages 277-290.This study considers the relation between irony and otherness. Chapter 2 shows that there is little agreement on the politics of irony in critical discussions. Nevertheless, irony and otherness do appear to be linked in many of these discussions. Chapter 3 offers a consideration of Emmanuel Levinas's conception of ethics in terms of his understanding of the other as face and trace. The tendency of language to foreclose on otherness by reducing it must be interrupted, while otherness must, nonetheless, be Said. The chapter concludes with an attempt to relate Levinas's conception of otherness - as the interruption of conceptualising otherness - to Paul de Man's conception of irony as permanent parabasis in terms of the tropes of prosopopoeia and catachresis. Any representation of the other must be interrupted continually as it is a prosopopoeia of otherness (in that it gives otherness a face) and therefore a catachresis (for the other has no face and must be given one). The task with which the (reading) self is faced is ironic in that it consists at once of positing and interrupting the face given to the other. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are attempts at reading the interplay of irony and otherness in selected recent South African fiction. Van Heerden's Kikoejoe, as an allegory of the refusal to narrativise otherness, is read as being caught in the double bind of irony; Matlou's Life at Home is read as a text intimating an otherness at the heart of domesticity and within the reader; and, finally, Coetzee's Age of Iron is read as a text in which confession is the nexus of the relation between irony and otherness. This study brackets the political in order to examine the relationship between irony and otherness from the vantage point of Levinas's 'conception' of the other. The task remains to consider whether it is possible to approach irony ethically, or ethics ironically, and to consider the political ramifications of the relation between irony and otherness postulated in this study.
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Powers, Donald. "Emigration, literary celebrity, and the autobiographical turn in J.M. Coetzee's later fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14708.
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Includes bibliographical references.Whereas commentary on autobiography in Coetzee tends to focus on the dynamics of secular confession and the idea of self-writing as 'autre-biography,' this thesis, taking the experience of emigration and literary celebrity as thematic pivots, argues that the protagonists of Coetzee's later fiction (Youth through Summertime) occasion a form of authorial self-disclosure that is not an end in itself but, with a nominal anchorage on Coetzee himself, a means of localising questions about literary genre, political complicity, the relation between author and character, the intersection of personal and collective history, and the social responsibility of the acclaimed writer. It is argued that the slippage of focus from the authorial personas in these fictions to the questions and critical voices they provoke nonetheless conspires to reaffirm the authority of the name and literary oeuvre' Coetzee. 'The thesis begins by examining the link in Youth between the protagonist's crisis of ethnic and literary identity and Coetzee's narrative strategy of subjective displacement (Chapter 1). It is shown that the refractive zone of questions in that fiction constitutes the self-qualifying reflex that becomes increasingly pronounced in the authorial surrogates and fictions that follow. Coetzee's representation of the acclaimed writer as a doubting, fallible, unheroic figure becomes in the case of Elizabeth Costello a rejection of the idea of the writer as a spokesperson for a group or cause and instead an opening for the pressures and responsibilities of living among others to be embodied and negotiated (Chapter 2). It is argued that Coetzee's Nobel Lecture provides a further example of this reserve about the reach of the writer's authority in the public realm: the deferral of authority in this text highlights by indirection an inconsistency in the Swedish Academy's invitation to Coetzee to speak for his work on the occasion of an award that celebrates its universal interpretability, its resistance to authorial meta-interpretation (Chapter 3). It is shown that in Slow Man, where the familiar metafictional interplay between the one who writes and the one who is written is framed on an emigrant history that is implicitly Coetzee's, the characters' contest of interpretation over photographs highlights the instability of the historical record - a point that holds for the text of Coetzee's personal history (Chapter 4). Emphasis on the nominal alignment of the author Coetzee and his authorial surrogate in Diary of a Bad Year governs a consideration of how the author's name- his proper name and reputation - focuses the condition of complicity with others as a reader and citizen; the question of whether the character JC speaks for Coetzee is revealed to be secondary to what it means to be held accountable for actions committed in the name of a group to which one belongs or set of interests to which one subscribes (Chapter 5). The thesis tracks the qualified textualisation of Coetzee 's authorial personas and history to Summertime, where' John Coetzee' is written out of an entanglement of acts of emigration and recollection in voices inflected with other histories than his own (Chapter 6).
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Gevers, Nicholas David. "Mirrors of the past : versions of history in science fiction and fantasy." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10511.
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The primary argument of this Thesis is that Science Fiction (SF) is a form of Historical Fiction, one which speculatively appropriates elements of the past in fulfilment of the ideological expectations of its genre readership. Chapter One presents this definition, reconciling it with some earlier definitions of SF and justifying it by means of a comparison between SF and the Historical Novel. Chapter One also identifies SF's three modes of historical appropriation (historical extension, imitation and modification) and the forms of fictive History these construct, including Future History and Alternate History; theories of history, and SF's own ideological changes over time, have helped shape the genre's varied borrowings from the past. Some works of Historical Fantasy share the characteristics of SF set out in Chapter One. The remaining Chapters analyse the textual products of SF's imitation and modification of history, i.e. Future and Alternate Histories. Chapter Two discusses various Future Histories completed or at least commenced before 1960, demonstrating their consistent optimism, their celebration of Science and of heroic individualism, and their tendency to resolve the cyclical pattern of history through an ideal linear simplification or 'theodicy'. Chapter Three shows the much greater ideological and technical diversity of Future Histories after 1960, their division into competing traditional (Libertarian), Posthistoric (pessimistic), and critical utopian categories, an indication of SF's increasing complexity and fragmentation.
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Eyeington, Mark. "Joseph Conrad and the ideology of fiction : a study of four works." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7969.
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Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation argues the priority of politics in the interpretation of Conrad's fiction. It does so by establishing a critical dialogue with, and around, Fredric Jameson's Marxist classic, The Political Unconscious (1981). Jameson's proposition that Conrad's fiction is to be understood as a """"Political Unconscious"""" - that is, that Conrad's works produce political meanings in the same way that Freud suggested thwarted human instincts produce neuroses or psychopathologies - is put to the test here. This dissertaion seeks to extend the application of Jameson's hypothesis into some of the areas of Conrad's oeuvre that Jameson himself did not treat, or treated only briefly.
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ZHOU, Mingying. "Lived experience and creative praxis : a critical appraisal of Raymond William's fiction." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2018. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd/21.
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Raymond Williams is known to the academic world as the pioneer and co-founder of the discipline of cultural studies, and his works on culture, society, democracy, hegemony, etc., have been widely read and cited. Yet, somewhat disappointingly, the fiction to which Williams devoted much of his life’s endeavor has been largely neglected and dismissed. Whenever Williams is mentioned, the salient labels attached to him are invariably “cultural critic”, “cultural materialist”, “critical theorist” and so on. This dissertation is not only designed to redress the balance with regard to Williams’s novels, read in parallel to his critical work, but also to interpret them from a new perspective. My aim is to shed fresh light on Williams’s fiction as a nuanced reflection on his socio-cultural concerns.
Williams has published seven novels, through which we may discern a rather different and, I argue, more complex Williams from the typical profile of the combative cultural theorist. This thesis intends to analyze the fiction from three dimensions: firstly, the innate and strong Welshness of Williams that is reflected in his depictions of the landscape and the Welsh people; Secondly, the sexuality and gendering in Williams’s fiction, which evidently tilts towards the female soft power, locating the power balance more specifically in the traditionally “weaker” gender; thirdly, tragedy haunts Williams’s protagonists and minor characters, yet, as his theory of modern tragedy reveals, the tragedy of the ordinary person is as tragic and heroic as that of kings and queens. In William’s novels a tragic mood and epic sweep often go hand-in-hand, and it is evident that his theory of modern tragedy informs his own novels as much as it does twentieth century drama.
Focusing as it does on Williams’s fiction, the present thesis offers a new perspective on Williams studies. In the process it engages critically with Williams’s idea on Welshness, sexuality, gendering, and tragedy, in particular, topics that have not been studied interdependently in commentaries on Williams’s work to date. In this respect the study represents an original and productive contribution to the field of Raymond Williams study.
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Vedin, Maria. "Adverbials as semantic and pragmatic operators : a functional approach to the analysis of English fiction language /." Luleå : Luleå University of Technology, 2002. http://epubl.luth.se/1402-1544/2002/30/index.html.
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McDonald, Bonny. "Buried Alive: Hard Science Fiction Since the Golden Age." TopSCHOLAR®, 2005. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/461.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
A substantial body of science fiction authors, critics and fans appreciate the literary attention the New Wave of the '60s and '70s brought to the genre of science fiction, but regret the seemingly lasting move away from the hard science classics of the '50s and before. They argue that "the hard stuff' is at the very heart of sf and that its future—still on the path set by the New Wave—is ostensibly a dead end. Many important critics along with hundreds of sf fan websites display this fatalistic concern, asking over and over "Is hard science fiction dead?" The answer is no. These reactionaries suffer from a serious case of the Good Old Days Syndrome (not to mention the Good Old Boys Syndrome). A close look at the state of the genre reveals that hard sf is not only alive and well but also that contemporary hard sf is more in line with its critics' definition of hard sf than the very stories they cite as exemplars of it. Contrary to the accusations of noted sf critics, it may well be that a new golden age of sf is dawning, one with an even truer scientific core as well as a commitment to literary quality. This thesis will expose the curious contradiction between the hard and soft / old and new sf. The introduction will examine the definition of hard sf and declarations of its unfortunate demise. Each of three chapters will compare two stories—one from sf s Golden Age and another after the supposed death of the genre. In each, I will show how classic examples of hard sf regularly fail to meet the objective, scientific criteria they purport to uphold and how contemporary stories—even while focusing (to varying degrees) on the political and personal—better espouse the principles of hard sf. Ultimately, it seems that those who descry hard sf s death miss not the technical aspects of hard sf that, even by their definition, distinguish it from softer sf, but the traditional Golden Age values of male dominance, imperialism, and anti-emotionalism. Newer stories' feminism and redefinitions of progress blind conventional readers to their truly hard-core, science-based foundations. The conclusion will consider what hard sf s paradigm shifts mean in terms of our evolving relationship to science. Specifically, in our technological age, science is not merely a field that studies how things work, but a field that can help us to illuminate and interpret our place in the universe. Ultimately, hard science fiction is not dead, it's just doing something different from what it used to.
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Smit, Sarah Johanna. "At home in Fanon: Queer romance and mixed solidarities in contemporary African fiction." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23021.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Throughout the recent iterations of student activism that have gripped South African universities, Frantz Fanon has been continuously disinterred. But the figure of Fanon often remains both abstract and plural within its articulations - interpretations of his body of work performing sometimes only partial allegiances to the whole. This means that centralising a Fanon within political discourse stands to reproduce the losses implicated in his mythification, rather than to recover new critical imports in his work. In other words, the simplification of Fanonist rhetoric fails to deal with the "un-political" dimensions of Fanon. As such the more troubling of Fanon's work, namely Black Skin, White Masks (1952), is often left un-interrogated, while The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is read like a manifesto for purposive change. Black Skin, White Masks it seems is deemed "not radical enough" because of what appears to be a problematic preoccupation with 'love and understanding.' In the following intervention, I argue that what makes this centrality of 'love and understanding' so unpalatable to radical activists is a misappropriation of Fanon's formulation of desire. This is in part, I believe, one of the flaws of Fanon setting up the dynamic of racialised desire within cisgender, heteronormative models for potential interracial relationships - "The Woman of Colour and the White Man" and "The Man of Colour and the White Woman." Hence, I consider what queering these relationships does to the way in which we read the political dimensions of Black Skin, White Masks, and whether or not this allays the allegory of revolutionary solidarity of the generic teleology of the heteronormative romance. The object of this thesis is to elucidate what possibilities for political solidarity are generated through the queered dynamic of interracial love, explored in the literature of the contemporary African diaspora. New African writers take seriously what Fanon recognised as "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness," by emptying out the category of the nation and engaging with the intersections of a trans-national, trans-gender and trans-racial politics. To demonstrate the ways in which a queer analysis of interracial romance might reimagine a raced identity politics, I analyse novels produced by members of the contemporary African diaspora, whose works deal with mixed race identity. Through my reading of Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl (2005) and Boy, Snow, Bird (2014), Yewande Omotoso's Bom Boy (2011), and Chris Abani's The Secret History of Las Vegas (2014), I hope to demonstrate that contemporary African literature is concerned with the formation of an identity that estranges the category of blackness from itself through its entanglement with a queer identity politics.
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Nylin, Kristina. "Why Read Fiction in the English Language Classroom? : Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-12828.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
The essay makes a case for the use of the Nobel Prize-winning (1993) author Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye (1970) in the English language classroom. The essay argues that the novel is an excellent reading choice and to what is appropriate according to the learning goals stated in Gy11's course syllabus English 6. Since the course English 6 syllabus is new some aspects different from previous course syllabus English B are mentioned by way of comparison. In order to develop the arguments for using the novel, different perspectives of reading and the learning process are discussed and how they match the curriculum Gy 11. Some points about how Morrison has managed to voice the former unspoken experiences of African American society are made to make it clear why reading The Bluest Eye is such a superb text in relation to the learning goals that are outlined in Gy11.The essay focuses mainly on mother - daughter relationships because most pupils will easily relate to this theme since they have experiences of this relation themselves, and therefore they will find it easy to find issues to discuss after reading the novel.
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Herzing, Melissa Jean. "The Internet World of Fan Fiction." VCU Scholars Compass, 2005. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/1046.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Fan fiction, the most popular creative outlet for fans, allows the amateur writer an opportunity to be published and receive immediate feedback from peers. As educators, we can learn from the fan communities as they participate in online activities, especially fan fiction. Students are more likely to embrace entertaining and creative assignments. And since much of the world is linked to the Internet in one way or another, we can allow students an opportunity to not only improve their writing skills, but also enhance their knowledge of the Internet and its capabilities. My study included online interviews with fan fiction writers and readers as well as the examination of fan fiction texts and websites. By exploring this relatively unknown genre of writing and reading, I believe teachers of composition can use fan fiction to their advantage by encouraging students to write creatively using subject matter that interests them in some way.
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Adams, Betony. "Rhyming youth with death : what we might learn from HIV/AIDS fiction in South Africa." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12631.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Includes bibliographical references.That the interpretation of disease, its fictionalisation, might prompt negative responses is an issue that has been addressed by various people. Of which one of the better known examples is Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor & Aids and its Metaphors. In South Africa the negative effects of reading HIV/AIDS as metaphoric are borne out by the shame and stigma which make acknowledging and treating the disease difficult. While recognising the relevance of being against the interpretation of disease this thesis is an attempt to argue for what we can learn from considering the metaphors that constitute what might be called the official fiction, that is, literary fiction, about HIV/AIDS in South Africa. I will focus generally on how metaphor might offer a singular way of communicating the experience of the diseased body in the context of the abstracting expertise of modem medicine. And I will also examine two instances in which metaphor and fiction might give specific insight into the experience of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
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Gevers, Nicholas David. "A study of the major science fiction works of Gene Wolfe." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21971.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This thesis examines three major works by the American Science Fiction and Fantasy writer Gene Wolfe (Eugene Rodman Wolfe, 1931-). The central argument of this thesis is that in The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972), the 'New Sun' cycle of novels (1980- 1987), and Soldier of the Mist (1986), Wolfe presents the human desire for knowledge of the Self and of God and the near-impossibility of attaining this knowledge. Wolfe expresses obstacles to knowledge and fulfilment in his created fictional worlds, in the characters of his protagonists, and in the complicated narrative structures that distinguish all three texts. By converting the stable and reassuring world of conventional Science Fiction into a realm of uncertainty, ambiguity, and spiritual and cognitive confusion, Wolfe radically subverts the genre and exposes it to a new subtlety and flexibility.
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Enzinna, Naomi R. "The Processing of Preposition-Stranding Constructions in English." FIU Digital Commons, 2013. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/889.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
One of the prominent questions in modern psycholinguistics is the relationship between the grammar and the parser. Within the approach of Generative Grammar, this issue has been investigated in terms of the role that Principles of Universal Grammar may play in language processing. The aim of this research experiment is to investigate this topic. Specifically, this experiment aims to test whether the Minimal Structure Principle (MSP) plays a role in the processing of Preposition-Stranding versus Pied-Piped Constructions. This investigation is made with a self-paced reading task, an on-line processing test that measures participants’ unconscious reaction to language stimuli. Monolingual English speakers’ reading times of sentences with Preposition-Stranding and Pied-Piped Constructions are compared. Results indicate that neither construction has greater processing costs, suggesting that factors other than the MSP are active during language processing.
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Nykvist, Martin. "Are We Terribly Different? : A case-study of male and female fiction-writing in English." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-3763.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
The aim of this study is to find similarities and differences between male and female fiction-writing. The data has been collected from pupils at an upper secondary school in Central Sweden. They were given an extract from a novel by Bernard MacLaverty and from that they were supposed to continue the story.Theories that have evolved during the last centuries claim that the language use between men and women differ in many aspects. Women, it is said, use a more emotional language than men do, while men use more expletives than women. Likewise, the language is said to differ in the use of adverbs, verbs and adjectives. It has also been claimed that men and women have different topic developments and that women write longer sentences than men.The results of the current study show that most of these claims are false, or at least not true in this specific context. In most cases there is little or no difference between the male writing and the female writing. There are also cases where the opposite is true – for example, the female participants write shorter sentences than the male participants. A general conclusion of the study is that the writing between the two groups are quite similar – or at least that similarities are present to a larger extent than differences.
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Minor, John Kyle. "The secret and the sacred are siblings." Thesis, University of Iowa, 2013. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6616.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
The Secret and the Sacred Are Siblings is a collection of fiction divided into three sections. The first, "Two Dispatches from Jesusland," contains two stories set in the United States, among disaffected fundamentalists. The second, "Three Koulev-Ville Stories," contains two short stories and a novella set in Haiti, among expatriates and locals. The third section contains two excerpts from The Sexual Lives of Missionaries, a novel-in-progress.
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Duncan, Rebecca. "Dark mirrors and disembodied spirits : gender, sexuality and incest in selected fiction by Daphne du Maurier." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14269.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-70).Daphne du Maurier has long been considered chiefly as a writer of popular fiction. She is celebrated as a masterful constructor of plot and acclaimed for her ability to infuse novelistic narrative with a nameless and pervasive frisson of unease, but it is only recently that critics have begun seriously to investigate the shadowy complexities of her widely-read novels. In this thesis, three of du Maurier's best-known works 'Jamaica Inn', 'Rebecca' and 'My Cousin Rachel' are examined using psychoanalytic theory and close textual analysis together with autobiographical information. Each novel reveals an informing concern with the stability of identity, and the psychological perils by which the self is both shaped and haunted. In my discussion of Jamaica Inn, Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection elucidates Mary Yellan's confinement within the rigid boundaries of a violently imposed gender role, and her dangerous quest to transgress these limits. In the case of Rebecca, Nancy Chodorow's version of the female Oedipus complex illuminates the bisexual triangle in which du Maurier's nameless heroine finds herself trapped at Manderley, and brings into focus the anxiety which haunts her in her pursuit of maturity. Finally, in the chapter on My Cousin Rachel Jean Baudrillard's work on seduction and Gilles Deleuze's account of masochism help to explain Philip's compulsion to rid himself of his wealth, his land and the house in which he grew up, so that he might live like a servant with his cousin's maternal and alluring widow. In my reading of each of these novels, analysis uncovers a preoccupation with varying combinations of gender, sexuality and incest, a trinity of issues which beset the author in her own life, and which, in her fiction, inflect the protagonists' quest towards or away from a coherent identity. In conclusion it will be suggested that du Maurier's narratives are written with a double-edged pen: at once widely read, popular fiction, and darkly psychological, subvertive literature, in which deep-rooted social and cultural boundaries are destabilized.
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O'Hanrahan, Paul. "Berlin in English-language fiction, 1989-2008 : spatial representation and the dynamics of memory." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2014. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/18299/.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
This thesis sets out to define the field of Berlin English-language fiction since 1989 by identifying its distinctive forms of representation of space and memory. The post-Wall Berlin thriller can be characterised as a literary category based on genre combinations and a turn to the past. Distinct spatial iconographies emerge in thrillers representing Nazi Berlin, post-war ‘rubble Berlin’ and the divided Cold War period; even the twenty-first-century city is related to 1920s cabarets. Applying Huyssen’s observations on Berlin as a palimpsest of dynamic relations between past and present, I show that the Berlin thriller’s concern with memory is responsive to contemporary uncertainties in the decades following the fall of the Wall. I proceed to compare British perspectives on divided Berlin in novels with thriller associations by Ian McEwan, John le Carré and James Lasdun. I posit that British involvement in the shared governance of divided Berlin during the Cold War era has fostered a special nostalgia for the city which has influenced the intimacy with which these authors represent the city. Through analysis of spatial relations with both parts of the divided city, I reveal unexpected British affinities with East Berlin, ambivalent memories of the Wall and regret at its fall. McEwan’s detailed psychological mapping of topography illustrates how ruins and abandoned space can preserve memory and challenge Nora’s definition of the memory site as a compensatory form. The contemporary, post-unification city is represented in a sample of novels from a wider Anglophone context. The transitory nature of the visitor narrative is challenged by the growing awareness of the city’s memory which informs Berlin novels by American author, Anna Winger, Mexican novelist, Chloe Ardijis and Irish-German author, Hugo Hamilton. Contrasts between insider and outsider relationships with the city are explored and related to representations of peripheral space. A new emphasis on the greening of Berlin is related to eco-critical perspectives: the prospect of emergence from a traumatic past, as signalled by Hamilton is countered by the premonitions of its return as a haunting presence in Aridjis. The diversity of representations of the past in English-language Berlin fiction since 1989 has been driven by the dynamics of the end-of-era perspective created by the fall of the Wall. I show how a seeming tendency towards detachment from post-unification Berlin contrasts with continuing engagement with memory sites in the contemporary city.
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Rossetti, Elena <1984>. "Reading and writing fan fiction in English as a foreign language: a survey study." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/4382.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
Starting from the researcher’s assumption that fan fictions can be useful in English language learning, either in a formal or in an informal learning environment, this study attempts to give an answer to the following question “Can writing and/or reading fan fiction in EFL help language learning and fosters a positive attitude towards the language itself?”
To accomplish said purpose, two preliminary open-form questionnaires of 11 (writers’ questionnaire) and 7 (readers’ questionnaire) questions were devised and shared on the Internet. The response showed that learners older than 19, rather than people in middle or high school, seem to be the most willing to share their personal experience regarding fan fics. Consequently, another open-form questionnaire, made up of 39 questions, was devised and uploaded on the Internet.
The analysis on the 35 questionnaires that have been compiled shows that most of the subjects share the researcher’s assumption and claim to have been motivated to improve their English language skills (through reading and writing) as well as actually learning a lot of English vocabulary and figures of speech (mainly through reading). This, I believe, can be the starting point for further research on how fan fiction helps English language learning through the study of specifically designed case studies.
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Jackson, Akia. "The mobility of memory and shame: African American and Afro-Caribbean women’s fiction 1980’s-1990’s." Diss., University of Iowa, 2019. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6962.
Повний текст джерелаАнотація:
The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the mixed legacy of shame. I work through the interrelationship between productive shame and debilitating shame and a character’s journey through this spectrum. In my research, I define shame not in the pejorative, but rather I repurpose the term to show its beneficiality in reshaping Black female characters during the period of Black Arts and Power Movements in America and the Caribbean. Essentially, my dissertation will argue that although debilitative shame seems overwhelmingly negative for the female characters, gradually they come to reassess this shame as a positive asset that helps them reevaluate societal and nationalistic expectations associated with their Blackness. I seek to redefine the globalized multiple dimensions of shame that Black authors confront throughout their novels because shame involves an often painful, sudden awareness of the self and trauma previously endured.
Thus, the fluidity of Black transnational experiences frame my interrogation of the impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on the cultural history and collective shame of Afro-diasporic descended characters in Morrison’s Tar Baby (1981), Kincaid’s Annie John (1985), Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1987), and Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). My project complicates mobility by dissecting the disconnections that arise from separation from homelands, family, and cultural familiarity. I analyze the four novels through an ordered methodology of migration, disruption, discontinuity, and the renaming debilitative shame as a positive asset. This methodology informs my argument on the middle ground and Black female characters occupying multiple identities in their movement through different nation-states and empires.