Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos
This issue is dedicated to the fond memory of
ENRIQUE ALCARAZ VARÓ (1940-2008)
Vol. 30, núm. 1 Junio 2008
30.1 (June 2008) 30.1 (Junio 2008)
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Consejo de Redacción
General Editor: Angela Downing Universidad Complutense de Madrid Assistant Editor: Ludmila Urbanová Managing Editor: Marta Carretero University of Brno Universidad Complutense de Madrid Book Reviews Editor: Clara Calvo Editor’s Assistant: Juan Rafael Zamorano Universidad de Murcia Universidad Complutense de Madrid Universität Bremen Style supervisor: Jorge Arús Hita Universidad Complutense de Madrid
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Editores Adjuntos
Andrew Blake Heinz Ickstadt University of Winchester Freie Universität Berlin Martin Bygate J. Hillis Miller Lancaster University University of California at Irvine Teresa Fanego Susheila M. Nasta Universidad de Santiago de Compostela Open University Fernando Galván Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Universidad de La Rioja
EDITORIAL BOARD Consejo Científico
Joan C. Beal Rachel Bowlby Graham D. Caie University of Sheffield University College London University of Glasgow Jesús Benito Sánchez Kris Van den Branden Gordon Campbell Universidad de Valladolid Katholieke Universiteit Leuven University of Leicester Marcella Bertuccelli Papi Mario Brdar Isabel Carrera Università di Pisa Josip Juraj Strossmayer University Universidad de Oviedo Nilufer E. Bharucha Laurel J. Brinton Shirley Chew University of Mumby University of British Columbia University of Leeds Clare Birchall Manuel Broncano Robert Clark Middlesex University Universidad de León University of East Anglia Anita Biressi Jorge L. Bueno Thomas Claviez Roehampton University Universidad de Vigo University of Stavanger Maggie Ann Bowers Christopher S. Butler Tom Cohen University of Portsmouth University of Wales University of Albany
Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre Jacqueline Hurtley Ruth Parkin-Gounelas Universidad de Murcia Universitat de Barcelona Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Francisco J. Cortés Rodríguez David Johnson Javier Pérez Guerra Universidad de La Laguna The Open University Universidad de Vigo Isabel de la Cruz Cabanillas Stephan Kohl James Procter Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Julius-Maximilians-Universität University of Stirling Pilar Cuder Würzburg Victor J. Ramraj Universidad de Huelva Zoltán Kövecses University of Calgary Daniela Daniele Eötvös Loránd University David Richards Università di Udine Manfred Krug University of Stirling Rocío G. Davis Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg Caroline Rooney University of Navarra Merja Kytö University of Kent Denise deCaires Narain Uppsala University Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza University of Sussex Alberto Lázaro Universidad de La Rioja Celestino Deleyto Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Dianne F. Sadoff Universidad de Zaragoza Ursula Lenker Rutgers University Balz Engler Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Jürgen Schlaeger University of Basel München Humboldt-Universität Berlin Charles Forceville María José López Couso Elena Seoane University of Amsterdam Universidad de Santiago de Universidad de Santiago de Compostela Javier Franco Aixelá Compostela Universidad de Alicante Dámaso López García María Josep Solé Sabater Universidad Complutense de Madrid María del Pilar García Mayo Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Universidad del País Vasco María Losada Friend Alasdair Spark Universidad de Huelva Cristina Garrigós University of Winchester Universidad de León Ricardo Mairal Usón M. S. Suárez Lafuente UNED Dirk Geeraerts Universidad de Oviedo University of Leuven Ana María Manzanas Calvo Juan Antonio Suárez Universidad de Salamanca Lincoln Geraghty Universidad de Murcia University of Portsmouth Javier Martín Arista Henry Sussman Universidad de La Rioja Vincent Gillespie University of Buffalo / Yale University University of Oxford John McLeod Justine Tally University of Leeds Cristina Giorcelli Universidad de La Laguna Università di Roma Tre Lavinia Merlini Paloma Tejada Caller Università di Pisa Manuel José Gómez Lara Universidad Complutense de Madrid Universidad de Sevilla Rafael Monroy Geoff Thompson Universidad de Murcia José Luis González Escribano University of Liverpool Universidad de Oviedo Carmen Muñoz I. M. Tieken-Boon van Ostade Universitat de Barcelona Francisco Gonzálvez García University of Leiden Universidad de Almería Jo Anne Neff Van Aertselaer Harish Trivedi Universidad Complutense de Madrid Agnieszka Graff University of Delhi Warsaw University Heather Nunn Carmen Valero Garcés Roehampton University Leighton Grist Universidad de Alcalá de Henares University of Winchester James Ogude Ruth Wodak University of the Witwatersrand Adolphe Haberer Lancaster University Université Lumière-Lyon 2 Ana Ojea Pilar Zozaya Universidad de Oviedo Pilar Hidalgo University of Barcelona Universidad de Málaga Mohamed-Salah Omri University of Exeter Juan Carlos Hidalgo Universidad de Sevilla Klaus-Uwe Panther Universität Hamburg Ton Hoenselaars Utrecht University Pedro Javier Pardo Universidad de Salamanca
Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos
30.1 (June 2008) 30.1 (Junio 2008)
Table of Contents • Índice
Remembering absent friends • Recuerdos de amigos ausentes
Enrique Alcaraz Varó (1940-2008) ...... 11
Articles • Artículos
Vision Metaphors for the Intellect: Are they Really Cross-Linguistic? Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Universidad de Zaragoza ...... 15
Shelley’s Orientalia: Indian Elements in his Poetry Jalal Uddin Khan Qatar University ...... 35
Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities: Translation as a Paradigm of Thought for Modernism M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera Universidade de Vigo ...... 53
A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences Ana Ojea Universidad de Oviedo ...... 69
From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits: The Multiple Histories and Identities of Doctor Who’s Cybermen Lincoln Geraghty University of Portsmouth ...... 85
Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research: How Socio-linguistic Roles and Relationships Facilitate or Frustrate Second Language Acquisition Colby Toussaint Clark and Ian Clark Portland State University / Mukogawa Women's University ...... 101
‘Making Something Out of Nothing’: Lesbianism as Liberating Fantasy in The Children’s Hour Mercè Cuenca and María Isabel Seguro Universidad de Barcelona ...... 115
Stance and Academic Promotionalism: A Cross-disciplinary Comparison in the Soft Sciences Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Universidad de Zaragoza ...... 129
Reviews • Reseñas
Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, eds. 2006: Hamlet Hamlet, The Texts of 1603 and 1623 reviewed by Jesús Tronch Pérez ...... 149
Tom Cohen 2005: Hitchcock’s Cryptonymies reviewed by Rosa María Díez Cobo ...... 159
Dirk Geeraerts, ed. 2006: Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings reviewed by Paloma Tejada Caller ...... 167
Carmen Muñoz, ed. 2006: Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning reviewed by Melinda Dooly ...... 173
María del Pilar García Mayo, ed. 2007: Investigating Tasks in Formal Language Learning reviewed by Ana Fernández Dobao ...... 179
Nieves Alberola Crespo and Yvonne Shafer, eds. 2006: ¿Nimiedades para la eternidad? Pioneras en la escena estadounidense reviewed by Barbara Ozieblo ...... 185
Jaydeep Sarangi and Bisnod Mishra, eds. 2006: Explorations in Australian Literature reviewed by Eroulla Demetriou ...... 191
José R. Ibáñez, José Francisco Fernández and Carmen M. Bretones, eds. 2007: Contemporary Debates on the Short Story reviewed by Gerardo Rodríguez Salas ...... 197
Cristina Suárez-Gómez 2006: Relativization in Early English (950-1250): The Position of Relative Clauses reviewed by Mª Ángeles Ruiz Moneva ...... 203
Abstracts in Spanish ...... 209
Contributors to this issue ...... 215
Acknowledgements ...... 219
Instructions to Contributors ...... 221
REMEMBERING ABSENT FRIENDS
RECUERDOS DE AMIGOS AUSENTES
ENRIQUE ALCARAZ VARÓ (1940-2008)
Enrique Alcaraz, our outstanding scholar, encouraging mentor and faithful friend, has left us. In these grief-stricken moments, we are confronted with the difficult task of summarizing his exceptional accomplishments. Those of us who were fortunate to have known him personally agree that Enrique will be forever remembered, not only for his extraordinary intellectual capabilities, but also for his generous human nature. He had the tremendous capability of being able to unite his academic and personal virtues in opening and sharing many new lines of research in the fields of linguistics, translation and applied linguistics, among others. Throughout the years, we have witnessed how he dedicated his mind and soul to research and teaching. His early work as a teacher in secondary education and as a teacher trainer influenced his prolific and noteworthy writings. He not only wrote English language course books and textbooks on phonetics and morphosyntax, but also put his theoretical knowledge into practice within the elementary and secondary school systems, where his teachings were promptly admired. His academic work steadily progressed and he went from the Escuela de Magisterio, where he was a full Professor of English, to the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the Centro de Estudios Universitarios de Alicante just at the time when the University of Alicante was founded. He played an important role in establishing the first statutes of the university and, some years later, as the academic secretary of the university’s social council. Together with the beloved professors Pedro Jesús Marcos and Asunción Alba, he worked to create the Department of English Studies, where he late became Head of Department. Thanks to his far-seeing view of the future during his years as Head, he also promoted the degree in translation studies. His own research began with a doctoral thesis on semantics as applied to literary stylistics. He afterwards continued his work, combining theory and practice through the publication of books and articles and their application in the university classroom. He followed the American structuralists, read Chomsky, discovered functional grammar and the philosophy of language, which led to the beginnings of the new paradigm of pragmatics. As a result of his profound studies and his first- hand experience, he wrote and published his renowned Tres Paradigmas de la Investigación Lingüística (Three Paradigms of Linguistic Research). His determination to bring theory into the light of reality led him to the fields of lexicography and to the study of specialized languages. In a matter of a few years Enrique, together with Brian Hughes, another highly esteemed colleague who has sadly also left us, devised a methodology which combined his knowledge of linguistics and its application to specialized language and dictionaries. Eventually, over ten dictionaries of specialized language were written in conjunction with other academics from the University of Alicante, as well as from other universities in Spain. At the same time, Enrique focused on forensic linguistics and was invited on many occasions to lecture on legal English in several European countries and in the United States. The respect and popularity that he obtained in the field was great to the point of being requested to give talks to the judges of the high courts of Spain (a los jueces del Consejo General del Poder Judicial español). His last and most recent project was the establishment of the Interuniversity Institute of Applied Modern Languages (IULMA-Instituto Interuniversitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas), which brings together interdisciplinary efforts of researchers and professors of the Universities of Alicante, Castellón (Jaume I), and Valencia. Although his academic and professional achievements seem to have gone beyond all expectations, they are surpassed or, at least, on a par with his extraordinary personality. He was very much loved by his students and companions. In addition, his academic and social perspectives were highly respected in all parts of the country. His well-known ability to share ideas and accomplishments made him a distinguished scholar with countless followers, many of whose doctoral thesis he directed. Among his virtues were his boundless generosity, his elegant conservative mannerisms and his skill at diplomatic negotiation. Those of us who had the privilege to be witnesses of Enrique’s kind actions and solemn words, at any of the numerous PhD vivas or tenure boards he attended, were often inspired by his knack of tactfully correcting, while simultaneously encouraging the candidates and skillfully sharing his knowledge and wise academic advice. He had the special ability to turn his words into maxims. For instance, he would say that “the two keys to success in life are a warm, friendly personality together with a good command of the English language”. Other well-known axioms of his were “Be prepared and the opportunity will come”, “One thing at a time” and “First things first”. His sensible and powerful words still echo in the minds of those who had the privilege of being his disciples, colleagues and friends, and will -for ever and ever- be our guiding light in academic life. Enrique Alcaraz will be greatly missed by all of us. Nevertheless, we will continue to read, quote and remember the wise words of our outstanding scholar, encouraging mentor and faithful friend.
Victoria Guillen, José Mateo, Teresa Morell and Francisco Yus Universidad de Alicante
ARTICLES
ARTÍCULOS
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124
Vision Metaphors for the Intellect: Are they Really Cross-Linguistic?
Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Universidad de Zaragoza [email protected]
Many metaphor researchers, especially within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, have argued that the conceptual link between sight and intellect is universal. However, there are many studies, mainly anthropological but also linguistic, that contradict not only the universality of these metaphors, but also the predominant role of vision in the domain of cognition. In this paper, I will discuss the role of ‘embodiment’ and the importance of ‘culture’ in the creation and conceptualisation of perception metaphors. The main point will be to show that all human beings use the senses for gathering and processing information, but that the sense through which they choose to access that knowledge depends on the culture they are embedded in. First of all, I will describe the senses in terms of ‘prototypical properties’. Then, I will show that the properties that apply to one sense in one culture might be applicable to a different sense in another culture. Rather than identifying one specific sense with one specific cognitive capability (UNDERSTANDING IS VISION), it is necessary to formulate these relationships on a more general and abstract level (UNDERSTANDING IS PERCEPTION).
Keywords: metaphor, perception, embodiment, culture
Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics is understood as a mapping or correspondence between two conceptual domains, where properties from one domain, the source, are transferred onto another domain, the target. It is in this way that metaphors “allow us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 135). According to the standard view of metaphor in this framework (cf. Johnson 1987; Kövecses 2002; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Grady 1997), the conceptual associations between source and target domains are usually considered universal, since they are grounded on an experiential bodily basis, i.e. embodied human experience. For example, it has been shown that the target domain of emotions is usually conceptualised by means of the source domain of physiological changes in the body (Kövecses 2000). A typical example of such a conceptual correspondence is the metaphor ANGER IS A HOT FLUID IN A PRESSURISED CONTAINER. This metaphor is based not only on our knowledge of the behaviour of liquid substances in pressurised containers but also on our physical experience when we are angry, that is, an increase in 16 Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano skin temperature, blood pressure and other activities in the nervous system (Ekman, Levenson and Friesen 1983; Gibbs et al. 1997; Levenson, Ekman and Friesen 1990; Levenson et al. 1992; Valenzuela and Soriano 2007). However, both anthropology and linguistics researchers (Fernandez 1991; Kövecses 2005) have questioned the universality of these metaphors and pointed out that there are other metaphors which are possible only in some languages and not in others. In Kövecses’s own words: “As a general tendency, cognitive linguists have overemphasised the universality of some of the metaphorical structures that they found and ignored the many cases of non-universality in metaphorical conceptualisation” (2005: xii). In this study, I will examine one of those metaphors considered universal in cognitive linguistics, namely the link between sight and intellect (Sweetser 1990). Based on cross-linguistic data, I will show not only that this link is not totally universal but also that the predominant role of vision in the domain of cognition is culturally bounded. In other words, I will discuss the role of ‘embodiment’ and the importance of ‘culture’ in the creation and conceptualisation of perception metaphors. Section 1 briefly reviews some of the main studies on the polysemy of perception verbs in Cognitive Linguistics. Section 2 discusses the issue of motivation in polysemy and offers a detailed description of the possible conceptual bases for perception verb meaning by means of prototypical properties. Section 3 tackles the issue of universality vs. language- specificity in the polysemy of perception verbs in different languages. The main goal will be to show that all human beings use the senses for gathering and processing information, but that the sense they choose in order to access that knowledge depends on the culture they are embedded in. Finally, Section 4 draws some conclusions and proposes a model that takes into account both embodiment and culture as the bases of the conceptual motivation for perception metaphors.
1. Polysemy in perception verbs
The semantic field of perception verbs is one of the favourite domains in linguistic research. Due to their wide variety of constructional and syntactical possibilities and their rich polysemous structures, these verbs have been the object of study not only in morpho-syntax (Dik and Hengeveld 1991; Enghels 2005; Fernández Jaén 2006; García- Miguel 2005; Gisborne 1996; Horie 1993; Roegiest 2003) but also in semantics (Alm- Arvius 1993; Horno Chéliz 2002-2004, in press; Ibarretxe-Antuñano 1999a, forthcoming; Rojo and Valenzuela 2004-2005; Sweetser 1990; Viberg 1984). In the area of polysemy, one can find numerous studies devoted to the analysis of the semantic extensions that these verbs lexicalise. Within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, Sweetser (1990) reviews some of the semantic extensions of perception verbs in English. Her main aim is to provide a motivated explanation for the relationships between senses of a single morpheme or word and between diachronically earlier and later senses of a morpheme or word. In order to do so, she proposes a semantic link-up—the MIND AS BODY metaphor—to account for this pervasive tendency in the Indo-European languages to borrow concepts and vocabulary from the more accessible physical and social world to refer to the less accessible worlds of reasoning,
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 Vision Metaphors for the Intellect 17 emotion and conversational structure. Figure 1 summarises Sweetser’s paths of semantic extension in English perception verbs:
Figure 1: Structure of English perception metaphors (From Sweetser 1990: 38) Sweetser’s list of perception metaphors can be complemented with more recent analyses that add new meanings not only to verbs of sight and hearing—which are the perceptual modalities that attract the attention of most linguists (Alm-Arvius 1993; Baker 1999; Danesi 1990)—but also to verbs of touch, smell and taste—usually more marginal in linguistic discussions. Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002: 114) offers the semantic extensions shown in Table 1. These studies clearly show that perception verbs are polysemous, but the question one has to put forward is whether these semantic extensions are arbitrary or motivated. In other words, are there any reasons that can explain why a verb like smell lexicalises the meaning ‘suspect’ as in (1) or that a verb like see can be used in the sense of ‘understand’ as in (2)?
(1) In Ferrari terms, it wasn't, and Niki should have smelled earlier that yet another Ferrari plot was under way, and without Montezemolo, his flanks were unprotected (BNC) (2) I explained the problem but he could not see it
Furthermore, provided that these reasons are found, the next step is to ask whether these paths of semantic extensions are applicable to all languages. That is to say, are these connections between the domain of sense perception and other domains like cognition universal or language-specific?
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 18 Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano
Table 1: Conceptual metaphors in perception verbs (From Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2002: 114)
2. Arbitrariness vs. Motivation: Conceptual bases in perception verbs
Some authors have attempted to study the meaning of words on the basis of a series of truth conditions independently from any type of human understanding (see, for instance, Fregean semantics [Geach and Black 1952] and Montague’s Model-theoretical semantics [Dowty, Wall and Peters 1981; Cann 1993]). Although this objectivist view of meaning can account for certain formal semantic properties, it falls short when it comes to explain the type of polysemous structures discussed in Section 1. As Lakoff (1987: 157-218) argues, language is intrinsically linked to human beings. Language does not reflect a reality based on an external objectivist world, totally independent of what people observe and experience; quite the contrary, language reflects conceptual structures based on people’s experience and knowledge of the external world that surrounds them. Therefore, to think that the relationship between linguistic forms and the concepts they represent is, as traditionally proposed, arbitrary cannot be totally true. To some extent, one can accept that there is a certain essential arbitrary component in the association of words with what they mean but, as Sweetser (1990: 5) points out, this arbitrariness is very restricted. Human conceptual categories and the meaning of linguistic structures at any level are not a set of universal abstract features or uninterpreted symbols; they are motivated and grounded more or less directly in experience, in our bodily, physical and socio-cultural experiences. This notion of ‘motivated’ language is known in Cognitive Linguistics as embodiment (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999).
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 Vision Metaphors for the Intellect 19
If the idea of embodiment is correct, then, it is possible to hypothesise that the semantic extensions that occur in perception verbs (Section 1) have to be motivated and grounded in the way we perceive and experience the senses. The senses have frequently been described as the different channels we have through which we gather information about the world (Sekuler and Blake 1994; Classen 1993). There are two key words in this definition: information and different. The five senses give us information about the world in which we live, but the way this information is received, processed and understood by human beings is different. These differences are based on biological as well as cultural constraints. Biologically, each sense has its own receptors—eyes, ears, skin, nose, mouth—and its own pathways to the brain. Each sense receptor responds to different stimuli: light, sound waves, mechanical disturbances, volatile substances and soluble substances. In sum, the way in which each sense modality links us to the world is different. Each modality makes us perceive certain stimuli and interpret the same reality in a particular manner. In order to explain the conceptual basis of the semantic extensions in perception verbs, it is crucial to take this diversity into account and to characterise the experiential domain of perception. The model I propose for this characterisation is the creation of a typology of prototypical properties. These properties are based not only on the physiology of the five senses—biological foundations—but also on the psychology of the senses—folk models, how people think they perceive with the senses (see Classen 1993; Howard Hughes Medical Institute 1995; Howes 2005; Rouby et al. 2002; Sekuler and Blake 1994). This guarantees the independence of description of the perception domain and eliminates any post hoc analysis derived from the semantic extensions found in perception verbs (for a discussion on this issue, see Keysar and Bly 1995; Murphy 1996). Due to restrictions of space, I can only enumerate and briefly describe the main prototypical properties that characterise and constrain the domain of perception.1 Definitions for each property are based on the relationship among the three main elements that participate in a perceptual act: the person that carries out the perception or perceiver (PR), the object—animate or inanimate—being perceived (OP) and the act of perception itself (P). These properties are not to be understood as semantic primitives or innate atomic conceptual units but as shorthand ways of referring to the defining properties used to describe perception. Prototypical properties are summarised in Table 2.
1 For a more comprehensive account of these prototypical properties including information about the physiological and psychological bases for these properties, and the distribution of positive/negative values, see Ibarretxe-Antuñano (1999a: chap. 5) and the references therein: http://www.unizar.es/linguisticageneral/Ibarretxe-PhD-Thesis-99.pdf
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 20 Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano
Table 2: Prototypical properties in perception The distribution of these properties in each sense is shown in Table 3. These properties are organised in accordance with two parameters: (i) the interrelations between the three elements involved in perceptual processes: PR, OP and P (shown in the first column), and (ii) the presence or absence of these properties in each sense since there are properties that are applicable to all senses, group A, and others which only apply to some, group B (shown in the second column). Based on the physiological and psychological information about the senses, each property receives a yes or no tag depending on the positive or negative value it receives with respect to the role properties play in the characterisation of each perceptual modality. For example, senses like touch that require contact between the PR and OP will have a yes tag, whereas senses like sight that do not require contact will have a no tag instead (Sekuler and Blake 1996: 6-7, 27). It is important to bear in mind that each sense has its own characteristics and its own way of processing information. This diversity has to be reflected in the distribution of both properties and values.
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 Vision Metaphors for the Intellect 21
PR, OP, P Presence Properties VISION HEAR TOUCH SMELL TASTE
PRÆP A
n> yes yes yes no yes OPÆP A ------B Table 3: Distribution of prototypical properties in the senses arranged according to the Western mode 2.1. Prototypical properties in action: An example ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 22 Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano Figure 2.1: Vision Figure 2.2: Hearing Figure 2.3: Smell In Figure 2.1 and 2.3, the direction of the arrow (P) goes from the PR to the OP, whereas in Figure 2.2 the direction is the other way round, from the OP to the PR. The direction of the arrow represents the property (3) I saw that there was going to be trouble (4) I heard that there was going to be trouble (5) I smelt that there was going to be trouble All these examples are the same except for the modality of the perception verb used in each group: see, hear and smell. This allows the meaning in each group to be different: example (1) can be paraphrased as ‘to know’, (2) as ‘to be told’2 and (3) as ‘to guess, to suspect’. However, if we look at these sentences more carefully, one realises that all these meanings belong to the domain of ‘knowledge’. What seems to be different is the type of knowledge that can be inferred from each of these sentences. It is not the same to say about a certain situation that I knew about it, in contrast with I was told about it or I suspected something. In each of these examples, there is a variation in the degree of accuracy and reliability between the hypothesis inferred from the Ps and the real object. This variation can be explained by means of the prototypical property 2 It has been suggested by one of the Atlantis referees that the semantic extension of the verb hear in sentence (4) could be a metonymy (EFFECT FOR CAUSE) rather than a metaphor. This explanation is possible if the sentence were to refer to a physical event, that is to say, if I were referring to the fact that somebody actually came and told me that information. However, I would argue that the mapping in (4) takes place from the domain of physical perception (hearing) to the abstract domain of cognition (knowing with less certainty), and therefore, I would consider (4) a metaphor. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 Vision Metaphors for the Intellect 23 going to be some problems, but I also interpreted these in a specific manner. In (2), I did not see with my own eyes that there was going to be trouble; another person told me so and, as experience tells us, sometimes what other people say, especially when reporting some event, is not always accurate. Finally in (3), I perceived that there was going to be trouble, but the indications to that conclusion were not very clear; the evidence for such an assumption is not strong enough for me to be sure of it. The different meanings in these sentences are a faithful portrait of the perceptual experiences that we undergo when we use each of these sense modalities. When we perceive by means of these senses we formulate or create hypotheses about the nature and characteristics of the OP that correspond more or less accurately to the nature of the real object. The information gathered by the sense of vision, and consequently, the hypothesis formulated on the basis of that information is more accurate than that of the sense of hearing or smell. Therefore, what we are doing when we use metaphorical expressions that contain verbs such as see, hear, or smell is to map that experience from the domain of physical perception onto the more abstract domain of knowledge. It is interesting to point out that the same distinctions about reliability of information we have just seen in the examples above are also lexicalised in evidentials, i.e. grammatical forms that provide information about the evidence on which a statement is based; they participate in the expression of the speaker’s attitude towards the situation his/her utterance describes (Aikhenvald 2004; Chafe and Nichols 1986). Sense perception verbs are a common cross-linguistic source for evidentials (see Aikhenvald and Dixon 1998, 2003; De Haan 2005; Willett 1988). Sensory evidentials (visual and non-visual) are used to mark direct evidence acquired by any of the sense modalities (visual, auditory, olfactory…). That is to say, these evidentials mark that the speaker knows the information because s/he saw, heard, smelt, felt… it. For example, the evidential ink’e in Eastern Pomo (McLendon 2003) with the verbal form phbék tells us that the speaker knows that the object is burned because s/he felt it. However, what is really interesting is that these sensory evidentials also lexicalise the same metaphorical meanings described above. Visual evidentials provide a higher degree of reliability than auditory ones. For instance, in Tuyuca (Barnes 1984), the visual evidential wi3 asserts a direct and reliable knowledge which does not require the speaker to be an eyewitness. Another example could be that of the morpheme wonon in the Samoyedic language of Russia, Nenets (Perrot 1996). This morpheme is used as an auditory evidential (the speaker hears a sound) but also as a quotative or hearsay evidential (the speaker is told). 3. Universality vs. language-specificity: Embodiment and culture As shown in the previous section, prototypical properties help us understand why verbs such as see, hear or smell in English lexicalise meanings related to the domain of knowledge. The next step is to ask whether this conceptual grounding also motivates the semantic extensions of these perception verbs in other languages. In theory, the 3 Wi is only one of the possible forms of the visual evidential, since evidentials in Tuyuca are expressed by means of a portmanteau morpheme together with person, number, gender, and tense. Wi is the visual evidential for the 3rd person singular masculine past (Barnes 1984: 258). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 24 Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano answer should be affirmative. It is necessary to bear in mind that one of the main aspects in the cognitive theory of embodiment is that all human beings perceive and experience the world that surround us in a similar way since all of us are built in the same way and rely on the same mechanisms (body, motor skills, perceptual skills and so on). Therefore, similar semantic extensions should be found in other languages and should be explained in an analogous manner. In previous research, Ibarretxe-Antuñano (1999a, b, 2002, 2006, forthcoming) carries out a contrastive study of the polysemy of perception verbs in two other genetically unrelated languages, apart from English: Basque and Spanish. She finds similar semantic extensions in the perception verbs in these languages, including the mapping onto the domain of knowledge. Let us see some parallel examples to the English ones in (3), (4), y (5) above: (6) a. Ya vi que iba a haber problemas already saw that went to there.be problems b. Arazoak egongo direla ikusi nuen problem.abs.pl be.fut aux.comp see aux.1sg ‘I saw that there was going to be trouble’ (7) a. Ya oí que iba a haber problemas already heard that went to there.be problems b. Arazoak egongo direla entzun nuen problem.abs.pl be.fut aux.comp hear aux.1sg ‘I heard that there was going to be trouble’ (8) a. Ya me olía que iba a haber problemas already refl.1sg smelled that went to there.be problems b. Arazoak egongo direla usaitu nuen problem.abs.pl be.fut aux.comp smell aux.1sg ‘I smelled that there was going to be trouble’ Judging from these examples, one can assume that these semantic extensions can be regarded as universal. In fact, in Cognitive Linguistics literature, the link between vision and cognition has been generally accepted as one of the most consistently universal mappings in this domain. Authors such as Sweetser (1990) claim that vision has primacy as the modality from which verbs of higher intellection, such as ‘knowing’, ‘understanding’ and ‘thinking’, are recruited, whereas hearing verbs, such as hear or listen, would not take these readings, because they are more “connected with the specifically communicative aspects of understanding, rather than with intellection at large” (1990: 43). This claim is shared by several psychologists and psycholinguists such as Gardner (1983) and Arnheim (1969), who consider vision the most important sense, and therefore, the association between vision and thinking/knowledge natural. However, research in non-Western languages seems to cause problems for this universal tendency. Evans and Wilkins (2000), for example, point out that in Australian aboriginal languages verbs of hearing are those that establish links with the domain of intellection, whereas the great majority of semantic extensions derived from sight verbs ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 Vision Metaphors for the Intellect 25 are more related to desire, sexual attraction, supervision and aggression. In their own words, …within Australia, ‘hearing’ is the only perceptual modality that regularly maps into the domain of cognition throughout the whole continent. It regularly extends to ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘remember’, as well as ‘understand’ and ‘obey’, thus presenting a pattern quite distinct from the Indo-European one…When ‘see’ extends outside of the domain of perception, it most commonly shifts into the domain of social interaction. (Evans and Wilkins 2000: 576) These authors offer a great amount of empirical linguistic data illustrating this pervasive mapping from hearing onto cognition in different Australian languages. Let us draw some examples. The verbs awe in Arrernte, kulini in Pitjantjatjara, yangkura in Ngar, gannga- in Banjalang with the meaning ‘hear, listen’ and ‘understand’. The verb marrija in Yukulta which means ‘listen, hear’ if it is used transitively and, ‘think, feel’ if it is used intransitively. The word for pina ‘ear’ in Walmajarri and its derived forms pina- jarti (lit. ‘having an ear’) ‘intelligent’, pina-pina-karrinyu (lit. ‘ear-ear-stand’) ‘think’, and pina-rri ‘knowing, knowledge’. ‘Ear’ based expressions in Kayrdild such as marraldunbuwatha (lit. ‘ear become useless’) and marraldurldiija (lit. ‘ear shit’) ‘to forget’. What Evans and Wilkins have found in their analysis of over 60 Australian languages is, by no means, an exception. There are several examples that demonstrate that vision is not universally linked to knowledge. Seeger (1975), for example, reports that the Suya Indians of Brazil use the same verb ku-mba for ‘listen’, ‘understand’ and ‘know’, and that “when the Suya have learned something—even something visual such as a weaving pattern—they say, ‘it is in my ear’” (1975: 214). Devereux (1991) also attests that the Sedang Moi from Indochina conceptualise the ear as the seat of reason, and expressions such as tlek ‘deaf’ and oh ta ay tue(n), literally ‘has no ear’, are used to describe people who lack intelligence. Mayer (1982) explains that in Ommura (Papua New Guinea) all intellectual processes are associated with the auditory. According to this author, all that has to do with motives, thoughts or intentions are ‘in the ear’, and verbs such as iero mean both ‘to hear (a sound)’ and ‘to know, to understand’. The Desana of the equatorial rain forest of Colombian Northwest Amazon (Reichel- Dolmatoff 1981) consider hearing as the most important function of the brain; it is the sense that connects both brain hemispheres (pee yíri ‘to hear to act’), and provides abstract thought. Hearing, however, is not the only alternative to vision; there are other possibilities. The Ongee of the Andaman Islands in the South Pacific, for instance, order their lives by smells (see Classen, Howes and Synnott 1994, Pandya 1993) and the Tzotzil of Mexico consider heat (hence, touch) to be the basic force of the cosmos (see Classen 1993). Furthermore, there are cultures in which several perceptual modalities work together in the conceptualisation of cognition. The Shipibo-Conibo Indians from Peru are reported to use visual, auditory and olfactory perceptions to form a body of shamanic cognition (see Gebhart-Sayer 1985). As suggested by several anthropologists, to take for granted that vision is the perceptual modality universally linked to the intellect is the direct consequence of an omnipresent Western perspective that somehow ‘pollutes’ conceptual reality in the ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 26 Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano domain of perception. Howes (1991), Ong (1991) and Tyler (1984), among others, have already warned us against this ethnocentrism (see also Palmer 2003). Nowadays, it is undeniable that vision occupies a salient position in our conceptualisation of the intellect, but this saliency is not shared by all cultures or even present in older stages in the Indo-European culture. As Tyler puts it: “The hegemony of the visual…is not universal, for it: (a) has a history as a commonsense concept in Indo-European, influenced particularly by literacy; (b) is not ‘substantiated’ in the conceptual ‘structures’ of other languages; and (c) is based on a profound misunderstanding of the evolution and functioning of the human sensorium” (1984: 23). An important consequence for the analysis of polysemy in perception verbs can be drawn from these linguistic and anthropological studies: The motivation and grounding of these semantic extensions cannot be solely explained by means of a common body-basis.4 The culture in which these human beings live in is also a key factor and as Ong points out: “Cultures vary greatly in their exploitation of the various senses and in the way in which they related their conceptual apparatus to the various senses” (1991: 26). The semantic extensions of the verbs see, hear and smell are found in English, Basque and Spanish not only because the embodiment of these senses is the same, but also because these languages, despite their genetic differences, share the same Western cultural background. In the other cases—the Australian languages, the Suya, the Sedang Moi, the Ommura, the Desana, the Ongee, the Tzotzil and the Shipibo-Conibo—the cultural basis is not the same and as a result the embodiment of the senses is used in a different manner. In other words, if we want to explain the motivation of these polysemous verbs we must take into account what we know about our own biology but also about our own culture since “language is a bio-cultural hybrid” (Levinson 2000: 5). Once it is clear that culture plays a role in the conceptualisation of the senses, the next step is to discover what it is in a given culture that leads to such a specific choice. Some anthropologists such as Howes (2003) and Classen (1993) suggest that this choice is based on social factors. Others such as Gell (1995) and Feld (1990) give preference to environmental factors (e.g. open desert versus dense jungle) instead. Evans and Wilkins (2000: 580-85), for example, offer six cultural factors in order to explain why ‘hearing’ rather than ‘seeing’ is related to cognition verbs in Australian languages. These are: (i) the role of individual choice in selectively directing attention in hearing, (ii) a non- dyadic or broadcast conversational style, (iii) different prototypes for perceiving objects 4 The term embodiment has several different interpretations in both psychological and anthropological studies (see Chrisley and Ziemke 2002; Wilson 2002; Ziemke 2003). In this paper, embodiment is always used in the cognitive linguistic tradition of Johnson’s (1987) work. Johnson’s definition of embodiment is quite problematic though, especially with regard to the role of culture as a determining factor in the interpretation of what embodiment is. Although Johnson includes social and cultural factors in his definition of embodiment, these two elements have been somehow ignored or perhaps, pushed into the background, in many cognitive linguistic studies. This situation is changing in current cognitive linguistic research. A proper discussion of the interaction between culture and embodiment lies outside the scope of this paper, but the interested reader can consult the following references: Dirven, Frank and Pütz (2003), Ziemke, Zlatev and Frank (in press); Frank, Dirven and Ziemke (in press). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 Vision Metaphors for the Intellect 27 absent from the immediate scene, (iv) accumulation of relevant knowledge about the country, land, tracks, myths… by hearing, (v) the role of hearing in the socialisation process, and (vi) oral tradition. 4. Conclusions: Conceptual motivation in perception In the previous section, I argued that it is necessary to take into account both embodiment and culture in order to understand and prove that the polysemous structures in perception verbs are motivated.5 This statement gives rise to a problem for the distribution and values of the prototypical properties of perception summarised in Table 3, which are arranged according to the Western model. In spite of the differences between cultures, what seems to be clear is that the senses are used as “channels for information about the world” (Sekuler and Blake 1994) everywhere. Although mappings between one particular sense and one specific conceptual domain do not coincide across different cultures, these mappings are still carried out in the field of perception. Therefore, as a possible solution to Table 3, I propose the flexible motivation pattern that is schematically represented in Figure 3: Embodiment Culture Prototypical properties of Values (yes, no) for the properties perception and their distribution in each sense CONCEPTUAL MOTIVATION Figure 3: Conceptual motivation in perception verbs The prototypical properties that describe the senses are kept the same, because they are based on the relationships established between the perceiver, the object perceived and the act of perception. Human beings have the same physical configuration and our organs work in the same way; therefore, these prototypical properties do not need to change. What has to be changed is the distribution of the properties in each sense and 5 For a general overview on the relationship between language and culture, see Duranti 1997, 2001; Foley 1997; Kövecses 2006; Levinson 2006; Palmer 1996. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 28 Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano the values attached to each of these properties depending on the sense. Distribution and values depend on culture, and, therefore, they will be different according to the culture in which these human beings are embedded. Physical mechanisms for perception do not change, but it is important to remember that our interpretation and use of these senses can change. Thus, as shown in Figure 4, it is possible to describe the correspondences between properties and values for the semantic extensions of ‘see’ and ‘hear’ in two different cultures. Sight Æ ‘know’ Hearing Æ ‘be told’ Hearing Æ ‘know’ Spanish Australian languages English Suya Basque Sedang Moi … … Figure 4: Semantic extensions in ‘see’ and ‘hear’ in two different cultures The distribution of properties in Figure 4 corresponds to two different ways of using the senses in two different cultural models. On the left hand side, the Western model that relies on sight as the perceptual modality for identifying and gathering more reliable information, and on the right hand side, the alternative or ‘Australian’ model, in which the sense of hearing is the one considered more accurate and reliable. Based on these two ways of experiencing and being in contact with the world, it is possible to argue that the semantic extensions that take place in perception verbs are the same— there is a mapping from perception onto knowledge / intellection—but that the grounding that underlies these extensions varies, depending on the sense that these cultures consider more appropriate for this domain. In other words, there is a shift of prototypical properties and values based on the cultural background or, following Kövecses’ (2005) terminology, a differential experiential focus, that is: “different peoples may be attuned to different aspects of their bodily functioning in relation to a target domain, or that they can ignore or downplay certain aspects of their bodily functioning as regards the metaphorical conceptualisation of a particular target domain” (2005: 246). This flexible motivation schema is not only useful for explaining differences between cultures. It can also be applied to other more individual cases. Let us draw an example from universal literature: the case of Patrick Süskind’s best-seller Perfume (1986 [1954]). In this novel, the main character, Grenouille, has an exceptional sense of smell, so acute that he uses it as his main source of information. His gift becomes evident in the linguistic descriptions of things, feelings and situations that Grenouille ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 Vision Metaphors for the Intellect 29 makes throughout the book. While other people talk about ‘seeing things’ and ‘clear problems’, Grenouille behaves as if he could see with his nostrils (1986: 18), be on the olfactory lookout (1986: 119) and have an olfactory imagination (1986: 176). Authors such as Popova (2003) have proposed a synesthetic metaphor SMELL IS VISION to account for Grenouille’s ‘special’ way of experiencing the world. However, this new metaphor is not strictly necessary. From the point of view of Western conceptualisation of perception, this metaphor holds. However, this solution easily runs into trouble. Let us consider the other examples about Australian languages discussed in the previous section. If SMELL IS VISION in the case of Grenouille, then HEARING IS VISION in the case of Australian languages. In my opinion, both cases can be explained without the need to postulate new synesthetic metaphors that presuppose a Western viewpoint. Grenouille prefers a different sense modality as his main source of reliable information, just as Australian languages do with regard to hearing. Therefore, it is possible to apply the same procedure to Grenouille’s case. This time vision properties shift to the sense of smell. Figure 4 schematically represents these correspondences. Sight Æ ‘know’ Smell Æ ‘suspect’ Smell Æ ‘know’ Spanish English Grenouille in Basque Perfume … Figure 5: ‘See’ and ‘smell’ in Western culture and in Grenouille’s model in Perfume. In conclusion, in this paper I have attempted to show that the semantic extensions of perception verbs are not the result of a more or less whimsical and arbitrary process. They are motivated and grounded in our own conceptualisation and experience of the world. This motivation, described in terms of prototypical properties, is based on the embodiment of the senses and is constrained by the culture in which individuals of a given language are embedded. Since cultures are not the same for all human beings, the properties that apply to one sense in one culture (e.g. vision in the West) might be applicable to a different sense in another culture (e.g. hearing in Australian languages); there are shifts of properties. 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Willett, Thomas L. 1988: ‘A Cross-Linguistic Survey of the Grammaticization of Evidentiality’. Studies in Language 12: 51-97. Wilson, Michael 2002: ‘Six Views of Embodied Cognition’. Psychological Bulletin and Review 9.4: 625-36. Ziemke, Tom 2003: ‘What's that Thing Called Embodiment?’ Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. –––––, Jordan Zlatev and Roslyn Frank, eds. In press: Body, Language and Mind Vol. 1: Embodiment. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Received 25 May 2007 Revised version received 22 October 2007 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 15–33 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia: Indian Elements in his Poetry Jalal Uddin Khan Qatar University [email protected] Shelley, one of the major English Romantic poets, was greatly influenced by the Indian thought that reached him through the works of the early English Orientalists of his time. Although his dream of personally visiting India had never materialized, his favorite readings included Sir William Jones's poems and essays on Indian subjects in the 1770s, Captain Francis Wilford's essay, ‘Mount Caucasus’ (1801), Sidney Owenson's The Missionary: An Indian Tale (1811) and James Henry Lawrence's The Empire of the Nairs, or the Rights of Women; An Utopian Romance (1811). This paper is an attempt to provide an account of the influence of these works on some of Shelley's major poems (such as Queen Mab, Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound, ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ and ‘Adonais’) in their setting, style and themes. As a revolutionary, Shelley was influenced by the forces of liberation and freedom suggested by oriental models as opposed to the hackneyed and overused neoclassicism of European literature. This paper will argue how his was an effort at a sympathetic understanding of India as a cradle of ancient civilization that knew no divide in terms of the so-called Western moral and racial superiority. His creative vision of India embraced an approach to integration as opposed to the Victorian reaction of mixed feelings. In fact, the Indian influence was not just a matter of stylistic embellishment away from the traditional but an indirect yet powerful means of attacking the Western political system he so passionately rebelled against. Key words: The Orientalism controversy, the reductionist theory, visionary integration, ancient Indian civilization, freedom, transcendence. Romantic ideals of love and romance, permanence and transcendence and freedom and liberation found expression through a variety of modes and motifs such as Hellenism, Medievalism, Pastoralism and Orientalism. Initially conceived as a fanciful exercise about passing curiosities of the East, Romantic Orientalism came to be connected with the rise and glory of Empire and the accompanying challenges and tensions, subsequently becoming more imaginative, academic and objective. Compared with the similar writings of the past, Romantic Orientalism claimed to be more realistic on account of the local details it made use of as at the same time it became more poetically interesting and suggestive. In the wake of European colonial expansion, many European writers, including the major English Romantic poets, participated in the 36 Jalal Uddin Khan fashionable discourse of Orientalism, approaching their subject matter with scholarly disinterestedness and leading to the concept of Orientalism as a body of serious scholarly works on the Middle East and South Asia. Moving away from the earlier notion of the Orient as a mere exotic and extravagant fantasy of cheap commercial glamour, they viewed the Orient, according to Edward Said, in abstract, extracting terms, as a vague ideological rather than a historical geopolitical reality. Said, the foremost postcolonial literary critic, observed that Western writers set themselves off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self so that their Orientalist texts tell more about their own than our Asian culture. He argued that regardless of whatever academic or scientific objectivity they might lay claim to, their writings were ultimately a deliberate attempt to distort and misrepresent the ‘other’ in the colonized East with the end of managing, dominating and controlling it from a morally ‘superior’, unscrupulous, racist, imperialist and ethnocentric perspective. Said’s landmark theory, first laid out in his book Orientalism (1978), has been highly influential in the field of postcolonial study of the relationship between literature, history and culture. However, it has also been critiqued as problematic and controversial in its so-called sweeping generalization. As pointed out by Nigel Leask, “Said falls into the trap of constructing ‘the West’ in exactly the same ahistorical, essentialist terms as Europe’s ‘Orient’, the object of his critique” and his theory fails to adequately respond to the fact that “…the ‘Easts’ of literary orientalism are as manifold, various, and historically contingent as the ‘Wests’ which produced them. Moreover, whilst Said is correct in mapping Orientalism on to the historical rise of empire, he seriously overestimates the confidence and unity of purpose of European imperialists and writers, failing to register adequately the anxiety, not to mention the critical scruples, which often underwrite oriental texts” (2005: 138-39).1 Deirdre Coleman, quoted in Roe, agrees with Leask’s qualification saying: The principal complaints are that Said’s conception of Orientalism is too monolithic, and his methodology too rigidly dichotomized between East and West. These limitations result not only in an Occidental stereotype of the racist Westerner but leave little scope for the multiplicity of orients imagined by hosts of writers, artists and scholars. Nor did Said’s argument take account of what was so palpable in so many Orientalist texts—the anxiety of empire and its accompanying sense of European vulnerability. (2005: 247) It is true that Said’s somewhat overgeneralization at times ignores the other side of the coin: that oriental writings do indeed open up an exploration of the rich and complex cultural history of the East and do betray a sense of ironic doubt, ambiguity and mixed feelings not only about the East itself but also its occupation by the West. It needs to be pointed out here, however, that Said himself warned against reductionist readings of his argument that tended to be confined to a fixation on the binary opposition between the West and the Orient and a tendency to homogenize both categories.2 He never entertained positions that might allow Orientalism to be used as a derogatory term rather than a scientific concept. Nonetheless, recent scholars, as shown above, have 1 Also see Nigel Leask (1992). 2 See the author’s disclaimer in the afterword to Said (1995). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 37 been trying to distance themselves from the supposedly over-reductive readings that Said made of Oriental texts. All Orientalist writers were not equally comfortable about Western colonization of the East. This is especially true of Shelley, whose love of freedom, purity of ideals and transcendent philosophy rise far above the racist, ethnocentric and imperialist construction of an Indian East and thus defy Said’s seemingly straight and clear-cut categorization. Shelley’s singularly idealistic, humanist, selfless and morally unalloyed attitude to society, together with the influences that helped him learn about the greatness of ancient Indian civilization, made him look at India with unequivocal admiration and enchantment. Far from constructing an ‘inferior’ other out of it under the ‘superior’ moral vigil of the colonial power (in the sense Said defines Orientalism), he created an India exactly the opposite—a storehouse of transcendent mythic philosophy and visionary ideals to reach out to. This enabled him to create and embrace the India of his imagination and rise above the fray of politico-historical dichotomy with which the colonized India was so much fraught. The India that may have played into the hands of those who, in Said’s view, tended to fall into the pit of misrepresentation and distortion and exaggeration was not the one he entertained and envisioned. In critiquing Said, my contention is that Orientalist writers, be they travelers or diplomats, merchants or missionaries, instead of misrepresenting as a way of their racially-motivated strategy, were in fact truthful to their experience and to what they saw. And what they saw was indeed largely true about the culture of their colonized lands in the East as a whole. Instead of being prejudiced, they may have depicted a part only, just like any writer, which does not mean they were intentionally fragmenting, splitting, bifurcating, dissecting, slicing the East to inject race or power or were so weak and shortsighted that they were blind to the truth and beauty of the whole. No writer is ever under the obligation of understanding and speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A writer’s business is to be revealingly suggestive and insightful about part or otherwise and thereby evoke the possibilities of the rest within the demands of his craft and space. European Orientalist writers were no exception. They learnt about India and let Indians learn about themselves and their Eastern heritage—rich and long and complex as it was—both from within and without, as far as they could, significantly contributing to the artistic utterance about the East. It was not (and can never be) the wholesale monopoly of only the native writers of one culture to educate and enlighten their people. Western Orientalists made a difference to this effect, more to the advantage of Indians than their own, and provided the very important dimension of how outsiders from the vantage point of a ruling position could afford to safely detach and distance themselves and look at Indians and examine them dispassionately and disinterestedly. They had the power and skill to rule and so they did. They said what they said about Indians without fear or favor and they were starkly true in what they said. Any denial of this would be attributable to the general sense of inferiority of those who have been subjugated for long and who still harbored that sense continually bred of their class- ridden, poverty-ridden and corruption-ridden society now ruled by their own domestic masters, postcolonial colonizers at home. Deprived of healthy freedom of expression ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 38 Jalal Uddin Khan and with hardly any critical discrimination or accountability, but with doubtful moral transparency and much deep-seated fear and conflict of loyalties and interests either under the home-grown dynastic or dictatorial rulers or ‘divide-and rule’ foreign occupiers, it is the local writers, then, in the Arab, Turkish, Persian and Indian lands who were likely to fail (with exceptions, of course) to see and tell the real clear truth about themselves. Instead, they may have found an escapist second self in various internal or external agents—religion, nature, personal or spiritual love, apolitical, visionary ideas—for a cover-up. Even if they succeeded in describing what was happening on the ground, in society, their success was likely to be partial, incomplete, marred with bias, connivance and careful carelessness. What follows below is a discussion of the influences on Shelley, especially Sir William Jones, whose works were an investigation of the greatness of India as a seat of one of the most ancient civilizations in the world. In 1812, Shelley ordered Jones’s Works (1799), among nearly 70 other titles (White 1940: 243). The literary history of Orientalism goes back to the time of Chaucer’s ‘The Man of Law’s Tale’ (1386), Knolles’s History of the Turks (1603), much admired by Dr. Johnson and Lord Byron, and Purchas’s Pilgrimage (1613), a key influence on Coleridge’s oriental poem ‘Kubla Khan’. It continued through the works of the Restoration writers such as Dryden, Waller, Milton (Persian and Indian elements in Paradise Lost, Bk. XI) and others dealing with India and other Easts. Since the publication of D’Herbelot’s encyclopedic Bibliotheque Orientale (1697), Antoine Galland’s Arabian Nights Entertainment (1704-12) and many other influential works throughout the eighteenth century,3 there had been a popular demand for tales of diverse Eastern origins and settings—Chinese, Arabian, Egyptian, Turkish, Persian, Indian and Abyssinian—partly for a refreshing change from whatever was familiar and conservative and partly from a desire to indulge colonialist feelings or even to suggest the opposite, that is, freedom and liberation from all kinds of oppression and occupation, including the imperialist. Completely disregarding neoclassical restraint and discipline, such tales sometimes served to expose the folly and excesses of oriental traditions and cultures in a gothic manner and sometimes the beauty and excellence of them, indirectly implying by contrast a criticism of contemporary European Enlightenment mores and manners. At first there was a fascination for China during the greater part of the 18th century, which 3 Mention may be made of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) and Spirit of the Laws (1748), Lord Lyttleton’s Persian Letters (1735), William Collins’ Persian Eclogues (1742, later as Oriental Eclogues in 1757), Horace Walpole’s Letters from Xo-Ho (1757), William Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World (1762), John Hawkesworth’s highly successful Almoran and Hamet (1761), and Account of the Voyages…in the Southern Hemisphere (1773), Alexander Dow’s Tales of Inatulla of Delhi and The History of Hindostan (both 1768), his Zingis (a drama, 1769), and Sethona (also a drama, 1774), Frances Sheridan’s ‘Persian’ History of Nourjahad (1767), a successful moral oriental novel, staged as a musical play, Illusion in 1813, Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759), Anquetil Duperron’s French translation of the Zoroastrian Zend-Avesta in 1759 (English translation in 1771) , Travels in India, and the Upanishads in 1786, Sir William Jones’s essays and translations directly from Eastern origins in the 1780s, and William Robertson’s Historical Disquisition on Ancient India (1791). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 39 was later replaced by an interest in Indian, Arabian or Near Eastern elements in Romantic Orientalism. As pointed out by Leask, “William Hazlitt’s criticism of the millionaire Beckford’s collection of tacky chinoiserie seen at Fonthill Abbey” was just a telling sign of this shift of interest (2005: 140). India was one of the major ‘Easts’ that occupied the attention of most orientalists. Despite the fact that it was ridiculed for its polytheism and other superstitious practices by the classically-minded Western intellectuals, they had a high regard for India as one of the most ancient civilizations of the world (Clarke 1997: 54-55). While Indian metaphysics and the Indian bent towards nothingness, inwardness and passivity were, philosophically speaking, in conflict with Enlightenment reason and rationalism, it was precisely these qualities that had a great appeal for the Romantic frame of mind and with which the Romantics engaged with great enthusiasm. “Stick to the East … The North, South, and West, have all been exhausted …the public are orientalizing, and pave the path for you”, that was what Lord Byron wrote to Thomas Moore in May 1813, quoting his ‘oracle’ Madame de Stael, who advised him about “the only poetical policy” left to the poets. This was a year after Byron had achieved instant fame with the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. While Byron and Moore were highly successful in their oriental narratives, Southey unfortunately was not. His epic romances, Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and The Curse of Kehama (1810), furnished with scholarly footnotes, were far from being popular, but they did not fail to leave a marked influence on other longer Romantic poems such as Shelley’s Queen Mab (1813), Alastor (1815) and Prometheus Unbound (1820) together with Keats’s Endymion (1818) in their appropriation and assimilation of Eastern elements. Of all the English Romantic poets, Shelley’s handling of Indian thought, in line with his treatment of Platonic or any other body of thought, is characteristically most idealistic, imaginative and psychologically internalized. He uses both Eastern and Western machinery in a syncretic manner to convey his abstract visionary ideas about the historical and political realities of his time. Leask has observed of Shelley that his “interest in India transcends the level of biographical anecdote” and has quoted Edgar Quinet’s remark that “Shelley is completely Indian” (1992: 71). Many earlier critics such as H. G. Rawlinson, Stoppord Brooke, James Cousins, Amiyakumar Sen and G. Wilson Knight stressed Shelley’s interest in Indian lore and experience of things of the spirit.4 For instance, Rawlinson, as early as 1937, found the Vedanta philosophy “magnificently propounded” in Adonais (Clarke 1997: 59). Brooke considered the description of the moon in the orientalized lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound (IV, 206-35) as a piece of nature-myth, which might equally be said of the moon-god in Indian mythology. Cousins (1933) noted the reflection on Prometheus’s transcendental philosophy of the Indian transcendental meditation represented by the system of yoga. The yoga system involves the discipline of devotion (bhakti-yoga), practice of the control of body and mind, and the path of action (karma-yoga) as it leads to the powerful final stage of what is called raja-yoga—the full expression of the Will and the regeneration of the complete individual in the realm of the spirit of wisdom. Cousins also noted the 4 Stoppord Brooke (1907: 153); James H. Cousins (1933: 35-36, 43); Amiyakumar Sen (1936: 243-70); G. Wilson Knight (1941: 211). All these critics have been noted in John Zillman (1959). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 40 Jalal Uddin Khan influence of the oriental sage Vasishta on Prometheus’s suffering condition and selfless contribution. He thought that Vasishta’s concept that the mere addition of the finite to the finite did not produce the infinite seemed to have been an influence when Shelley, for example, said that “the alleviations of his state,/ Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs/ Withering in destined pain” (II.iv.98), with alleviations meaning different steps in the processes of civilization. If alleviations can be taken to mean different stages of civilization, then, in Cousins’ view, those life-improving processes, finite as they were, could not proceed to their final manifestations, for their higher self, as embodied in Prometheus, was in bondage and thereby restrained from participating in the forces of creativity and further advancement (1933: 35-36). In other words, Prometheus, who represents the principle of highest perfection, was barred from taking those forces forward to the level of ultimate accomplishments. Sen (1936) found a deep resemblance between the Upanishadic, thought to be the progress of Prometheus's lover Asia to the limit of ultimate reality, and Shelley’s use of the veil image throughout to imply the difference between appearance and reality, inner truth and outer illusion. Sen also noted a parallel between the passive Indian goddess Iswara and the passive Prometheus, between the active Shakti and the active Asia, whose radiance fills the universe creating a new heaven and new earth, in the following passages: the concluding lines of I, 827-33; II. iii, 72-81; II, v, 26-30; III.iv, 190-204. Ellsworth Barnard suggested that Shelley’s Demogorgon, in addition to many other sources, might owe something to the Hindu and Buddhist ‘Karma’ (1944: 86). Carl Garbo (1930) found the evidence of the concept of Nirvana—the sea of universal mind or spirit—in the concluding part of Act II, scene iv, 394-99, 565-69 (Barnard 1944). Woodberry observed that Shelley had almost a Buddhistic sympathy with life in its humblest form (qtd in Zillman 1959. III.iii, 91-93). The young Shelley was highly influenced by the royal physician Dr. James Lind, who “in early life was a surgeon to an East Indiaman: a wanderer in strange lands”, and who had “a love of Eastern wonders” and a liking for “tricks, conundrums and queer things”. Shelley recalled his debt to Dr. Lind with fervor: “I owe to that man far more than I owe to my father; he loved me and I shall never forget our long talks where he breathed the spirit of the kindest tolerance and the purest wisdom” (qtd from Dowden 1926 in Peck 1926: 23). Influenced by Dr. Lind, who had gathered a fine collection of Indian and other Eastern curiosities during his travels, Shelley had developed an interest in Oriental lore. In early 1818, he and Mary visited the Indian library in the British Museum. Later he wrote to Peacock inquiring about the possibility of going to India in the employ of the East India Company. Peacock replied pointing out the practical impossibility of such a project (Brett-Smith and Jones 1934: 225-26). However, it was the scholarly activities of Sir William Jones and the other learned members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, founded in Calcutta in 1784, that most influenced Shelley (and other Romantics) in their use of oriental elements.5 Jones and 5 Other well-known members of the Asiatic Society include Nathaniel Halhed (1751-1830), Charles Wilkins (1749-1836), who produced in 1785 the first translation of the great Hindu epic the Bhagavat-Gita, and Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837), who wrote essays on the religion and ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 41 his other colleagues were instrumental in transforming the oriental materials from a fanciful subject into a great oriental renaissance. There was a genuine pursuit of knowledge about classical India and its languages and literatures as a seat of one of the most ancient civilizations of the world. Jones’s famous essays, ‘On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations’ (included in his Poems Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatic Languages of 1772) and ‘On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India’ (1784) and his ‘Hindu Hymns’ published through the 1780s—were all an attempt to discover the greatness of ancient India and to favorably compare and integrate it with that of the West. He praised the ancient Indian (and Persian) poetry for its exulting tone and expressive ideas and recommended the study of oriental models to instill new life into the worn-out neoclassical European literature. “The Asiatics excel[led] the inhabitants of our colder regions”, Jones said, “in the liveliness of their fancy and the richness of their invention” and while “Reason and Taste [were] the grand prerogatives of the European mind, the Asiatics have soared to loftier heights in the sphere of Imagination” (quoted in Roe 2005: 141). Jones’s works celebrated the revival and rejuvenation of Hindu culture. He thought it was possible on account of a British initiative when Britain, as he says in the Argument to the Hymn to Lakshmi, was “a most extensive and celebrated Empire” (quoted in Roe 2005:142). He and his fellow orientalists have the credit of pioneering the idea of what Leask called benign imperialism and which characterized the orientalist interaction with India during the time of the increasing British colonial presence there. It finds a poetic expression in the closing lines of Jones’s just-mentioned Hymn: Oh! bid the patient Hindu rise and live … Now, stretch’d o’er ocean’s vast from happier isles, He sees the wand of empire, not the rod: Ah, may those beams, that western skies illume, Disperse th’ unholy gloom! “By 1800, then”, Leask argues, “orientalism had been transformed from the status of an exotic mercantilist commodity—a token of oriental luxury—into a form of knowledge which incorporated the iconography and mythology of Britain’s Asiatic subjects into the nation’s image repertoire, in precisely the manner demanded by William Jones” (2005: 141). It became more ethnographically and culturally informed as it became more critically discriminating, thereby becoming more authentic and original. It is demonstrated by the scholarly research that went into the composition of oriental poems and fictions and the long footnotes added to them.6 philosophy of the Hindus. Robert Southey acknowledges his debt to Jones in the Preface to The Curse of Kehama and in at least a dozen notes to that poem. 6 Samuel Henley’s notes to Beckford’s Vathek (1786) drawing upon the writings of Jones and others sources, Elizabeth Hamilton’s notes to her epistolary novel Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1797) drawing upon the work of the Asiatic Society and prefaced by a ‘Dissertation on the History, Religion and Manners of the Hindoos’, Southey’s Curse of Kehama (1810) following a decade of laborious research into orientalist sources and its complicated set of notes, Byron’s Eastern tales and the notes added to them and Moore’s Lalla Rookh and its notes are some of the examples of ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 42 Jalal Uddin Khan During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mythology and comparative religion were among the most discussed fields, questioning the notion of a solely Christian state and implying an obvious challenge to the idea of Europe as representing the only dominating cultural or religious tradition. The awareness of other cultures which came with the British and European colonization of other lands across the oceans raised the level of anxieties about the empire and threatened the Western sense of cultural pre-eminence. Despite the fact that some orientalists only served to reinforce the superiority of the Christian religion and European cultural traditions and so to confirm the legitimacy of colonial occupation, knowledge of other myths and religions and languages and cultures was in fact a challenge to the classical and biblical traditions and deepened the doubt of the freethinkers who were already critical of the Christian hegemony. The question of the origins of the European peoples had been the subject of intensive debate for some time, especially during the French Enlightenment tradition when, apart from the accounts of other cultures and traditions (such as those of native Americans, Pacific or Polynesian islanders, the Norse and Celtic myths and the ancient Icelandic sagas), India proved to be an especially interesting storehouse of knowledge and information. The biblical narrative, instead of being regarded as older in time, was considered to have derived from Hindu or Egyptian sources. Added to the pagan myths of Greek and Roman origin were the ancient cults of the East, both imparting a new immediacy and universality to each other and both having great similarities with each other. Jesuit missionaries such as John Holwell and Alexander Dow, among other Western pioneers in Indian scholarship, had an Enlightenment inclination towards deism and hence a tolerant, universalistic outlook which made it possible for them to give a highly favorable account of the religious and philosophical ideas of India. They encouraged the belief that India was the source of all wisdom and that it had profoundly influenced the philosophical traditions of Ancient Greece. Their writings were influential with Voltaire (1694-1778) and helped him form his views on the antiquity of Indian religion and civilization. Voltaire held up Hinduism as an example of a natural deistic religion with origins older than those of Judaism and Christianity. Anquetil Duperron (1723-1805), who visited India between 1754 and 1761, developed an appreciation for diversities of culture and tradition and an openness for broad comparisons among them beyond the limits of Eurocentric orthodoxy only. This openness was evident in his recommendation that Indian classics be treated and studied with equal importance as given to those of Greece and Rome and that the teachings of the Upanishads be taken seriously rather than read for merely antiquarian interest. He was indeed one of the first thinkers to draw attention to parallels between Indian and Judaeo-Christian ideas. Of particular importance was the connection he made between Indian Brahmin philosophy and the German philosopher Kant’s transcendental idealism. He became how the new Romantic orientalism was rooted in a conscious appreciation for the reality of cultural and ethnographic details. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 43 one of the favourite readings of another German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who also was greatly influenced by Indian thought. One of the most important themes running through Jones’s writings on India and translations of Indian texts was the claim that European and Indian languages bore remarkable resemblances to each other. His discovery of the affinity of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, proclaimed in his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society on 2 February 1786, laid the foundations of historical and comparative linguistics. He argued that Sanskrit was “more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident” (qtd in Cannon 1952: 45). Such a historical kinship based on grammatical structure rather than the etymological method of Jacob Bryant’s A New System; or Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1775), the source of his discourse, pointed to the probability that all three languages may have sprung from some common source. Jones’s thesis of the Indo-European family of languages made it possible to make intercultural comparisons and contrasts with a far more solid basis than before. Following the same line of argument about linguistic similarities, Jones conjectured that the European and Indian races may have sprung from a common source. As shown in the brief historical background above, he was an heir to over a century of speculation about migrations from Asia, but with his knowledge of Sanskrit he was able to bring more precision and authenticity to these speculations. In his Ninth Anniversary Discourse on the Origin and Families of Nations Jones argued that there was “incontestable proof … that the first race of Persians and Indians, to whom we may add the Romans and Greeks, the Goths and the old Egyptians or Ethiops, originally spoke the same language and professed the same popular faith”, (qtd in Clarke 1997: 58) suggesting that Iran was the common place of origin and thus asking to exercise more caution in accepting the biblical account asserted by Bryant in his Analysis. Bryant dismissed ancient pagan myths, idolatrous solar rituals and thereby the whole sceptical tradition of natural, erotic, allegorical and astronomical meanings as distortions of Noah’a original monotheism following the catastrophic Flood. He stressed the authority of the Bible and the primacy of the biblical tradition, highlighting the significance of Ham, whose Cushite generations, through his wicked grandson Nimrod, builder of the tower of Babel, settled all over the world in the way of colonial occupation, preserving and disseminating its original language. Bryant argued that the whole range of ancient civilizations were all of Cushite descent, a fact etymologically supported by the Cushite roots of their languages. It is this discovery of etymological similarity, which, while lacking in convincing proof in consideration of the fact that he had no knowledge of oriental languages, made him argue that Noah was the origin of a range of ancient mythological figures from Prometheus to Osiris. On the other hand, armed with his knowledge of a number of oriental languages including Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, Jones provided a scholarly critique of Bryant’s argument and rejected his notion that ancient myths were actually distorted memorials of Noah and his family. When he said that “the whole crowd of gods and goddesses in ancient Rome and modern Varanes [in India] mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the SUN” (qtd in Clarke 1997: 58) he came strikingly close to the ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 44 Jalal Uddin Khan allegorical and intellectual freethinking position of sceptics such as Erasmus, Darwin and Constantin Volney, the latter arguing in his The Ruins, or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires (1791) that the “Gods, who act such singular parts in every system, are no other than the physical powers of nature, the elements, the winds, the meteors, the stars, all of which have been personified by the necessary mechanism of language, and the manner in which objects are conceived by the understanding”(qtd in McCalman 1999: 339-41). Jones, however, did not belong to the radical, naturalist and libertine tradition of skeptics nor did he side with any religious conservative brand as he was careful in endorsing or defending the full prior authority of the Bible too.7 Accepting the Deluge as “a historical fact admitted as true by every nation”, he believed that the children of Ham, Shem and Japhet had settled in Iran but gradually lost their common original language, a process commemorated in the tower of Babel episode in Genesis. Only the children of Shem—the Jews—maintained the record of universal history in an uncorrupted form. Jones concurred with Bryant in his account of the Christian diffusionist tradition according to which all the peoples of the world descended from the survivors of the Flood and the Cushite children of Ham—“the most ingenious and enterprising of the three, but the most arrogant, cruel and idolatrous”—spread into India, China, America, Egypt, the Mediterranean and Scandinavia, preserving the common linguistic and mythological heritage (qtd in McCalman 1999: 339-41). Jones had explored the matter in his deeply syncretic ‘On The Gods of Greece, Italy and India’, which established a direct relationship between the Romantic interest in Hellenistic culture as shown by Shelley, Keats, Peacock and Barry Cornwall and the ‘oriental renaissance’ inaugurated by himself and his fellow scholars of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The influential essay, built on his discovery of the common linguistic roots of Sanskrit and European languages, compared the Hindu with the Greco-Roman classical pantheon, concluding that the gods worshipped under different names were in fact identical. It was thus a pioneering exercise in mythographical syncretism identifying the Hindu and Greco-Roman pantheons as similar. The synthesizing argument had a powerful influence on Shelley who exploited the analogy between Greek and Hindu deities in PU (Prometheus Unbound) and represented Prometheus’s rebellion against the tyrannical Jupiter as a geopolitical reunification of the ‘European’ hero with his lover ‘Asia’. Drawing on the sceptical tradition of exposing the primitivism and irrationalism of Christian orthodoxy, PU suggested how closely linked 7 The European sceptical tradition was represented by Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736-93), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Pierre Francois D’Hancarville (1719-1805), Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), Charles Dupuis (1742-1809), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Constantin Francois Volney (1757-1820), Richard Payne Knight (1751-1824), Louis Langles (1763-1824), Sir William Drummond (1770-1828), the Revd Robert Taylor (1784-1844), also called the ‘Devil’s Chaplain’, and G. S. Faber (1773-1854), among others, all of whom sought to undermine the chronological and spiritual priority of the Bible by often maintaining a polytheistic account of cultural and religious origins and that the biblical narrative had derived from Hindu (Vedantic) or Egyptian sources and that the Hindu chronology was superior to the Mosaic one. Jones disagreed with them. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 45 was Shelley’s admiration for classical Greece in Hellas to the search for the Asiatic roots of Greek myth. Jones’s liberating ideas opening up a new world of knowledge and learning about the East, especially India, were to have a great influence on the contemporary European mind and forced it to rethink about its sense of complacent superiority more critically. The German Romantic scholar Friedrich Schlegel, after reading Jones’s work, exclaimed: “Everything, absolutely everything, is of Indian origin!” (qtd in Roe, 2005:142). The Indo-European ‘Aryan’ tradition provided German intellectuals with a more ancient and spiritual heritage than the ‘Frenchified’ civilizations of the Mediterranean. This was very useful to the Romantics who wanted to break out of what they saw as the narrowness of the Judeo-Christian tradition and marked a further step towards a more universal conception of humanity. It was vital in shaping the intellectual background of the oriental writings of Walter Savage Landor, Robert Southey, Lord Byron, Shelley and Thomas Moore, who “adapted [Jones’s] forms, themes, style, and subject matter, preceded by the fantastic evocations of Eblis in William Beckford’s famous novel Vathek (1784), which was itself influenced by Jones’s evocation of the dreamworld of pleasure” (qtd in Cannon and Brine 1995: 41). Jones’s translation, in 1790, of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala, the most famous specimen of dramatic literature from classical India, profoundly influenced European poetry from Shelley’s Alastor to Goethe’s Faust. The curse, the spirits, pastoral setting, defeat of the enemy, and the final reconciliation of Dushyanta and Sakuntala in the realm of the immortals have been variously worked out in Prometheus Unbound. Shelley’s romantic orientalism avoids being realistic and defies categorization in terms of the elements of typical or general cultural traditions. This sets him apart from other Romantic poets like Southey, Byron or Moore. His orientalist quest romances such as Alastor, The Revolt of Islam and Prometheus Unbound are all internalized versions of the drama of cultural encounter taking place in the realm of dream and exhibiting a psychological quest for the feminized ‘epispsychidion’ or ‘soul within a soul’. His visionary thoughts and ideas show a great influence of Jones’s well-received allegorical Hindu Hymns written over a number of years before they were first published in 1785, then 1810, 1816 and 1818. The nine Hymns addressed to nine Indian deities take their subject matter from Indian mythology and religion but in spirit and style they are a reworking of elements from diverse sources such as Plato, Pindar, Milton, Pope, Gray and the Bible.8 Garland Cannon is of the opinion that the Hymn to Lakshmi, which was inspired by the Bhagavad-Gita, foreshadowed Shelley in its allegorization of Lakshmi’s qualities as the world’s great mother and preserving power of nature (Cannon 2006: 236). The reconciliation of the dreadful Durga with her lover Siva in a mystic wood, the tribute paid to the sun god Surya by using many of his Sanskrit epithets, the description of Ganga’s fabulous birth, her wanderings and nuptials with Brahma’s son, the vision of the wonders of Indra, god of the abode of immortals in the firmament and his “empyreal train…mounted on the sun’s bright 8 For example, while the Hymns to Durga and Bhavani use the manner and style of Pindar’s Nemean Odes, Hymn to Ganga shows the measure and diction of Gray. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 46 Jalal Uddin Khan beam”, and the beautiful allegorical pictures of Kamdeo, the Indian Cupid and his being reduced to a mental essence when he attempts to wound Mahadeo suggested a possibility that the hymns were an influence behind the formation of much of Shelley’s symbolic expression used to convey his ideal dreams and abstract ideas. Jones’s imagery of the caves as when in the Hymn to Surya he says the sun-god Surya “Draws orient knowledge from its fountains pure, / /Through caves obstructed long and paths too long obscure…” (Jones, Lady, ed. 1779. II.50) is very common in Shelley and Coleridge, who use it to suggest the sources of metaphysical speculations and transcendent love. According to De Sola Pinto (1946: 694), Shelley’s transition from his early atheistic materialism to the mystical pantheism of his mature works was largely due to a study of Jones’s writings.9 Pinto also points out a great similarity in style between Shelley and Jones. For example, the “Champak odors” falling “Like sweet thoughts in a dream” in Shelley’s ‘The Indian Serenade’, champak being a kind of magnolia-like flower, derived from Jones’s Hymn to Indra. Shelley’s poem, in which an East-Indian young woman is singing a serenade, is a dramatic imitation of an Oriental love-song of Turkish origin translated by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and mentioned in a letter of hers in April 1717. The Indian woman’s love-dream is melting like the champaka’s odor. Shelley himself acknowledged that he took the reference to the gold-coloured flower from Jones who had mentioned about how its elegant appearance on the black hair of Indian women supplied the Sanskrit poets with elegant allusions (Swinden 1976: 187, 195). Similarly, the description of Love as a “planet-crested shape” with “lightning braided pinions” in PU is reminiscent of Jones’s “starry-crowned” Kamdeo with “locks in braids ethereal streaming” (De Sola Pinto 1946: 692). Shelley’s Queen Mab arrives to curb her swift coursers by the use of her “lines of rainbow light” (i.54), which was probably hinted at by Jones’s “Such heaven-spun threads of color’d light serene / As tinge the reins, which Arun guides” (Hymn to Surya : in Franklin, ed. 1995: 272).10 Shelley must have read Hymn to Kamdeo before June 21st of 1811 when he wrote to Elizabeth Hitchener about the “sacrifice” he was making at “the altar of the Indian Camdeo”. The last and best-known Hymn to Narayana with its description of the most divine attributes of the Supreme Being and His manifestation in different forms suggesting various archetypal ideas and the perception of primary and secondary qualities through Narayana’s chief epithets was perhaps the most influential with Shelley. As Hewitt (1942: 57) points out, the form of this hymn inspired that of Shelley’s ‘Intellectual Beauty’. Jones’s description of the remote, primeval deity may have been the inspiration for Keats’s opening lines in Hyperion (Sharp 1937: 100). Another influence on Shelley was Jones’s The Palace of Fortune (1769), taken from a number of Indian and Eastern sources. In the poem, the abstract characters in the form of Pleasure, Glory, Riches and Knowledge are destroyed by the very wishes they sought to be granted, the moral being that human wishes are vain and empty. The discontented maiden Maia, whose name means illusion, well understands the great moral lesson after 9 Coleridge, after an initial, youthful idealization of India, rejected Indian philosophy as a form of pantheism. See John Drew (1987: 186-88). 10 By his own admission, Southey was indebted to Jones’s picture in his description of the same character as one who “check’d the rainbow reins” in The Curse of Kehama (VII, St. 7). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 47 seeing what happened to those personified characters. Like the earlier The House of Superstition (1762) by Thomas Denton, Jones’s poem exploits an enchanting dream- vision and the associated psychological complexities adapted from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590-1609). In both Denton and Jones, a human protagonist becomes magically transported to a celestial fairy world where he observes the universal conflicts in the human mind between the attractions of sensual pleasure and the call of duty. Shelley must have read Jones’s The Palace of Fortune before writing the description of Queen Mab’s palace (ll. 29-39).11 In a letter to Elizabeth Hitchener, dated June 11, 1811, Shelley referred to “the true style of Hindoostanish devotion”, alluding to Jones’s poem . E. Koeppel (1900: 43-53) and Marie Meester (1915: 38) remarked on the similarities between The Palace of Fortune and Queen Mab: both poems tell of a sleeping maiden (Ianthe in QM), who is taken up to a fairy-court by a supernatural figure (the goddess Fortune in Jones’s poem; the queen of spirits Queen Mab in Shelley’s poem) and who is shown realistic visions by the supernatural figure, who seems to know all about mankind. Both critics said that Shelley took the idea of his two women, Ianthe and Queen Mab, from Jones’s poem and explained other similarities in thought and expression. Shelley was also influenced by the work of Captain Francis Wilford, a fellow member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, who represented the most extravagant development of Jones’s linguistic research. Wilford claimed that all European myths were of Hindu origin and that India had produced a Christ whose life and works closely resembled the Christ of the Bible. The ten articles which he contributed to Asiatic Researches between 1799 and 1810 provided a rich source for poets like Southey and Shelley. Unlike the cautious Jones, who paralleled only Hindu and Greco-Roman traditions, Wilford was more interested in tracing parallels between Hindu and Jewish traditions. He claimed to have discovered a Sanskrit version of the story of Noah. In ‘Mount Caucasus’ (1801), Wilford argued for a Himalayan location of Mt. Ararat, claiming that Ararat was etymologically linked with Aryavarta, a Sanskrit name for India. Shelley embraced Wilford’s thesis with enthusiasm: he set both his Alastor and Prometheus Unbound in Wilford’s Hindu Kush and Cashmere (McCalman 1999: 341- 42). In Alastor, the poet-protagonist’s journey takes him back through human history (that is, Arabia, Persia, over the Hindu Kush mountains, which form the Indian Caucasus extending from Afghanistan to Kashmir in north-west India) to “the thrilling secrets of the birth of time” (l.128). In Prometheus Unbound too, Shelley moves the location from the Russian Caucasus on the Caspian to the Indian Caucasus “as the scene for his drama because it was thought to be the cradle of civilization” (qtd in O’Neill 1998: 264). It makes him contemplate about a world of “thrice three hundred thousand years” (l.74) and “boundless space and time” (l.301). The “eagle-baffling mountain,/ Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,/ Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life” (ll.20-22) to which Prometheus had been bound for three thousand years was believed, Duncan Wu 11 The same poem (The Palace of Fortune) furnished Southey with many images in his account of the chariot of Arvalan and his description of Glendoveer in The Curse of Kehama (XI, 12 and VII, 4). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 48 Jalal Uddin Khan (1999: 867) notes, to have been the original home of the human race, and was associated with the golden age, thus being appropriate as the location for the birth of a second golden age. Commenting on the metaphysical aspect of Prometheus Unbound, Mary Shelley said what was akin to the spirit of Indian metaphysics, Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague…He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry. (qtd in Noyes 1980: 282) In PU the Greek Prometheus has been redefined as a syncretic figure analogous to the Greek Dionysus, the Persian Zoroaster, the Jewish Noah and the Hindu Rama. Wilford’s essays made one ask the subversive question of “whether the Hindu Brahmins borrowed from Moses or Moses from the Hindu Brahmins”. For some of his Indian elements Shelley owes a great debt to James Henry Lawrence, a friend of William Godwin, both of whom were members of the radical Newton- Boinville circle in the early 1800s. Shelley wrote to Lawrence twice and met him more than once. In line with the Godwinian philosophy, Lawrence was an advocate of a feminist and freelove theory. His four-volume romance, The Empire of the Nairs; or the Rights of Women. A Utopian Romance (1811), is an illustration of the matriarchal and matrilineal practices of the Nair people of the Malabar coast in Kerala, a noble cast of Hindus who had come under the rule of the East India Company in 1792. The work, which was originally published in German in 1801, came to be regarded as an extraordinary feminist tract after Mary Wolstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Dismissing the anti-utopian position of Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population (1798) in which he argued that the geometric rise in population due to the uncontrollable desire to procreate would defeat every effort to help the poor, Lawrence recounted the endless evils of the existing European system of marriage and approvingly described the sexual customs of the vibrant South Asian community of the Nairs in The Empire. The novel left a deep influence on the young Percy Shelley, who read it more than once and thought it was the greatest argument against matrimony. In a letter to Lawrence enclosed with a separate letter to his publisher Thomas Hookam of August 17, 1812, Shelley enthusiastically declared himself “a complete convert” to Lawrence’s doctrines which called for the abolition of marriage as a form of licensed prostitution, and for inheritance and child-raising to be the responsibility of the mother. In the letter to Hookam, Shelley said, “I have read his Empire of the Nairs, nay, have it, perfectly and decidedly do I subscribe to the truth of the principles which it is desired to establish” (White 1940: 241-42; Jones, Frederick L. 1964: 322-22). Shelley was to adapt and incorporate Lawrence’s critique of Christian marriage and other elements of his plot and imagery in Queen Mab, Laon and Cythna and Rosalind and Helen (qtd in Peck 1925: 246-49, and in Graham 1925: 881-91). Although a liberal attitude towards marriage and the insistence that unions be bonded by love and affection rather than by financial consideration were common in 18th century writings, the radical Lawrence and Shelley were for complete sexual freedom, where motherhood ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 49 of any type was highly rewarded and the concept of father was unknown. In their free- love utopia, like most of the utopias of discovery, primitivism was equated with virtue and the path of ‘nature’ formed the basis of a romantic ideal of love. But this same ideal also implied a turning away from the tradition of impractical and artificial courtly love and chivalric romanticism, with its inflated conception of female virtue or male constancy.12 Shelley drew inspiration from his reading of Lady Morgan’s novel The Missionary (1811), on which he wrote, the same year, “The only thing that has interested me … has been one novel. It is Miss Owenson’s Missionary, an Indian Tale. Will you read it? It is really a divine thing. Since I have read this book I have read no other—but I have thought strangely”.13 In the view of Leask, Morgan’s tale of the love between Hilarion, a Portuguese missionary in India, and the Brahamachira priestess Luxima (Lakshmi), is an allegory of the desire for union between cultural opposites: “Anticipating the Byron/Moore plot resolution, Luxima is killed by Catholic bigots and the grieving missionary Hilarion retires to a cave in Kashmir to venerate her memory, true to Morgan’s liberal opposition to evangelical activity in British India” (Roe 2005: 145). Shelley’s Alastor owes some of its scenery and much of its basic idea to Owenson’s novel, which, as mentioned above, is the story of a priest who tries to lead a life of isolated high idealism, who forsakes this way of life to follow Ideal Beauty in the form of a beautiful priestess and thereby comes to ruin. The novel contains journeys and wonderful scenery, including a Tartar horse; so does Alastor. The meeting of Hilarion and Luxima in the sacred glen suggests the closing episode of Shelley’s poem. Both works have a common moral: that meditative introspection may lead to the pursuit of virtue but too much of it causes gloom, depression and disaster.14 The quest narrative in Alastor describes the journey the protagonist undertakes to the East in search of self-knowledge and this involves the discovery of the “thrilling secrets of the birth of time”. Shelley’s version of the erotic encounter in the vale of Kashmir, Leask argues, is clearly a dream vision in which the visionary maid is represented “as a prophetess of secular republican, rather than orientalist, enlightenment” (1992:140). He goes on to say that Keats’s narrative poem Endymion, written in response to Shelley’s Alastor, reworks the quest romance structure and yields to the orientalist fashion by affording an important role to the Indian Maid in the poem’s final book. In the syncretic fabric of Prometheus Unbound, again to follow Leask’s observations, Shelley’s quest romance takes place in the oriental setting of Hindu Kush, far away from the setting of his source, Aeschylus’ tragedy, with the Caucasian Prometheus’s lover named Asia. This time the lovers end in triumph, reunited in the cave after the fall of Jupiter, the symbol of tyranny, imperialist power and oppression and religious dogma. Jupiter’s drinking of the “Daedal cup” (PU, III. i. 12 Mary Shelley also read Lawrence but was less impressed by his utopian program, which she partially parodied in Frankenstein. See D. S. Neff (1996). 13 See Shelley’s letter to Hogg, June 27, 1811 in White (1940: 140, 144, 147). 14 For more details of the connection between The Missionary and Alastor, see A. M. D. Hughes, (1912: 293-39). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 50 Jalal Uddin Khan 26-32) and his being overthrown are based on the evil king Kehama’s draining of the ‘Amreeta Cup’ at the end of Southey’s Hindu epic, The Curse of Kehama. As noted at the beginning of this essay, Romantic orientalism coincided with the growth and development of a scholarly discourse about the East in the wake ofEuropean colonial expansion. According to Edward Said, this discipline of scholarly discourse known as orientalism was invented to support the larger imperialist project of making the process of colonization more successful and lasting. As discussed above, this new enterprise cannot be said to be true in the case of Shelley, whose agenda did not include exporting and universalizing Western culture in the East. In his visionary love of freedom, he transcended Western imperial ambitions and came to be critical of a Western mode for allowing the domination of the Orient. His discourse of orientalism was without the pretension of knowing the East to disseminate distortions about the East; it was rather a sympathetic effort at the understanding and exploration of the East which was as great and old as - if not greater and older than - the Western sources of knowledge and civilization and needed to be integrated with the latter. Works Cited Barnard, Ellsworth 1944: Shelley: Selected Poems, Essays and Letters. New York: Odyssey P. Brett-Smith, H. F. B. and C.E. Jones 1934: Works of Thomas Love Peacock. London: n.p. Brooke, Stoppord 1907: Lyrics of Shelley: Studies in Poetry. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Cannon, Garland H. 2006 (1990): The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ––––– 1952: Sir William Jones, Orientalist: An Annotated Bibliography of His Works. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P [UMI Books on Demand, printed in 2007]. ––––– and Kevin R. Brine, eds. 1995: ‘Oriental Jones’, Objects of Enquiry: The Life, Contributions, and Influences of Sir William Jones. New York: New York UP. Clarke, John James 1997: Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought. London: Routledge. Cousins, James H. 1933: The Work Promethean: Interpretations and Approaches of Shelley’s Poetry. Madras: Ganesh and Co. De Sola Pinto, V. 1946: ‘Sir William Jones and English Literature’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XI.4: 686-94. Drew, John 1987: India and the Romantic Imagination. Oxford: Oxford UP. Garbo, Carl 1930. A Newton Among Poets: Shelley’s Use of Science in ‘Prometheus Unbound’. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P. Graham, Walter 1925: ‘Shelley and the Empire of the Nairs’, PMLA 40: 881-91. Hewitt, Reginald Mainwaring 1942: ‘Harmonious Jones’. Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 28: 42-597. Hughes, Arthur Montague D'Urban 1912: ‘Some Recent English Shelley Literature’. Englische Studien XLV: 293-99. Jones, Frederick L., ed. 1964: The Letters of P. B. Shelley. Oxford: Oxford UP. Jones, Lady, ed. 1779. Works of Sir William Jones, 6 vols. London: n.p. Jones, Sir Willam 1993: The Collected Works of Sir William Jones. London: Routledge Curzon. Jones, Sir William. 1995. ed. Michael Franklin, Selected Poetical and Prose Works. Cradiff: University of Wales Press. Knight, G. Wilson 1941: Starlit Dome. London: Oxford UP. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 Shelley’s Orientalia 51 Koeppel, Eric 1900: ‘Shelley’s Queen Mab and Sir William Jones’s “The Palace of Fortune”’. Englische Studien XXXIII: 43-53. Leask, Nigel 1992: British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 137-48. ––––– 2005: ‘Easts’. Nicholas Roe, ed. Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Oxford: Oxford UP. 137- 48. McCalman, Iain, ed. 1999: An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832. Oxford UP. Meester, Marie E. de 1915: Oriental Influences in the English Literature of the Early Nineteenth Century. U of Heidelberg P. Neff, D. S. 1996: ‘The “paradise of the mothersons”: Frankenstein and The Empire of the Nairs’. The Journal of English and Germanic Philosophy 95.2: 204-22 Noyes, Russell, ed. 1980 (1956): English Romantic Poetry and Prose. New York: Oxford UP. O’Neill, Michael 1998: ‘P. B. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound’. Duncan Wu, ed. A Companion to Romanticism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers: 259-68. Peck, Walter Edwin 1925: ‘Shelley’s Indebtedness to Sir Thomas Lawrence’. MLN 40: 246-49. ––––– 1926: Shelley: His Life and Work, Vol. 1. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. Roe, Nicholas, ed. 2005: Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Oxford: Oxford UP. Said, Edward 1978: Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. ––––– 1995: ‘Orientalism and After’. Interview with Anne Beezer and Peter Osborne, Radical Philosophy. Rpt. in Gauri Viswanathan, ed. 2005 (2004): Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews with Edward Said. London: Bloomsbury. 208-32. Sen, Amiyakumar 1936: Studies in Shelley. Calcutta UP. Sharp, Sir Henry 1937: ‘Anglo-Indian Verse’. Essays by Diverse Hands 16: 93-116. Swinden, Patrick 1976: Shelley: Shorter Poems and Lyrics (A Casebook). Oxford: Macmillan. White, Newman Ivey 1940: Shelley, Vol. 1. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Wu, Duncan, ed. 1999 (1994): Romanticism: An Anthology, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Zillman, John 1959: Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound: A Variorum Edition. Seattle: U Washington P. Received 22 February 2008 Revised version received 17 April 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 35–51 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities: Translation as a Paradigm of Thought for Modernism M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera Universidade de Vigo [email protected] Modernism is generally defined as a major revolt against prevalent aesthetic traditions of the Western world and is usually associated with the cultural and social context of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, when all forms of expression were coming under investigation and the relation of language to logic and reality became a central theme. Taking as a point of departure the notion of linguistic experiment as an essential element of literary modernism, this article proposes to re-evaluate the ideological implications of modernism’s experimental poetics in the light of the modernist writers’ engagement with translation as mode of literary composition. Drawing from contemporary translation theories, the notion of translation is developed as a self-conscious interrogation of the nature and function of communication; accordingly, it is argued that this notion informs modernist epistemology. Through an examination of representative authors and texts, the essay demonstrates that a large number of modernist writers (many of them also translators) were ‘foreigners’ who sought to express the articulation of alternative identities through a radically new language. Ultimately, the article explores the different ways in which translation may be used as an enlightening paradigm of thought for modernism. Key words: modernism, translation, self-consciousness, alienation, exile, identity, foreignness, between-ness. “America is my country and Paris my home town” Gertrude Stein It is impossible to separate the history of translation from the history of languages, of cultures and of literatures—even of religions and nations. To be sure, this is not a question of mixing everything up, but of showing how in each period or in each given historical setting, the practice of translation is articulated in relation to the practice of literature, of languages, of the several intercultural and interlinguistic exchanges. Antoine Berman 54 M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera Most recent work in the field of Translation Studies has focused on the aspect of literary translation as a complex cultural activity, thereby emphasizing its centrality to the emergence of innovative aesthetics, and the development of new ideologies throughout different historical contexts and literary traditions. Drawing from the conviction that translation must be observed as an essential mechanism in the process of consolidation of new poetics as well as in the negotiation of issues of cultural and individual identity, I propose to re-evaluate modernist practices and concerns in the light of my own investigation into the relationship between modernism and translation. In the post-traditional order of modernity, characterized by the pluralization of contexts of action, the diversity of authorities and the emergence of new modes of mediated experience, the concept of personal and social identity is continuously subjected to revision as previous configurations of knowledge take now the form of provisional hypotheses and doubt is institutionalized.1 Many earlier presumptions, including those of national inviolability, the location of culture and the nature of the relation between the sexes, come under scrutiny. Although I shall not dwell here on either a discussion of modernity or an inquiry of the various ways in which modernism interacts with social modernity, I wish to stress that critics have frequently elaborated on the parallels between historical and social modernity on the one hand, and modernist art and literature on the other. Likewise, notwithstanding the debate underlying irreconcilable conceptualizations of modernism and postmodernism, my point of departure will be based on the critical consensus that regards modernism as a major revolt against prevalent aesthetic traditions of the Western world, later continued in the so-called postmodern age.2 Therefore, modernism will be understood not only as the cultural and social context of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, when artists and thinkers were challenging previous conventions in order to accommodate their perception of an unsettling world, but also as a radical break in the historical attitude towards language and communication as evinced in the literary texts I will refer to.3 At the turn of the century the complexity of the modern world demanded a literature of such unconventional force that writers felt compelled to reshape language. In this respect, modernist innovation relies fundamentally on the creation of a new language. As Jacob Korg states in the introduction to his book Language in Modern 1 For a study of the interconnections between mechanisms of self-identity and the institutions of modernity see Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. 2 For a thorough examination of the different positions in the philosophical debate about modernity and postmodernity see D’Entrèves, Passerin and Benhabib, Seyla eds, Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity. 3 For an exceptionally lucid exploration of modernism from the perspective of literary history and theory and an illuminating reading of modernist texts and authors see Astradur Eysteinsson, The Concept of Modernism. See also Randy Malamud, The Language of Modernism, for an exhaustive exploration of the renewal of literary language as undertaken by the modernist writers Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities 55 Literature: “There is no doubt that a revolution occurred, and that it was primarily a verbal revolution, manifesting itself in new uses of language” (1979: 1). Most importantly, linguistic experiment must be seen both as an essential element of literary modernism, and a symptom of how Western culture as a whole changed in the first decades of the twentieth century. The relation of language to reality became a central theme for the modernists whose art was to reveal a constant dialogue between the artist and his or her medium. The poet T.S. Eliot, whose major work, The Waste Land (1922), was dismissed by early reviewers as a kind of modern excess for its transgression of poetic decorum, had stated that “there is always the communication of some new experiences, or some fresh understanding of the familiar, or the expression of something we have experienced but have no words for, which enlarges or refines our sensibility” (Eliot 1957: 7). As Eliot acknowledged, and manifested repeatedly as he struggled to articulate a new language, modern experience cannot be fully explained by tradition. Consequently, the modernists must now endow their language with new possibilities; they must deviate from the straight path of conventional English, abandon the conventional lexicon and syntax, and even violate the principles of standard grammar as if they were writing under the pressure of having to translate from a different tongue. Significantly, during the first years of the twentieth century, both in Britain and the United States, translation appealed to a large number of modernist writers who found in foreign languages and cultures not only sources of inspiration and models for renewing their own culture but also ways of expanding the possibilities of expression in English. Critics such as Lawrence Venuti and Steven G. Yao have remarked on the fact that translation played a crucial role in the development of modernism. In his recent Translation and the Language of Modernism, Yao explains that modernist translation constituted a fruitful autonomous literary activity that inspired varied and sustained critical reflection and served modernist cultural agendas: It embodied a comprehensive textual strategy for negotiating between the demands of transmission and transformation, between the authority of tradition and the demands of innovation, between the endowments of the past and the imperatives of the present. In their drive to develop and renew different formal and social possibilities, the Modernists writing in (and into) English turned to translation and, in turn, reinvented it as a uniquely important mode of literary composition. (2002: 22) Undoubtedly, modernism could be seen as a ‘heroic age of translations’ if only judging by the number of modernist writers who engaged in translation at crucial points in their careers. Yao provides an impressive list, extremely diverse both as regards the chosen subjects and the languages involved. Thus, he refers to James Joyce’s youthful renderings of two plays by the German writer Gerhart Hauptmann and discusses also the case of another Irish author, W.B. Yeats, who approached Greek tragedy as a model for the formation of a national Irish Drama. Other significant examples provided by the critic are the translations of Hellenic poetry and drama by the American writer Hilda Doolittle (known by her initials H.D.), the versions of the fables of La Fontaine by Marianne Moore, Eliot’s renderings of French essays, Virginia Woolf’s versions of ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 56 M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera Dostoevsky and William Carlos Williams’s translations of numerous poems by French, Spanish and Latin American writers such as Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Hernández. In this context, the American poet Ezra Pound, with his versions of Guido Cavalcanti, his rendition of medieval Chinese lyrics and Japanese haikus, and his treatment of Latin poets, stands as a pre-eminent example of the interconnection between translation and other modes of literary production. Interestingly, Pound, who recommended translation as an imperative practice for young poets, stands as a remarkable example of how the experimentation that characterized the literature of the period must be approached in the context of the modernist writers’ concern with translation. In fact, for Pound translating does not differ in essence from original poetic composition. Indeed, much of the innovation of his poetry derives from his efforts to revitalize English through acts of homage to other languages and cultures. Both as a translator and as a writer, he employs strategies that aimed to challenge what Venuti has called the dominance of transparent discourse: Pound’s translations avoided the transparent discourse that has dominated English- language translation since the seventeenth century. Instead of translating fluently, foregrounding the signified and minimizing any play of the signifier that impeded communication, pursuing linear syntax, univocal meaning, current usage, standard dialects, prosodic smoothness, Pound increased the play of the signifier, cultivating inverted or convoluted syntax, polysemy, archaism, non-standard dialects, elaborate stanzaic forms—textual features that frustrate immediate intelligibility, emphatic response, interpretive mastery. (1995: 203) Modernist translation as undertaken by Pound entails the inscription of the foreign in the native culture through the disruption of hierarchies and the estrangement of the dominant values, thus illustrating an understanding of the practice of translation which deviates from the notion of a mere crossing over in order to transport and fix the original.4 Pound’s approach to translation can be seen in the light of what poststructuralist thought has conceptualized as “an action in which the movement along the surface of language is made visible” (Gentzler 1993: 162). Notwithstanding that my invocation of poststructuralism will not be followed by a discussion in depth of the influence of poststructuralism on translation theory, I will nevertheless resort to certain theoretical positions which allow me to think about modernist translation in other than traditional terms. Significantly, Jacques Derrida’s and Paul de Man’s approaches to translation take as a point of departure the work of Walter Benjamin, one of the most representative figures of modernist thought. De Man is interested in how, according to Benjamin, translation dismantles the notion of “the stability of the original” and thus, whereas “the translation canonizes, freezes, an original”, it simultaneously “shows in the original 4 In this respect, in his introduction to Ezra Pound: Translations, Hugh Kenner appropriately comments on Pound’s audacities as a translator “Ezra Pound never translates ‘into’ something already existing in English . . . only Pound has both the boldness and resource to make a new form, similar in effect to that of the original, which permanently extends the bounds of English verse” (Pound 1963: 9). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities 57 a mobility, an instability which at first one did not notice” (de Man 1986: 82). Likewise, Derrida questions traditional definitions of translation based on the notion of reproducing or communicating the ‘meaning’ of the original in similar terms. For him, translation might better be viewed as “one instance in which language can be seen as always in the process of modifying the original text, of deferring and displacing for ever any possibility of grasping that which the original text desired to name” (Gentzler 1993: 163). Thus, as I have argued elsewhere, “the functions of communication and representability of language are always problematized in translation through the paradox that translation itself represents” (Caneda 2007: 677). A translation obligatorily speaks of itself as an act of linguistic provisionality and displacement of meaning which “ironically, transplants the original into a more definitive linguistic realm, since it can no longer be displaced by a secondary rendering” (Benjamin 1992: 77). So conceived, translation explicitly becomes a site of conflict which defers an end or a definitive interpretation. In this respect, by deviating from traditional approaches which regarded fidelity and freedom as competing tendencies, we can open the possibility for a translation theory which can go beyond the obsession with the reproduction of meaning. Translation is directly related to the notion of incommunicability, since, as Benjamin argues, a total transfer is not possible: “Even when all the surface content has been extracted and transmitted, the primary concern of the genuine translator remains elusive” (Benjamin 1992: 76). The mobility and elusiveness which become visible through the process of translation—“the task of the translator is to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work” (Benjamin 1992: 80-81)—would thus seem to suggest an implicit elusiveness and mobility in the original itself. In this respect, this approach to translation as a mode of displacement would appear to fit in with a particular view of the original as a text which does not communicate an authorized meaning through formal wholeness but, rather, as a linguistic construct which self-consciously manifests its ambiguity through open forms and lends itself to being displaced and transformed. Therein lies the attractiveness of Benjamin’s redefinition of translation for an exploration of the relationship between translation and modernism.5 Ultimately, his notion of translation seems fraught with the same anxiety about language which lies at the heart of modernism. The work of translation scholars like Alexis Nouss, who has followed in the footsteps of Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’, clearly illustrates a contemporary concern in the field of translation studies to move beyond the obsession with transmission and the strict adherence to the traditional distinction between signifier and signified. Nouss (1997) maintains that translation is in itself a form of philosophy and consequently exposes the need for a translation theory which encourages commentary on texts which are themselves commentaries. According to traditional 5 For further discussion of translation as a mode of displacement that must be approached as “the inescapable destiny of modernism”, see Caneda ‘The Untranslatability of Modernism’ (682). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 58 M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera perspectives, translation entails the recollection of an original meaning which must be unveiled and restored. Yet, as defended by Nouss, it is possible to produce a translation theory which focuses not on the traditional opposition between the original and its translation, but rather centres on how a translation self-reflexively speaks of its unfulfilled relation to a previous text. This is precisely the scholar’s own standpoint as he claims that translation must be approached as a trans-disciplinary paradigm, in itself a transversal and transgressive form of epistemology. It is my contention that this notion of translation, a self-conscious act of communication which constantly interrogates its nature and function, not only informs the overall trajectory of modernism but appropriately illustrates epistemological modernist concerns. Thus, I will argue that the modernists’ interest in the play of signifiers and the employment of textual features that frustrated immediate intelligibility and transparency in the composition of their own original works requires to be approached in the context of the writers’ own (explicit or implicit) engagement with translation. It must be noted that this ‘engagement with translation’ was not always made visible. Apart from those writers who (like Pound and Eliot) developed deviant and eccentric forms of trans-lingual writing, for modernists translation was much more of an implicit practice; it conformed to a whole array of aesthetic experiments through which they challenge established concepts of self and otherness. Many modernists cultivated heterogeneity by resorting to a foreignizing poetics which, far from being a mere play with aesthetic formulas, stands as a symptomatic foregrounding of their own engagement with the unfamiliar, an engagement which is inherent to the task of the translator. In this respect, the practice of translation becomes paradigmatic of the writers’ attempt to articulate a new language through which they can express their rejection of tradition and, simultaneously, speak about the ‘foreignness’ inevitably linked to the experience of the modern self in the modern world. The inclusion of fragments appropriated from texts in foreign languages becomes essential in a large number of modernist creations, both manifesting a new intertextual poetics which deviates from standard literary values and simultaneously making an explicit statement about the multilingual dimensions of modernism.6 Furthermore, in their attempt to defamiliarize their medium of expression the modernists include languages other than English with such frequency that Pound’s famous motto make it new can well be interpreted as an implicit exhortation to make it foreign. As Michael North has indicated in his superb study on race and language in twentieth century literature, The Dialect of Modernism, a striking example of the use of foreignizing poetics can be found in one of the poems that Eliot wrote in French, ‘Mélange adultère de tout’ (1916). This poetic composition introduces a speaker who wanders from place to place so that the recurrent motif of movement through space 6 In his foreword to Extraterritorial (1971), George Steiner identifies a clear convergence between the “language revolution” and the crisis of “morals and formal values” which immediately precedes and follows the First World War. For him, one of the most striking aspects of the language revolution is represented by “the emergence of linguistic pluralism or ‘unhousedness’ ” (viii) in representative figures in the literature of exile. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities 59 appropriately entails a translation/alteration of personality as well: “En Amerique, professeur;/En Angleterre, journaliste ; /A Londres un peu banquier; /en Allemagne, philosophe” (Eliot 1963: 39). North remarks that the poem expresses instability of place and identity by variations in language: it is written in French about an American much like Eliot himself and includes German terminology, American place-names, French slang and non-linguistic expressions like tra la la. I agree with North that both in this poem, and indeed in his longer and more representative The Waste Land, the modernist freedom afforded by the drastic mix of styles and languages reveals Eliot’s obsession with ‘between-ness’ which appears everywhere in his work.7 Certainly, the writer’s poetic method is significant in relation to other modernist texts which incorporate foreign languages as examples of otherness, thus becoming cross-cultural artefacts in the middle of a fragmented and disrupted Western culture. However, it is not only that Eliot attempts to express his own dislocation between languages in order to illustrate that “the protagonist’s movements from country to country unsettle identity and language at once” (North 1994: 84). Furthermore, I will argue that since in both poems the notion of a single standard style, tone or diction is undermined by poetic voices that speak different languages and employ radically opposed linguistic registers, Eliot consciously produces a hybrid text that undermines the very concept of monolingualism.8 In doing so, the poet, who in his early years had considered giving up English and writing only in French, seems to suggest a challenging new mode of linguistic affiliation for the modern self which simultaneously exposes the flaws of narrowly compact discourses of ‘national’ culture. In this respect, both ‘Mélange’ with its adulterate mixture of places and identities, and The Waste Land, with its inclusion of lines in German, French, Italian, Latin and Hindi, self-reflexively reveal themselves as multilingual modernist texts marking the speakers’ position as strangers, always being somewhere else, always translating themselves into someone else and thus standing in opposition to clearly defined identities speaking in the ‘original’ language.9 7 My use of between-ness differs from North’s employment of the same term. The critic, consistent with his exploration of Eliot’s anxiety about race and language, identifies the quality of between-ness with “the loss of an identity once underwritten by secure racial boundaries” (North 1994: 86). In my case, the concept is used to refer to Eliot’s typical modernist dislocation as a writer between worlds and languages and manifested through the techniques of quotation, juxtaposition, montage and parody. 8 In his biography of T.S. Eliot, Peter Ackroyd explains that in The Waste Land Eliot developed his gift for dramatic impersonation and stylistic allusiveness and appropriately remarks that his passages of parody and pastiche are not simply imitations but “ the creative borrowing of another style and syntax which releases a plethora of ‘voices’” (1984: 117). The critic maintains that Eliot found his voice “by reproducing that of others” and explains that Ulysses struck him so forcibly because “Joyce had created a world which exists only in. and through, the multiple uses of languages—through voices” (1984: 118). Ackroyd, who also states that the position of alien had always appealed to the poet, clearly identifies Eliot’s experimental techniques with his undermining of a monolingual identity. 9Although Ackroyd does not discuss Eliot’s modernism in the context of translation theories, he significantly comments on Eliot’s skepticism and relativism as follows: “His early ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 60 M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera The polyglot finale of Eliot’s major poem eloquently speaks of a modern consciousness that exists only in a constant state of translation and consequently can only be defined through a continuous movement between languages and cultures: Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow Le Prince d’Aquitanie à la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih (Eliot 1963: 69) As in the case of Eliot, a large number of modernist writers belonged to a group of cross-cultural individuals who aspired to contest cultural and social homogeneity and sought to express their cultural defiance through the articulation of a radically new language. Among others, the New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield and the Dominican-born Jean Rhys accordingly translated their own colonial experiences, and their subsequent conflicts of identity crises and divided consciousness, into narratives of movement and migration in which foreign female protagonists, existing ‘between’ languages and cultures, wander as alienated strangers in the European metropolises of London and Paris. As we have seen, many of these writers were also translators who travelled and lived in foreign countries or exiles displaced through Europe fleeing from asphyxiating impositions of national or gender identity, eager to explore possible/foreign alternatives. As mentioned in the cases of Pound and Eliot, but also Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and the lesbian writers Stein and H.D. who, together with Djuna Barnes found in Paris an escape from constraining social and cultural conventions, the unequalled phenomenon of literary expatriation is connected with the origins and development of modernism.10 Directly or indirectly, all of these writers embraced translation, not only as a theme, but as the discourse of modern experience par excellence. Interestingly enough, their personal and geographical exile, their cultural and linguistic displacement appropriately illustrates the ‘transcendental homelessness’ of modernity, the foreignness of individuals in a world in which “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” (Yeats 1921: 184).11 philosophical investigations had been concerned with the primacy of ‘interpretation’ and the irrecoverability of any original ‘meaning’” (1984: 18). 10 In reference to modernist women writers, feminist criticism has for some time now argued that although literary history has confined women to the margins of modernism, the modernism emerging from the women’s line is more complex than ‘canonical’ male modernism. Feminist critics maintain that since women are historically outsiders in relation to the institutions and beliefs that constitute the official version of history, ‘making it new’ for female writers entails rebelling against the cultural inheritance of patriarchy. Thus, as Stein’s The Making of Americans evidences in its radical abandonment of syntactical structures, modernist women writers believe that they must defy not only traditional representations of the feminine but reinvent language itself. 11 This line from ‘The Second Coming’ (1921) has often been invoked by critics to refer to the ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities 61 In this respect, if modernist poetry must necessarily resort to foreign languages and cultures since, as Pound declares in Canto LXXXVI, “it can’t be all in one language” (1975: 563), in a similar way, a large number of modernist narratives bear witness to the recognition that there no longer exists a single inherited reservoir of meaning or language which can be taken for granted. Making a statement about the inadequacy of the old language, modernist fiction turns to the quest for alternatives so that earlier presumptions about national identity, political enterprises, religious faiths and moral beliefs, cultural certainties, social policies and sexual differences are constantly subjected to scrutiny. Linguistic experiment unites a varied spectrum of writers whose works reflect the conviction that language in the modern age had to stretch and change in order to say more. In its breaking away from assumptions, the modernist novel becomes the space where a moment of crisis is dramatized rather than solved. Thus, the explicit challenge to inherited concepts of culture and language is recurrently addressed in fictional representations which often deal with tensions in the identification of self and society. Significantly, these modernist narratives portray personal conflicts, the protagonists of which are always ‘outsiders’ translating themselves, standing in a skewed relationship to the rest of humanity, out of tune with some of the most broadly accepted values and attitudes. In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.Dalloway (1925), the shell-shocked soldier Septimus Warren Smith, married to Rezia, a foreigner who feels herself at odds in England, epitomizes the condition of the modern individual whose estrangement from a sense of common experience is symptomatically reflected in his obsession with language.12 After the war, Septimus, who was once well versed in “Shakespeare, Darwin, The History of Civilisation, and Bernard Shaw” (Woolf 1992: 93) and had shown serious aspirations to become a poet, finds that the inherited ‘original’ language of his native cultural tradition cannot be used to express what has happened to him: “You served with great distinction in the war?” The patient repeated the word “war” interrogatively. He was attaching meaning to words of a symbolical kind . . . “The war?” the patient asked. The European war—the little shindy of schoolboys with gunpowder? Had he served with distinction? He really forgot. (Woolf 1992: 105) His chaotic and fragmented stream of consciousness appropriately begins to question the conditions of conventional language as a valid mode of communication. Any predetermined and externally objective definition becomes incomprehensible and perception of a fragmented modern age in which modernist writers must necessarily break down the inherited tradition into fragments in order to reformulate modernist aesthetics. 12 In her study Outsiders Together, Natania Rosenfeld argues that Mrs Dalloway deploys images of hybridity and mutation; thus, she interestingly remarks that Woolf gives Septimus Warren Smith an ambiguous label through his absurd name, emblematic of his between-ness. She explains it as follows: “He is a border case, neither one thing, nor the other . . . His surname is as prosaic and ‘common’ as his given name is high-flown and extraordinary” (2000: 4) ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 62 M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera irrelevant for the shell-shocked war veteran who must translate himself into a new invented language, beyond the limitations of his given tradition and society: The word “time” split its husk, poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable, words, and flew to attach themselves to their places. (Woolf 1992: 76) As if she were engaging in the typical task of a translator, Woolf explores in this novel the separation of words from their traditional associations and meanings. In Mrs. Dalloway, as is typical of her other novels and stories in which characters are portrayed puzzling over the gap between words and the world, the writer questions the capacity of language to mean and communicate. Through her employment of disjointed and subverted sentences, fragmented thoughts and images, Woolf pointedly demonstrates that the task of the modernist writer is to envision a new language that can represent or, rather, translate the experience of modern men and women. Woolf was indeed an outsider, a dislocated writer; both as a woman and as a manic-depressive she was aware of her exclusion from the centres of power and, thus, her work constantly celebrates experiences of marginality and displacement.13 In this respect, Mrs. Dalloway may well be read as a textbook of modernism since it illustrates Woolf’s repudiation of her Edwardian predecessors and, furthermore, embodies her own project to create a language that would undermine the linguistic and literary structures of tradition through a “translation of the languid artefacts from the past into what must carry on into the future” (Malamud 1989: 24). In a similar vein, Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness (1902), must be viewed as another paradigmatic modernist text, on the one hand dealing with the protagonist’s encounter with foreignness and the subsequent experience of personal and social alienation, and, on the other hand, operating according to the principles which inform the translation process. If in Woolf’s novel her engagement with translation practices and her ‘foreignness’ and exile must be considered in the context of the literary tradition and the male dominated culture she seeks to liberate herself from, Conrad’s own biography and literary trajectory, as a Polish émigré who kept on translating himself into French and English, comes to illustrate the notion of modernist identity that I have been discussing. North appropriately remarks that the Polish-born expatriate who lived and wrote “in constant remembrance of linguistic difference” came before his British public as a foreigner, “a racial outcast” (North 1994: 52). As a foreign speaker of the English language and as a stranger in the context of the cultural and literary tradition that, ironically, the writer would become part of, Conrad’s work raises important issues for the study of the relationship between modernism and translation. Conrad’s fictional 13 In her ‘A Room of One’s Own’ Woolf sees the exclusion of women from the patriarchal system as having specific consequences for the language of women’s writing. She points to a particular form of linguistic exile when she remarks that the woman novelist has to revise the syntax, sentence structure, literary conventions and value system of the novel created by men. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities 63 worlds, like the ships he embarked on as a sailor, are crowded with outsiders, and his novels, often set in remote territories, abound with scenes representing dialogues between characters speaking different languages or translating from one language into another, doubtless inspired by his own experience among the polyglot crews he worked with.14 In this regard, Conrad seems to relish in the dramatization of foreignness through the inclusion of scenes dealing with either simultaneous translation between languages or the shift from English to a foreign tongue. In Lord Jim, for example, apart from Marlow, other narrators communicate through a hybrid speech form which mixes syntactic patterns and vocabulary from different languages. The narrative functions as a translation in progress as it reminds us that “nothing can be seen independently of ways of seeing it which are inevitably specific, to individuals, cultures and ultimately languages” (Stevenson 1992: 189). In Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s protagonist cites and translates a variety of different languages which includes French, Russian and German as well as unspecified native African tongues. Although recorded in the English language, the novel accounts for the heteroglot nature of the European colonial enterprise in the African territories. Furthermore, Marlow’s main struggle as a narrator is directly related to the frustrations that he experiences as a translator of Africa, a radically foreign place, where normal Western linguistic categories cannot aptly be used to signify. Since both representability and communication are problematized, the emphasis falls on language as a way of negotiating one’s relation to a world which is experienced as ‘foreign’: “We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse” (Conrad 1995: 62). Ironically, although Marlow recognizes that he cannot find an appropriate language, his narrative does rely on specific language uses which ultimately reveal his ideology as a translator. In his ‘translation’ of Africa, he often resorts to a vocabulary influenced by his own appreciation of the Congo experience as strange, exotic, primal and ‘dark’: We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. (Conrad 1995: 62) Heart of Darkness operates according to the principles that inform the translation process. On the one hand, the novel offers itself as Marlow’s retelling through a sort of creative and performative act, the importance of which lies not in the fact that it puts us in contact with the ‘original’ and ‘pure’ experience, “but rather in how it self-reflexively speaks of itself as a linguistic reconstruction of a past experience in the present moment” (Caneda 2007: 679). On the other hand, Marlow inhabits a mediating position, marked by uncertainty, which resembles the translator’s—“It seems to me I 14 In fact, as Nico Israel maintains in his Outlandish: Writing Between Exile and Diaspora, Conrad extends Bakhtin’s formulation of the social heteroglossia “to include an international cast of voices” (2000: 64). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 64 M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream sensation” (Conrad 1995: 50). He is inside and outside at the same time, someone whose identity has become terminally displaced through a cross- cultural experience: “We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings . . . We could not understand, because we were too far and could not remember” (Conrad 1995: 62). Whereas Conrad’s text can be seen as a modernist variation of a larger tradition of travel novels about Europeans voyaging in remote territories, Heart of Darkness, the work of a foreigner trying to make a career in England and a writer aware of how language structures civilization, also proclaims the modernist conviction that the establishment of personal and cultural identity, like translation, requires engaging with the multiple others of foreign languages and cultures. Marlow acknowledges repeatedly through the novel that his attempts at communicating his experience turn into vain efforts because representation can only reproduce its relation to experience but is far from conveying experience itself. Paradoxically, the ungraspable nature of Marlow’s original experience remains a constant even while he insistently attempts to re-create it for his audience. The narrative obsessively exposes its uncertain (modernist) condition. As if it were a translation, the text performs a displacement of the ‘original’ experience and, thus, dramatizes how meaning is always interpreted, subjected to the possibilities and limits of language and mediated by its formal and ideological boundaries. In this respect, rather than a chronicle, Marlow’s tale must be better understood as a translation (Caneda 2007: 680) since, paradoxically, as he attempts to tell his experience he confesses the futility of a task that remains impossible: “No, it is impossible; it’s impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence —that which makes its truth, its meaning— its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible” (Conrad 1995: 50). Because of his own linguistic and cultural alienation Conrad himself emerges as a particularly apt representative of the ‘between-ness’ and uncertainty of the modern identity which he thematized in his novels. Ultimately, Marlow’s shocking discovery that the European colonial enterprise is supported by destruction and death emerges accompanied by his own realization that the English language cannot be used appropriately to convey the unfamiliar experience of Africa. His deep sense of void, as he is confronted with the purposelessness and failure of a Western civilization and language in the negotiation between self and other, occurs in the context of a modernity characterized by unequal imperial encounters that the novel dramatizes but does not solve. Challenged by the experience, Marlow’s telling exposes how much a human being cannot know mainly because the knowledge of reality depends essentially on individual perception and, in its turn, human perception is mediated by cultural values: You can’t understand. How could you? –with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman . . . These little things make all the great difference (Conrad 1995: 85). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities 65 Whereas Conrad’s narrative is grounded on modernist uncertainty and indeterminacy, it nevertheless brings into question nineteenth-century assumptions of universal reality, suggesting that Western models of reason and experience are relative and as such cannot be universalized. In Heart of Darkness Marlow’s (and Conrad’s) anxious telling is fraught with the anxiety of failure inherent to the task of the translator. Symptomatically, in the context of a modern world characterized by the shift from the familiar experience of common and civilized values to an unfamiliar world informed by scepticism and self-doubt, the novel proposes that new forms of understanding must be created for a successful engagement with the ‘foreignness’ of experience. Marlow’s attempts at puzzling out the demands of a foreign environment evidence the gaps between word and world which translation always reveals. Translation always exposes that nothing can be seen absolutely as it is since nothing is independent from ways of seeing it. This is so because the singularity of a particular perspective is inevitably linked to particular individuals, cultures and ultimately languages. “I’d like a language which is above all languages” (Ellmann 1959: 410), proclaimed the Irish writer James Joyce echoing Pound’s acknowledgement that no language can make more than an incomplete contact with the world. This idea is celebrated in Ulysses (1922) where Joyce parodies and mocks a large range of styles, registers and speech patterns avoiding expressing himself in one single language. As Fritz Senn has claimed, Joyce’s novel can only be understood as a “continuous intratranslation” since the different chapter modes function as translations, illustrating “the idea of a conjugation of all languages’ potential and all stylistic ranges” (Senn 1984: 52-53). As discussed in the opening pages of this essay, for most modernist writers linguistic concern and experiment go hand in hand with the experience of exile and linguistic displacement. In this respect, Joyce’s modernist awareness of the arbitrariness in the relation between signifier and signified, and his subsequent exploration of alternatives is first manifested in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where he seems to reflect on his particular experience of linguistic alienation as an English speaker, through the words of Stephen Dedalus: The language in which we are speaking now is his before it is mine . . . His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My souls frets in the shadow of his language. (1968: 189) Joyce himself spent most of his life between ‘acquired speeches’, having to translate himself constantly, first as an Irish writer dispossessed of an original language and later as an exile in France, Switzerland and Italy. His life-long interest in languages other than English, together with his exile and alienation from his mother tongue, provides the appropriate framework for understanding the modernist experimentation that culminates in Finnegans Wake (1939), where Joyce interweaves strands from sixty different languages into the fabric of English. Certainly, his most radically experimental work must be seen in the context of the modernist writer’s urge to escape from the stylistic and formal constraints of tradition. Yet, more significantly, Finnegans Wake can be understood as the ultimate expression of a modernist attempt to expand the ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 66 M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera possibilities of English by imaginatively translating it into a nonexistent ‘autonomous’ language which, paradoxically, manages to effectively multiply its endless relation to many other foreign languages and cultures. Through the carnivalesque fantasy of a world in which different languages and cultures mingle to create a new one, simultaneously unique and multiple, original and derivative, Joyce dismantles monolithic linguistic structures and attacks the ideology of cultural purity and homogeneity. As the scholar John McCourt has remarked: Writing against notions of pure Aryan and pure Irish here, Joyce gave voice to the “confusioning of human races” (FW35.5) and in doing so gave voice to the Europe he saw from afar and longed for in Dublin, discovered at first hand in the multicultural city of Trieste, and in Zurich, city of refugees and later in Paris. (2006: 12) Finnegans Wake embodies the translation process itself since it forces us to look for similarities between languages and cultures, particularly similar signifiers and sounds, and simultaneously reminds us of dissimilarities, mainly as different meanings are evoked by the same word. Ultimately, Joyce’s text, like the translated text, becomes a hybrid site where difference and otherness are not only allowed to emerge but are encouraged and celebrated. “When I translate”, explains Nouss, “I translate as much the other into myself, as myself into the other” (2007:251). For the critic, who envisions translation as a ‘navigation’ between languages and cultures, to translate means always to receive the foreigner who takes refuge in one’s language as one simultaneously takes refuge in the other’s. Across the twentieth century, a time of unprecedented mass migration, exile, displacement and increasing new forms of (trans)national affiliation, the work of many modernist (and postmodernist) writers will recurrently insist on telling stories of hybridity and métissage, narratives about the movement and mixture of people, languages and cultures, thus proclaiming that translation has become the defining (and necessary) condition of our modern era. Works Cited Ackroyd, Peter 1984: T.S.Eliot. London: Abacus Benjamin, Walter 1992 (1923): ‘The Task of the Translator’. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, eds. Theories of Translation. Trans. Harry Zohn. Chicago: U of Chicago P. 71-82. Caneda Cabrera, M. Teresa 2007: ‘The Untranslatability of Modernism’. Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska, eds. Modernism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 675-92. Conrad, Joseph 1995 (1902): Heart of Darkness. Ed. Robert Hampson. London: Penguin. De Man, Paul 1986: The Resistance to Theory. Foreword.Wlad Godzich. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Eliot, T.S. 1963: Collected Poems 1909-1962. New York and London: Harcourt Brace. ––––– 1957: On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber. Ellmann, Richard 1959: James Joyce. New York: Oxford UP. Eysteinsson, Astradur 1990: The Concept of Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Gentzler, Edwin 1993: Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge. Giddens, Anthony 1991: Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities 67 Stanford: Stanford UP. Israel, Nico 2000: Outlandish: Writing Between Exile and Diaspora. Stanford: Stanford UP. Joyce, James. 1939: Finnegans Wake. New York: Viking. ––––– 1968 (1916): A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Text, Criticism and Notes. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Viking. ––––– 1986 (1922): Ulysses Ed. Hans Walter Gable. New York: Vintage, 1986. Korg, Jacob 1979: Language in Modern Literature: Innovation and Experiment. Sussex: The Harvester P. Malamud, Randy 1989: The Language of Modernism. Boston: U.M.I. Matthews, Steven 2004. Modernism. London: Arnold. McCourt, John 2006: ‘Joyce, il Bel Paese e la lingua italiana’. Paper read at the 20th International James Joyce Symposium: Joycean Unions. 1-12. North, Michael 1994: The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP. Nouss, Alexis 1997: ‘L’Essai sur la traduction de Walter Benjamin’. Meta 32/4: 429-37. ––––– 2007: ‘Translation and Métissage’. Paul St-Pierre and Prafulla C. Kar, eds. Translation- Reflections, Refractions, Transformations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 245-53. Pound, Ezra 1975 (1934): The Cantos of Ezra Pound. London: Faber and Faber. ––––– 1963: Translations. Ed. Hugh Kenner. New York: New Directions. Rosenfeld, Natania 2000: Outsiders Together. Princeton: Princeton UP. Senn, Fritz: 1984. Joyce’s Dislocutions: Essays on Reading as Translation. Ed. John Paul Riquelme. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Steiner, George 1971: Extraterritorial. New York: Atheneum. Stevenson, Randall 1992: Modernist Fiction: An Introduction. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky. Venuti, Lawrence 1995: The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. Woolf, Virginia 1966: Collected Essays. London: Hogarth. ––––– 1992 (1925): Mrs. Dalloway. Ed. Elaine Showalter. London: Penguin. Yao, Stephen G. 2002: Translation and the Languages of Modernism: Gender, Politics, Language. New York: Palgrave. Yeats, W.B. 1992 (1921) Collected Poems. London: Vintage. Received 16 January 2007 Revised version received 9 November 2007 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 53–67 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences Ana Ojea Universidad de Oviedo [email protected] This paper analyses the syntactic structure of to-infinitive sentences in English, focusing on the grammatical features that may characterize them. In particular I argue that these clauses are introduced by the features [±assertion] and [-indicative], and that the particle to has a modal value which is a remnant of its prepositional origin. These assumptions will allow me to explain their differences and similarities not only with indicative and subjunctive sentential complements but also with other non-finite forms such as –ing participle clauses and the bare infinitive. The feature analysis that is defended here, together with the prepositional nature of the particle to, will also help account for some relevant contrasts between English and Spanish in these constructions. Keywords: Grammar, Syntax, Illocutionary features, Mood, Infinitive sentences, Non- finite clauses, Minimalist Program, Contrastive Grammar 1. The syntax of to-infinitive complement clauses In line with current generativist analyses of the sentence, it will be assumed that sentential structure comprises lexical and functional categories, and that the specification of the lexical/grammatical features that head them is the key to understanding the processes that lead to the final form of sentences and to their correct interpretation.1 In this respect, the basic structure of a sentence must include a) a category or a group of categories which serve to connect the sentence with other sentences or with the discourse: the illocutionary layer, b) a category or a group of categories to codify the temporal and aspectual values of the sentences: the inflectional layer and c) a category or a group of categories that represent the relations between the different lexical elements of the sentence: the thematic layer. Starting with the illocutionary layer, I have defended elsewhere (Ojea 2005) that the left periphery of the sentence must include information about its modality – i.e. its 1 Even though one of the basic assumptions of the Minimalist Program underlies this approach to infinitival sentences (namely, the adoption of the feature as the core grammatical unit), my goal here is basically descriptive, and I shall thus avoid technical details except where they are strictly needed. 70 Ana Ojea (non) assertive nature – and its mood, the categories Force Phrase and Mood Phrase being the projection of those values: 1. [ForceP ±assertion [MoodP ±indicative … The notation Force Phrase has been taken from the seminal work by Rizzi (1997), which inaugurated a rich flow of works on the analysis of the left periphery of the English sentence. The term Force refers there to the illocutionary force of the proposition, that is, in a broad sense it alludes to its modality, to the speaker’s degree of commitment to that proposition in terms of asserting, inquiring, promising, ordering… I have opted for the feature [±assertion] to subsume those options.2 But in Rizzi’s proposal the obligatory complement of ForceP is the category Finite Phrase, which encodes the (non)finiteness of the clause. According to Huddleston (1984: 81), the term finite is related to its everyday use of ‘limited’, and alludes to the verbal forms which are limited with respect to person and number; to use his own example, a form like takes is finite because it is limited to occurrence with a third person singular subject. This is then just a question of morphological agreement, and even though it is true that certain predicates may select sentential complements with finite/non-finite verbal forms, I believe that there exists another type of grammatical information which is more relevant in this respect: the grammatical mood of the proposition, which is manifested on its verb.3 A mere look at languages morphologically richer than English serves to show that mood is basically selected from outside (i.e. certain predicates and operators force the subjunctive mood, whilst others select the indicative), a fact which would justify its syntactic embodiment in some of the peripheral projections of the sentence. And, even more significantly, grammatical mood seems to be strictly associated with the (non)assertive nature of the proposition and, ultimately, with the assertive value of the selector, that is, MoodP qualifies as the natural complement of the category ForceP. Hooper and Terrell (1974) were among the first to study the relationship between the semantic notion of assertion and that of grammatical mood. The generalization they defended was that in languages like Spanish, where mood distinctions are still productive, when the proposition expressed by a complement clause is asserted, this clause appears in the indicative, whereas when it is not asserted, it appears in the subjunctive mood. Later, Hooper (1975) refined the analysis intersecting the assertive/non-assertive distinction with the notion of factivity; and, as regards their assertive value, she classified the predicates that can have sentential complements into two main groups, as shown in table 1: 2 A proposition is asserted when it is susceptible of being assigned a truth value. In all the other cases (i.e. questions, orders, suggestions, volition…) it will be non-asserted. 3 Although the two terms have sometimes been employed indistinctively, mood is used here to refer to the morphological means which may serve to express the different types of modality. It will also be argued that the notion of finiteness in English can eventually be subsumed under mood (i.e. non-indicative forms are basically non finite) ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences 71 [+assertive] [-assertive] think say predict know doubt forget believe admit remark discover deny regret suppose answer report find out be likely resent imagine assure agree learn be possible be odd guess certify decide note be probable be strange expect claim deduce observe be unlikely be interesting seem explain be afraid remember be impossible be relevant appear maintain be certain realize be improbable be sorry Table 1 Assertive and non-assertive predicates taking sentential complements (adapted from Hooper 1975: 92) Hooper (1975) grounded this classification not only on semantic facts but also on the ability or inability of the predicate and its complement to undergo certain syntactic operations. For that, she focused on the combination of these predicates with finite sentential complements. One of the goals of this paper will be to extend her analysis and explore the potential of the notion of assertion to explain the properties of to-infinitive complement clauses as well. Given that in finite sentences in English the only grammatical mood is, strictly speaking, the indicative (since only here do we find distinctive inflectional morphemes), I will employ the feature [±indicative] to comprise under the negative specification all the other possibilities ─i.e. subjunctive and the so- called non-finite forms.4 Coming back to my proposal in (1), it predicts four possible combinations of the features [±assertion] and [±indicative], all of them actually present in different clause- types: a) [+assertion, +indicative], to be found in main sentences and most complement clauses after assertive predicates, b) [-assertion, +indicative], which will characterize interrogative clauses, c) [-assertion, -indicative], the values in most complements of non assertive predicates, mainly sentences in the subjunctive mood and to-infinitives, and d) [+assertion, -indicative], the features that will characterize a subgroup of to-infinitive clauses. The present paper sets out to explore in detail the last two combinations, i.e. [-assertion, -indicative] and [+assertion, -indicative]. The first of them, [-assertion, -indicative], establishes a clear connection between to- infinitives and subjunctive clauses, since both share these features. It is interesting to note here that, quite recently, Los (1999) has convincingly argued that to-infinitives came to be regarded as the non-finite counterpart of subjunctive purpose clauses, and that in Old English they systematically appeared in contexts about non-actuated facts that were intended, promised, permitted or ordered by the speaker (i.e. in non-assertive contexts), where subjunctive clauses could also appear (see also Rohdenburg 1995 for 4 If we admit the literal sense of the term finite aforementioned (cf. Huddleston 1984), the subjunctive in English will also be a non-finite form, since it is precisely characterized by its lack of morphological agreement in person and number with the subject. In a way (see footnote 6) the subjunctive could be grouped with infinitives and gerunds as a non-tensed and non-finite form. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 72 Ana Ojea the competition of the two forms from the 16th to the early 19th century). She therefore defends that the actual ongoing competition in Old English was between to-infinitives and subjunctive clauses.5 In present-day English, to-infinitives have clearly ousted subjunctive clauses in non-assertive contexts, but they can still be considered alternatives in many cases, this phenomenon being much clearer in languages with rich mood distinctions (see section 2.3). Therefore, I believe it makes sense to characterize both of them with the same illocutionary features: 2. They demanded to be heard They demanded that they be heard 3. It is important not to be afraid It is important that they not be afraid As for the second combination, [+assertion, -indicative], these features in ForceP and MoodP may serve to clarify the different behaviour of to-infinitive clauses after assertive and non assertive predicates, as will be shown in next section. Turning now to the inflectional layer, it has been customarily agreed that infinitival sentences do not have tense, this being the main reason why they cannot be assigned a truth value. But even if it is true that to-infinitives lack the morphological feature [±past] and do not display subject agreement either, this does not necessarily imply that they lack a tense frame (cf. Stowell 1982; Abusch 2004), or, for that matter, that they cannot be given a truth value. Of course, tense does not place the event here on the objective time axis (i.e. situating it with respect to the moment of speech), but it marks that event as temporally bound to the predicate that selects it. It will then be assumed that the category TP of to-infinitive complement sentences has an unvalued feature that is to be interpreted anaphorically with respect to the temporal features of the matrix predicate, and the temporal reading of to-infinitival clauses will be accounted for in terms of the conjunction of this anaphoric value with the semantics of the particle to itself.6 The proposals I have made so far lead us to the following functional structure in subordinate clauses: 4. matrix predicate [ForceP [±assertion] [MoodP [±indicative] [TP [±valued]… Predictably, there must be a head-to-head selection among the different nuclei in (4). Thus, the matrix verb selects the [±assertion] feature in Force, Force the [±indicative] feature in Mood, and both crucially restrict the possibilities in Tense. The unmarked cases will be the ones in which every option coincides, that is, an assertive 5 A different view, namely that in OE to-infinitives were in competition with the bare infinitive, has been traditionally adopted in the literature (e.g. Sweet 1903; Jespersen 1961; Visser 1972; Lightfoot 1979). 6 The anaphoric reading of the tense of infinitival complements with respect to that of the main clause is another point they have in common with subjunctive clauses, and may justify the inclusion of the latter in the group of non-tensed complements in English, as illustrated by (i): i) I request/requested that Bill pick up the ball ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences 73 predicate that selects a sentential complement with [+assertion] force, [+indicative] mood and a valued feature in tense (which can be [±past]), i.e. a subordinate indicative sentence; or, alternatively, a non-assertive predicate that selects a clause with [-assertion] force, [-indicative] mood and an unvalued feature in tense, i.e. a subordinate subjunctive, infinitival or gerund sentence. Finally, an analysis of to will be pursued that connects this particle to its origin as a preposition which signalled a goal of motion.7 I will argue that it projects a Modal Phrase whose value of futurity and, therefore, of potentiality, is a remnant of that origin (the future being understood as the goal, the endpoint of the temporal reference).8 This in turn, may explain some of the differences between to-infinitives and other non-finite clauses such as –ing clauses, since the former will be systematically associated with non- factual readings. Moreover, this view of to as a modal preposition establishes a semantic relationship between to and the modal verbs, a relationship that may be reflected in the syntactic similarities between them which have been sometimes noted in the literature (eg. Gazdar et al. 1982; Huddleston and Pullum 2002); thus, like modals, to can appear separated from the verb that heads the predication, as in (5), may act as the carrier of the negation, as in (6), and allows for the gapping of the verbal phrase, as in (7):9 5. To always complain about your luck will not help you much 6. I would like him not to go 7. I do not want to With this analysis of to, I clearly depart from the traditional view which considers it a meaningless particle, an idea quite pervasive in the literature (e.g. Jespersen 1961; 7 Grammarians such as Quirk et al. (1985: 687) have also explicitly claimed that the infinitive marker to may be viewed as related to the spatial preposition to through metaphorical connection. 8 During the times of the Principles and Parameters approach, to was customarily analysed as a possible lexical projection of the category TenseP (IP at that time). But this view is practically impossible to reconcile with the current assumptions of the Minimalist Program, since, apart from important empirical problems (e.g. the placement of the Negative Phrase in the clause), it would technically imply specifying Tense with contradictory [±V] uninterpretable features, and to assume that these features can be checked both via merge and via movement (prior and after Spell Out). The proposal here does not face those problems, and is also compatible with other well-known formal approaches of Tense in which this category is treated as a dyadic predicate of temporal ordering whose external argument is the Reference-time and its internal argument the Event-Time (see Zagona 1990; Stowell 2007). 9 Given the restriction in English that precludes two modals in sequence in the same clause, the modal character of to that I defend may arguably serve to explain as well why it can be followed by a bare form of any verb (lexical or auxiliary) except a modal, (i.e. to go/to be going/to have gone/*to can go); the same reasoning may be extended to the impossibility of a modal followed by to (i.e. *can to go). Also note that, having become a modal particle, to has lost many of the characteristics of genuine prepositions (mainly in terms of modification and complementation cf. Radford 1997: 52), a fact that again connects it to modal verbs, which clearly display important syntactic and morphological differences with respect to other verbal forms. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 74 Ana Ojea Chomsky 1957; Buyssens 1987; Radford 1997, among others). Actually, I believe that it is precisely this modal-prepositional character of to that contributes to a large extent to make to-infinitives different from other non finite clauses, including bare infinitives, or from infinitival clauses in other languages like Spanish. But I do not adhere to the view that systematically associates to with notions like future, potentiality or hypothesis, either (see Bolinger 1978; Dixon 1984 or Wierzbicka 1988, among others). The idea that I would like to defend here is that the final reading of to-infinitives depends on the conjunction of the values of the different grammatical features that are present in the subordinate clause, in particular those in (8): 8. ForceP[±assertion] [MoodP[-indicative] [TP[unvalued] [ModalP to [VP.. With this feature specification of to-infinitives I will attempt a classification of these clauses which may complement the standard. As is well-known, in formal grammars to- infinitive sentences have been customarily divided into three groups, established on the basis of what kind of subject (i.e. implicit or lexical) the infinitival clause has. Thus, one would distinguish between (subject or object) Control complements, as those in (9) and (10), and Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) complements, as in (11): 9. I want [PRO to stay here] 10. I persuaded Mary [PRO to stay here] 11. I believe [him to be a good pianist] I will look at to-infinitive sentences from a different angle, one which focuses on (the features of) the categories that inaugurate them and cuts across the classification above. In this respect there have been different attempts to correlate the semantics of the infinitival complement with the structural characteristics of their subjects in terms of the lack or existence of certain categories like Tense or Comp; but all of them meet empirical problems which tell against this intended connection (see Wurmbrand 2001 for a review of the relevant literature on the issue). I contend that the possibility of a lexical subject or a controlled null category in to-infinitive complements has to do with the Case properties of the matrix predicate, not with its (non) assertive value; actually, one can find both Control and ECM infinitive complements after [+assertive] predicates (e.g. 12, 13) or after [–assertive] ones (e.g. 14, 15): 12. I decided [PRO to stay] 13. I expected [them to stay] 14. I wish [PRO to stay] 15. I want [them to stay] In what follows, it will therefore be assumed that all to-infinitival complements have the same sentential structure (as in 8), and in section 2.1. I will focus on the different readings we may obtain from the combination of the relevant features in that structure. Section 2.2.explores the differences between to-infinitivals and complements in the bare infinitive under this approach; and finally, in section 2.3 the implications that this ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences 75 analysis may have for a comparison between English and Spanish in this particular area will be sketched. 2. Empirical predictions 2.1. On the reading of to-infinitival sentences Apart from some of the non-assertive verbs and adjectives listed in Table 1 above, there are two other major groups of predicates that productively take to-infinitival complements.10 The first is the group of volition and mandative verbs like want, wish, desire, prefer, allow, beg, command, demand, recommend or urge: 16. I allowed them to stay home 17. They begged him to help them 18. They intended the appointment to be cancelled 19. I want to follow you 20. I wish to stay The subordinate clauses in the examples above have a non-assertive reading that clearly matches the deontic or boulomaic sense of the matrix predicate. In other words, this group of verbs all select the [-assertion], [-indicative] features in the illocutionary layer of their sentential complements; and these features can in turn be checked by a subjunctive form, a modal particle or a modal verb, thus the equivalence among the three constructions: 21. They begged that I help him me to help him that I should help him 22. She intended that the appointment be cancelled the appointment to be cancelled that the appointment should be cancelled 23. I wish you were staying a little longer you to stay a little longer you could stay a little longer The second group is that of emotive verbs like hate, like, loathe, love, etc., all of them non-assertive as well: 24. I would hate to be left out 25. I would like to leave it like that 26. I would love to travel with you 10 This characterization of to-infinitive sentences does not pretend to constitute an exhaustive description of the possibilities, but a different approach to their analysis; this is why I have simply focused on those cases which can better exemplify my views on the topic. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 76 Ana Ojea These verbs also select the [-assertion], [-indicative] features in the illocutionary layer of their complements but, since present day subjunctive is not compatible with these predicates, the [-indicative] feature will only be possibly checked here by the modal particle to or by a gerund form. Recall that the former has a non-factual value which is not present in the latter and, therefore, as Quirk et al (1985) have noted, the infinitival option is to be preferred in contexts like (24-26) where the matrix predication (with the auxiliary would) favours a modal sense of potentiality; contrast, in this respect, (24-26) with (27-29): 27. ?I would hate being left out vs. I hate being left out 28. ?I would like leaving it like that vs. I like skiing 29. ?I would love travelling with you vs. I love travelling with you This clearly argues for the modal character of the particle to that has been defended so far, and may also explain the contrast between non-finite sentential complements after other non assertive predicates, as in the following pairs, where, predictably, only in (31) and (33) does the subordinate clause presuppose the factuality of the subordinate event: 30. I’ll remember to tell her about it 31. I remember telling her about it 32. Sheila tried to bribe the jailor 33. Sheila tried bribing the jailor Yet the feature specification defended in (8) also allows for the possibility of the to- infinitival clause being introduced by a [+assertion] feature in ForceP, that is, as the complement of an assertive predicate. This is what we find after a small group of verbs such as know, believe, consider, expect, promise, predict, seem… When unmarked, these verbs will select for their complements the [+assertion], [+indicative] features in the illocutionary layer and a [+valued] tense (i.e. they will take a that-clause in the indicative mood), but may also allow for a negative specification of the features in mood and tense, as in (34): 34. ForceP[+assertion] [MoodP[-indicative] [TP[unvalued] [Modal P to [VP.. That the infinitive clause has an assertive value after verbs like these is reflected in the fact that truth or falsity can be predicated of it in these contexts, something which would never be possible if the clause had an introductory [-assertion] feature (cf. Bošković 1996). Compare in this respect (35-37), with (38-41):11 35. I know them to be happy, which is true 36. They believe her to be in Paris, which is true 37. I consider him to be a great painter, which is true 11 The corollary in (38)-(41) is impossible when intended to be just for the complement clause. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences 77 38. I allowed them to visit the ruins, *which was true 39. They intended the appointment to take place in June, *which was true 40. She wants to travel to Paris, *which is true 41. I would like to buy a new car, *which is true The modality value of the particle to will be neutralized in these contexts by the assertive feature which introduces the subordinate clause, and this impedes the potentiality reading which was characteristic of the infinitival complement after non- assertive predicates.12 This explains the different temporal reference of the to-infinitive after non-assertive verbs, as in (42-45), or after assertive verbs, as in (46-48): 42. I allowed them to visit the ruins the following day 43. They intended the appointment to take place two weeks later 44. I want to travel to Paris next month 45. I would like to buy a new car next year 46. I know them to be happy now / *in the future 47. They believe her to be in Paris now / *in the future 48. I consider him to be a great painter now / *in the future The temporal reference of the subordinate infinitive clause must necessarily match that of the matrix predicate unless the perfect auxiliary have is employed to mark the subordinate event as anterior to the matrix one, a possibility generally ruled out in non- assertive contexts, at least in those which have a deontic sense, such as (52) and (53):13 49. I know them to have been happy then 50. They believe her to have been in Paris 51. I consider him to have been a great painter 52. *They allowed them to have stayed at home 53. *They begged him to have helped them Finally note that given the nature of the particle to, to-infinitive clauses will be more productively combined with those assertive predicates which have a futurate meaning: 54. They promised to be here on time 55. He was predicted to win 12 The to-infinitive clauses will not completely lose their modal reading after these assertive predicates, though. As Mair has put it, the presence of to “generally serves to express a combination of knowledge and subjective judgment” (1990: 200), which would not obtain if the complement of these verbs were a that-clause. And, significantly, for...to infinitives, where the introductory complementizer for adds an extra modal value, are never possible in these contexts (see Bresnan 1979; De Smet 2007). 13 It is impossible to impose an obligation over a past (i.e. anterior) situation, thus the incompatibility of a complement clause with have after a deontic predicate. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 78 Ana Ojea To sum up so far: infinitival clauses with to can be the complement of assertive or non-assertive predicates. In the first case the proposition expresses an assertion whose temporal reference (unless auxiliary have is present) must match that of the main predicate, and though the modal sense of to is practically neutralized in these contexts, it still combines better with futurate predicates, more akin to the original temporal value of the preposition. On the contrary, when the matrix predicate is non-assertive, the unmarked case, the potentiality reading of to clearly determines the final interpretation of the complement clause.14 2.2. The to-infinitive versus the bare infinitive The argumentation above could lead us to the following question: if to is a modal particle which typically conveys a hypothetical reading, why is it not the case that the bare infinitive, and not the to-infinitive, is selected as the complement of assertive predicates? I believe that the answer to this question has to do with the different syntactic structure that these two constructions have. Whereas to-infinitives are clauses, the bare infinitive after a lexical verb forms a small clause (SC), that is, the minimal predicative structure, and, as such, it contains a predicate and its arguments but none of the illocutionary or inflectional categories of (non small) clauses as in (4), above; therefore, they cannot be treated as free alternatives. The bare infinitive is basically found after perception verbs and causatives like make or let:15 56. I saw/heard him slam the door. 57. They watched her paint the fence 58. She made me wash up the dishes 59. They let him go As expected, there does not always exist a to-infinitive counterpart to the bare infinitive construction (i.e. not all verbs allow for both, a full clause and a small clause, as their complement); for example, neither watch nor the causatives make and let above have a double alternative, and for those verbs where the possibility exists, the options are not simple contextual variants: 14 Note that in those to-infinitival clauses which do not have an argumental status with respect to the matrix predicate (e.g. adjunct purpose clauses), or which modify a non verbal head, the interpretation of the clauses will be largely dependent on these notions of potentiality and future that to imposes, as illustrated by (i) and (ii): i) They need a larger car to accommodate the whole family ii) Fuel prices to rise next week (example taken from Mittwoch 1990: 124) 15 Incidentally, recall that verbs like make or let may select non verbal SCs as their complement as well; e.g. (i) and (ii): ii) She made me happy iii) He let them out. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences 79 60. Will you help me wash up the dishes? 61. Will you help me to wash up the dishes? Here the first sentence implies an actual event taking place (where the addressee is asked to have an active participation), whereas in (61) the event is understood as non- actuated yet, the predicted reading of non-factuality that to brings about. Also consider the contrast between (62) and (63): 62. I saw him run 63. I see this to be true According to Jespersen, after see and hear the to-infinitive may be used when these verbs do “not indicate immediate perception, but an inference” (1961: 280), this inference reading being clearly akin to the modal sense of the particle. Therefore there are no grounds to consider that the bare and the to-infinitive are simply variants of the same construction.16 If my proposal is on the right track, and leaving aside the particular structure we may assign to SCs in general, the syntax of pairs like (62) and (63), will differ along the following lines:17 64. …help [VP me wash up the dishes] 65. …help [ForceP [MoodP [TP me to wash up the dishes] In the small clause (64) we just have a verbal predicate that merges with its arguments and projects, whereas in (65) we have a full grammatical specification (crucially illocutionary force, mood and tense) and a modal particle to, all of which conspire to give the subordinate clause a hypothetical and/or futurate reading that may explain contrasts like (60)/(61), or (62)/(63) above. Other pairs along the same lines are exemplified in (66-67) and (68-69) (examples taken from Duffley 1992: 14): 66. I had nine people call 67. I had nine people to call 68. They let him go 69. They allowed him to go In (66) the subordinate clause is asserted, while in (67) it is not, and in (68) the event of going is understood as actually realized, while in (69) its realization may be situated in the hypothetical future. 16 This assumption has been rather frequent, though, in traditional grammar (e.g. Zandvoort 1957; Curme 1931). 17 There are reasons to believe that small clauses should be introduced by a functional category AspP, but I shall not take a stand on this question here. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 80 Ana Ojea Finally note that when a verb which takes a bare infinitive as its complement also allows for a gerund form, the difference in interpretation between the two options will only be aspectual, and not modal as they were in sentences like (30-33) above:18 70. I saw/heard him slam the door vs. I saw/heard him slamming the door 71. They watched her paint the fence vs. They watched her painting the fence The question why assertive predicates do not take the bare infinitive as their complement may then be reduced to a lexical restriction on the part of those predicates (i.e. they select one particular syntactic category over another), and, more interestingly for my goal here, the differences between bare infinitive complements and to- infinitivals will support the (unmarked) non-assertive reading and the modal function of the particle to that has been defended so far. 2.3. Some predictions for a contrastive analysis English/Spanish My analysis of to-infinitives has rested on two basic assumptions: the first is that, when unmarked, these clauses are complements of non assertive predicates and only after a small group of assertive predicates may the to-infinitives be also possible. The second is that to retains its prepositional origin and thus projects a prepositional ModalP whose contribution to the meaning of the sentence is mainly one of potentiality and futurity. Now, given that these infinitival sentences are always [–indicative], a prediction follows that in those languages where the subjunctive mood is morphosyntactically more productive than in English: a) subjunctive clauses will systematically substitute infinitival clauses when the head of ForceP is [–assertion], but not when it is [+assertion], and b) certain restrictions due to the prepositional nature of to will not be present if that language does not employ an equivalent particle in its infinitival complements. Spanish is such a language, and therefore, as (72-77) show, the examples equivalent to (16-19) and (24-25) will all appear in the subjunctive mood:19 72. Les permití que quedaran/*quedaron en casa 18 The contrast between to-infinitives and –ing complements in terms of mood and aspect does not exhaust the grammatical differences between the two. Note, for example, that the -ing suffix also contributes with nominal features which in some cases may even preclude the eventive reading of the verbal form (e.g. My father taught me to drive vs. My father taught me driving). 19 I have exemplified with to-infinitive clauses which have an explicit subject to obtain a clear correspondence with Spanish, since the two constructions alternate here precisely at this point: when the subject of the main clause and of the complement are co-referential the infinitive is used; when they are not, it is the subjunctive that is employed: i) Quiero ayudar a mi vecino ii) Quiero que tú ayudes a mi vecino ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences 81 I allowed them to stay home 73. Le pidieron que les ayudara/*ayudó They begged him to help them 74. Intentaron que la cita se cancelara/*canceló They intended the appointment to be cancelled 75. Quiero que me siga/*seguiría I want him to follow me 76. Odiaría que me dejaras/*dejarías de lado I would hate you to leave me out 77. Me encantaría que lo dejaras/*dejarías así I would like you to leave it like that On the contrary, none of the examples of to-infinitives after an assertive predicate allows for an equivalent sentence in the subjunctive:20 78. Sé que son/*sean felices ahora I know them to be happy now 79. Creen que ella está/*esté en París They believe her to be in Paris 80. Considero que es/*sea una gran pintora I consider her to be a great painter 81. Prometieron que estarían/*estuvieran aquí a tiempo They promised to be here on time 82. Los meteorólogos predijeron que el tiempo sería/*fuera cálido The meteorologists predicted the weather to be warm As for the restrictions that the particle to imposes in English, its prepositional nature may prevent the subordinate clause in which it appears from being the complement of another preposition (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 1184); this in turn restricts the possibilities for these sentential categories to act as adverbial modifiers to only those contexts which have a sense of purpose or result (i.e. connected to the original meaning of to). Obviously, this restriction is not found in a language like Spanish, which lacks an equivalent particle altogether, and therefore infinitival modifiers with different adverbial senses are frequent in this language (see Hernanz 1999 for a more extensive treatment of the possibilities): 83. Debes estudiar más duro para aprobar este examen (Purpose) You must study harder (in order) to pass this exam 84. Lávate las manos antes de comer (Time) *Wash your hands before to eat 85. La han multado por conducir demasiado rápido (Cause) 20 Some assertive predicates become non-assertive when negated; therefore the equivalent negative sentences to (79) and (80) will take a subjunctive complement: i) No creo que esté en París ahora ii) No considero que sea una gran pintora ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 82 Ana Ojea *They have fined her because to be driving too fast 86. Se fueron a la cama sin cenar (Manner) *They went to bed without to have dinner 87. De haberlo sabido, me habría quedado en casa (Condition) *If to have known it, I would have stayed home 88. A pesar de comer muy poco, ha engordado (Concession) *Even though to eat frugally, he has put on weight Sketchy though this comparison between English and Spanish has been, I believe it supports the view adopted here about the role of the particle to and of the notion of non-assertion in the syntactic analysis and eventual interpretation of to-infinitive sentences. 3. Conclusion This paper has approached the syntactic analysis of to-infinitive sentences under the assumption that to projects a ModalP unmarkedly connected to the features [-assertive] [-indicative] in the illocutionary shell of the clause. This view rests on historical grounds (the origin of to as a preposition, and the competition between to-infinitives and subjunctive clauses in Old English), synchronic facts (the syntactic and semantic similarities of to-infinitives with the subjunctive and with modal verbs in English) and contrastive facts (the equivalence of to-infinitive sentences with subjunctive clauses in languages with a productive mood distinction as Spanish). The feature analysis defended here has also served to formalize some of the semantic peculiarities of those constructions where the to-infinitive markedly functions as the complement of an assertive predicate, and also its main differences with the bare infinitive and with –ing clauses in the contexts in which they can alternate.21 Works Cited Abusch, Dorit 2004: ‘On the Temporal Composition of Infinitives’. Jacqueline Guéron and Jaqueline Lacarme, eds. The Syntax of Time. Cambridge: MIT P. 27-53. Bolinger, Dwight 1978: ‘A Semantic View of Syntax: Some Verbs that Govern Infinitives’. Mohammad Ali Jazayery, and Edgar C. Polomé, eds. Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Archibald A. Hill. The Hague: Mouton. 9-19. Bošković, Zeljko 1996: ‘Selection and the Categorial Status of Infinitival Complements’. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14: 269-304. Bresnan, Joan. 1979: Theory of Complementation in English Syntax. New York: Garland. Buyssens, Eric 1987: ‘The Preposition for with an Infinitive Clause’. English Studies 68: 336-47. Chomsky, Noam 1957: Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Curme, George Oliver 1931: Syntax: A Grammar of the English Language. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company. 21 I would like to thank the editor and the anonymous referees of Atlantis for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences 83 De Smet, Hendrik 2007: ‘For…to-infinitives as Verbal Complements in Late Modern and Present-Day English: Between Motivation and Change’. English Studies 88.1: 67-94. Dixon, R.M.W 1984: ‘The Semantic Basis of Syntactic Properties’. Berkeley Linguistics Society Proceedings 10: 583-95. Duffley, Patrick J. 1992: The English Infinitive. London: Longman. Gazdar, Gerald, Geoffrey K Pullum and Ivan A. Sag 1982: ‘Auxiliaries and Related Phenomena in a Restrictive Theory of Grammar’. Language 58.3: 591-638. Hernanz, M. Lluïsa 1999: ‘Infinitives’. Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte, eds. Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española. Vol. 2. Madrid: Espasa. 2197-56. Hooper, Joan Bybee 1975: ‘On Assertive Predicates’. John. P. Kimball, ed. Syntax and Semantics 4. New York: Academic P. 91-124. Hooper, Joan Bybee and Tracy Terrell 1974: ‘A Semantically Based Analysis of Mood in Spanish’. Hispania 57.3: 484-94. Huddleston, Rodney 1984: Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum 2002: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Jespersen, Otto 1961 (1927): A Modern English Grammar. Part V, Syntax (Fourth Volume). London: Allen and Unwin. Lightfoot, David 1979: Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Los, Bettelou 1999: Infinitival Complementation in Old and Middle English. The Hague: Thesus. Mair, Christian 1990: Infinitival Complement Clauses in English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Mittwoch, Anita 1990: ‘On the Distribution of Bare Infinitive Complements in English’. Journal of Linguistics 26: 103-31. Ojea, Ana 2005: ‘A Syntactic Approach to Logical Modality’. Atlantis 27.1: 53-64. Quirk, Randolf, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik 1985: A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Radford, Andrew 1997: Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Rizzi, Luigi 1997: ‘The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery’. Liliane Haegemann, ed. Elements of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 281-337. Rohdenburgh, Günter 1995: ‘On the Replacement of Finite Complement Clauses by Infinitives in English’. English Studies 76: 367-88 Stowell, Tim 1982: ‘The Tense of Infinitives’. Linguistic Inquiry 13.4: 561-70. Stowell, Tim 2007: ‘The Syntactic Expression of Tense’. Lingua 117.2: 437-63. Sweet, Henry 1903: A New English Grammar. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon. Visser, F. Th. 1972 (1966): A Historical Syntax of the English Language. Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill. Wierzbicka, Anna 1988: The Semantics of Grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Zagona, Karen 1990: ‘Times as Temporal Argument Structure’. Ms. U of Washington. Zandvoort, Reinard Willem 1957: A Handbook of English Grammar. London: Longman. Wurmbrand, Susane 2001: Infinitives: Restructuring and Clause Structure. The Hague: Mouton. Received 10 July 2007 Revised version received 23 January 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 69–83 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits: The Multiple Histories and Identities of Doctor Who’s Cybermen Lincoln Geraghty University of Portsmouth [email protected] Through a detailed analysis of the Cybermen’s narrative evolution and changing cyborg appearance, this essay maintains that throughout the decades that spanned its series’ run, Doctor Who addressed key fears present in British society: fear of technology, loss of identity, American economic power and totalitarianism. These fears not only evolved alongside the physical appearance of the Cybermen, but also changed in significance as British television audiences accepted the consequences of technological assimilation and looked to the future in anticipation rather than apprehension. The general field of study on the cyborg in popular culture remains transfixed on the products of the big screen; American cinema is the focus for many works which continue to examine the cyborg as a predominantly American reality, for example Star Trek’s The Borg dominate the work done by scholars in these fields. Fear of technology, or fear of the automaton, is thus depicted as somehow an inherently American fear. However, this essay attempts to correct this imbalance and bring close attention to bear on the Cybermen as televisual figures of a technological complexity; one that is not necessarily American or cinematic, but rather British and televisual in origin and nature. Keywords: Cybermen; Doctor Who; cyborg; technology; television; Pedler, Kit; Science Fiction; British Culture; history; totalitarianism “Resistance is useless… you will be eliminated”. - Cyberleader, ‘The Moonbase’ (1967). The BBC television series Doctor Who is the most famous British science fiction programme to be exported to an international audience. Voted third most popular British television programme of all time by a British Film Institute poll in 2000 (Cull 2006: 52), the series has garnered both a critical and a cult following comparable to the American science fiction series Star Trek. Originally conceived in 1963 as an educational programme aimed at children, Doctor Who revelled in its traditional Saturday evening 86 Lincoln Geraghty slot and attracted viewers of all ages, male and female. Generically, the series was envisioned by Head of BBC Drama Sydney Newman as not “space travel or science fiction” but rather designed “to contain not only futuristic adventures but also historical stories that could be regarded as educational and improving for its juvenile audience, concerning significant events in times and places visited by the main characters” (Bignell and O’Day 2004: 30). While this directive remains part of the series’ ethos even now, it was only after writers Terry Nation and Gerry Davis introduced iconic monsters such as the Daleks and Cybermen that the series really started to attract the devoted audience that continues to watch and rewatch it today. Doctor Who’s format, according to James Chapman, “places it directly in the historical lineage of British literary” science fiction (2006: 5), in the vein of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), whereby a genius inventor travels through time to discover Earth’s dystopian future. Yet, also, Doctor Who follows other literary motifs found in Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), specifically that of alien invasion. For Chapman, Doctor Who often used the invasion narrative to place Britain at the heart of a global crisis where the quintessentially English Doctor would save the day by outwitting and outmanoeuvring the enemy: “To this extent, Doctor Who is informed by, and draws upon, post-war British anxieties about decline and the nation’s place on the world stage” (Chapman 2006: 6). The Cybermen, Doctor Who’s routinely voted second most popular villain, appeared in no less than ten major storylines throughout the Doctor’s twenty six televised seasons (1963-1989). Thanks to their enduring popularity they have recently been brought back to British screens in the latest Doctor Who series starring David Tennant (2005- Present). The subject of numerous audio adventures and BBC novels, they can be described as the archetypal TV monster: evil, remorseless and emotionless cyborgs that are prepared to kill to get what they want. Yet, if one were to delve deeply into the catalogue of work done on the figure of the cyborg in science fiction film and television the Cybermen would be notoriously lacking. The general field of study on the cyborg in popular culture remains transfixed on the products of the big screen. Cinema is the focus for many works that continue to examine the cyborg as a predominantly American reality. Fear of technology, or fear of the automaton, is seemingly being understood as an inherently American phenomenon. J.P. Telotte’s Science Fiction Film (2001) provides a coherent reading of science fiction film with the figure of the cyborg brought to the reader’s attention in Telotte’s examination of RoboCop (1987). Two further studies of science fiction and the cyborg refrain from going outside the American sphere. Sean Redmond’s Liquid Metal collects together key texts in science fiction film criticism; yet its section on the cyborg excludes mentioning the Cybermen, and even Star Trek’s the Borg, as iconic symbols of technology ‘gone bad’. Doran Larson’s ‘Machine as Messiah’ draws specific parallels between the cyborg body in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and the American body politic; the main claim being that the movie signals a shift towards a “technodemocracy” where the technological body stands as threat to our freedom and thus our power over the machine (Larson 2004: 192). Similarly, Sue Short’s Cyborg Cinema and Contemporary Subjectivity (2005) maintains the hierarchy of film over television as she locates the attraction of the cyborg in its crossing of “boundaries ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits 87 between the artificial and the organic, revising speculations regarding the nature of subjectivity” (Short 2005: 3). Overall, these titles suggest that the domain for questioning our relationship with technology, and thus our fears of assimilation, is the cinema. Without question, television appears to lack the narrative space in which we as humans can put our fears to the test and investigate the cyborg as a postmodern subject. However, this essay seeks to correct this spatial imbalance and bring close attention to bear on the Cybermen as televisual figures of a technological complexity; one that is also not necessarily American, but rather British, in nature. As Elaine Graham (2002: 17) notes, “representations of the post/human” in the “‘stories we live by’ can be important critical tools in the task of articulating what it means to be human in a digital and bio-technological age”. Using this notion as a starting point, the following essay is an examination of the various incarnations of the Cybermen. During the 1960s, Doctor Who maintained that the Cybermen’s greatest threat, and ultimately their greatest weakness, came from their inability to understand human nature. On the one hand, it was clear that they wanted to destroy all who stood in their way. However, on the other, in trying to control humans the Cybermen were always defeated – the Doctor was always able to outwit and confuse them by relying on the interminable nature of the human condition. Following the long break between appearances, the Cybermen took on a more totalitarian role. In the 1980s, assimilation of the human race was the main aim of the silver giants; if they could not destroy humanity then they would try and adapt it to suit their needs. Subsuming individual identities would lead to galactic domination. However, it is also important to take into account more recent developments in the television franchise where the creation and preservation of a cyber-history (a narrative back-story) has helped cement the technological threat posed by the Cybermen; they were once like us, therefore humanity might follow in their footsteps to total technological assimilation. Contemporary stories from Big Finish Productions and new episodes of the series recently aired on the BBC move beyond the totalitarian tin men of the eighties and interestingly depict joining the Cyber-race as an attractive alternative to the limits of our organic bodies. Cybermen still pose a threat to identity and individuality, but perhaps taking on some semblances of cyber-technology might increase humanity’s potential for the future. Woollen Balaclavas and Cyber-identities In terms of this essay, and the figure of the Cyberman, it is interesting to note at what point in the history of film Francisco Collado-Rodríguez attributes the birth of the cyborg and the fear of technology taking over humanity. He sees manifestations of the cyborg, the replicants in Blade Runner (1982), Seth Brundle’s fly in The Fly (1986), the artificial reality of the matrix in The Matrix (1999), as well as the Borg, as being influenced by the Cyberpunk genre including its most notable example: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). Cyberpunk’s “emphasis on the controlling power of artificial intelligence systems and its radical views on the process of bodily transgression into the cybernetic are motifs that combine with the importance cyberpunk confers to virtual reality, and with its actual presentation of our metaphoric fear of being fused ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 88 Lincoln Geraghty with and eventually controlled by the machine” (Collado-Rodríguez 2002: 71-72). This is explanation enough for film and the Borg who appear in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s ‘Q Who?’ (1989) five years after the acknowledged birth of cyberpunk, but where does this leave the Cybermen? How could a literary genre of the eighties have been an influence on Doctor Who’s televised representation of the cyborg in the sixties? The answer is “perhaps not”, but that does not preclude this essay from looking back at the development of the Cybermen and at what possible cultural and historical roots they might have. Who were the Cybermen and what could they have possibly represented? It is necessary to point out that both the Cybermen and the Borg conform to what Claudia Springer calls a “contradictory discourse on cyborgs” (1991: 304). Cyborg imagery has not lived up to the ungendered ideal envisioned by Donna Haraway in her seminal article ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs’ (1985). The cyborg was seen as a potential liberator for women; by getting rid of the physical body one “could release women from their inequality under patriarchy by making genders obsolete” (Springer 1991: 309). However, due to science fiction cinema’s fascination for the hard bodied male cyborg, notions of gender equality remain ever present even in the relatively neutral world of cyberspace. Like the numerous highly eroticised and muscle bound images of the male cyborg in films such as RoboCop and The Terminator (1984) described by Yvonne Tasker (1993) and Susan Jeffords (1994), the Cybermen have remained firmly located within the realms of the real world, not cyberspace; their bodies act as metallic markers of their fragile reliance on human parts and the shifting boundaries between the organic and technological. Equally, the female cyborg body has come to represent the inherent threat posed to established patriarchy. From the first depiction of the inhuman cyborg vamp Maria in Metropolis (1926) to the overtly sexual Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact (1996) technology has been regularly eroticised and coded as female, thus the threat posed by new technologies to the freedom of humanity also becomes female (Short 2005: 7-8). The Cybermen, although usually male, now appear more open to equal opportunities. For example, in ‘Cyberwoman’ (2006), an episode of the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood (2006-Present), we see the first female Cyber character on screen; unable to control her programming she attempts to assimilate her ex-boyfriend and his teammates. Like Maria in Metropolis and the suburban threat seen in The Stepford Wives (1975), technology is seen here as even more threatening when linked with the possibility of female reproduction. Notions of fear of technology were present in the very first meeting with the Cybermen in 1966. If the Borg were a possible future for mankind then the Cybermen were the future. Mondas, Earth’s twin planet, “had an elliptical orbit that took it beyond the solar system”, which meant that it did not get enough sun and its people began to die (see ‘Cyberhistory’). In an attempt to survive the freezing temperatures on the surface, the inhabitants retreated below ground, depleting their energy reserves, and turned to cybernetic implants to prolong their lives. As more people became part machine/part human, Mondasians saw the benefits of technological assimilation. As the machine system began to take over society, logic became the backbone to the Cyber consciousness. In ‘The Tenth Planet’ (1966) the Doctor encounters the Cybermen for the first time as they try to bring Mondas back into the Sol solar system and steal Earth’s resources. The Cyberleader tells the First Doctor that they want to steal Earth’s ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits 89 resources; they do not care how many humans will die. Their society is based on logic and having emotions is seen as weak; however, they do assimilate humans if they believe them worthy and strong enough to be Cybermen. The Doctor and Cyberleader converse: The Doctor - “Emotions: love, pride, hate, fear; have you no emotions sir? Mmm?” Krang, Cyberleader - “Come to Mondas and you will have no need of emotions… You will become like us”. Yet, as we can see below, the early Cybermen viewed survival as their primary goal, not the assimilation of all alien species: Krang, Cyberleader to Polly - “We are equipped to survive; we are only interested in survival. Anything else is of no importance. Your death will not affect us”. What the early Cybermen represent is a determined, self-important, almost overly- confident attitude. Amusingly, the roots of the Borg’s infamous catchphrase “resistance is futile” can be seen in the words of one of the Cybermen in ‘The Tenth Planet’: Cyberman - “Resistance is useless!” The Cybermen were an invention of Dr Kit Pedler, who worked for a brief time as unofficial scientific advisor to Doctor Who. One idea he had for a story was based around the premise that Earth had a twin planet. Working with script editor Gerry Davis, Pedler penned the episode ‘The Tenth Planet’. One of his greatest phobias, he told Davis, was “dehumanising medicine” and that “he foresaw a time when spare-part surgery had reached the stage where it was commonplace, possibly even cosmetic”: There would come a point where it was impossible to tell how much of the original human being remained. Such creatures, he reasoned, would be motivated by pure logic coupled with the overriding desire to survive. They would sacrifice their entire bodies and their minds in the quest for immortality… (Richards 2003: 78). The Cybermen were the physical manifestation of Pedler’s fear, and thanks to his insight into contemporary debates surrounding artificial surgery and technological progress in medicine, Doctor Who was able to tap into a very real issue affecting British and global society. Alan Barnes’ ‘The Fact of Fiction’ (2005) explores the history and inspiration for the Cybermen in ‘The Tenth Planet’, maintaining that as well as being the physical manifestation of Pedler’s fear of “spare part surgery”, the Cybermen were also inspired by the escalating space race between the USA and the Soviet Union (Barnes 2005: 26). James Chapman traces the Cybermen’s cultural and scientific ancestry as far back as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), with its notion of replacing human body parts, to Metropolis and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), with their depictions of metallic cyborgs and androids. The science of prosthetic surgery progressed during World War Two and by the 1960s had developed to include fitted pacemakers and the first heart transplant in 1967 by Dr. Christian Barnard (Chapman ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 90 Lincoln Geraghty 2006: 62). Pedler’s creation can clearly be read as a comment on the future outcome of the rapidly growing science of cybernetics (where flesh and blood are replaced by mechanical parts) and the long-held cultural fear of the monstrous, hybrid ‘other’. The futuristic robotic costumes were based on early technology used by NASA in designing exoskeletons for their astronauts (Barnes 2005: 27). According to Barnes, the Cold War provided the perfect backdrop for the Cybermen’s plan to devour Earth’s resources for Mondas; reading across the opposing sides, Barnes suggests that the story could have been a veiled attempt to comment on the soulless (communist) Cybermen’s battle against the trigger-happy (American) International Space Command (27-28). Designing the Cybermen to reflect the merging of cosmetic surgery, cyborg technology and the human body became a crucial part of the creative process; something which Piers Britton and Simon Barker have looked at in their book Reading Between Designs (2003). The original Cybermen were extremely humanoid in appearance, with painted woollen balaclavas acting as faces and large torches attached to their heads. They reflected the less is more aesthetic of the International Style; whether they looked convincing as men in silver suits was not a problem since audiences did not have a basis for comparison. Along with the Daleks the Cybermen followed in the filmic tradition of showing aliens as austere figures, which was more than enough to position them as extraterrestrial other (Britton and Barker 2003: 171). The Cybermen, as described in an extract from ‘The Moonbase’ below, were products of the complete unknown; perhaps at their most terrifying: The Doctor - “There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things, things which act against everything that we believe in… they must be fought”. The Second Doctor would go on to have several deadly and violent encounters with the Cybermen; in all cases their appearance and technology signalled their ultimate intention: to eradicate humanity. In ‘The Moonbase’ the Cyberleader warns the Doctor “You will be converted”, “Resistance is useless… you will be eliminated”. Likewise, in ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’ (1967) the Cyber Controller announces to the captive archaeological team, “You belong to us… you shall be like us!” Furthermore, in ‘The Wheel in Space’ (1968) a Cyberman confirms to the humans aboard a futuristic space station that, “The Cybermen need to colonise. They must have the treasures of the Earth” intimating that beyond all else they desire the resources kept by humans rather than humans themselves. This is brought to the fore in ‘The Invasion’ (1968) where the Cybermen use the London Underground and sewer system to plan and start an attack on Earth. As mentioned previously, James Chapman sees the threat of alien invasion as crucial to the generic format of the series. It “reflects a contradictory sense of national awareness” by expressing “a sense of paranoia and insecurity” on the one hand, and suggesting “a perverse sense of national self-importance and prestige” on the other: Britain is consistently aided by the Doctor but also posited as a great power by the fact that aliens always try to take it over as a prelude to global domination (Chapman 2006: 5). Chapman also points out that in 1968 right-wing politician Enoch Powell “advocated the repatriation of Commonwealth immigrants” (66-67) thus alluding to ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits 91 the then present fear that Britain was being ‘invaded’ by immigrants looking for work and a better life. The Cybermen’s pursuit of wealth and material gain is most obviously seen in this story through the role of the human traitor, Tobias Vaughn. Reflected in him is the notion of greed and power that is also at the heart of the Cybermen’s invasion of Earth – he is promised that he can have Earth for himself when the invasion is successful. The Cyber Director controls Vaughn (who is himself part machine thanks to conversion) and uses him to make International Electromatics the world’s leading electronic manufacturer. Big business and the capitalist desire for profit appear to pose just as great a threat as alien invasion and technological subordination. In a Britain of the near future, ‘The Invasion’ implies that the Cyberman threat is social as well as technological; by continuing to allow big business and faceless executives to reap the benefits of a low-paid, automated society, Britons will not only lose a sense of national identity (big business can be read as American business) but also their sense of individual identity (Vaughn has become part machine). His speech, clearly based on contemporary drives to make Britain competitive in the global market, speaks volumes: “Uniformity, duplication. My whole empire is based on that principle. The very model of business efficiency”. Doctor Who was not alone in exploring themes of big business and man-verses-machine; series such as The Avengers (1961-1969) also touched upon them in ‘The Cybernauts’ (1965) and the ‘Return of the Cybernauts’ (1967). James Chapman sees these two episodes as responding to “contemporary concerns, particularly the ideas expressed by academics such as Theodore Roszak that technocracy (the organisation of society based on principles laid down by technical experts) could all too easily lead to a form of totalitarianism” (Chapman 2002: 83). After defeating the Cybermen and freeing Earth from the prospect of a half man/half machine dictator, the Doctor did not encounter them again until 1975 in ‘The Revenge of the Cybermen’. By this time, it had become apparent that the Cybermen were not only wanting galactic domination but also revenge for defeat at the hands of the Vogans – the once emotionless Cybermen were perhaps becoming more human than they would care to admit. The Doctor recognised this transformation and taunted the Cyberleader saying, “You’ve no home planet, no influence, nothing… you’re just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship”. In this story the Cybermen used the greed of a human collaborator, Kellmen, to help take control of Nerva Beacon which they could then use to blow up the Vogan homeworld, an asteroid made entirely of gold (gold of course being lethal to Cybermen). Human emotions seem to creep into the Cybermen’s cruel and remorseless threats aimed at the Doctor; the once-emotionless monsters seen in ‘The Tenth Planet’ appear to take enjoyment from their killing in ‘The Revenge of the Cybermen’. The Cyberleader revels in saying: “You are about to die in the biggest explosion ever witnessed in this solar system. It will be a magnificent spectacle. Unfortunately, you will be unable to appreciate it”. This story provides a transition point for the Cybermen, Doctor Who’s robotic silver nemesis has changed from being an emotionless technological monster to a cruel ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 92 Lincoln Geraghty technocrat that enjoys verbally and physically sparring with humanity. However, as put forward by Kim Newman, the Cybermen were also showing their out-datedness in that the Doctor describes them as “a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers”. The threat posed by them in the 1960s was somehow diminished in the 1970s, not least because they did not reappear on British television screens until 1982 (Newman 2005: 86). As would be seen in further episodes, the Doctor and his companions would eventually learn that the Cybermen were becoming more dangerous; they were in fact becoming more human. Silver Jumpsuits and Cyber-histories As films in the seventies such as Star Wars (1977) pushed the boundaries on what the alien should look like, the Cybermen became more stylised and textured. The more modern-day version of the Cyberman, with the silver jumpsuit, subdivided helmet and booming deep voice, was more like Darth Vader than synthetic human. Britton and Barker (2003: 172-73) see this development as a sign of Doctor Who’s new intention to accommodate designs from contemporary science fiction films. James Chapman acknowledges the impact that American television series such as Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981) were also having on the BBC and its attempts to modernise the look of Doctor Who. Producer Graham Williams had to comply with the BBC’s tight budgetary requirements and entertain an audience becoming familiar with, and attracted to, big-budget cinema and television from across the Atlantic (Chapman 2006: 123). Further to this, after Margaret Thatcher’s government established the Peacock Committee to investigate the funding of the BBC in 1985, science fiction programming on the channel would take a serious hit as it was seen by many, including BBC1 Controller Michael Grade, to be too expensive and too niche to continue production (Chapman 2006: 154). The Cybermen’s upgraded new look owed much to developments in the industry and the popularity of resurgent themes in the science fiction genre such as the space opera (Star Wars) and the cyborg feature (RoboCop and The Terminator). However, it could be argued that this change meant the Cybermen in the sixties symbolised a more immediate and horrific threat because it was more obvious that underneath the metal there were signs of human skin and a human body – suggesting that total technological assimilation was not far away. As the Cybermen became more metallic and more comedic, their threat seemed to slightly diminish – the last vestiges of the human body (skin) are completely hidden or eradicated under plastic. Although the Cybermen were neutralised in later regenerations of the Doctor, they still represented a possible future for humanity. Frank Oglesbee saw the Daleks as typical, omnipresent adversaries because their character was a familiar science fiction premise – they were “creatures devoid of human emotion”. Similarly, the Cybermen lacked emotions and embodied “both chaos (destruction of desirable order) and control (totalitarian rule)” (Oglesbee 1989: 181). However, as previously stated, the Cybermen were in fact becoming more emotional in later episodes. This was something that could actually be used against them – the Doctor appeared to be fully aware of the change and was willing to take advantage. In ‘Earthshock’ (1982) the Fifth Doctor ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits 93 confronts the Cyberleader, both are unwilling to stand down as the Cybermen plan to change time and prevent Mondas from being destroyed by Earth. After capturing the Doctor’s assistant, Tegan, the Cybermen use her to obtain his help. Recognising that he cares for Tegan the Cyberleader threatens to kill her, and the Doctor’s emotions are tested: The Doctor - “Emotions have their uses”. Cyberleader - “They restrict and curtail the intellect and logic of the mind”. The Doctor - “They enhance life… When did you last have the pleasure of smelling a flower, watching a sunset, eating a well prepared meal?” Cyberleader - “These things are irrelevant!” As we can see from this exchange the Cybermen cannot be reasoned with, their threat is entirely based on the fact that human emotions can be used against humans. Of course, the Doctor wins in the end but, interestingly, because Cyber-society does eventually accept a form of human emotion. Cybermen regard all human parts as a weakness, therefore as totally converted humans they symbolise the extreme predictions of Kit Pedler’s dehumanised medicine and the human fear that technology will not only merge with us but ultimately replace us. Yet, ironically, in using emotions to try and defeat the Doctor the Cyberleader reveals that Cybermen also have them – perhaps not the same as humans – but enough to indicate that there is some semblance of humanity at their logical core; the incessant drive to return home and steal resources to restore Mondas, intimates that the Cybermen really do care about something. Indeed, it is this sense of ancestry and having roots that characterises the Cybermen of the 1980s. The concern for history, realisation and the perfectibility of the cyber cause means that unlike their antecedents in the 1960s, modern Cybermen are more human than the humans they encounter – therefore just as fallible. Lynette Russell and Nathan Wolski (2001) argue in an article on post-colonialism and the Borg that they were Star Trek’s first attempt at questioning its own narrative, whereby the Federation was no longer the only colonizing force within the galaxy: The Borg were now “a post-colonial mirror held up to reflect the nature of colonisation and assimilation”. The Federation’s colonialist mission was “reflected and intensified” by the Borg who acted as a prism through which ideas of “self and other, difference and sameness” were “explored and critiqued” (para. 5). Most obviously, where the Federation colonises other worlds by implanting their values and laws through trade and political union under the distracting rubric of non-interference, the Borg “colonize from within, by injecting microscopic nanoprobes into the body of their prey”. Russell and Wolski’s argument maintains that the Borg help to reveal the inadequacies of the Federation’s foundational charter “to explore strange new worlds, to seek new life and new civilizations” (para.17); Picard and the audience are forced to look within and explore their own existence, forget the final frontier of space and turn to explore the different ways of seeing and being the post-colonial other. In some senses, the Cybermen provided a similar mirror to the inadequacies of humanity in Doctor Who; the ruthless nature of 1980s Thatcherism and Britain’s economic conservatism is played out in their attempts, seen in ‘Earthshock’ (1982), ‘The Five Doctors’ (1983), ‘Attack of ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 94 Lincoln Geraghty the Cybermen’ (1985) and ‘Silver Nemesis’ (1988), to again relive their greatest achievements. History is integral to these stories as the Cybermen try to rewrite it in order to bring back Mondas. David Banks’ Doctor Who: Cybermen (1988) offers several intriguing and convincing theories for the creation of the Cybermen and brings together fictional histories of the ArcHive to provide a back-story for Doctor Who’s infamous cyborgs. This ‘history’, alongside the final Cybermen stories, consolidates notions of the Cybermen’s passion for ancestry and roots highlighted in episodes from the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctor. To clarify, it has not been the intention of this essay to offer up a narrative history of the Cybermen, or indeed recount the various versions of history provided in Banks’ work (his book is an excellent example of a fictional ‘future history’). However, it is important to state the lengths to which fans and producers of the series go in order to create and legitimate a ‘metahistory’ of Doctor Who that both contributes to and expands upon the original television text. The fact that the Cybermen have become the focus of such textual amplification alludes to the important place they hold within the Doctor Who mythos.1 As John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado state: “Doctor Who represents a site of endless transformations and complex weavings as well as a programme of increasing institutional stability and public popularity” (1983: 5-6). In ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ Doctor Who pays homage to earlier stories such as ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ and ‘The Invasion’, whereby they return to their tomb chambers on the planet Telos and use the sewers underneath London to plan their attack. The silver cyborgs use half-assimilated humans to carry out their menial work on Telos; the better specimens are fully converted. This story shows the Cybermen as being more concerned with history, and the correcting of it, than with galactic domination – perhaps the two are linked. However, greed still forms a part of their social makeup and again it is reflected through the use of an evil collaborator. The bounty hunter Lytton, first seen working for the Daleks in ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ (1984), is originally portrayed as working for the Cybermen where in fact he is working for the Cryons on Telos. The Doctor recognises the callous nature of the ‘evil human’ but is wrong in thinking that Lytton is truly corrupt. Nonetheless, in disobeying the Cyber Controller Lytton is first tortured and then prepared for assimilation before being killed when trying to help the Doctor. The Cyber Controller relishes in his torture in a most graphic, almost sadistic, way (crushing his hands): “You are foolish, Lytton, you could have saved yourself the pain. I told you you would tell us everything. Now you will become as we are”. The turn toward sadistic fascism is made even more explicit in ‘Silver Nemesis’ where the Cybermen return to Earth to find the Nemesis statue competing with a group of 1 According to Andrew Skilleter, the illustrator for Bank’s book, Doctor Who: Cybermen was voted number seven in an 40th Anniversary poll of most popular Doctor Who non-fiction books. This information is contained in the accompanying booklet to the Doctor Who BBC Audiobook ‘Origins of the Cybermen’ (2004) also based on extracts from Cybermen. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits 95 Neo-Nazis and a 17th century witch. In their attempts to resurrect Mondas on Earth using the statue, the Cybermen are literally mirroring the Neo-Nazis’ attempts at establishing the Fourth Reich in Britain. The totalitarian vision of the fascist Nazis leader, De Flores, is no different from the deterministic tirade imparted by the Cyberleader towards the Doctor: Earth will be the new Mondas; only the best chosen humans will be their assimilated slaves. If Cybermen of the eighties represent an aggressive, capitalist, yet totalitarian, departure from their ancestors in the sixties, then Cybermen in more recent Doctor Who adventures appear to have changed again. The resurrection of Mondas is still of paramount importance; however, the assimilation of humans – the continued amalgamation of organic flesh and technology – does provide an intriguing and irresistible source of power for the Cyber-race and humanity. James Chapman claims that the series’ rebirth of the Cybermen in the 25th Anniversary story ‘Silver Nemesis’ was part of a cultural trend in the 1980s that saw other popular media such as comics return to their roots to “revisit and reinterpret the origin myths” that had made them so popular in the first place (Chapman 2006: 166-67). Revisionist narratives permeated Doctor Who from the Fifth Doctor onwards and are most noticeably at the heart of the new Doctor Who series written by Russell T. Davies. Two recent episodes, ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ and ‘The Age of Steel’ (both 2006), suggest that society’s fascination for new and improved technology can be of a benefit to the continued evolution of humanity – The Doctor comments on the ingenuity of the human race in creating gadgets and gizmos such as mobile phones and bluetooth headsets that entertain and enrich lives. It is only when humans – and in particular the Cybus Industries owner, John Lumic – become paranoid about the fragile nature of the organic body that they start to look to the potentials of the Cyber-race and their metal bodies. Of course, for Lumic, like all human sympathizers of the Cybermen, he is simply being manipulated by the Cyber Controller who sees human flesh as a waste product for his nefarious plans for galactic domination. Tom MacRae, the episodes’ writer, wanted to show how the Cybermen offer attractive possibilities for humans – the extension of life being the most valuable commodity. In an extract from an interview with MacRae he clearly sees the potential for a new Cyberman story, but also feels that what makes them truly threatening is their closeness to humans in that they value life above all else: Lumic is not an evil genius, he’s a man who is very ill and desperate to save himself, and in the process he’s gone a bit mad… the Cybermen are very interesting and I wanted to draw that out. I wanted to get away from the straightforward monstrous villains of the end of the original series and make them more human, and therefore more scary (MacRae quoted in Richards 2006: 17). Conclusion: from totalitarian tin men to the Cyber-Borg In the audio adventure ‘Spare Parts’ (2002) the final days leading up to the creation of the Cybermen on Mondas are played out as the Fifth Doctor witnesses how humans have started to rely on artificial implants and have created a task-force to counteract the climate’s effects on the population. As more power is handed over to the ‘committee’ – ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 96 Lincoln Geraghty an artificial intelligence created to handle the cyber force – humans are seen as the raw material to build a Cyber army and ensure the survival of the Cybermen on Mondas. Here, not only are the humans of Mondas responsible for the creation of the Cybermen by using them as robot workers, they are also responsible for giving them the power to reproduce. Individuals can be called up by the committee to be turned into Cybermen, for work in the hazardous conditions on the planet’s surface, but more importantly they become part of a ready-made army waiting to take full control. Although the Cybermen are products of human over-reliance on technology, the initial experiments with cyber-technology proved to be beneficial to society. The Doctor in ‘Spare Parts’ acknowledges that, if the committee had not taken control, then human society would have learnt to adapt to the technological improvements incorporated in the body and perhaps the Cybermen would be a power for good not evil. In leaving Mondas the Doctor believed that the possibility for changing cyber- history, so that Cybermen and humans can live together in peace, was more immediate than his companion Nyssa had originally thought. Unfortunately, the Doctor had underestimated the resilience of the committee leader, Zheng, and by the end of the story it is revealed to the listener that his Cybermen would continue to convert all humans: logic would inevitably reign supreme over the weak flesh. As an origin story ‘Spare Parts’ is one possible explanation for how the Cybermen became what they are. Although ‘Spare Parts’ is an audio adventure produced by Big Finish Productions it can be included in the overall narrative of Doctor Who since these stories are legitimate within the BBC franchise (see Richards 2003: 388-93). Compare this to Star Trek where any stories or characters outside the film and television episodes are seen as ‘fiction’ and therefore do not count within the franchise narrative, and we can see that the narrative cyber-history is integral to the continued presence of the Cybermen in Doctor Who: “Paramount has decreed that anything that’s televised as Star Trek is ‘Star Trek fact’, whereas anything that’s printed is ‘Star Trek fiction’” (Pearson 1999: 4). The general opinion that technology might be beneficial to humanity (as long as it is used properly) is replayed in ‘Sword of Orion’ (2001), a story in which the Eighth Doctor becomes involved in the war between humans and androids. The Doctor discovers that humans are prepared to go to any length to defeat the android race they had once created as slaves. Humans want to steal the secret of cyber-conversion in order to make an army strong enough to defeat the androids. Here, technology is again seen as desirable yet threatening; making humans into artificial Cybermen to defeat other artificial life forms is a necessary risk. However, Deeva, the android double agent sent to steal the Cybermen’s secret, reveals she is more human than most humans when she sacrifices her own life to save the Doctor. Charley, the Doctor’s assistant, points out at the end of the story that although Cybermen are technically human, Deeva had proved to be better because she had shown true human qualities. Therefore, technology was not necessarily the problem; it has something more to do with application and how technology could be used for good. In ‘Real Time’ (2002) the Cybermen have become more advanced in both design and technology. Artwork for the BBCi web-drama shows the Cybermen as more slimline and organic in appearance – silver wires and metallic veins are seen beneath the skin. The Sixth Doctor again encounters the Cybermen trying to change history, only ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits 97 this time Cyber agents from the future are also sent back to destroy the more primitive Cybermen: a case of Frankenstein’s monster coming back to kill its creator. It is clear that assimilation/conversion has become inspired by Borg technology seen in Star Trek: First Contact. Nanotechnology, the ability to convert humans into Cybermen, is passed on through a virus; technology not only subsumes humans but it also infects them in this story. However, emotions are also present in the Cybermen’s hi-tech persona. A converted trooper continues to have memories of his best friend, Renchard, and cannot understand why he is able to feel emotions while also being connected to the Cyber- system. After asking Evelyn Smythe what happened to Renchard, Carey (the trooper) demands answers from his commander; not getting any, he proceeds to take revenge on behalf of Renchard and kills his superior. It would appear that cyber-conversion does not guarantee complete eradication of human emotions, thus proving that the austere logic of the Cybermen is in fact weaker than human emotions. Cybermen with emotions are more developed than their would-be totalitarian masters. The audio adventures of the early twenty-first century have pictured the once technocratic and inadaptable Cybermen as more flexible and fluid characters; a trend which, as pointed out earlier, started in the ‘Revenge of the Cybermen’ and continued through the stories televised in the mid-eighties. However, the fascist and sadistic (almost cartoon-like) versions of the Cybermen were too preoccupied with changing the past to pose any real threat or any real questions for human society; therefore the Doctor and his companions were easily able to outwit the Cyberleader and halt his plans. In stories such as ‘Real Time’ and ‘Spare Parts’ the Doctor has become aware of the emotional core that can be found in those humans converted into Cybermen, although they are still not able to readily use it to overcome the entire conversion process. In these stories, technology has been viewed as a necessary evil in the development of society (particularly in ‘Spare Parts’) and, as such, humans need to learn how to use it wisely. Elaine Graham has identified this shift in representations of technology in popular culture and sees it coinciding with the development of the “posthuman condition, a world in which humans are mixtures of machine and organism, where nature has been modified (enculturated) by technologies, which in turn have become assimilated into ‘nature’ as a functioning component of organic bodies” (Graham 2002: 10-11). If we see the new Cybermen as part of this ‘posthuman’ world, then we can also see how our original fears over technology, machines and the loss of human emotions are being transformed into concerns with our personal identities, relationships with other people and global society more generally. Whereas Francisco Collado-Rodríguez sees the Borg as the product of when “our wish to live longer and better lives with the help of technological aids, prostheses and genetic manipulation systematically collides with our fear of becoming not simply posthuman but even inhuman” (2002: 72), perhaps Doctor Who’s Cybermen can show society a glimpse of a more positive future. Technology does not have to take over from the organic; the human can exist in conjunction with the inhuman, the organic with the machine. If we heed the Doctor’s advice and learn to live with technology without succumbing to its temptations, then perhaps the Cybermen can stand as important televisual warnings to be mindful of our fears but not be ruled by them. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 98 Lincoln Geraghty Works Cited Banks, David, with Andrew Skilleter 1988: Doctor Who: Cybermen. Bournemouth: Who Dares Publishing. Barnes, Alan 2005: ‘The Fact of Fiction: The Tenth Planet’. Doctor Who Magazine February: 22- 31. Bignell, Jonathan and Andrew O’Day 2004: Terry Nation. Manchester: Manchester UP. Britton, Piers D. and Simon J. Barker 2003: Reading Between Designs: Visual Imagery and the Generation of Meaning in The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Doctor Who. Austin: U of Texas P. Chapman, James 2002: Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s. London: I.B. Tauris. ––––– 2006: Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who. London: I.B. Tauris. Collado-Rodríguez, Francisco 2002: ‘Fear of the Flesh, Fear of the Borg: Narratives of Bodily Transgression in Contemporary U.S. Culture’. Ramón Plo-Alastrué and María Jesús Martínez-Alfaro, eds. Beyond Borders: Re-Defining Generic and Ontological Boundaries. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter. 67-79. Cull, Nicholas J. 2006: ‘Tardis at the OK Corral: Doctor Who and the USA’. John R. Cook and Peter Wright, eds. British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker’s Guide. London: I.B. Tauris. 52-70. ‘Cyberhistory’ ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits 99 Filmography The Avengers: The Cybernauts (1965) Produced by Julian Wintle. Directed by Sidney Hayers. Written by Philip Levene. Music by Laurie Johnson. 60mins. ITV. The Avengers: Return of the Cybernauts (1967) Produced by Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. Directed by Robert Day. Written by Philip Levene. Music by Laurie Johnson. 60mins. ITV. Blade Runner (1982) Produced by Michael Deeley. Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples (Based on a story by Philip K. Dick). Music by Vangelis. 124mins. Ladd Co./Run Run Shaw/Warner Bros. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Produced by Julian Blaustein. Directed by Robert Wise. Written by Edmund North. Music by Bernard Herrmann. 92mins. 20th Century-Fox. Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet (1966) Produced by Innes Lloyd. Directed by Derek Martinus. Written by Kit Pedler (Eps 1 and 2) and Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis (Eps 3 and 4). Music by Ron Grainer and Brian Hodgson/Stock. 4x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: The Moonbase (1967) Produced by Innes Lloyd. Directed by Morris Barry. Written by Kit Pedler. Music by Ron Grainer and Brian Hodgson/Stock. 4x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) Produced by Peter Bryant. Direct by Morris Barry. Written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis. Music by Ron Grainer and Brian Hodgson/Stock. 4x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: The Wheel in Space (1968) Produced by Peter Bryant. Directed by Tristan de Vere Cole. Written by David Whitaker (Story by Kit Pedler). Music by Brian Hodgson/Radiophonic Workshop. 6x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: The Invasion (1968) Produced by Peter Bryant. Directed by Douglas Camfield. Written by Derrick Sherwin (Idea by Kit Pedler). Music by Don Harper. 8x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: Revenge of the Cybermen (1975) Produced by Philip Hinchcliffe. Directed by Michael E. Briant. Written by Gerry Davis. Music by Carey Blyton. 4x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: Earthshock (1982) Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Directed by Peter Grimwade. Written by Eric Saward. Music by Malcolm Clarke. 4x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: The Five Doctors (1983) Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Directed by Peter Moffatt (and John Nathan-Turner). Written by Terrance Dicks. Music by Peter Howell. 1x90mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks (1984) Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Directed by Matthew Robinson. Written by Eric Saward. Music by Malcolm Clarke. 2x45/50mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen (1985) Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Directed by Matthew Robinson. Written by Paula Moore. Music by Malcolm Clarke. 2x45mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis (1988) Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Directed by Chris Clough. Written by Kevin Clarke. Music by Keff McCulloch. 3x25mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: Rise of the Cybermen (2006) Produced by Phil Collinson. Directed by Graeme Harper. Written by Tom MacRae. Music by Murray Gold. 45mins. BBC One. Doctor Who: The Age of Steel (2006) Produced by Phil Collinson. Directed by Graeme Harper. Written by Tom MacRae. Music by Murray Gold. 45mins. BBC One. Doctor Who Audio: Sword of Orion (2001) Produced by Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery and Jacqueline Rayner. Directed by Nicholas Briggs. Written by Nicholas Briggs. Music by Nicholas Briggs. 110mins. Big Finish Productions. Doctor Who Audio: Spare Parts (2002) Produced by Gary Russell and Jason Haigh-Ellery. Directed by Gary Russell. Written by Marc Platt. Music by Russell Stone. 100mins. Big Finish Productions. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 100 Lincoln Geraghty Doctor Who Audio: Real Time (2002) Produced by Gary Russell and Jason Haigh-Ellery. Directed by Gary Russell. Written by Gary Russell. Music by Alistair Lock. 130mins. Big Finish Productions/BBCi Drama. Doctor Who Audio: Origins of the Cybermen (2004) Produced by Silver Fist/Who Dares. Directed by David Banks. Written by David Banks. Music by David Banks. 50mins. BBC Audiobooks Ltd. The Fly (1986) Produced by Stuart Cornfield. Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Charles Edward Pogue. Music by Howard Shore. 100mins. Brookosfilms/20th Century-Fox. The Matrix (1999) Produced by Joel Silver. Directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Written by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Music by Don Davis. 136mins. Groucho II Film Partnership/Silver/Village Roadshow/Warner Bros. Metropolis (1926) Produced by Erich Pommer. Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou. Music by Otto Harzner. 120mins. Universum Film (Ufa). RoboCop (1987) Produced by Edward Neumeier and Arne Schmidt. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Music by Basil Poledouris. 105mins. Orion Pictures. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) Produced by Rick Berman. Directed by Jonathan Frakes. Written by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore. Music by Jerry Goldsmith. 106mins. Paramount Pictures. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Q Who? (1989) Produced by Robert L. McCullough. Directed by Robert Bowman. Written by Maurice Hurley. Music by Jerry Goldsmith. 60mins. Paramount Pictures. Star Wars (1977) Produced by Gary Kurtz. Directed by George Lucas. Written by George Lucas. Music by John Williams. 121mins. 20th Century-Fox. The Stepford Wives (1975) Produced by Edgar J. Scherick. Directed by Bryan Forbes. Written by Ira Levin and William Goldman. Music by Michael Small. 115mins. Columbia Pictures. The Terminator (1984) Produced by Gale Anne Hurd. Directed by James Cameron. Written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd. Music by Brad Fiedel. 108mins. Hemdale Film Corp./Cinema 84/Euro Film Fund/Pacific Western. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Produced by James Cameron. Directed by James Cameron. Written by James Cameron and William Wisher. Music by Brad Fiedel. 93mins. Carolco/Le Studio Canal/Lightstorm Entertainment/Pacific Western. Torchwood: Cyberwoman (2006) Produced by Russell T. Davies. Directed by James Strong. Written by Chris Chibnall. 50mins. BBC Three. Received 17 May 2007 Revised version received 15 October 2007 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 85–100 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research: How Socio-linguistic Roles and Relationships Facilitate or Frustrate Second Language Acquisition Colby Toussaint Clark Portland State University [email protected] Ian Clark Mukogawa Women's University [email protected] This article has two central aims. Firstly, to discuss how a sociolinguistic approach to language learning creates measurable increases in performance and secondly to highlight the need for a greater quantity and quality of research in this area. The article begins with a discussion on the discontent that exists regarding studies which investigate how sociolinguistic variables influence the quality of classroom learning. This will be followed by a brief discussion on the now mature field of classroom interaction, which will reaffirm the potential of this approach to deliver measurable increases in performance across the curriculum before moving on to briefly discuss how these general understandings are relevant to the discipline of second language acquisition. The remaining content of the article will be confined to a discussion concerning the sociolinguistic roles 'acted-out' by learners in pairs and small groups. The work of Neomy Storch has been selected as a research feature because it presents a particularly clear argument for the potential of the sociolinguistic perspective. Key words: socio-cultural, sociolinguistics, interaction, classroom, dyads, collaborative, SLA, L2, English, language The Slow Growth of a Sociocultural Focus in SLA Research There is a preponderance of anecdotal evidence that strongly suggests second language acquisition (SLA) is best supported by the use of clearly structured pair-work or small group activities. The key to understanding the difference between this constructionist view and more traditional views is that for constructionists, knowledge is not what individuals believe but rather what social groups or knowledge communities believe. 102 Colby Toussaint Clark and Ian Clark This widely accepted Vygotskian approach has in recent years begun to gradually move toward a wider acceptance of sociocultural perspectives in the field of second language acquisition. This article will feature a 2002 study by Neomy Storch who argues that randomly assigning students to groups or pairs does not necessarily facilitate learning or language acquisition. Storch is one of a growing number of researchers that recognize the importance of student socio-linguistic roles and relationships in classroom interaction and how the various kinds of roles affect language learning. Storch points out that collaborative relationship means much more than two or more learners working together. From a sociolinguistic perspective when students take on collaborative roles in an interaction, they are assisting each other equally while attempting to solve a particular linguistic challenge or problem. For this reason the word collaborative in all its forms will be avoided unless it meets Storch's definition of collaborative relationship. It is this type of collaboration that many studies highlight as essential, and that without the opportunity to practice language and negotiate meaning in pairs or small groups, students' language learning may be hindered. However, the field of sociolinguistic interactions in the classroom remains a much understudied realm of pedagogical research. One explanation for this dearth of sociolinguistic research is the manner in which studies have been constricted by a narrow traditionalist purview of mainstream SLA work. Pennycook remarks, “...the learner has been cast as a one-dimensional acquisition device...as a sort of language learning machine” (2001: 143). Lantolf suggests that SLA “presents a lopsided and uncritical view of both itself and the scientific tradition from which it arises, and it precipitously dismisses those who would challenge it” (1996: 716). Rampton points out that SLA studies “could probably benefit from an enhanced sense of the empirical world's complex socio-cultural diversity” (1995b: 294). Similarly Gebhard argues for a “sociocultural perspective” that takes as a starting point “an understanding that the origin and structure of cognition are rooted in the daily social and cultural practices in which an individual participates” (1999: 544). Although the respected mainstream journals TESOL Quarterly and Language Learning are publishing articles that adopt a sociolinguistic approach and recent works by dedicated authors to the perspective are in evidence (Lantolf and Thorne 2006); studies which robustly investigate social context, power and identity remain relatively difficult to locate. The Case for Peer Interaction Classroom practice has evolved at a rapid rate since the importance of peer interaction was widely acknowledged at the 1972 International Communication Association (ICA) convention which focused on interaction and learning. While such a notable evolution in classroom practice is of course not wholly attributable to a single event, the accumulated research since the early 1970s has caused the widespread use of social interaction in classrooms today. The benefits of peer interaction across the entire curriculum have been compellingly expressed (Johnson and Johnson 1990, 1996; Fuchs et al 1994; Slavin 1990). Consequently, an increasing number of teachers in every discipline are structuring their teaching methods to engage their students in ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research 103 communicative tasks, often through grouping them in small groups or pairs. According to Bruffee (1993), research indicates that five or six is the optimal number for a group primarily dedicated to discussion, while task groups assigned to produce a tangible group project or product should have no more than three members. Johnson and Johnson (1996) using the term co-operative learning groups began to characterise the benefits of peer learning interactions as: a) positive independence, b) individual accountability, c) face-to-face promotive interactions and d) the appropriate use of interpersonal and small-group skills and group processing. In summary, such learning arrangements act as powerful catalysts for higher achievement, more positive relationships among students and greater psychological health. These significant realisations have contributed to the demise of the teacher-fronted methodology as the predominant method of classroom instruction across the entire curriculum. However, before one becomes complacent about the ubiquitious nature of classroom interaction across the curriculum, one should note the following remark by Askew: “the characteristics of dialogue are equality, sharing, spontaneity, collaboration and reciprocity. What I found interesting is that young people do not think such experiences are appropriate for the classroom where a particular view of behaviour is perceived” (2000: 47). This perception is perpetuated in the minds of students and practitioners alike by the prevailing policy of high stakes testing in schools. A phenomenon noted by Wiliam et al when they observe that classroom interaction is severely limited because “the introduction of high-stakes state-mandated testing, such as now exists in England and most states in the U.S.A, makes the effective implementation of formative assessment even more difficult. This is because…attempts to maximise student and school scores appear to result in a lack of attention to the kinds of higher-order thinking involved in formative assessment” (2004: 49). The Practice and Theory of Interaction in the L2 Classroom The crucial question is: do practitioners really understand why peer-peer interaction facilitates (or frustrates) language acquisition from a sociocultural perspective? When focusing on L2 classrooms it is to be expected that social interaction is a very popular method of instruction. As Kumaravadivelu says, “...theorists and practitioners alike almost unanimously emphasise communication of one kind or another” (1993: 12). Thinking comes along as a necessary element of the communication process. It is for this reason that “human thought is consummately social: social in its origins, social in its functions, social in its form, social in its applications” (Geertz cited in Bruffee 1993: 114). The internalisation of experience arising from social interaction is crucial to a person’s understanding of his or her role as a participant in a post-modern society typified by states of flux, dynamic change and complex uncertainties. As Eisner and Peshkin observe, “Whether we are talking about unicorns, quarks, infinity, or apples our cognitive life depends on experience” (1990: 31). In the microcosm of the classroom and then in the yet smaller collective of the group or dyad this observation is also true. Many foundation studies have demonstrated that communicative interaction is necessary (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 1982; Long and Porter 1985; Long 1983a, 1983b; Krashen 1982). It is therefore inevitable that even a cursory library search on second ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 104 Colby Toussaint Clark and Ian Clark language acquisition and interaction reveals a proliferation of research which seeks to aver that second language acquisition is facilitated by interaction between the learner and a more proficient English speaker. Through interaction with more able English speakers, language learners have access to models of language structure and are given a chance to practice what they are learning, therefore moving forward in their second language acquisition. As early as 1975 Wagner-Gough and Hatch claimed that second language acquisition is a process based on conversational interactions, and that limiting research to a syntactic process internal to the learner is not adequate. Interaction is seen as a means of providing comprehensible input to the learner and also as fundamental to an individual's cognitive and affective growth. The main pedagogical arguments in favour of collaborative learning in the SLA context have been summarised by Long and Porter (1985) as: a) increasing opportunities of language practice, b) assisting in the individualisation of instruction, c) advancing the quality and quantity of student talk, d) encouraging a positive affective environment, and e) increasing the students' motivation to learn. Ellis remarked, “group work provides the kind of input and opportunities for output that promote rapid L2 acquisition” (1994: 598). The fundamental point made by many researching on classroom interaction is that collaborative learning reduces communicative stress and creates a more natural environment in which to practice communicative skills. Mainstream SLA research examines a number of crucial variables which facilitate a comprehensive investigation into language learning. Of primary importance is a) the cultural background of the students, b) the classroom environment and c) the learning styles of the students. It is with the already cited concerns of Pennycook (2001), Lantolf (1996), Rampton (1995) and Gebhard (1999) in mind that this article seeks to explore a fourth and largely neglected variable: d) the sociolinguistic roles and relationships that exist in the classroom and the extent to which they facilitate or frustrate language acquisition. The Sociocultural Approach and Language Acquisition The study of socio-linguistic roles between peers is a relatively new concept in SLA research and is notably understudied. Building on the early work of L.S Vygotsky, specifically his theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD), L2 researchers have developed a body of very compelling evidence that became so persuasive that the Vygotskian (or social constructivist) approach is now conventional pedagogical wisdom. It is worth remembering that although Vygotsky's most productive years at Moscow's Institute of Psychology were between 1924-1935 the most often cited text on his theories, Mind in Society became accessible to the mass international readership in 1978. Furthermore, Vygotsky's work, while enormously influential, is limited by a focus on learner-teacher/expert interactions. Consequently, it has only been in relatively recent years that the potential benefits of peer-peer interactions have become widely acknowledged. Contemporary researchers such as Donato (1988, 1994), Ohta (1995) and Storch (2002) have advanced Vygotskian theory by arguing that for SLA to occur in a manner that will promote language learning learners need to interact with their peers in small groups or pairs. Accordingly, Swain, Brooks and Tocalli-Beller (2002) also argue that input from a teacher/expert is not the only factor that creates the ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research 105 opportunity for second language acquisition; peer-peer interaction can also facilitate effective learning. Peer-peer interaction is not only crucial to effective learning, it also has important psychological ramifications. Classroom discourse has been recognized as a complex sociocultural activity in which meaning-making is an integral process in the creation of the social identity of learners, (Pennycook 2004; Norton 2004; Kubota 2004). Of particular interest among the foundation studies that look at peer-peer sociolinguistic interaction is a 1986 study by Porter. This study contrasted native speaker/native speaker (NS/NS), native speaker/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) and non-native speaker/non-native speaker (NNS/NNS) interactions based on grammatical accuracy, interactional features, and sociolinguistic appropriateness of the input between a variety of such dyads. Porter's findings most relevant to the stated enquiry of this article are two-fold. Firstly, there was no clear advantage having a NS as an input provider because input from a NNS was just as comprehensible as input from a NS. Secondly, there were few indications that NNS frustrate SLA by giving each other miscorrections and error incorporations. The roles that learners take on in this type of interaction are often described as expert and novice. A study conducted by Storch (2002) expanded the existing taxonomy of sociolinguistic descriptors by adding collaborative, passive and dominant as role-categories to the list. More will be said about Storch's research in a later section of this article. Up to this point the focus of this article has been dedicated to the discussion of the positive aspects of peer-peer interaction. Indeed, the results of both the foundation studies and more recent research consistently support the hypothesis that peer-peer interaction is of at least parallel importance to learner-teacher/expert input in pedagogical terms and goes far beyond it in terms of psychological and social value (Long and Porter 1985; Johnson and Johnson 1996; Pennycook 2004; Kubota 2004). However, a growing body of complementary research reveals that the sociolinguistic roles that students assume while interacting may not assist the process of language acquisition. Undesirable and counter-productive interactions occur in any social setting as they must do in a classroom that exhibits the Vygotskian concept of the social construction of knowledge as a central design feature. For example, DiNitto (2000) compared two small groups of language learners in order to ascertain why one group was achieving at a considerably lower level than the other. She observed that one student in particular seemed to dominate and control the flow of communication. This type of peer-peer interaction, which engendered asymmetrical (i.e. non-collaborative) social roles, did not allow for the hypothesis testing and group interaction that is characteristic of collaborative group work. DiNitto explained this phenomenon by pointing to the teacher-fronted method deployed by the instructor. Both DiNitto (2000) and Bruffee (1993) note that the instructor’s role includes the function of group facilitator and role-model as well as serving as a source for information and insight. Consequently, the type of teaching technique may create the social circumstances which bring into existence types of peer dynamics which frustrate effective learning. Teaching is often described as a social accomplishment and student perceptions of the teacher are important in deciding the kind of society the students find in a classroom. Cited in Harrison et al, one student responds positively to the social role modelled by the teacher: “It wasn't as if there was a teacher in the class, but rather someone whom we could trust and identify as a 'sharer'. You were...sensitive to our thoughts and that ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 106 Colby Toussaint Clark and Ian Clark made it all the more 'authentic' for me. It was an authentic experience, not just a class” (2002: 29). Foster (1998) also found that students working in groups or pairs did not always work collaboratively or show any notable L2 acquisition. In her study, she compared the language produced by intermediate EFL students between small groups and dyads based on tasks that required the negotiation of meaning. The process of negotiating meaning takes place when a speaker requests clarification (asking for repeating or rephrasing), confirmation (e.g. tag questions) and makes self and other repetitions (Ellis 1994: 260). Foster found that this process was frustrated by the personalities of the learners and the roles that they 'acted-out' during the task. Foster also found that the type of task had a significant effect on the social interaction. The next section explores how and why tasks are of fundamental importance to sociocultural researchers. The Relevance of Task Type in Sociocultural Research While the type of interaction (e.g. collaborative) is in itself of key importance to a sociolinguistic approach to language learning, it is also of crucial importance to pay close attention to the context in which the interaction takes place. Coughlan and Duff point out that a task is only “a kind of behavioural blueprint” (1994: 175) given to students, setting out the expectations of the teacher. In their study, although the pairs were given the same task, with the same instructions, and produced texts which on the surface looked similar, the pairs experienced a range of very different activities. Therefore, sociocultural researchers claim that it is not only the personality and ability of the teacher or the type of task which affects learning outcomes. They emphasize that it is the kind of behaviours and relationships exhibited by the participants when working together to complete the task that determines the quality of the learning process. Following the works of Pennycook (2004), Toohey (2003) and Kubota (2004), two core principles are developed to inform our understandings of the task blueprint and the activities which arise from the task blueprint during the learning interactions. Firstly, language learning tasks provide participants with opportunities to assess and negotiate knowledge, concepts and ideas in the light of their own sociocultural backgrounds. Secondly, learning tasks allow for a multiplicity of activities at any given time so that learners can decide which activities to engage in and how to engage in them. Coughlan and Duff (1994), in accordance with the later studies of Pennycook, Toohey and Kubota also found that sociocultural variables arising from group or pair interactions can potentially create a wide variety of activities based on the same task. In Coughlan and Duff's study several Hungarian students of English were given a picture to describe orally. The study details the varying responses by the students, who created several different activities based on the same task. Coughlan and Duff claim the complexity arising from the assignation of expert/novice roles to participants and the fact that the participants brought a communicative element to the task were major factors in determining the various types of descriptions created by the participants. This study effectively proved that any task that provides for communicative interactions is unique and cannot be accurately replicated. This serves as a caveat to those who have ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research 107 lamented the lack of a taxonomy of SLA tasks by strongly implying that studies which embrace the sociolinguistic perspective investigate L2 learning processes and outcomes more deeply than any such taxonomy ever could. A taxonomical approach is ideal when seeking to describe the answers to the what questions. However, this approach is of very limited use when examining the more deeply significant why and how questions raised about the processes and outcomes relating to small group or pairwork tasks. Donato (1994) advanced Coughlan and Duff's study by illustrating how learning takes place in a social setting. He analysed the discourse for evidence of collective ‘scaffolding’, and noted, “...the speakers are at the same time individually novices and collectively experts, sources of new orientations for each other and guides through this complex linguistic problem solving” (1994: 46). Donato's findings are analogous to those of Vygotsky when he states, “individual knowledge is socially and dialogically derived, the genesis of which can be observed directly in the interactions among speakers” (1994: 51). Yet Donato’s study builds on Vygotskian theory and emphasizes peer-peer interactions as catalysts for learning. Ohta (1995) undertook a similar study with Japanese students of English and found that peer dyads displayed greater linguistic accuracy than in those tasks fronted by the teacher. She also observed that the expert – novice role alternated between them. Ohta's findings support the proposition that guided pair-work enabled the learners to acquire language by sharing their strengths in the zone of proximal development. A further study arising from Vygotskian theories was that of de Almeida Mattos (2000) who focused on the concept of scaffolding. Students were asked to work together on formulating a story using pictorial stimuli and then recount the story individually. She found evidence of scaffolding in both peer-peer and individual phases of the task. Consequently, de Almedia Mattos suggests that language teachers give students the opportunity for scaffolded interactions in the class, especially before examinations. The Research of Neomy Storch (2002) The final part of this article features a rare example of robust sociolinguistic research. Neomy Storch's (University of Melbourne) research has been selected because her findings clearly illustrate how a sociolinguistic approach to language learning creates measurable increases in performance. Storch analysed the dialogues of 10 pairs of ESL learners not only for their linguistic competence and language acquisition but also according to the social interactions that took place. Her study attempted to explore the gap in the extant research on the social context of classroom learning. The purpose of the study was to determine what patterns of social interaction were exhibited between pairs, the influence that performance of the linguistic task exerts upon pair interaction and the impact of the passage of time upon observable dyadic outputs. In summary, therefore, the over-arching aim of the study was to analyse whether the differences between types of dyadic interaction result in different outcomes in terms of second language acquisition. In an attempt to determine how the sociolinguistic roles affect language learning across a variety of tasks, Storch combined the following roles and relationships into a common research framework: expert; novice; collaborative; passive; dominant. These ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 108 Colby Toussaint Clark and Ian Clark dimensions were created by unifying the concepts of collective scaffolding and the sociocultural dynamics of dyadic interaction already discussed in the preceding sections of this article. In order to realise her research goals, Storch analysed the transcripts of students in an academic ESL program. The dialogues were transcribed from tape- recorded interactions during the completion of three tasks. In addition to the transcripts, Storch collected data through: (i) an editing task that served as a pre- and post-test; (ii) a survey issued at the beginning of the study aimed at determining the students' attitude toward group and pair work; (iii) Storch's research notes and (iv) students' output arising from a range of writing tasks. Storch analysed the transcripts by looking for significant features exhibited by pairs of pre-tested learners who were then arranged according to their L2 proficiency. From this she identified four patterns of interaction that described the role relationships between the participants: a) collaborative; b) dominant/dominant; c) dominant/passive; d) expert/novice. As seen in figure 1, Storch blended her framework with the notions of equality and mutuality found in the work of Damon and Phelps (1989). Equality is defined as the level of authority or control over the task. Pairs exhibiting a high level of equality have the ability to take direction from each other. Mutuality means the extent of engagement between each other’s contributions. Pairs which exhibit a high level of mutuality share ideas and give reciprocal feedback. The relationships between the different elements of Storch’s model of dyadic interaction may be seen below; as one would expect, the collaborative quadrant is characterised by both high mutuality and high equality. High Mutuality Expert/Novice Collaborative Low Equality High Equality Dominant/Passive Dominant/Dominant Low Mutuality Figure 1. A model of dyadic interaction (Storch 2002: 128). Storch found that students who worked collaboratively learnt more than pairs who were observed in any other role. Expert/novice relationships also performed well but less so than their collaborative counterparts. This suggests that the existence of high mutuality in peer-peer interactions is more important than a relationship which emphasises high equality. Storch (2004) has stated that she intended her taxonomy of roles/relationships to exist in the affective domain. However, if one uses the pre-study placement tests to interpret the terms expert, novice and collaborative to refer to different levels of knowing and comprehension, they then become cognitive elements. When applying this interpretation it is to be expected that pairs exhibiting cognition- type relationships (relationships dedicated to acquiring and transmitting knowledge) provide evidence of better learning. The essential pedagogical point arising from Storch's findings is that teachers should be acutely aware of how the different social ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research 109 roles and relationships arising from learning interactions facilitate or frustrate the quality of the learning process and the outcomes of that process. Further Investigation: A Small-Scale Study Toussaint-Clark (2007) undertook a small-scale qualitative case study as a precursor to her continuing research. A central aim of Toussaint-Clark's research is the attempt to refine existing descriptions of learning behaviour from a sociocultural perspective. In her initial case-study she observed two pairs of low level students learning English. The purpose of their study was to improve their ability to negotiate meanings in the 'real- world' rather than for specific examinations or another specific purpose. Four tasks were chosen for analysis: 1) asking and answering questions about the location of different items on a map; 2) describing a map they had drawn to their partner; 3) describing a picture to their partner; 4) organising sentence strips. The utterances of the participants were recorded, codified and then described by using the categories devised by Storch. Toussaint-Clark found that collaborative relationships featured almost exclusively throughout the observation and that the other categories (dominant, passive, expert, novice) were absent. Where some evidence of expert/novice roles existed it was decided by panel analysis that these were much closer to Storch’s definition of a collaborative relationship. A transcribed example of collaborative interaction is presented in Table 1, below, with the street names removed to protect the identity of the participants (Toussaint-Clark 2007: 48-49). In this excerpt the students are collaboratively engaged because, “they often interrupt each other with positive corrections, positive confirmations, completions of their partner's sentences, or with questions” (Toussaint-Clark 2007: 49). Thus, Storch's original definition of the collaborative relationship is satisfied. 47. Jorge Here’s my apartment (2- second pause) (( points to map)) here is 48. Tai Huan Macdonal? 49. Jorge No es (1- second pause) apartments 50. Tai Huan Apartment 51. Jorge yeah (+) he he is a *consulton (+) *consul *consul to (street name removed) 52. Tai Huan Oh 53. Jorge and a (street name removed)….do you know *consul (+)*constulton to (street name removed) (+) here in the corner 54. Tai Huan *consco? 55. Jorge *consular (+) to (street name removed) 56. Tai Huan *Consulat (2- second pause) 57. Jorge Here in the corner is a (+) 58. Tai Huan coffee shop ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 110 Colby Toussaint Clark and Ian Clark 59. Jorge coffee shop barber (+) barb barber shop yep barber shop 60. Tai Huan Barber shop 61. Jorge yes barber shop next to the coffee shop (1-second pause) is a barber shop 62. Tai Huan yes Table 1. An example of collaborative interaction (from Toussaint-Clark 2007: 48-49) Parallel Work Toussaint-Clark noted an additional category of interaction which did not feature in Storch's 2002 foundation study. She called this new role relationship parallel work. Parallel work is described as a relationship in which “the participants work side by side with some interaction while they work individually” (Toussaint-Clark 2007: 55). Therefore, parallel work is characterised by an individual studying style but with some limited interest in the progress of the other member of the dyad. For example, in the following excerpt the students talk to themselves during the task as they write the phrases under the pictures on their worksheet. Parallel work occurs because they look at each other’s work while they are talking to themselves. It also provides an opportunity to discuss Coughlan and Duff’s “behavioural blueprint” (1994: 175). In Toussaint- Clark’s study one member of the dyad made initial attempts to work collaboratively with the other (lines 74-82); he then abandons the collaborative learning behaviour which the teacher intended to arise from the task and so begins a different activity type phase of parallel work (lines 83-86 in Table 2, below, from Toussaint-Clark 2007:50- 51). 74. Jorge Ok (11- second pause) ((puts worksheet in between Tai Huan and himself)) 75. Tai Huan ((gets worksheet from another student)) he is a thinker ah? ((writes on worksheet)) 76. Tai Huan He (2- second pause) 77. Tai Huan He-is (+) thinker 78. Jorge (laughs) a what? 79. Tai Huan think (+) t-h-i-n-k ((writes on his worksheet)) 80. Jorge thinking _thinking_ thinking_ ((looks at Tai Huan’s worksheet and starts to write on his worksheet)) 81. Tai Huan Think 82. Jorge thinking think think ((points to his own head)) Table 2. Initial attempts to work collaboratively (from Toussaint-Clark 2007: 50-51) ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research 111 It is at this point that Jorge abandons his attempts to work collaboratively with his partner and, as seen in table 3, a task-phase of parallel work arises from the activity. 83. Jorge He (2- second pause) is (+) writing ((writing on paper)) 84. Jorge ((writes on worksheet))he (+) he(+) is (2- second pause) he is think thinking_ thinking_ he is thinking (2- second pause) ((looks at Tai Huan’s worksheet)) he he write (+)he writing the ((writes on own worksheet)) 85. Tai Huan he is (3- second pause) sign 86. Jorge he (+) is writing write (2- second pause) ((looks at Tai Huan’s worksheet)) he writing he he (2 second pause) is he writing he write he ((writes on own worksheet))writing (+)writing (2 second pause) the date he writing he writ writing writing he writing writing writing he writing the (3- second pause) date_ date_ date_ what ((looks at Tai Huan)) Table 3. Task-phase of parallel work (from Toussaint-Clark 2007: 50-51) At this point both students work for several minutes speaking aloud to themselves while writing on their worksheets and checking each other’s work visually. As one would expect, the longer the phase of parallel work lasts the less effective the activity becomes, and thus the learning process is frustrated. Conclusion Storch's foundation study adds valuable and much needed data to the discussion about the sociolinguistic variables that impact on peer-peer interaction in L2 classrooms. It goes some way to raising the profile of highly significant yet often denounced (Gregg et al 1997) research that accounts for social context, power and identity. Yet perhaps the real experience is the irony felt when such a valuable contribution compels one to look more deeply into this body of research in the hope of garnering even greater understandings, but instead further investigation merely brings the realisation that very few studies on sociolinguistic variables and language learning exist at all. For example, at the time of writing this article no studies could be found that look at sociocultural dyadic interaction in a non-academic context or with low level language learners in any context. As a consequence, a vast population of L2 learners remains undiscovered. The discussion and studies presented in this article clearly point to the benefits of collaborative peer interaction for second language acquisition. What are needed now are more dedicated and robust studies which advance research regarding sociocultural roles in the classroom and how they operate to inhibit or promote learning to a very significant degree. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 112 Colby Toussaint Clark and Ian Clark Works Cited Askew, Susan 2000: Feedback for Learning. London: Routledge/Falmer. Bruffee, Kenneth A. 1993: Collaborative Learning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Coughlan Paul and Patricia Duff 1994: ‘Same Task. Different Activities: Analysis of SLA Task from an Activity Theory Perspective’. James Lantolf and Gabriela Appel, eds. Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research. Norwood: Ablex. 173-91. Damon, William and Erin Phelps 1989: ‘Critical Distinctions among three Approaches to Peer Education’. 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Harrison, Roger, Fiona Reeve, Ann Hanson and Julia Clarke, eds. 2002: Supporting Lifelong Learning, vol.1. London: Routledge/Falmer. Johnson, David and Roger Johnson 1990: ‘What is Cooperative Learning?’ Mark Brubacher, Ryder Payne and Kemp Rickett, eds. Perspectives on Small Group Learning: Context and Opportunities for Acquiring Academic English. TESOL Quarterly 30: 253-80. Johnson, David and Roger Johnson 1996: ‘The Role of the Cooperative Learning in Assessing and Communicating Student Learning’. Thomas R. Gusky, ed. 1996 ASCD Yearbook: Communicating student learning. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.25-46. Krashen, Stephen 1982: Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon P. Kubota, Ryuko 2004: ‘Critical Multiculturalism and Second Language Education’. Bonny Norton and Kelleen Toohey, eds. Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 30-52. Kumaravadivelu, B. 1993: ‘Maximizing Learning Potential in the Communicative Classroom’. ELT Journal 47.5: 12-21. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research 113 Lantolf, James P. 1996: ‘SLA Theory Building: Letting All the Flowers Bloom!’ Language Learning 46: 713-49. Lantolf, James. P. and Steven Thorne 2006: Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development. Oxford: Oxford UP. Long, Michael H. 1983a: ‘Native Speaker/Non-Native Speaker Conversation and the Negotiation of Comprehensible Input’. Applied Linguistics 4: 126-41. Long, Michael H. 1983b: ‘Linguistic and Conversational Adjustments to Non-Native Speakers’. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 5.2: 177-93. Long, Michael H. and Patricia A. Porter 1985: ‘Group Work. Interlanguage Talk and Second Language Acquisition’. TESOL Quarterly 19.2: 207-28. Norton, Bonny 2004: ‘Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning: An Introduction’. Bonny Norton and Kelleen Toohey, eds. Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 1-17. Ohta, Amy Snyder 1995: ‘Applying Sociocultural Theory to an Analysis of Learner Discourse: Learner-Learner Collaborative Interaction in the Zone of Proximal Development’. Issues in Applied Linguistics 6: 93-121. Pennycook, Alastair 2001: Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pennycook, Alastair 2004: ‘Critical Moments in a TESOL Praxicum’. Bonny Norton and Kelleen Toohey, eds. Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 327-46. Pica, Teresa, and Catherine Doughty 1985: ‘Input and Interaction in the Communicative Classroom: A Comparison of Teacher-Fronted and Group Activity’. Susan Gass and Carolyn Madden, eds. Input in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley: Newbury House. 115-32. Porter, Patricia A. 1986: ‘How Learners Talk to Each Other: Input and Interaction in Task Centered Discussions’. Richard R. Day, ed. Talking to Learn. Conversation in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley: Newbury House. 200-21. Rampton, Ben 1995: ‘Politics and Change in Research in Applied Linguistics’. Applied Linguistics 16: 233-56. Slavin, Robert E. 1990: ‘Research on Cooperative Learning: Consensus and Controversy’. Educational Leadership 47: 52-54. Storch, Neomy 2002: ‘Patterns of Interaction in ESL Pairwork’. Language Learning 51.1: 119-58. Storch, Neomy 2004: ‘Using Activity Theory to Explain Differences in Patterns of Dyadic Interactions in an ESL Class’. The Canadian Modern Language Review 60.4: 457-80. Swain, Merrill, Lindsay Brooks and Agustina Tocalli-Beller 2002: ‘Peer-peer Dialogue as a Means of Second Language Learning’. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 22: 171-85. Toohey, Kelleen 2003: Learning English at School: Identity, Social Relations and Classroom Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Toussaint-Clark, Colby A. 2007: Patterns of Interaction between Low-Level Non-Academic ESL Learners, Unpublished Master's thesis. Portland State University, Oregon. Wagner-Gough, Judy and Evelyn M. Hatch 1975: ‘The Importance of Input Data in Second Language Acquisition Studies’. Language Learning 25: 297-308. Wiliam, Dylan; Clare Lee, Christine Harrison and Paul Black 2004: ‘Teachers Developing Assessment for Learning: Impact on Student Learning’. Assessment in Education 11.1: 49-65. Received 1 December 2007 Revised version received 22 January 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 101–113 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ‘Making Something Out of Nothing’: Lesbianism as Liberating Fantasy in The Children’s Hour The tendency to figure “lesbian” as utopic and outside dominant conceptual frameworks essentializes that category as transgressive or subversive. (Jagose 1994: 5) Mercè Cuenca Universidad de Barcelona [email protected] María Isabel Seguro Universidad de Barcelona [email protected] Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour was notoriously successful in its première in 1934, and its revival in 1952, because of its inclusion of a lesbian theme. Paradoxically, the play’s reception has largely focused on its symbolic depiction of the effects of slander, instead of on its depiction of female homosexuality. In recent years, the representation of same-sex desire in Hellman’s play has begun to be broached, being critically read as blatantly homophobic. In this article, we would like to revise the play’s agenda by proposing that its articulation of lesbianism is an indictment of the patriarchal containment of women’s political and sexual desire. Keywords: American drama, Lillian Hellman, literary historiography, feminism, homophobia, lesbian desire 1. Introduction1 A first approach to Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934, 1953) may lead one to conclude that it is concerned with issues of justice and mercy, a reading upheld by the 1 María Isabel Seguro’s contribution to this article was made with the financial support of the Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and the European Social Fund. 116 Mercè Cuenca and María Isabel Seguro play's opening with a deliberate misquotation of Portia's famous speech in The Merchant of Venice. The text apparently deals with the injustice and mercilessness inflicted by a community on two innocent women, Martha Dobie and Karen Wright, falsely accused of ‘unnatural’ sexual behavior, that is, lesbianism. A second reading arises from the play’s ending, according to which society ‘rightly’ punishes one of the women, Martha, for admitting her passionate love for her female friend, Karen. From this perspective, it can be argued that The Children’s Hour has been ‘canonized’ for its acquiescence to heteronormativity: to kill the lesbian, thus, symbolizes the fight against social chaos brought about by the subversive and “abnormal” sexual behavior (Titus 1991: 222). This interpretation is emphasized by the changes Lillian Hellman introduced to the source of her play, an 1810 Edinburgh libel case: two women in charge of an all-girl boarding school were accused by a pupil of deviant sexual behavior and eventually won the case (Tuhkanen 2002: 1006-08). Overall, by making the women in The Children's Hour lose the trial and killing the “unconscious lesbian”, as Martha is described in the play's early draft (Spencer 2004: 47; Titus 1991: 220), Hellman seems to have created “a profoundly conservative text” in which “she wanted to confirm contemporary sexual ideology overtly” (Titus 1991: 223). However, a contextualized reading of the first version of the play provides interesting insights according to which the text, rather than conforming to the sexual discourses of its time, reflects and criticizes them, especially through silences and the avoidance of explicitness onstage (Sinfield 1999: 17-18). It should be noted that The Children's Hour, a 1934 commercial success, was revived in 1952 in the midst of the Cold War. Whereas in the (post-) Depression years of the 1930s the lesbian came to symbolize the threats of feminism to patriarchal values, in the Cold War era, despite the fact that “homosexuality was equated with communism as a threat to national security” (Spencer 2004: 52), the theme of same-sex desire was directly used to indict homophobia. Our contention is that, in both periods, Hellman used the figure of the lesbian not merely to reproduce homophobia on the stage, but to denounce its politics and consequences upon those choosing ‘non-patriarchal’ modes of living. From this viewpoint, The Children's Hour should be related to its antecedents featuring lesbianism on the American stage during the years immediately before the play’s opening at the Maxine Elliot's Theatre in New York. In 1922, the English version of God of Vengeance (1906-7) by the Yiddish playwright Sholem Asch premièred in the Provincetown Theatre in Greenwich Village before it transferred to Broadway the following year. The play is about a young girl, Rivkele, who falls in love with a prostitute working in a brothel run by her father. The producer, the director and the twelve performers were arrested and found guilty on the charge of obscenity. Sin of Sins, by William Hulburt, a play about a lesbian who kills her beloved's fiancé, followed a similar fate when it opened in Chicago in 1926 and was forced to close as a result of hostile reviews. That same year The Captive, based on Edouard Bourdet's La Prisonnière (1926), encountered the same kind of adverse critical reception: the theatre was actually raided by the police, and due to the outrage these performances provoked on mainstream (conservative) society, legislation was passed allowing the closure of a theater for a year if a representation was found guilty of obscenity or immorality. The play is the story of a twenty-five year old woman, Irene, who marries Jacques in an ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ‘Making Something Out of Nothing’ 117 attempt to be ‘saved’ from her obsession for her lover, a married woman. However, her husband is unable to ‘cure’ her (Faderman 1992: 66; Sinfield 1999: 137-39; 177-78). As Sinfield states, what the critical reception and public reaction to these texts indicate is that censorship is: an area of pressure, not an absence. The social order promoted same-sex awareness, as well as penalising it, through a continuous flirtation with the impermissible. To be sure, individuals were subjected to vicious penalties, but these too made homosexuality present, even while forbidding it. We are looking at what I have called a faultline in the system: a point where the dominant ideology is under strain, where powerful competing concerns produce urgent ideological work. (1999: 72-73) We believe that, in Hellman’s case, self-censorship was at work since she suggests lesbianism but never has it staged. It is from this standpoint that The Children's Hour will be analyzed. 2. ‘None of us should see salvation’?: Same-sex desire as deconstruction of patriarchy in The Children’s Hour (1934) In her article ‘Murdering the Lesbian’ Mary Titus suggests that during Hellman's childhood and youth, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, the feminist movement was already discredited, as exemplified by the emergence of the New Woman at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century (1991: 215). As Lillian Faderman shows in her work Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1992), such a discredit was directly linked to the advancement of the suffragist and feminist movements which began to challenge mainstream, patriarchal values, especially those related to the family. Whilst close female relationships were encouraged in the nineteenth century as a means for women to find consolation and support prior to marriage, such ‘romantic friendships’, with the advent of sexology, became the target of mainstream (male) discourses. The feminist movement, fighting for women's suffrage, their right to higher education and access to the labor market, encouraged these female attachments. This period saw the birth of quite a few all-women colleges which meant that middle class women, with career ambitions, did not need to consider marriage as the only option for surviving economically. Consequently, romantic friendships, and the feminist movement associated with them, were accused of making women unfit for marriage and family life. The lesbian—the sexual invert—came to symbolize the dangers brought about by feminism and romantic friendships as the result of the popularization of work by sexologists, especially followers or interpreters of Freud after the First World War. Until then, there was resistance “to attribute sexuality to such proper-seeming maiden ladies” and, as Faderman goes on to explain: . . . as the late nineteenth-century feminist movement grew in strength and in its potential to overthrow the old sex roles, it was not too long before feminism itself was also equated with sexual inversion and many women of the middle class came to be suspected of ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 118 Mercè Cuenca and María Isabel Seguro anomaly, since as feminists they acted in ways inappropriate to their gender, desiring to get an education, for example, or work in a challenging, lucrative profession. (1992: 46) This explains the fascination with, and fear of, the lesbian in the 1920s as exemplified on the stage by the plays mentioned previously. Moreover, in the Depression years of the 1930s, the convergence between feminism and lesbianism became more apparent since women's search for independence meant competition for jobs with men who had to support (traditional) families (Faderman 1992: 94). Our contention is that at the time of its première, The Children's Hour mirrored the origins and the results of these changing positions towards what once was considered to be mere ‘romantic friendships’ between women, and then lesbianism. In Hellman's play, Karen and Martha's liaison actually contains all the ingredients of a romantic friendship. As such, it represents a threat to patriarchal, Victorian values which, despite the bohemian atmosphere of the 1920s, had never disappeared. Martha fears that Karen's engagement to a young doctor, Joseph Cardin, will put an end to her emotional and professional relationship with her friend. In their conversation about Karen's forthcoming marriage, we learn that both women went to college together, presumably to an all-female institution. Such places came to be regarded as dangerous for women; colleges “masculinized” girls making them crave for “privileges” ascribed to men and encouraging same-sex desire (Faderman 1992: 14). Martha is aware of the incompatibilities between marriage and a successful professional life. “I don't understand you”, she tells Karen. “It's been so damned hard building this thing up [the school], slaving and going without things to make ends meet … and now we're getting on our feet, you're all ready to let it go to hell” (Hellman 1979: 16). Clearly, Martha articulates the ideology of the New Woman. The sexual element that was attached to that figure in the early twentieth century is reflected later on in the same act when Martha’s aunt, Mrs. Mortar, a former actress, points out that her fondness for Karen is unnatural, a term used by turn-of-the-century sexologists to refer to lesbianism. Moreover, Mrs. Mortar suggests to her niece that it is about time she got “a beau of her own” (Hellman 1979: 20). These last words can be related to popular notions on Freudian theories during the bohemian 1920s. The most sophisticated and avant-garde (male) members of the bourgeoisie, as they saw themselves, accepted the notion that sexuality—heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual—had to be experienced as an escape valve for repression. Consequently, lesbianism, for example, could be considered as a mere stage some women underwent, enabling them to become the perfect partner in a heterosexual, companionate marriage—one in which man and woman would be on equal terms as a result of female sexual liberation and social advancements. Karen has such a notion of marriage as she believes that her life with Cardin will not interfere with her career. Mrs. Mortar's words suggest that Martha should follow the same track and overcome her ‘lesbian phase’. Danger, therefore, lies in the fact that Martha is unwilling and/or unable to undergo the whole evolution of female sexuality according to the ‘modern’ ideology of the time. As she is a model to the young pupils – she teaches in an all-girl boarding school – her attitude could represent both a social and a political menace. So it follows that Mary Tilford, the student who accuses the young teachers of deviant sexual ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ‘Making Something Out of Nothing’ 119 behavior, is in fact the one to exploit the fears towards the kind of counter-ideology that was being passed on by these female/feminist institutions. When Mary first appears on stage, she is described as a fourteen-year-old who is “neither pretty nor ugly. She is an undistinguished-looking girl, except for the sullenly dissatisfied expression on her face” (Hellman 1979: 8). That is, initially there is nothing remarkable about her except her constant dissatisfaction for which the play provides no clear answers. What is remarkable, as the play immediately shows, is Mary's mind, which seems to justify ideas about the negative consequences of knowledge and education for women. She is a clear example of how such an access to ‘rational matters’ masculinizes the feminine. According to Judith Butler's reading of Jacques Lacan, within patriarchy women are a reflection of the Phallus since masculine subjectivity, provided by the Symbolic through language, requires the Other —the female— to confirm his own subject position. Women, therefore, are or reflect what men are not supposed to be. Mary does not want to be the Phallus, understood as that which signifies the masculine’s “Other, its absence, its lack, the dialectical confirmation of [male] identity” (1990a: 44). Mary wants to have the Phallus, that is, the phallic power, to create meaning. To do so, she needs access to knowledge and to the language that constitutes it. In the text, this is reflected in her discovering that two pupils, Peggy and Evelyn, have been eavesdropping on a conversation in which Mrs. Mortar accuses Martha of having ‘unnatural’ feelings for Karen. This information gives Mary the power traditionally associated with men and she uses it as men do, for her own benefit. She is also the source of knowledge for the other girls, to whom she passes over her copy of Théophile Gautier's novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) which deals with transgenderism and homosexual love and which, eventually, inspires her to accuse Karen and Martha of lesbianism. Moreover, she also puts into practice her power through physical violence at the end of Act I: “MARY makes a sudden move for her [Peggy], grabs her left arm, and jerks it back, hard and expertly. PEGGY screams softly. EVELYN tries to take MARY’S arm away. Without releasing her hold on PEGGY, MARY slaps EVELYN’S face. EVELYN begins to cry” (Hellman 1979: 30). Mary's behavior is linked to her precocity, to the extent that Karen wonders at how they always talk about the child “as if she were a grown woman” (Hellman 1979: 14). It is interesting to notice that this was one of the characteristics the famous English sexologist Havelock Ellis associated with sexual inversion: “distinct precocity of the sexual emotions, both on the physical and psychic sides” (1995: 384, emphasis added). Although Mary has no affectionate feelings for anyone, except the selfish love she feels for her grandmother, her conduct is clearly related to the concept of the female invert, a woman who showed masculine traits and who, in extreme cases, was considered a man trapped in a woman's body. Hellman shows how lesbianism was linked to social unrest—seemingly, making the play merely reflect the mainstream discourses on female homosexual desire and sexuality—by characterizing Mary for her talent to perform, manipulate and deceive others. Her acting qualities, and those of Mrs. Mortar, are opposed to Karen and Martha's (romantic) friendship and to former times in which middle-class women who decided to pursue a life together could do so without having to ‘act’ until discourses on feminism and female (homo)sexual desire challenged mainstream values. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 120 Mercè Cuenca and María Isabel Seguro If we take the boarding school as a social microcosm representing the socio-cultural pressures upon women in general, and upon female friendships in particular, then Mary's behavior is a critical view of the exercise of phallogocentrism. Such a representation of the girl's masculinist, phallic power is foregrounded in the opening stage picture in Act II Scene II when we see Mary playing with a puzzle once she has already triggered the scandal. She manipulates the pieces as she does facts, characters and knowledge, and it is the reader’s and audience’s task to deconstruct the puzzles that, out of such manoeuvres, are created around discourses on feminism, desire and power. From this perspective, Mary reflects the same power which later on in the play her grandmother, Mrs. Tilford, will exercise against Karen and Martha so as to prevent the further propagation of immorality and the social chaos it brings. Karen, ironically, also mirrors such a hostile attitude regarding friendship among the girls when she realizes it could lead to trouble and so separates the three – Mary, Peggy and Evelyn – and orders them to change rooms—they have been together “too long” to be socially acceptable (Hellman 1979: 23). It has been argued that, from a dramatic point of view, The Children's Hour follows the pattern of the realistic, well-made-play, despite the flaws shown in Act III as a result of the abrupt ending: Martha's (surprising?) confession and her suicide (Spencer 2004: 48). Mary disappears altogether from this last act; the reader/audience is not provided with the satisfaction of witnessing her punishment, as they would in a realistic, moral play, in the Aristotelian sense. This underlines the fact that the text, despite Hellman's own words, is not so much about a lie but about the consequences of the relation between power and discourse, and its practical effects upon the lives of human beings (Hellman 1981: 4). However, the play, as we have been arguing throughout, points at the faultlines in mainstream ideology. This is seen in Cardin's failure to ‘save’ Karen. His doubts concerning her relationship with Martha underline the instability about his own masculinity—not being ‘man enough’ to break a love relationship between two women. Such a relationship, which provides them with economic independence and emotional satisfaction, makes men dispensable. Cardin's insecurity and doubts mirror the fallacy of the companionate marriage, just as Martha's words did at the beginning of the play. The bohemian arrangement, as Karen very well perceives, has no chance of working since it implies a reversal of Eve K. Sedgwick's concept of male homosocial desire (1985: 1, 25): Cardin's doubts make him feel that he is exchanging a woman for another woman, not a man, and therefore, male bonding and his masculinity cannot be reinforced. Furthermore, as woman is the phallus, that is, the reflection of what man is not, both women and their relationship emasculate Cardin: firstly, as independent professionals and, secondly, as purported lovers. They no longer represent what Man/Cardin is not, the patriarch of a heterosexual family (Butler 1990a: 43-47). This is so much the case that it is Karen who makes the final decision to break off their engagement, and what is finally proved is that “the masculine subject only appears (emphasis in the original) to originate meanings and thereby to signify. His seemingly self-grounded autonomy attempts to conceal the repression which is both its ground and the perpetual possibility of its own ungrounding” (Butler 1990a: 45). As underlined by the omission of Portia's words in Act I, when Peggy is reciting the famous speech on ‘the quality of mercy’ at the end of The Children's Hour, it is proved ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ‘Making Something Out of Nothing’ 121 that “in the course of justice, none of us, /Should see salvation” (Shakespeare 1985: 111- 12). As events develop and until the ‘truth’ of Mary's accusation is revealed, references to other truths concerning women's lives, hidden under the accusation of lesbianism, also come to light through faultlines in discourse. The play's final stage picture, showing Karen on her own sitting on the ledge of an open window, is not only an image of isolation and loneliness of the female condition; it is also an image of hope, of new possibilites, no matter how difficult or painful, opened up because these other ‘truths’ have been displayed. 3. ‘[T]he lie with the ounce of truth’: Lesbianism as discursive product in The Children’s Hour (Acting Edition, 1953) The 1953 edition of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour is usually referred to as the ‘Acting Edition’ because it is the revised version of the text which the playwright edited before its highly successful re-staging in 1952. The very existence of the two versions of The Children’s Hour begs the question of why a dramatic piece written in 1934 would be revisited by its author and, moreover, become a huge success eighteen years after its first performance in American theatres. Many scholars have deemed the answer a simple one: the play is structured around Mary’s slander of Karen and Martha on the grounds of lesbianism, the power of unproved words to destroy two people’s teaching careers and, by extension, their lives. The parallelism with the thriving House Un- American Activities Committee’s persecution of Communists and homosexuals during the early 1950s, at times based on outright defamation, has been noted by critics time and again (Wertheim 1982: 218; Adler 1999: 125; Spencer 2004: 52). This hypothesis seems to be further supported by the preface to the widely distributed Dramatists Play Service Inc. ‘Acting Edition’ which consists of a reprint of an article by Harry Gilroy first published in the New York Times in 1952. The piece is significantly entitled ‘The Bigger the Lie’ after Hellman’s statement in interview that “[i]t’s the results of her lie that make her [Mary] so dreadful – this is really not a play about lesbianism, but about a lie. The bigger the lie the better, as always” (Hellman 1981: 4). While the fact that the play is not about lesbianism but about a lie has hardly been contested, the lie to which Hellman referred has been unequivocally interpreted as Mary’s false indictment of Martha and Karen’s relationship as a homosexual one (Dolan 1990: 47; Spencer 2004: 53). However, much is gained by entertaining the possibility that the lie around which the play is structured is, in fact, the intensely homophobic (mis)construction of lesbianism at the time of the play’s production when psychiatrists such as Dr. Frank S. Caprio described homosexual women as willing and able to seduce “a young innocent girl” because they were “essentially sick individuals” (Caprio 1954: 304). The relevance to Hellman’s play of such a stereotyping of lesbians as women who hold the ability to seduce young girls and transform them into younger members of their ‘perverted ranks’ is quite evident. In the text, the potential disseminators of same-sex desire are in fact teachers who have a direct influence upon their boarding school’s young female pupils. Notably, in his seminal work Female Homosexuality: A Psychodynamic Study of Lesbianism (1954), Dr. Caprio singled out the ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 122 Mercè Cuenca and María Isabel Seguro importance of The Children’s Hour as a text which had “done much to enlighten thousands of American women regarding a problem that affects more women than is generally supposed” (Caprio 1954: 54). Although the influence of Dr. Caprio’s theories and ‘literary reviews’ could be devalued by arguing that they are only those of one professional, it is important to point out that his study on lesbianism was the only one of its kind to be published and widely distributed throughout the 1950s (Adams 1990: 266). Bearing in mind the popularity of Dr. Caprio’s study foregrounds two relevant facts in order to understand the success of Hellman’s text in post-war America: firstly, Female Homosexuality must have reproduced the circulating discourses on lesbianism which were largely believed by average American citizens and which The Children’s Hour ostensibly exemplified; secondly, lesbianism was an issue which worried the nation and, thus, a matter of cultural debate. Robert J. Corber argues in his article ‘Cold War Femme: Lesbian Visibility in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All about Eve’ (2005) that “[i]t is often emphasized that during the anti-homosexual witch hunts of the 1950s, more lesbians and gays lost their jobs in the federal government than did suspected communists and fellow travellers. Although this view of the 1950s is not unfounded, it glosses over the inconsistencies and contradictions in Cold War ideologies . . . Cold War anxieties about the instability of heterosexual identities” (3-4). Corber’s statement adequately describes the cause underlying the heterosexist scenario which Cold War America turned itself into after the Second World War. The necessity of (re)defining identity categories such as woman, feminine and heterosexual, after the destabilizing of the meaning of these terms during the conflict, foregrounded the fact that they were, in fact, constructs which could shift with time. The possible disruption of the equation of femaleness to femininity and to desire for the opposite sex was thus in the air. As Corber further argues, the fear of a possible subversion of the heterosexist status quo led the feminine lesbian, who could pass as heterosexual, to be homophobically constructed as a menacing figure for the very fabric of American society, solidly founded on nuclear family life (2005: 4). The feminine homosexual woman, usually referred to as femme, questioned the feasibility of defining woman as feminine and as heterosexual. Interestingly, in The Children’s Hour Karen tells her fiancé Cardin that the accusation of lesbianism which she and Martha have withstood has led her to realize that “every word has a new meaning. Child, love, lawyer, judge, friend, room, woman – . . . There are not many safe words any more. That we can’t move away from” (Hellman 1981: 62). If the characters in The Children’s Hour cannot escape the instability of linguistically-articulated identities, it is because, having become victims of prejudice themselves, they cannot believe in the main discourse which structured Cold War American heterosexism: homophobia. Seeking to stabilize heterosexual desire as normative meant that homosexuality was constituted into a homophobic fantasy in mainstream American culture. This process is described by Judith Butler in her article ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’ (1991) as the transition from homosexual practice to homophobic fantasy (20). As she further argues, homophobia may become a constituting fiction for heterosexual men and women, a way to define themselves as ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ‘Making Something Out of Nothing’ 123 seamless subjects with a stable identity against “a domain of unviable (un)subjects” (Butler 1991b: 20). Such a proposition is highly relevant to Hellman’s play since the foregrounding of homophobia as a founding fiction enables the dramatic plot to develop. Actually, the only description of lesbianism included in the text is the one Mary whispers to her grandmother, Mrs. Tilford – a description the audience never hears and which is solely constituted by the following stage directions: “Leans over back of Mrs. Tilford’s chair and begins whispering. At first the whisper is slow and hesitant, but it gradually works itself up to fast, excited talking” (Hellman 1981: 38). This wordless articulation is preceded by Mary’s repeated claims that she has seen and heard things she doesn’t understand, an exalted monologue peppered with the adjectives awful, unnatural and funny (Hellman 1981: 36-38). Clearly, Hellman relies on the audience’s implicit understanding of the ‘things’ Mary is referring to as homosexual acts. This indicates that the very silencing of lesbianism as the epitome of unnameable desire, which heterosexism imposed in Cold War America, made same-sex desire between women become a haunting issue for mainstream citizens. The lesbian’s ‘awfulness’, ‘funniness’ and ‘unnaturalness’ would only corroborate the role which homophobia played in constructing the homosexual woman as an invisible, but nonetheless threatening, presence. As Castle argues in the introduction to her volume The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture, “seeming obliviousness should not deceive us. Behind such silence, one can detect an anxiety too severe to allow for direct articulation” (1993: 6). Despite the fact that Hellman’s textual reference to lesbianism is indirect, examining the play within the lesbian literary framework of the 1950s sheds light on the extent to which The Children’s Hour may be reappraised as a contribution to lesbian visibility. After all, one should bear in mind that female homosexuality was not only a taboo subject in Cold War America but also a censored topic for publishing houses, which had to tailor the contents of explicitly lesbian works to avoid their banning. As Marijane Meaker explains in her introduction to the 2004 re-edition of Spring Fire, her lesbian pulp fiction novel originally published under the pseudonym Vin Packer in 1952, there were harsh restrictions placed on writers who wanted to broach lesbianism: namely, the works had to reproduce the homophobic discourses circulating on lesbians at the time. That is why they could not have a happy ending; homosexual women had to voice a rejection of their same-sex desire, on account of its “perverted nature”, and lesbians had to be described as either sick or crazy (Packer 2004: vi). Interestingly, Hellman’s play caters to all of these editorial requirements: the end is anything but happy, with Martha having shot herself after her voicing of her love and desire for Karen (Hellman 1981: 67) – a desire which she rejects because, in her own words, it makes her feel “sick and dirty” (Hellman 1981: 67). Should there be any doubts about lesbianism being equated with sickness, Karen’s fiancé, Cardin, makes the relation between both elements explicit when he tells his girlfriend that “I wanted to be a doctor because I don’t like sick people . . . I’m not going to be a sick man, and I’m not going to let you grow sick, either” (Hellman 1981: 62). It could therefore be argued that Hellman’s play was a natural choice for American theatres during the 1950s since the text reproduces all the homophobic fantasies on lesbians which mainstream audiences accepted as a matter of ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 124 Mercè Cuenca and María Isabel Seguro course at the time. In doing so, the text avoided any possible banning of the production or censoring of publication. Notwithstanding all this, Hellman’s ‘Acting Edition’ of The Children’s Hour offers much more than mere historiographical proof of the pervasiveness of homophobia in Cold War America. The playwright noted that she had wanted to operate a greater change in the text than she had accomplished by erasing the final dialogue of the work when Mrs. Tilford shows herself to be contrite because she has found out that her granddaughter’s accusations of lesbianism are, in fact, lies. However, in Hellman’s words, “I finally decided that a mistake was as much a part of you as a non-mistake and that I had better leave it alone before I ended up with nothing” (Bryer 1986: 111). Whether the passage was truly a mistake or not is beside the question; more interesting is considering how it provides a counterbalance to the deeply homophobic indictment of lesbianism which the play seems to support up to the very end. Having found out that Mary’s slander “wasn’t true”, Mrs. Tilford explains: “I’ve talked to Judge Potter. He has made all arrangements. There will be a public apology and an explanation” (Hellman 1981: 69). While Mrs. Tilford’s attempts to sanitize Karen and Martha’s reputation and her own conscience continue to dramatize homophobia, since Mrs. Tilford seeks redemption only because she believes Karen and Martha are not lesbians, the reader is left to wonder what Mrs. Tilford would have done if Mary’s accusations had been based on facts. Precisely because the answer that comes most readily to mind is that the old lady would have done nothing, and would probably not have grieved as much over Martha’s suicide, Hellman’s decision to keep this final dialogue in the ‘Acting Edition’ provides a powerful comment on the notorious cruelty of a society which bases its morality on hate and prejudice. Revealingly, a fragment of the last conversation between Karen and Martha also provides some room for hope: the former remarks that “it isn’t a new sin they tell us we’ve done. Other people aren’t destroyed by it” while Martha answers that “[t]hey are people who believe in it, who want it, who’ve chosen it for themselves. That must be very different” (Hellman 1981: 65). The possibility of the play’s being an indictment of homophobia, and not of lesbianism as a conscious choice is thus embedded in the text, whose lack of clarity with respect to the condemnation of female homosexuality is undoubtedly deliberate. Hellman’s play can also be read to include a statement on the power of literature as nurturing and even fostering otherness, creating an awareness of lesbianism which might not have originally been there. Martha’s assertion that “[t]here’s something in you and you don’t know anything about it because you don’t know it’s there. Suddenly a little girl gets bored and tells a lie – and there, that night, you see it for the first time, and you say it yourself” (Hellman 1981: 66-67) places Mary’s lie at the origin of her self- identification as a lesbian. Mary’s lie in turn is based upon the reproduction of her clandestine reading of Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). Hence, the reproduction of literary discourses on lesbianism is the very fabric of Mary’s slander and, eventually, leads to Martha’s self-discovery. The role of literature as a tool to enable awareness, a means of identification and refuge from the impending homophobia of the 1950s, is well documented in Lee Lynch’s article ‘Cruising the Libraries’, where the author states that “I had to find reflections of myself to be assured that I was a valuable human being and not alone in the world. . . . These are the words ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ‘Making Something Out of Nothing’ 125 which taught me who and what I was” (1992: 42). If The Children’s Hour can be read as an indictment of homophobia and an affirmation of the possibility of feeling and sharing same-sex desire despite social prejudice, it is feasible to consider the play as Hellman’s contribution to such an enabling body of literary work. Paraphrasing Martha’s words, The Children’s Hour may be summed up as a play representing a homophobic lie with an ounce of lesbian truth (Hellman 1981: 67). 4. Conclusions In her article ‘Sex, Lies, and Revisions: Historicizing Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour’ (2004), Jenny S. Spencer argues that “[g]iven its specific, and fairly well- documented, historical transformations . . . The Children’s Hour provides a model site for thinking about the questions and methods of historical theatre research and their relation to the processes of social change” (45). Indeed, as has been argued above, the two versions of Hellman’s text do provide a historical chronicle of social processes intimately related to the liberation of women’s social and sexual desires: while in the original 1934 edition of the play female homosexuality is drawn upon as a metaphorical tool to achieve ultimate feminine liberation from patriarchal constraints, the 1953 revised version of the text takes a further step in pointing towards the feasibility of structuring women’s actual lives around same-sex desire. The extent to which both editions of Hellman’s The Children’s Hour are subversive can be appreciated when one considers the negative connotations with which lesbianism was imbued during the 1930s and 1950s. If during the 1930s female homosexuality was socially constructed as a notorious consequence of feminism, thus becoming a homophobic fantasy meant to discredit the ideological advocacy for women’s rights, the 1950s were an especially ripe era for lesbian scapegoating, since American national ideology was equated with heterosexism. In the light of these historical backgrounds, we contend that Hellman’s use of lesbianism as an imaginary construction becomes a motif in both versions of The Children’s Hour, the use of which reveals its author’s wilful transgression of social mores regarding female homosexuality. In the original text, lesbianism has been argued to provide the means by which one of the main characters, Karen, realizes the potentially liberating possibilities of choosing to live beyond patriarchal expectations of womanhood. After revision, the play has been noted to validate same-sex desire between women as a feasible means to achieve feminine fulfilment. Hence, both versions of the text advocate lesbianism as a liberating fantasy for women in each specific historical context. By highlighting the role literature may play in enabling female readers’ awareness of lesbian love as a possibility, Hellman makes a statement on the importance of both reading and writing as active tools against women’s submission to patriarchal domination and against homophobia. Hence, while the 1934 and 1953 versions of The Children’s Hour offer divergent points of view on the liberating potential of lesbianism – the former text impinging on the metaphorical dimension of female same-sex desire, the latter making a far more explicit case for female homosexuality – both texts draw on love between women as an imaginary site from which to resist the patriarchal containment of women’s social and ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 126 Mercè Cuenca and María Isabel Seguro sexual options. Such a figuration of lesbianism as a liberating imaginary site beyond normative social discourses is described by Annamarie Jagose as the ‘lesbian utopics’ which characterize patriarchal ideology, and thus as an ideological fault in the mainstream social imaginary. As she points out, “[t]his space held by ‘lesbian,’ at once liberatory and elsewhere, is a utopic space. . . . [G]iven the utopic site’s disavowed dependency on those very economies from which it distinguishes itself, all these spaces converge in the impossible dream of exteriority” (1994: 2). The relevance of Jagose’s theory to Hellman’s play cannot be underestimated since The Children’s Hour articulates female homosexuality as the imaginary projection of a child’s mind which has been stimulated by fiction. Thus, Mary’s construction of lesbianism is represented throughout as exceeding the limits of realism but, paradoxically, is also shown to be grounded on an accurate perception of facts. That is why female same-sex desire becomes, in the text, a site which negotiates the wavering limits between the condemnatory fantasy of social homophobia and the laudatory imagination of individual liberty. Focusing on the latter aspect of Hellman’s play opens the possibility of rereading both versions of The Children’s Hour (1934, 1953) as brave attempts to vindicate the positive potential of same-sex desire for women, instead of dismissing them as versions of a text which “plays into homophobic rules” (Fleche 1996: 26). Works Cited Adams, Kate 1992. ‘Making the World Safe for the Missionary Position: Images of the Lesbian in Post World-War II America’. Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Radical Revisions. Eds. Karla Jay and Joanne Glasgow. London: Onlywomen P: 255-274. Adler, Thomas P. 1999: ‘Lillian Hellman: Feminism, Formalism, and Politics’. Brenda Murphy, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.118-33. Bryer, Jackson R., ed. 1986: Conversations with Lillian Hellman. Jackson and London: UP of Mississippi. Butler, Judith 1990a: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge. ––––– 1991b: ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’. Diana Fuss, ed. Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. New York and London: Routledge. 13-31. Caprio, Frank S. 1954: Female Homosexuality: A Psychodynamic Study of Lesbianism. New York: The Citadel P. Castle, Terry 1993: ‘A Polemical Introduction; or, the Ghost of Greta Garbo’. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia UP. 1- 20. Corber, Robert J. 2005: ‘Cold War Femme: Lesbian Visibility in Joseph L. Mankiewickz’s All about Eve’. GLQ 11.1: 1-22. Dolan, Jill 1990: ‘“Lesbian” Subjectivity in Realism: Dragging at the Margins of Structure and Ideology’. Sue-Ellen Case, ed. Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP. 42-53. Ellis, Havelock 1995 (1908): ‘Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sexual Inversion’. Regina Barreca, ed. Desire and Imagination. Classic Essays in Sexuality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 380- 413. Faderman, Lillian 1992 (1991): Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Penguin Books. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ‘Making Something Out of Nothing’ 127 Fleche, Anne 1996: ‘The Lesbian Rule: Lillian Hellman and the Measures of Realism’. Modern Drama 39: 16-30. Gilroy, Harry 1981 (1952): ‘The Bigger the Lie’. The Children’s Hour. Lillian Hellman. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc. 3-5. Hellman, Lillian 1979 (1934): The Children’s Hour. Six Plays by Lillian Hellman. New York: Vintage Books. ––––– 1981 (1953): The Children’s Hour. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc. Jagose, Annamarie 1994: ‘Lesbians are Elsewhere’. Lesbian Utopics. New York and London: Routledge. 1-24. Lynch, Lee 1992 (1990): ‘Cruising the Libraries’. Karla Jay and Joanne Glasgow, eds. Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Radical Revisions. London: Onlywomen P: 39-48. Packer, Vin 2004 (1952): Introduction. Spring Fire. San Francisco: Cleis P. v-ix. Sedgwick, Eve K. 1985: Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York and Chichester: Columbia UP. Shakespeare, William 1985: The Merchant of Venice. Arden Edition. Ed. John Russell Brown. London and New York: Routledge. Sinfield, Alan 1999: Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theatre in the Twentieth Century. New Haven and London: Yale UP. Spencer, Jenny S. 2004: ‘Sex, Lies, and Revisions: Historicizing Hellman’s The Children’s Hour’. Modern Drama 47.1: 44-65. Titus, Mary 1991: ‘Murdering the Lesbian: Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour’. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 10.2: 215-32. Tuhkanen, Mikko 2002: ‘Breeding (and) Reading: Lesbian Knowledge, Eugenic Discipline, and The Children’s Hour’. Modern Fiction Studies 48.4: 1001-40. Wertheim, Albert 1982: ‘The McCarthy Era and the American Theatre’. Theatre Journal 34.2: 211- 22. Received 16 February 2007 Revised version received 5 December 2007 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 115–127 ISSN 0210-6124 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 STANCE AND ACADEMIC PROMOTIONALISM: A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COMPARISON IN THE SOFT SCIENCES Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría University of Zaragoza [email protected] Stance in academic prose has been a major focus of research attention in the past decade. However, studies on stance in the soft sciences have been relatively scarce compared to those in the hard sciences. By comparing two disciplines in the soft sciences, this paper explores the semantic and syntactic profiles of stance adjectives in research article introductions – a section in which writers are expected to find a research space in order to convince readers of the value and usefulness of their research. The paper also examines the functional uses of stance adjectives as rhetorical devices that writers employ to assess research processes and give significance to research outcomes. Quantitative results show that stance adjectives share relatively similar semantic and syntactic profiles in both disciplines. However, the rhetorical analysis of stance adjectives suggests different discipline-specific conventions as regards the use of adjectives within the Create-a- Research-Space model established for writing introductions. These differences might be attributed to the specific nature of knowledge of each discipline as well as to the established conventions for research writing in each disciplinary community. Key words: stance; evaluative adjectives; soft sciences; academic promotionalism; academic rhetoric; disciplinary writing 1. Introduction To the question of how novice researchers should write academic papers, influential stylebooks recommend the canons of clarity, completeness, impartiality, accuracy and objectivity (Barras 1987; Turk and Kirkman 1996). More specifically, style guides addressed to scholars in the hard sciences claim that the main purpose of research report writing is “to explain to others in the field what the objectives, methods and findings of the study were” (Weissberg and Bucker 1990: 1).1 The contrary is said to 1 Becher and Trowler (2001: 14) distinguish between hard sciences (i.e. those belonging to the scientific, technological and biomedical fields) and soft sciences (i.e. those belonging to the social sciences, education, humanities and arts fields). As these authors contend, this distinction is grounded in the fact that disciplinary communities of scientists use different “methodological 130 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría lead to speculation, unsupported claims, overgeneralisations and, broadly speaking, a lack of scientific rigour. Along similar lines, style manuals for the soft sciences explain that since academic prose disseminates new knowledge by focusing on entities, events and processes it should display an object-oriented character. In this vein, Wilkinson specifically remarks that academic writing “cannot, therefore, be the vehicle for the writer’s personal relation to the objects studied or personal objectives in the research” (1991: 11). However, a long-standing debate on the objective/subjective nature of research prose has been opened by linguistic research in the past decade. This research strand has investigated several structural, discoursal and functional features of linguistic expressions of writers’ subjectivity and stance in published academic papers (Hunston 1993; Hyland 1998; Hunston and Thompson 2000; Conrad and Biber 2000; Biber 2006). Other studies have paid attention to the pragmatic devices and interpersonal mechanisms that scholars use to interact with audiences (Meyer 1997; Varttala 2003; Markannen and Schröder 1997; Hyland 2002). Intercultural rhetoric research has also been prolific in studies of stance in academic writing, ranging from analyses of personal pronouns (Breivega, Dahl and Flottum 2002), metatextual references (Mauranen 1993) and metacomments (Dahl 2004) to examinations of epistemic indicators and modality expressions (Vassileva 2001; Salager-Meyer 2005), among other stance markers. This broad theoretical spectrum may be taken as evidence that, although academic writing obviously takes objective positions when reporting new knowledge, it also contains subjective elements that lay overt the writers’ stance. 2. Overview of the study: the lexical marking of stance Style guides for research writing in the fields of the soft sciences tend to value content over form and emphasise that the main focus of academic prose should be conceptual. Wilkinson, for instance, explicitly recommends the avoidance of evaluative adjectives such as certain, considerable, dramatic, fair, good, great, marked, poor, possible because they are “too weak and too imprecise for use in scientific writing” (1991: 451). Notwithstanding the valuable guidance that stylebooks offer to those in need of being acculturated in the practices of academic writing, grammars of contemporary English have specifically noted that writers’ overt positioning in academic prose is linguistically enacted through “the use of an evaluative lexical item, usually an adjective, main verb, or noun” (Biber et al 1999: 968). Relying on cross-register comparison, Biber et al further remark that the most common predicative adjectives (difficult, important, likely, necessary, possible, true, etc.) are used as explicit indicators of evaluation in academic prose, and that “several of the most common attributive adjectives in academic prose approaches, conceptual and theoretical frameworks” depending on the specific nature of the knowledge. Applied linguistics and information science, the two disciplines analysed in this paper, fall into the category of the soft sciences (cf. also UNESCO international nomenclature for the classification of these humanities disciplines as 5701- Applied Linguistics). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 131 [are] also evaluative” (1999: 968-69) – for example, adjectives such as appropriate, good/best, important, practical, and useful. Lexical markers of stance have been a major focus of attention of scholarly research in the past decade. Among others, Grabe and Kaplan (1997) have compared the use of stance adjectives in professional and popular writing in the hard sciences. Thetela (1997) has examined lexical evaluation in several disciplines of the soft sciences, the type of entity to which evaluation is attached and its ascribed values. Shaw (2003) has carried out an analysis of stance adjectives in introductory sections of articles on economics, Stotesbury (2003) has compared attitudinal lexis in abstracts of humanities, social and natural sciences, and Biber has studied complement clauses “controlled by adjectives” (usually in extraposed constructions) and their functional role in evaluating “the likelihood of information, or the desirability/possibility of some action or event” (2006: 110). Because studies on stance in the soft sciences have been relatively scarce compared with the numerous investigations carried out on disciplines in the hard sciences, this paper sets out to explore the extent to which writers in the soft sciences – more specifically, those in the disciplines of applied linguistics and information science – use stance adjectives in the introductions of their papers, a section in which writers are expected to highlight the significance of the new findings in order to persuade readers of the value of these findings. The reason for selecting these two disciplines is grounded in Becher and Trowler’s (2001) classification of disciplinary communities in the soft sciences according to the nature of the knowledge they deal with. These authors distinguish between soft-pure disciplines and soft-applied disciplines. Knowledge in the soft-pure disciplines is defined as “reiterative, holistic, organic/river-like, concerned with particulars, qualities, complication; personal, value-laden; dispute over criteria for knowledge verification and obsolescence; lack of consensus over significant questions to address; results in understanding/interpretation” (Becher and Trowler 2001: 36). In the soft-applied disciplines, knowledge is “functional, utilitarian (know-how via soft knowledge), concerned with enhancement of [semi-]professional practice, uses case studies and case law to a large extent, results in protocols/procedures” (2001: 36). Following this distinction, I initially hypothesised that applied linguistics and information science, both of them considered to be soft-applied disciplines because of their experimental nature of knowledge, were going to behave similarly as regards the use of evaluative adjectives despite the recommendation of style guides to adhere to objectivity when reporting on experimental research. To validate the hypothesis, this paper quantifies the presence of stance adjectives – and other semantic categories of adjectives – in the introductory sections of research articles in the two disciplines. The paper also describes the syntactic associations of stance adjectives across the selected disciplines and the way these associations build up what Hunston and Sinclair define as a “local grammar of evaluation” (2000: 74). In a qualitative, context-sensitive analysis, the paper looks at the functional behaviour of stance adjectives across the rhetorical moves established for writing introductions (i.e. Swales’ 1990 Create-a-Research-Space [CARS] model). By this means, it explores ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 132 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría possible explanations of the rhetorical functions that stance adjectives perform in the transmission of knowledge in each discipline. 3. Corpus and methodology To develop the present research a pilot corpus of 20 research article introductions from the above mentioned disciplines was selected. On a broader scale, the selection of this corpus was intended to determine whether these disciplines were suitable for the compilation of the humanities component of SERAC (the Spanish-English Research Article Corpus), a corpus specifically designed for contrastive analyses of stance markers in academic prose.2 The texts on applied linguistics were taken from the Applied Linguistics Journal (numbered AL/1 to AL/10). The texts on information science were selected from the Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology (JASIST/1 to JASIST/10). Both journals operate on a double-blind peer-review process. The corpus consisted of a total of 15,683 words, relatively evenly distributed across the two subcorpora (8,034 words for the AL subcorpus and 7,649 for the JASIST one). Only the introductions of these texts were selected for the analysis of stance adjectives since, as Swales remarks, this section privileges “an environment in which originality (especially in theory) tends to be highly prized, competition tends to be fierce, and academic promotionalism and boosterism are strong” (2004: 226). As such, introductions were assumed to contain a fair number of these stance markers. Because stance adjectives are highly context-sensitive items, the frequency count and the comparative distribution of semantic groupings of adjectives in the two disciplines were carried out manually and intuitively. Later, following Swales and Burke (2003), stance adjectives were further categorised into two sub-groups: relevance and assessment evaluators. Colleagues and English native scholars supervised the categorisation of adjectives and provided useful help in those cases where semantic categories of adjectives overlapped. Grammars and dictionaries were also consulted to corroborate the decisions. For the purpose of comparison, the frequency counts of the taxonomy of adjectives in the introductions were all normalised on a 1,000-word basis. Since the occurrence of adjectival evaluators proved to be statistically significant when compared with the other semantic groupings of adjectives, it was deemed necessary to identify recurrent syntactic associations of stance adjectives. The identification of these patterns of evaluation sought to provide a preliminary description of the preferred lexico-grammar of stance in each discipline. Although corpus limitations for substantive comparison were acknowledged, implications regarding how stance adjectives vary syntactically in the two soft sciences disciplines were expected to be found at this stage. Finally, lexico-grammatical patterns containing stance adjectives were analysed in context. More specifically, the distribution of relevance and assessment evaluators across each move of the Create-a-Research-Space 2 This paper is a contribution to projects ‘El inglés y la ciencia: la voz del autor en la expresión y difusión del conocimiento científico’ (Spanish Ministry of Education, HUM2005-03646) and ‘Interpersonalidad en el lenguaje académico escrito’ (Government of Aragón, 245-100). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 133 model was quantified and possible explanations of the rhetorical intentions behind the use of stance adjectives were tentatively provided. 4. Results and discussion 4.1. Semantic categories of stance adjectives in introductions As a preliminary research step, a total of 823 adjectives were manually identified in the corpus. Following Biber et al (1999: 512-13), two major groups of adjectival tokens were established: descriptors (437 tokens) and classifiers (386 tokens). The first group comprised size/amount descriptors (small, high, low, etc.), time descriptors (new, old, etc.), and evaluative descriptors (good, important, possible, likely, necessary, etc.). In the second major group both relational classifiers (used to delimit the referent of a noun, e.g. same, general, basic, following, etc.), and topical classifiers (delimiting the domain of a head noun, e.g. local, physical, social, etc.) were included. In the total count a small number of adjectives were found to behave both as a classifier and as a descriptor when looked at within a context of use. This was the case of adjectives such as different, main, specific, or particular, whose contextual meanings conveyed evaluative overtones. These instances were thus counted as evaluative markers. Table 1 below displays the distribution of the semantic domains of adjectives in the two subcorpora.3 Raw number of tokens, frequency per 1,000 words and total frequency are shown in the table. Descriptors Classifiers Totals Descriptors Evaluators Relational c. Topical c. AL 26 182 115 33 356 3.24 22.65 14.31 4.11 44.31 7.30% 51.12% 32.30% 9.28% 100% JASIST 31 198 160 78 467 4.05 25.89 20.92 10.20 61.05 6.64% 42.40% 34.26% 16.70% 100% Table 1: Distribution of semantic categories of adjectives in AL and JASIST introductions 3 It might be thought, at first sight, that the statistical significance of the differences in distribution could be assessed by means of the chi-square test. However, this test is appropriate only when the data points, both between cells in the contingency table and within them, are independent of each other. Although for the data reported here there is independence between cells, the data points represented in each cell are not independent, since many observations are derived from each text, and some texts might well contribute far more instances to a given cell than others, the effect of this being exaggerated by the small sample used in this pilot study. For this reason, the differences in distribution have not been tested statistically. Here, I would like to acknowledge the valuable guidance provided by the Atlantis specialist in the statistical procedures of this paper. I also wish to thank the anonymous reader who gave generous help in improving the precision of expression in the text. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 134 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría Comparatively, the two disciplines showed a relatively similar distribution of descriptors and classifiers. As regards classifiers, relational adjectives (basic, common, general, single, various, etc.) accounted for approximately 30% of the total occurrences in both AL and JASIST, and were used to restrict a noun’s referent in relation to other referents. Much lower frequencies were found in the semantic category of topical classifiers (formal, theoretical, thematic, analytical, conceptual, etc.), with a greater use of adjectives delimiting the domain of a noun in JASIST (16.70%) than in AL (9.28%). As for the group of descriptors, both disciplines showed a very low occurrence of time/size descriptors (previous, recent, subsequent, large, etc.), with a frequency of 7.30% in AL and 6.64% in JASIST, and nil counts of colour descriptors used for describing qualities of Things. Interestingly, the sub-category of evaluators was the most frequent semantic type of adjectives in the two subcorpora (51.12% and 42.40% of the total number of adjectives in AL and in JASIST, respectively). In addition, and consistent with Thetela (1997) and Pérez-Llantada and Neumann (2006), a small repertoire of evaluative descriptors (different, important, possible, likely, difficult, better, good, best, clear and necessary) appears to be used by the two groups of scholars. This selection of adjectives accounted for 30% of the total occurrences of evaluators in the corpus, which might indicate that both AL and JASIST writers tend to select this small range of adjectives for assessing entities, facts and processes or when emphasising their value or usefulness. Following Swales and Burke’s (2003) taxonomy of evaluative adjectives in academic writing and speech, two types of evaluators were quantified – those of relevance and those of assessment. Relevance adjectives are used by writers to highlight research outcomes (central, important, main, major, relevant, unique, crucial, essential, fundamental, significant, considerable, critical, etc.). Assessment adjectives help writers assess procedural aspects of the research process (good, better, best, interesting, difficult, bad, useful, problematic, effective, necessary, complex, appropriate, etc.). Table 2 shows the distribution of the two groups of stance adjectives in the AL and JASIST texts. Relevance adjectives Assessment adjectives AL JASIST AL JASIST Raw number of tokens 97 112 85 86 Frequency per 1,000 words 11.95 14.64 10.70 11.24 Total % in subcorpus 53.30% 56.57% 46.70% 43.43% Total tokens 209 171 Frequency per 1,000 words 13.33 10.90 Total % 55.00% 45.00% Table 2: Distribution of relevance and assessment stance adjectives across disciplines Comparative totals indicate that relevance adjectives are slightly more frequent than those of assessment in the pilot corpus, while the comparative frequencies of the two categories of evaluators are also relatively similar across the two disciplines. This context-sensitive analysis of the relevance/assessment categorisation echoes Thetela’s ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 135 distinction between “topic-oriented evaluation” (TOE) and “research-oriented evaluation” (ROE) and, within ROE, the distinction between “research-product” and “research-process evaluative items” (1997: 113). While relevance adjectives in the corpus primarily work for evaluating research products (i.e. results, findings, data, etc.), assessment adjectives tend to function as linguistic markers for evaluating research processes, methods and procedures. Although plausible emendations should be acknowledged, the relevance vs. assessment taxonomy proved significant to complement the study of stance adjectives with the analysis of lexico-grammatical patterns of evaluation across the two disciplines (section 4.2) and of the rhetorical intentions of these adjectives across the three moves within introductions (section 4.3). 4.2. Syntactic profile of stance adjectives in introductions Having identified similar trends as regards the frequency and semantic profile of stance adjectives in the two disciplines, the second stage of the research looked at the syntactic behaviour of these adjectives. Syntactically, the two disciplines showed a clear preference for attributive rather than predicative positions. In quantitative terms, evaluative adjectives were considerably more frequent in attributive (69.21% of the total occurrences, and a frequency of 16.76) than in predicative positions (30.79%, and a frequency of 7.46). A relatively similar distribution of attributive vs. predicative positions (65.93% vs. 34.07% in AL, and 72.22% vs. 27.78% in JASIST) was observed in the two disciplines. These data seem to support Biber et al’s (1999: 506) claim that attributes are much more frequent than predicative adjectives in expository written registers such as academic prose. The subsections below detail how stance adjectives – both attributive and predicative – combine with other linguistic elements, building up recurrent patterns of evaluation. 4.2.1. Syntactic behaviour of attributive evaluators Nominal pre-modification is the most common syntactic role of evaluative attributes in the two disciplines. Pre-head modifiers describe the quality of a head noun or nominal expression, which, in the selected texts, is usually an abstract noun (a good coverage, an important role, an attractive idea, particular interest, etc.). Though the size of the corpus is very limited, it is interesting to note that the AL introductions seem to show a preference for linguistic combinations with the relevance adjective important (an important assumption, an important connection, an important difference, an important reason). In contrast, JASIST introductions make frequent use of different with evaluative overtones (different indicators, different patterns, different conceptualisation, different levels of expertise). Also, the syntactic pattern formed by two attributive evaluators (long and often tedious process; a complex and multifaceted construct; gradual and unruly nature; a further, more systematic investigation) only occurs in AL. For purposes of cohesion, evaluative attributors usually combine with nouns performing a phoric function in discourse (issue, idea, focus, question, etc.), as in [t]he major focus of this study is to examine, […] has raised a critical issue of how to […]). As ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 136 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría detailed in section 4.3, these evaluative units perform pragmatically as they allow writers to place important ideas at the end of the clause, thereby giving greater emphasis to them. Other common linguistic items clustering with pre-head modifiers are adverbial intensifiers (a potentially important marker; a completely different problem; very great control, etc.). Writers in the two disciplines tend to use these stance adverbs to enhance the semantic force of the adjective, that is to say, to emphasise the writer’s qualification of a Thing when projecting his/her stance at a textual level. Stance is also conveyed through noun phrases with an abstract noun head which is post-modified by an of-phrase embedding an evaluative pre-modifier. Word combinations such as identification of relevant items, a problem of central interest, questions of paramount interest, etc., may illustrate a common tendency in the two disciplines to rely on evaluative adjectives for the purpose of enhancing the value of the research reported in the paper. For similar communicative intentions, evaluative attributes in the two disciplines accompany a head noun which is also pre-modified by a classifier adjective, the latter being most frequently a topical classifier (vital strategic importance; unacceptable computational complexity; tedious physical details). The above observations suggest that the two disciplines share a similar lexico- grammar of stance, which is mostly built upon attributive adjectives. Minor discipline- specific preferences such as the choices of evaluative attributors and the use of double attributive evaluation patterns in the AL introductions would need to be corroborated with a larger sample of texts. 4.2.2. Syntactic behaviour of predicative evaluators Quantitatively, the two disciplines displayed very low frequencies of stance adjectives in predicative positions (only 30.79% of the total number of evaluators). Also, a different repertoire of linguistic items was noticed in the analysis of predicative modifiers in each discipline. While the post-modifying adjectives interesting, critical and crucial appear to be preferred linguistic choices for the JASIST writers, the AL scholars preferred difficult, likely, better, and necessary for noun post-modification. Future research should reveal whether these observations might entail the existence of a discipline-specific repertoire of stance post-modifiers in the rhetorical practices of these two soft sciences. Two recurrent syntactic patterns convey authorial stance through predicative evaluators. The first pattern is that of ‘anticipatory it + copula verb + evaluative adjective + to-inf./that-clause’. This syntactic construction, in which heavier constituents are placed at the end of the clause, allows writers to thematise attitudinal meaning when expressing a value judgement towards the new findings. In both disciplines, impersonal it-patterns combine with relevance and assessment adjectives modified by to-infinitive constructions to express the writer’s evaluation of research processes (it is difficult to test; it is interesting to compare; it is thus critical to develop), and with likelihood adjectives followed by that-clauses conveying the writer’s evaluation of research outcomes (such as it is probable that; it is likely that; it is certain that). The second recurring pattern is that formed by ‘nominal expression + copula verb/hinge + evaluative adjective’. Subject predicatives appear both in the AL ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 137 introductions (the role of language play in SLL is facilitative, though not necessary; the treatment of personality has been inconsistent) and in JASIST (research on this issue is critical; […] that was relevant to the topic). In both disciplines, the predicative adjective is often preceded by adverbs qualifying the writer’s value judgement ([…] are particularly interesting to study; these factors are equally important). At other times, the adjective is complemented by a to-infinitive when the writers evaluate research processes (these theoretical models are difficult to quantify; very hard to publish; very difficult to find). It is worth noting that the intensifying adverb very recurs in process- oriented evaluation and that it stands as the most common stance adverbial in the AL introductions. In sum, the syntactic description of stance adjectives suggests that both attributive and predicative adjectives should not be regarded in isolation but rather as building up a specific lexico-grammar of evaluation in the introductory sections of research articles. Future comparative studies across these soft-applied sciences should confirm whether the linguistic preferences in terms of syntactic positions, recurring lexical choices and collocational units of stance adjectives commented above are significant in a larger corpus. 4.3. Functional variation of stance adjectives in introductions On both theoretical and pedagogical grounds, Swales (1990, 2004) and Swales and Feak (1994) represent a major contribution to the consolidation of information conventions in research article sections. These authors establish three main rhetorical moves in the so called ‘CARS (Create-a-Research-Space) model’ established for writing introductions (Swales and Feak 1994: 174-75): Move 1 sets up the research territory, Move 2 establishes a niche or gap in previous research and Move 3 occupies the niche or gap. As such, the rationale of this information organisation convention brings to the fore the need for persuasion for reasons of “academic promotionalism and boosterism” (Swales 2004: 226). Academic writers rely on stance adjectives either for highlighting the new knowledge or for assessing research processes. By this means, they create a research space for the purpose of convincing the expert audience of the significance of the findings reported in the paper. Furthering the semantic taxonomy of evaluative adjectives described in section 4.1, Table 3 shows the occurrence of relevance and assessment adjectives across each CARS move as well as the total frequency per move of each type of adjectives in the corpus and in the two subcorpora. Total frequencies per move (cf. right-hand column of Table 3) reveal a higher occurrence of relevance adjectives in Moves 1 and 3 but a slightly higher occurrence of assessment adjectives in Move 2. This distribution of adjectives seems to correlate with the rhetorical intentions of each CARS move: claiming centrality of the topic that the research article discusses (Move 1), conveying authorial stance by showing that the author is knowledgeable about the state of the matter (Move 2), and highlighting the new findings and promoting both research claims and the researcher him/herself (Move 3). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 138 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría AL JASIST Total frequencies R A R A R A Move 1 25 25 39 21 64 46 3.11 3.11 5.10 2.75 4.08 2.93 50.00% 50.00% 65.00% 35.00% 58.18% 41.82% Move 2 40 36 10 22 50 58 4.98 4.48 1.31 2.88 3.19 3.69 52.63% 47.37% 31.25% 68.75% 46.30% 53.70% Move 3 32 24 63 43 95 67 3.98 2.99 8.24 5.62 6.06 4.27 57.14% 42.86% 59.43% 40.57% 58.64% 41.36% Table 3: Relevance (R) and assessment (A) adjectives across CARS moves As far as the two disciplines are concerned, the AL texts show the highest frequencies of stance adjectives, both relevance and assessment, in Move 2. In the comparison of the two types of adjectives across moves, relevance evaluators are slightly more common in Moves 2 and 3 and score similar to assessment adjectives in Move 1. In the JASIST texts, the highest frequencies of stance adjectives appear in Move 3, followed by Move 1. Across moves, relevance adjectives outnumber assessment qualifiers in Moves 1 and 3, while assessment evaluators score double than relevance adjectives in Move 2. Using rhetorical analysis, the following subsection describes the functional work of stance adjectives across CARS moves in each discipline and gives possible explanations for discipline-specific rhetorical conventions in the use of these adjectives. 4.3.1. Functional role of stance adjectives in the AL texts In terms of rhetorical organisation, the AL introductions first provide the general theoretical background of the topic, and then present the literature review to finally lead readers to a specific reference to the research presented in the paper. These three sections would correspond, broadly speaking, to the three moves of the CARS framework, but none the less seem to represent less clear-cut moves than those found in the JASIST introductions. The following context-sensitive observations were drawn regarding the functional variability of relevance and assessment adjectives in the AL subcorpus. In Move 1, the AL writers provide an introductory sentence that serves to establish the ‘research territory’ (i.e. sharing background knowledge with their readers). Seven out of the ten introductions claim centrality of the topic by means of relevance adjectives, both in attributive and predicative positions: (1) The Noticing Hypothesis has been a driving force in advancing research on explicit vs. implicit learning (AL/5) (2) Language play in general has long been recognised as important for the development and learning […] (AL/8) ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 139 In Move 2 writers summarise previous research and anticipate present research by extending a finding. Nine out of the ten studies are a continuation of an existing line of enquiry, which might explain why Move 2 is rich in assessment and relevance adjectives. Through stance adjectives, both functioning as subject predicatives and nominal pre-modifiers, the AL writers assess the value and usefulness of previous research when referring to previous research knowledge on the specific topic of the paper: (3) Intuitively, this approach to evaluating texts seems to be very satisfactory. (AL/2) (4) The intrinsic and extrinsic orientations of motivation, as conceptualized in self- determination theory, constitute a useful framework for studying motivation in educational contexts. (AL/4) (5) Also, it has been documented that private language rehearsal, that is private language play is an important feature of learners’ acquisition. (AL/7) One of the AL writers uses stance adjectives profusely in Move 2. By explicitly acknowledging the difficulty of controlling several research processes, the writer seems to anticipate to readers that what is being reported in the paper intends to cover a research gap (literally, a widely acknowledged problem). In any case, the abundance of evaluative adjectives in this particular extract is more likely to be attributed to the individual style of the writer when projecting his opinion in the text: (6) It is difficult to get texts […]. It is difficult to see how the occurrence […] it is however very difficult to test claims […]. It is very difficult to set up large groups […] and it is very difficult to find an example […]. Again, this is not surprising. A widely acknowledged problem in experimental research is that studies which fail to show significant results are very hard to publish, and for this reason, studies where LFP appears not to be performing successfully are much less likely to be published than studies where it has been used successfully. (AL/2) In the literature review section of the introductions both relevance and assessment adjectives help the AL writers maintain the argumentative flow. By anticipating for readers the shift from Move 2 to Move 3, evaluative adjectives not only act “to present information through the organization of the text itself (on the autonomous plane)” but also “to engage readers as to how they should understand it (on the interactive plane)” (Hyland 2005: 8). The examples below, for instance, have a recapitulating/summarising function which helps readers make a connection between the problem and the solution that the writer is going to present. At the same time, through the use of adjectives the writers seek to draw their readers towards a similar line of thought: (7) The intrinsic and extrinsic orientations of motivation […] constitute a useful framework for studying motivation in educational contexts. […]. The major focus of this study is to examine the relationship of motivation to actual learning processes. (AL/4) (8) On a theoretical note, language play can thus be seen as an important element in language learning. There is, however, very little empirical work on […]. The present ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 140 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría study attempts to situate children’s spontaneous language play and L2 learning […] (AL/7) In Move 3, the AL writers occupy the research niche by giving the purpose of the present research and describing it. Four out of the ten writers explicitly use relevance and assessment adjectives in this move to validate the new knowledge ([t]he major focus of this study is to examine […], [o]ur starting point is that it is axiomatic that […]). The remaining six writers rather seem to avoid evaluative remarks and opt for ‘voiceless’ statements in which stance is kept to a minimum: (9) Since it is theoretically plausible that effective use of learning strategies may sustain motivation in language learning, this study will explore […] (AL/4) (10) The purpose of this paper is to explore […] and I focus further on one specific aspect of […] (AL/6) This authorial positioning is often mitigated by a hedged discourse which acts as a face- saving strategy when claiming centrality of findings. As in the examples below, combinations of impersonal anticipatory-it patterns with hedges such as conditionals, modals and epistemic lexical verbs might suggest that their writing conventions recommend toning down authorial remarks when stating the purpose of the research in the paper in Move 3. The use of tentative language reveals a very different interpersonal positioning to that found in the JASIST writers (see subsection 4.3.2): (11) In view of the growing importance of this kind of research, it would be advisable to pursue the possible constraints of ID variables on the processing of L1 pragmatic input. As a follow-up study to Takahashi (2001), the current investigation tends to examine […] (AL/5) (12) More specifically, in this paper, I hope to show how advice resisting is accomplished in and through talk. (AL/6) (13) Since this was our first investigation of E&M instruction of vocabulary, it seemed prudent that we should focus on unitary words of apparent high tractability. (AL/10) In all, both assessment and relevance adjectives, being most common in Move 2 of the AL texts, function to convey a critical stance and foreground the new research outcomes. Rather than making negative comments about previous research, the AL writers use positive adjectives to evaluate these studies. Accordingly, the main rhetorical function of stance adjectives does not seem to be that of creating a research gap but of validating previous research to offer the continuation of a line of enquiry. It is also worth noting that in this particular discipline the expression of stance through relevance adjectives in Move 3 is often mitigated with hedging devices. As stated above, the combination of hedging devices with attitudinal markers could be indicative of a particular writing convention in the discipline of applied linguistics – namely developing a critical voice yet conveying pragmatic politeness towards the expert readership. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 141 4.3.2. Functional role of stance adjectives in the JASIST texts As opposed to the AL texts, the JASIST introductions prove to be very systematic in terms of rhetorical organisation as all of them stick very clearly to the three main moves of the CARS model. In a closer contextual analysis, the functional distribution of adjectives across these moves displays the following characteristics. In Move 1, information scientists mostly have recourse to relevance adjectives (central, relevant, complex, critical, integral) in order to establish the research territory. This rhetorical preference helps writers give emphasis to their claims and provide centrality to the theoretical frame of reference. The ten introductions use an evaluative opening statement containing a relevance adjective that foregrounds the significance of the research-related entity being judged by the writer. See, for instance, the following examples: (14) Identification of relevant items in large information collections has been a problem of central interest in the information systems area. (JASIST/6) (15) The spread of end-user database applications has raised a critical issue of how to […] (JASIST/7) (16) With society’s increasing dependence on Internet search engines, it becomes important to understand how users utilize these sites […] (JASIST/9) As also happens with the AL subcorpus, Move 2 in the JASIST introductions links what has been researched on (Move 1) to what is going to be researched on (Move 3), and also serves to invite readers to share the author’s critical view towards previous research. While the AL writers relied on the literature to offer a continuation of previous research, the JASIST scholars rely on the literature to indicate a research gap. This gap is indicated by attributive adjectives conveying negative assessment and making explicit the inconsistency of previous research findings (serious problems, unacceptable computational complexity, poor fault tolerance, etc.); to a lesser extent, predicative adjectives are also used for similar purposes. Adhering to Thetela’s (1997) definition of research-oriented evaluation (ROE), the adjectives italicised below specifically evaluate research-process entities: (17) However, the treatment of personality has been inconsistent especially within the communication sciences (JASIST/3) (18) However, such an assumption may not be valid. […] In fact, over the past few years, there have been many ineffective, dwindling CN services […] (JASIST/4) (19) […] a systematic methodology is still not clear. (JASIST/6) All the JASIST writers use Move 2 not to extend a previous research finding, as the AL scholars do, but to criticise problems or shortcomings in previous studies. By this means, statements in Move 2 implicitly suggest to readers that there is a need for carrying out improved research processes: (20) Often, researchers use differing strategies, based on different conceptualizations, which result in nongeneralizable findings (JASIST/3) (21) This gap in knowledge is increasingly problematic. (JASIST/7) ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 142 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría (22) Nevertheless, it has still been necessary to make such metadata more interoperable and endurable, or more reliable. (JASIST/10) Following this problem-solution thematic development, Move 3 is mainly used to fill the research gap or niche created in Move 2. The JASIST writers mainly resort to relevance adjectives (indicative, greater, significant, imperative, etc.), at times syntactically acting as predicative evaluators in impersonal constructions and, at other times, followed by to-infinitive clauses specifying still-to-take-place research processes. These adjectives explicitly indicate the usefulness and significance of the new research process undertaken in the study. As shown in the examples below, thematic options containing subject predicative adjectives as “evaluative enhanced themes” (Tucker 1998) allow the writers to place greater emphasis on their expression of stance. In contrast to the AL scholars, notice the use of a non-hedged, categorical language when giving relevance to the new research presented in the paper: (23) It is thus critical to develop a holistic understanding of the effectiveness of the three data models […] (JASIST/7) (24) Much of the existing literature in information seeking suggests that users are largely unsuccessful in their search attempts, with failure rates often approaching 50%. Clearly, this presents a significant dilemma […]. With such a significant portion of the population searching online for information, it is imperative to understand […] (JASIST/9) In sum, the contextual analysis of stance adjectives in the JASIST texts suggests a clear correlation between the presence of evaluative adjectives and the rhetorical intentions of each CARS move. Relevance adjectives are recurrently used in Move 1 to give significance to the research territory. In Move 2, assessment adjectives help create the research niche. As opposed to Move 2 in the AL texts, the JASIST writers abundantly employ negative rather than positive assessment adjectives, since the purpose of their research is not to extend previous findings but to indicate a research gap. In Move 3, relevance adjectives, being much more recurrent than in the other moves, serve to highlight the value or usefulness of the new knowledge, thus echoing the academic boosterism and promotionalism that Swales (2004) notes for research article introductions. The clear-cut correlation between the two categories of stance adjectives and the three CARS moves might be interpreted as belonging to the specific rhetorical conventions and writing practices of this soft science. 5. Conclusion Despite the neutrality and facelessness often attributed to academic writing, this small- scale study appears to confirm the importance of evaluative lexis in introductory sections of research articles, a section in which writers are expected to find a research space in order to convince their audiences of the value and usefulness of the new knowledge. The initial hypothesis that applied linguistics and information science, both of them soft-applied disciplines, would behave similarly regarding the use of stance ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 143 adjectives in introduction sections is only partially confirmed by the findings of this study. Although the size of the corpus cannot facilitate empirical generalisations on stance adjectives, several observations are made below regarding the specific semantic, syntactic and rhetorical profiles of stance adjectives in each discipline. Semantically, stance adjectives appear to stand as key elements of lexical enquiry in the research writing practices of the two disciplines as they account for almost half of the total adjectival occurrences in the corpus. Consistent with previous studies on stance adjectives (Stotesbury 2003; Swales and Burke 2003; Biber 2006), the recurrence of both relevance and assessment adjectives in the selected introductions may give evidence of the writers’ overt evaluation of research outcomes, procedures and methods. This suggests that, even if style guides recommend objectivity in academic prose, both the AL and the JASIST writers tend to lay overt their stance in a very similar way. The syntactic analysis of stance adjectives across disciplines seems to indicate the existence of a local grammar of evaluation (cf. Hunston and Sinclair 2000) in the introductions of the two disciplines. Also, in agreement with Hunston (1993) and Hyland (2005), the context-sensitive analysis further suggests that this lexico-grammar of evaluation performs a metadiscourse function in discourse. That is, this phraseology of stance not only allows writers to evaluate existing knowledge and claim centrality of new findings (on the autonomous plane of discourse), but also engages readers and convinces them that the author’s claims are valid or useful (on the interactive plane of discourse). Although the two disciplines seem to share common syntactic features, this level of analysis also unveils some minor discipline-specific linguistic preferences in terms of recurring repertoires of collocational units accompanying stance adjectives. Rhetorically, the comparison of the two disciplines reveals different discipline- specific conventions regarding the functional distribution of relevance and assessment adjectives across the three CARS moves of introductions. The AL writers mostly restrict their adjectival choices to items conveying positive evaluation with the purpose of extending previous research in Move 2. Conversely, the JASIST writers make wider use of stance adjectives both to seek centrality of findings (in Moves 1 and 3) and to convey negative assessment – and, by this means, indicate a research gap – in Move 2. A further difference noted in the rhetorical analysis is that while the AL writers mostly express their opinion using a cautious, hedged and tentative style in Move 3, the JASIST writers lay overt their stance when giving significance to the claims of new knowledge. As stated above, although the small-scale corpus is limited for substantive comparison, these findings may also be taken to indicate that this functional variability in the use of stance adjectives should be interpreted as a rhetorical response to the publishers’ actual requests. Whereas JASIST information for authors solicits “high quality innovative papers addressing significant research questions” (emphasis added), Applied Linguistics “is more interested in the handling of problems in a principled way by reference to theoretical studies” (emphasis added). From a broader perspective, and in the light of the above analysis, the rhetorical differences in the use of adjectives across these soft sciences might also be attributed to the specific nature of knowledge, lines of reasoning, enquiry procedures and specific conventions in the transmission of knowledge in each disciplinary grouping. Becher ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 144 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría and Trowler claim that “the ways in which academics engage with their subject matter and the narratives they develop about this are important structural factors in the formulation of disciplinary cultures” (2001: 23). As illustrated with the cross- disciplinary comparison of soft scientists’ specific choices, functions and rhetorical intentions through the use of stance adjectives, there appears to be a need for re- defining the specific writing conventions of each disciplinary grouping according to the nature of knowledge and the ethos of each academic sub-community – hence the linguistic richness of research prose. Works Cited Barras, Robert 1987: Scientists Must Write. A Guide to Better Writing for Scientists, Engineers and Students. London and New York: Chapman and Hall. Becher, Tony and Paul R. Trowler 2001: Academic Tribes and Territories. Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines. Buckingham and Philadelphia: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open UP. Biber, Douglas 2006: ‘Stance in Spoken and Written University Registers’. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5: 97–116. Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan 1999: Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Essex: Longman. Breivega, Kjersti, Trine Dalh and Kjersti Flottum 2002: ‘Traces of Self and Others in Research Articles: a Comparative Pilot study of English, French and Norwegian Research Articles in Medicine, Economics and Linguistics’. Applied Linguistics, 12.2: 218–39. Conrad, Susan and Douglas Biber 2000: ‘Adverbial Marking of Stance in Speech and Writing’. Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson, eds. Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. New York: Oxford UP. 56–73. Dahl, Trine 2004: ‘Textual Metadiscourse in Research Articles: A Marker of National Culture or of Academic Discipline? Journal of Pragmatics 36: 1807–25. Grabe, William and Robert B. Kaplan. 1997: ‘On the Writing of Science and the Science of Writing: Hedging in Scientific Text and Elsewhere’. Raija Markkanen and Hartmut Schröder, eds. Hedging and Discourse. Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 151-67. Hunston, Susan 1993: ‘Evaluation and Ideology in Scientific Writing’. Mohsen Ghadessy, ed. Register Analysis: Theory and Practice. London: Pinter. 5-7. Hunston, Susan and Geoff Thompson, eds. 2000: Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. New York: Oxford UP. Hunston, Susan and John Sinclair 2000: ‘A Local Grammar of Evaluation’. Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson, eds. Evaluation in Text. Oxford: Oxford UP. 74-101. Hyland, Ken 1998: ‘Persuasion and Context. The Pragmatics of Academic Metadiscourse’. Journal of Pragmatics 30: 437-55. ––––– 2002: ‘Options of Identity in Academic Writing’. ELT Journal 56.4: 351-58. ––––– 2005: Metadiscourse. London and New York: Continuum. Mauranen, Anna 1993: Cultural Differences in Academic Rhetoric: A Textlinguistic Approach. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Markkanen, Raija and Hartmut Schröder, eds. 1997: Hedging and Discourse. Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 Stance and Academic Promotionalism 145 Meyer, Paul G. 1997: ‘Hedging Strategies in Written Academic Discourse: Strengthening the Argument by Weakening the Claim’. Raija Markkanen and Hartmut Shcröder, eds. Hedging and Discourse. Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. 21-41. Pérez-Llantada, Carmen and Claus-Peter Neumann. 2006: ‘A Genre-based Study of Authorial Presence in Research Articles and University Lectures’. Paper presented at the Conference in Honour of J.M. Swales. Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 2006. Salager-Meyer, Françoise 2005: ‘The Expression of Conflicting Knowledge Claims in Academic Discourse: A Study in French/English Contrastive Rhetoric’. Pilar Durán, Guadalupe Aguado and Ana M. Roldán, eds. Reflections on Language Use in the Academic Context. Madrid: DLACT. 29-48. Shaw, Philip 2003: ‘Evaluation and Promotion across Languages’. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2: 343–57. Stotesbury, Hilkka 2003: ‘Evaluation in Research Article Abstracts in the Narrative and Hard Sciences’. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2: 327-41. Swales, John M. 1990: Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ––––– 2004: Research Genres: Exploration and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. John M. Swales and Amy Burke. 2003. ‘"It's really fascinating work": Differences in Evaluative Adjectives across Academic Registers’. In Pepi Leistyna and Charles F. Meyer eds. Corpus Analysis. Language Structure and Language Use. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi. pp.: 1-18. Swales, John M. and Christine Feak 1994: Academic Writing for Graduate Students. Ann Arbor: the U of Michigan P. Thetela, Puleng 1997: ‘Evaluated Entities and Parameters of Value in Academic Research Articles’. English for Specific Purposes 16.2: 101-18. Tucker, Gordon H. 1998: The Lexicogrammar of Adjectives. A Systemic Functional Aapproach to Lexis. London and New York: Cassell. Turk, Christopher and John Kirkman. 1996 (1982): Effective Writing. Improving Scientific, Technical and Business Communication. London and New York: Spon P. Varttala, Teppo 2003: ‘Hedging in Scientific Research Articles: A Cross-disciplinary Study’. Giuseppina Cortese and Philip Riley, eds. Domain-specific English: Textual Practices across Communities and Classrooms. New York: Peter Lang. 141–74. Vassileva, Irena 2001: ‘Commitment and Detachment in English and Bulgarian Academic Writing’. English for Specific Purposes 20: 83–102. Weissberg, Robert and Suzanne Buker 1990: Writing up Research. Experimental Research Report Writing for Students of English. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Wilkinson, Antoinette 1991: The Scientist’s Handbook for Writing Papers and Dissertations. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Received 1 June 2007 Revised version received 8 January 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 129–145 ISSN 0210-6124 REVIEWS RESEÑAS Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, eds. 2006: Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd Series. London: Thomson Learning. 613 + xxii pp. ISBN 1-904271-33-2 Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, eds. 2006: Hamlet, The Texts of 1603 and 1623. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd Series. London: Thomson Learning. 368 + xv pp. ISBN 1- 904271-55-3 Jesús Tronch Pérez Universitat de València [email protected] Editing Shakespeare being a national pastime, the publication of any new critical edition of Shakespeare arouses great expectations. Curiosity impels scholars and conoisseurs alike to thumb the newly printed pages in order to verify how the editor solved this or that textual crux, opted for this or that modernization of a character’s name, or whether she or he offered a new-fangled emendation no one had hit upon before. If the new critical edition is Hamlet, the expectations are peculiar since the play has a singular and complex textual situation and a shifting editorial tradition, as is summarized in the next two paragraphs. Hamlet is unique in Shakespeare for having three substantive early texts: the First Quarto of 1603 (Q1), the Second Quarto of 1604/5 (Q2) and the First Folio of 1623 (F). The two latter texts are the basis of the received version of Hamlet but are different in over 1000 substantive variants (most of them single words or phrases in the dialogue), with 7% of F being absent from Q2, and 10% of Q2 absent in F.1 Traditionally defined as a ‘bad’ quarto memorially reconstructed by actor(s), Q1 is a notably different and shorter version, with discrepancies in structure, names of characters and a stylistically uneven dialogue fluctuating from identical to null correspondence with Q2 and F. If one takes the modern editorial tradition to begin with Nicholas Rowe (1709),2 F became the basis of critical editions but was complemented with Q2-only phrases, lines and passages neatly inserted in the text, thus creating the so-called ‘conflated’ Hamlet. Wilson’s New Shakespeare Cambridge edition (1934) turned Q2 into the standard copy-text, a move culminating in Jenkins’s edition for The Arden Shakespeare in its second series (1982), although he excluded those F-only words and phrases believed to be actoral interpolations. Spencer’s New Penguin text reached the height of conflation by inserting a Q1-unique speech into Hamlet’s advice to the players (1980: 129-30). As the notion of Shakespeare as a reviser was reinstated in the 1980s, Edwards based his 1 Proportions given by Thompson and Taylor, based on the number of words (2006a: 80). Scholars will welcome the fact that they have counted the number of words in Q2 (28,628), F (27,602) and Q1 (15,983), so that, for the first time, statistical information can be based on more reliable data than the fluctuating and misrepresenting system of the number of lines. 2 Mowat (1988) offers a detailed narrative of the conflationist tradition. Jackson (1989) discusses Jenkins’s, Edwards’s, Hibbard’s and Taylor and Wells’s editions. That the modern editorial tradition begins with Rowe is questioned by Massai (2007). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 150 Jesús Tronch Pérez New Cambridge Shakespeare edition on both Q2 and F but printed Q2-only passages between square brackets to indicate that they were authorially intended for omission (1985). Removing these passages from their F-based critical text to an appendix, Taylor and Wells, Hamlet editors for the Oxford Complete Works (1986), produced the first ‘non-conflated’ Hamlet, as did Hibbard for the Oxford Shakespeare series (1987). Later editorial series also offer a variety of practices: Benvington’s Bantam Hamlet (1988)3 continued the eclectic conflated text as did Hoy’s Norton (1992) and Evans’s Riverside (1997) in their second editions; although revisionism favoured the Folio text, Q2 was used as copy-text by Mowat and Werstine’s 1992 New Folger Library (yet they signalled both Q2-only and F-only elements with different brackets), by Andrews’ more editorially conservative but still conflating Everyman edition (1993), and by Braunmuller’s 2001 Pelican edition (absent in Thompson and Taylor 2006a), which reflected the recent trend towards conservative and version-centred editing (Proudfoot 2002; Werstine 2004: 58-59). Q1 was edited in old spelling and with minimum emendation in punctuation by Holderness and Loughrey in their Shakespearean Originals series (1992), and in a modernized critical text by Irace (1998) in The Early Quarto series of The New Shakespeare, Cambridge. In this context, any new critical edition of Hamlet generates expectations concerning the choice of copy-text, of a conflated or non-conflated version, the editor’s account of the origins and relationship among the three substantive texts, with keen interest in whether she or he endorses the late revisionist stance, apart from the solution to difficult passages, such as the “dram of eale . . . of a doubt” in Q2 (1.4.36-8).4 But if the new critical edition is The Arden Shakespeare Hamlet in its third series, whose editors had announced that they would edit the three textual witnesses separately, further questions accumulate: How will they present the three texts? Will they privilege any of them, or any of the two ‘good’ texts? Will they be revisionist too? Will they consider, for instance, Hamlet’s “is’t not perfect conscience?” in Q2 (5.2.67) –where F reads “is’t not perfect conscience, To quit him with this arme?” and adds thirteen more lines (TLN 3571-2)– the result of an accidental omission or of authorial revision? And if the latter is the case, how will they edit the line in their Q2 edition? And what editorial approach will they follow, the traditionally-sanctioned eclecticism or the lately-endorsed conservatism? How will they edit Q1’s ‘bad’ text? In seeking to satisfy curiosity about these and related issues, I will focus more on the textual novelty of the edition(s) under review, without forgetting the rest of the critical material therein contained. If, as Thompson and Taylor acknowledge, any new critical edition is under the strain that it must have “something genuinely new and indeed ‘original’ to offer” (2006a: 9), theirs is certainly original in that they have edited Hamlet by editing three 3 For the sake of economy, some Hamlet editions mentioned only once are not included in the Works Cited list. 4 Act.scene.line references are keyed to the editions under review (Thompson and Taylor 2006a for Q2; and 2006b for F). If referring to a prose scene or a passage unique to F, I will also add the more universal TLN, the Through Line Number established by Charlton Hinman (1968) in his Norton facsimile edition of the First Folio. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 151 Hamlets, by offering a multiple-text edition with three separate, modernized and critical texts, each of Q1, Q2 and F, more so in a series traditionally associated with single-text editions. This trinitarian conception, simple as it is but never before materialized by any publisher, is also unprecedented in its granting equal textual status to the three early texts, each with “sufficient merit to be read and studied on its own” (Thompson and Taylor 2006a: 11). It had already been argued that each early text constitutes a discrete version of Hamlet, and separate, non-conflated editions of each had only partly been produced in individual editions based on one or two of them, but not in the sense of editing the three of them in order to edit the play. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor envisaged non-conflated editions of Q2 and F when they reviewed their own ground- breaking Oxford Complete Works edition (1990: 16), but they were thinking of Q2 and F only, and not of the ‘bad’ quarto; in contrast, Thompson and Taylor now offer an edited Q1, not in a companion series of Early Quartos, but in the second Arden volume that also incorporates the edition of the ‘good’ Folio text. That this three-in-one edition appears in two volumes is a concession to the physical and commercial constraints of the printed book format, which forced the editors to decide on the key issue of which early text to include in which volume. This issue was especially acute since volume 1 was to be the standard ‘Arden Hamlet’ volume, a “self-contained free standing” edition, wealthier in information in the commentary notes and the introduction (Thompson and Taylor 2006a: xxii), and was expected to be the only one many readers will buy. Thompson and Taylor gave that privilege to Q2 (with F-only passages in an appendix), but in line with their equalitarian spirit, they stress that it is not because of “any conviction that Q2 is the one authoritative text” (11). Their Q2 option is first based on the unpolemical grounds that Q2 is the longest text – and that “allows the two volumes to be not dissimilar in size” (11). Yet later they recognize that “if one were forced to choose just one . . . there is general agreement among scholars that, Q2 derives from an authorial manuscript” (11-2), while Q1’s and F’s claims to authority do not gather such consensus. Thus their half-hearted and forced decision has partly inclined to a sure-footed authorial endorsement rather than to mere chronological precedence or to a more socio-historical view that would privilege F as the version –if not authorially revised– chosen by the author’s friends and fellow actors to be ‘canonized’ in the first complete works (the First Folio). It should also be recalled that F is the text on which the rival Oxford editions are based. Yet given the edition’s respect for the integrity of each early version, one wonders why the Q2-only standard volume is advertised in its title simply as Hamlet, and not as Hamlet, the Second Quarto (as appears on page 139), thus leaving readers with the immediate first impression that the editors have sought to undermine: that an edition of Hamlet cannot be equated with a single-text edition based on any of the early texts or a conflation of them. In Thompson and Taylor’s history of the texts, it is somewhat odd to observe that their conclusions are apparently based more on the relative agreement of previous textual critics that on their own judgement of the analysed evidence. Two qualities stand out in their rigorous analysis: skepticism and honesty. A skeptical stance –an “agnostic” disposition as they call it (2006a: 507)– is evident in their statement that they “do not feel that there is any clinching evidence to render definitive any of the ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 152 Jesús Tronch Pérez competing theories” of the texts’ transmission (507). And an honest attitude is clear when, as a result of their textual agnosticism, they recognize that they do not have “a strong theory” and adopt a “default position arrived at by eliminating . . . the less likely options” (509). But their agnosticism is not unwisely taken to the extreme of denying any possibility of assuming a conjectural history of the texts that may provide a rationale for their editing. Envisaging two authorial versions of Hamlet –with “Q2’s copy . . . largely based on Shakespeare’s foul papers, . . . F’s copy [being] no more than one step away from a manuscript containing some significant authorial revisions to the text in the foul papers” (509)– and Q1 as derived from “an anonymous reconstruction of a performance based on the text behind F” (509), their textual history is akin to that of the Oxford editors (Taylor and Wells 1987) and also of Hibbard; however the editorial consequences are different. While the latter chooses F as copy-text, Thompson and Taylor see no reason to prefer one text over the other and decide to produce three single edited texts because they find it “a simpler explanation of the facts” that “each of Q1, Q2 and F records a distinct Hamlet” (509). As if anticipating any critique, Thompson and Taylor soon acknowledge that even a traditional conflated Q2-based Hamlet could be defended, but that they decided against it because, in another sign of their honesty, they believe they cannot prepare a better conflated edition than that of their predecessor, Harold Jenkins (509). In their principles and procedures –thoroughly explained in the introduction (2006a: 87-92) and in Appendix 2 (510-22)–, Thompson and Taylor unhesitatingly state that they produce a conservative edition, that is, “one that keeps to the copy-text wherever possible to do so without involving a degree of ingenuity which renders the refusal to emend implausible” (510). This position denotes a commendable boldness given that eclecticism has characterized not only the long tradition of Shakespearean editing, but also Arden editions. Though editorial conservatism has been denounced as logically flawed (Housman 1903: xxxi; Greg 1942: xxvi-xxvii; Tanselle 1995: 17), Thompson and Taylor’s arguments are consistent with their skepticism about the validity of assumptions or explanations based on textual evidence that they find as insufficiently “overwhelming or widespread to oblige” them to be eclectic (2006a: 92). Only trusting editors who believe they can identify the source of errors in a conjectural history of the texts can proceed eclectically. However, another of their arguments for conservatism leaves me puzzled: they begin with the “working assumption” that each of their copy-texts (Q2, F and Q1) “reflects pretty accurately the manuscript that served as its compositor’s copy”, and then they state that they “attribute authority to the compositor’s copy on the basis that, for all we know to the contrary (their being no hard evidence to go on), it is a pretty accurate record of what the author wrote and intended to write” (510); but on what basis do they assume that each copy-text “reflects pretty accurately” the printer’s copy? This hypothesized accuracy cannot be checked nor proven and Thompson and Taylor’s anticipation that there is “no hard evidence to go on” does not resolve the problem. However, it should be added that only assumptions are also at the foundation of eclectic editors’ principles. Once a conservative approach is adopted, they have elaborated a consistent emendatory rationale by which they correct each text by first resorting to the collateral text that has likelier authority according to their “general, impossibly precise, and ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 153 ‘default position’ view of the history of the text(s)” (2006a: 517): they emend Q1 with reference to F, Q2 with reference to F, and F with reference to Q2. Although they use their hypothetical history of the texts to support their emendatory rules, they do not posit, as is lately common, “any particular lost text, be it holograph, promptbook or performance” behind their copy-text when they emend it, only the recognition that “somewhere behind each text lies an authorial manuscript” (510).5 Consistent with their disregard for any kind of lost text underlying the witnesses, Thompson and Taylor keep Q2’s readings in instances such as the apparently incomplete sentence “is’t not perfect conscience?” (5.2.66),6 or “some dozen lines, or sixteen lines” (2.2.477), which Jenkins and Edwards judged as an authorial false start wrongly preserved in Q2’s copy. Their editorial conservatism does not rule out editing the copy-text without comparison with the collateral witness: they do not blindly accept any Q2 or F reading whenever they make sense, but weigh the probabilities of the collateral variants. For instance, in their F edition, they compare F’s “heauenly” with Q2’s “heauily” (2.2.296/ TLN 1344), observe that keeping “heavenly” would imply a strained sense of sarcasm, judge it as “more likely an error” (2006b: 240), and emend to Q2. And they do not always emend to the collateral witness as a matter of fact but resort to modern emendations when they find that both Q2 and F are likely errors: for instance, for Q2’s “fret me not” and F’s “can fret me” they adopt “fret me, you” (3.2.363) proposed by Teresa Fanego (1982) and by Jenkins (1982) independently (though, as usual, only Jenkins gets the credit). Other modern emendations are not finally adopted, as in the case of Wilson’s proposal in his revised edition of 1954 “Thus diest thou” (4.7.55) for Q2 “didst” and F “diddest”, which Thompson and Taylor deem “attractive but not strictly necessary” (398). As Shakespeare editing has such a long tradition, new editors hardly have opportunities to offer emendations of their own, but Thompson and Taylor have their share of originality. In their Q2 edition, they provide a number of new line divisions (e.g. 2.1.48-50) and two new stage directions: they make the accompanying mute lords leave the stage with Rosencrantz and Guildernstern at 3.1.28 rather than with the Queen at 3.1.42, and at 5.1.247 (TLN 3454) they make Laertes leap out of the grave and grapple with Hamlet. In their F edition (2006b: 309), they emend F’s “Battaliaes” not as “battalions” (usually adopted from Q2’s “battalians”) but as “battalia” (4.1.77 /TLN 2816);7 and, more conspicuously, they have reorganized the act and scene division, making the traditional 4.1 part of the closet scene 3.4 (and then traditional 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 become 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 respectively), with traditional 4.5 starting the Fourth Act. Many critics have observed the inadequacy of the traditional scene division because the 5 Note, for instance, how they emend F’s “breath” to Q2’s “brother” (3.4.65) not only because it “makes better sense (and metre)” but also because “F’s reading would be an easy misreading of a manuscript ‘brother’ with final ‘er’ suspended” (2006b: 291). 6 Yet in the corresponding commentary footnote I miss a comment on the significance of the subsequent Folio-only lines, which, as Edwards (1985: 85) and Werstine (1988: 20-21) observed, provides a different justification for Hamlet’s revenge. 7 Considering that they posited emending F with reference to Q2, this is an instance of the fact that Thompson and Taylor do not blindly follow their own emendatory rules. In their Q2 edition, they retain Q2’s “battalians” modernized as “battalions” (4.5.79). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 154 Jesús Tronch Pérez Queen remains onstage after the end of 3.4. Thompson and Taylor could have applied the same re-arrangement to their Q2 edition, but, quite understandably, they have done so only in the text that is not in the ‘Arden Hamlet’ volume. There are few places in which their copy-text made plausible sense but was emended. In their F edition, they emend F’s “Froward” (1.2.8) to Q2’s “Forward” because they find it “more appropriate to the context” (2006b: 199), but “Froward” is acceptable and is retained in Bate and Rasmussen’s recent F-based edition (2007); similarly, while the original F punctuation at 1.2.157 allows “break my heart” (as Bate and Rasmussen edit), Thompson and Taylor emend to Q2’s “break, my heart”. In their Q2 edition, they emend Q2’s speech heading “Doct.” to “PRIEST” 5.1.215 (TLN 3415) because it “might be misleading in a modern text, suggesting a medical practitioner” (2006a: 426). I find this justification odd because that is the problem with any word in the dialogue whose meaning has changed since then: if one were to apply the same principle to these words, one would ‘emend’ them to synonyms in present-day English. Another interesting oddity is their different treatment of the invariant “indeed” in Q2’s “indeede your fathers sonne” and F “your Fathers sonne indeed” (TLN 3114): it appears as two separate words “in deed” in their edited Q2 (4.7.123), because of the “contrast with in words” in the next line, but not in the F edition (4.3.98). Nor is their conservative approach blindly applied to modernization. For instance, Q2’s original reading “coted” (2.1.109) in the sense of “‘outstripped’, i.e. outmanoeuvred” is judged by Thompson and Taylor as “just about acceptable”, but they adopt the F variant in their Q2 edition because “coted” is a “frequent Shakespearean spelling of ‘quoted’ . . . which means ‘observed’ or ‘judged’ [and] makes better sense in the context” (2006a: 236). Nonetheless, their conservatism seems sometimes excessive as they retain readings that one may feel more inclined to judge as probable errors. After examining their conservative practice in the first two scenes of their Q2 and F editions, I allowed myself the game of editing some scenes to see how many of my decisions would coincide with theirs. The comparison revealed that they were more conservative, retaining two or more readings per scene that I had thought of as errors. For instance, F reads “Gives the tongue” instead of Q2’s “Lends the tongue” (1.3.117), where one may easily suspect an erroneous substitution prompted by the proximity of “Giving” at the beginning of the next line, but Thompson and Taylor keep F even though they acknowledge that “Gives might be an error” (2006b: 204). Similarly with F’s “spirit / weal” (3.3.14; F variant first), “an idle / a wicked” (3.4.13), “makes / sets” (3.4.44), “rank / ranker” (3.4.143), “might / would” (4.1.12 / TLN 2757).8 Yet they use the criterion of proximity for emendations: for instance, F’s “Why” to Q2’s “What” (4.3.89/ 3104), because the F reading “could result from eyeskip forward” to three lines later (2006b: 323). They invoke the paleographical criterion of “h/th misreading” to retain F’s “his money” (2.1.1) instead of emending to Q2 “this money” (unlike Taylor and Wells, Hibbard and recently Bate and Rasmussen) because such “misreading would be an easy error” (2006b: 219), whereas they emend F’s “her drinke” to Q2 “their drink” (4.3.153/ TLN 8 In all these cases, Bate and Rasmussen emend F to Q2. Thompson and Taylor acknowledge that the repetition “may be an error by a scribe or compositor” (2006b: 288). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 155 3173) because F “must be wrong and is an easy h-/th- misreading” (326). Sometimes one suspects error through inadequate metre, as in “you bend / you do bend” (3.4.106), but Thompson and Taylor keep the unmetrical F reading. In the variation “that calms / that’s calm” (4.1.116 / TLN 2860) one would suspect an error of metathesis, but they retain F. In most cases, Thompson and Taylor make explicit their awareness that their retained readings may be errors –another sign of their honesty. All in all, their conservative Hamlets make available to modern readers a number of readings which eclectic editing had deprived them of. One of the most interesting is Hamlet’s description of his flesh in his first soliloquy: “O that this too too sallied [F reads ‘solid’] flesh would melt” (1.2.129). Since Wilson’s edition in 1934, Q2’s “sallied” has been ‘modernized’ by most editors as “sullied” (meaning “soiled, defiled”), but in their Q2 edition Thompson and Taylor keep “sallied” in the sense of “assailed, besieged” (2006a: 175).9 Accordingly, they also keep Q2’s “sallies” (glossed as “attacks, criticisms”) in “You laying these slight sallies on my son” (2.1.39), even though most editors interpreted it as a variant spelling of F’s “sullies” (=“blemishes”). Thompson and Taylor acknowledge that “either seems acceptable” (2006a: 231). Little space is left in the present review for Q1, but it should be mentioned that also in their Q1 edition, Thompson and Taylor are more conservative than previous editors, not only Irace, as they acknowledge (511), but also Hubbard (1920) and Weiner (1962). For instance, where editors and textual critics find errors arising from illegible handwriting –such as “total guise” for “total gules”, “Back’t and imparched” for “Baked and impasted”, and “Rifted” for “Roasted” (7.347-50)– Thompson and Taylor find plausible readings in all except “Back’t” (2006b: 108). Arden editions are reputed for their wealth of information in generous introductions and commentary footnotes. Thompson and Taylor’s ‘Arden Hamlet’ lives up to this expectation, especially in filling the twenty-five-year gap since Jenkins’s 1982 edition in which much scholarship on critical interpretations and stage productions needed to be covered. They have achieved an effective and well-balanced synthesis through eight sections: ‘Hamlet in our time’ (17-36), selecting and summarizing recent critical interpretations; ‘Hamlet in Shakespeare’s time’ (36-59), including information on the so-called ur-Hamlet and on the early performances of the play; ‘The story of Hamlet’ (59-74), dealing with sources and influences; ‘The composition of Hamlet’ (74- 94), providing a general account of the early textual and publishing history, and of the editorial options (including the one they have materialized); ‘Hamlet on stage and screen’ (95-122); a brief and very interesting section on ‘Novel Hamlets’ (122-32), discussing how the play’s characters have been treated in narrative; and finally ‘The continuing mystery of Hamlet’ (132-37). In yet another sign of their honesty, Thompson and Taylor confess that they do not, “after working on the play for about ten years, have a new sensational ‘theory of Hamlet’ to offer our readers” (2006a: 137). 9 Also defended by Furnivall and Tennyson, as Jenkins points out in his longer note (1982: 436-38). I missed this information in Thompson and Taylor’s commentary note, as well as information, in the corresponding textual note, about the “sullied” option first adopted by Wilson (1934) from an anonymous conjecture. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 156 Jesús Tronch Pérez Commentary footnotes respond to the new reader’s need for more linguistic clarification and interest in performance issues. They also make constant references to the editorial decisions by Jenkins, Edward, Hibbard and Taylor and Wells. This is with a view to providing “readers with the material to read a Hamlet within” the tradition of the single-text, eclectic edition Arden is associated with (2006a: 11). In a way, Thompson and Taylor are positioning themselves against their predecessors (perhaps with more references to the F-based editions by Hibbard and by Taylor and Wells). More information is given in six appendices containing: four Folio-only passages of three lines or more with their textual notes and commentary –briefer ones are shown in the commentary and textual notes of the Q2 edition– (465-72); the detailed account of ‘The Nature of the Texts’, which also includes a list of Jenkins’s emendations from F (474-532); an explanation of editorial conventions exemplified in a passage contrasted with facsimiles of the early texts (533-43); a discussion of the problematic act division at 3.4/4.1 (543-52); a note and charts on casting (553-65); and a note on the use of music (566-68). To conclude, in this new edition of Hamlet (or Hamlets) readers have an innovative, bold, consistent, informative editorial work in a major series, a work worth taking into serious consideration, which does not disqualify, nor do Thompson and Taylor claim to do so, previous eclectic and conflated editions. This unconflated three-text Hamlet has appeared (and it was high time) when our mindsets influenced by more relativist, poststructuralist times are readier to accept it. With a few exceptions, I usually substitute a new Arden 3rd series edition for its corresponding 2nd series titles on my bookshelf. One of these exceptions is Jenkins’s exemplary edition, next to which stand now Thompson and Taylor’s excellent and also exemplary volumes. Works Cited Bate, Jonathan and Eric Rasmussen, eds. 2007: William Shakespeare: Complete Works. The RSC Shakespeare. New York: Modern Library. Edwards, Philip, ed. 1985: William Shakespeare: Hamlet. New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Fanego, Teresa, ed. 1982: William Shakespeare: Hamlet. Clásicos de la lengua inglesa. Madrid: Alhambra. Greg, Walter 1942: The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon. Hibbard, George, ed. 1987: William Shakespeare: Hamlet. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford UP. Hinman, Charlton, ed. 1968: The First Folio of Shakespeare: The Norton Facsimile. New York: Norton and Company, Inc. Housman, Alfred E. 1903: Preface. M. Manilii astronomicon liber primus. London: Richards. vii- lxxv. Rpt. in Christopher Ricks, ed. Collected Poems and Selected Prose. London: Lane- Penguin, 1988. 372-87. Hubbard, Frank, ed. 1920: The First Quarto Edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Madison: U of Wisconsin P. Irace, Kathleen O., ed. 1998: The First Quarto of Hamlet. The New Cambridge Shakespeare: The Early Quartos. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 157 Jackson, MacDonald P. 1989: ‘Editing Hamlet in the 1980’s: Textual Theories and Textual Practices’. Hamlet Studies 11.i-ii (Summer-Winter): 60-72. Jenkins, Harold, ed. 1982: William Shakespeare: Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen. Massai, Sonia 2007: Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Mowat, Barbara 1988: ‘The Form of Hamlet’s Fortunes’. Renaissance Drama 19: 97-126. Proudfoot, Richard 2002: ‘New Conservatism and the Theatrical Text’. Shakespeare International Yearbook 2: 127-42. Spencer, T. J. B., ed. 1980: Hamlet. The New Penguin Shakespeare. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Tanselle, George Thomas 1995: ‘Varieties of Scholarly Editing’. David Greetham, ed. Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research. New York: MLA. 9-32. Taylor, Gary and Stanley Wells 1987: ‘[Editorial introduction to] Hamlet’. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett and William Montgomery. William Shakespeare. A Textual Companion. Oxford: Clarendon P. 396-420. Taylor, Gary and Stanley Wells, eds. 1986: Hamlet. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett and William Montgomery, eds. William Shakespeare. The Complete Works. Oxford: Oxford UP. 653-90. Thompson, Ann and Neil Taylor, eds. 2006a: Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd series. London: Thomson Learning. Thompson, Ann and Neil Taylor, eds. 2006b: Hamlet, The Texts of 1603 and 1623. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd series. London: Thomson Learning. Weiner, Albert, ed. 1962: Hamlet: The First Quarto. Great Neck, NY: Barron. Wells, Stanley and Gary Taylor 1990: ‘The Oxford Shakespeare re-viewed’. Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 4: 6-20. Werstine, Paul 1988: ‘The Textual Mystery of Hamlet’. Shakespeare Quaterly 39: 1-26. Werstine, Paul 2004: ‘Housmania: episodes in twentieth-century “critical” editing of Shakespeare’. Lukas Erne, M. J. Kidnie, eds. Textual Performances: The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare’s Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 49-62. Wilson, John Dover, ed. 1954 (1934): The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. New Shakespeare. London: Cambridge UP. Received 10 January 2008 Accepted 21 February 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 149–157 ISSN 0210-6124 Tom Cohen 2005: Hitchcock’s Cryptonymies. Volume I. Secret Agents. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. 284 pp. ISBN: 0-8166-4206-0; ISBN -13: 978-0-8166-4206-9 Tom Cohen 2005: Hitchcock’s Cryptonymies. Volume II. War Machines. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. 300 pp. ISBN: 0-8166-4171-4; ISBN -13: 978-0-8166-4171-0 Rosa María Díez Cobo Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata (Argentina) [email protected] A panoramic shot of the city of London ominously turns to focalise a crowd that, on the banks of the river Thames, attends an improvised electoral speech. The attention of the audience is violently perturbed when a young lady’s nude corpse appears floating on the waters. The cause of murder: strangulation. The weapon: a tie around the deceased’s neck. This brief summary corresponds to the initial scenes of Hitchcock’s penultimate feature film, Frenzy (1973). All the elements that orchestrate the grisly cadence of this opening will be perfectly identifiable for anyone well acquainted with the British director’s filmography. Thus, as François Truffaut accurately pointed out to Hitchcock during one of their encounters: “Frenzy is the combination of two series of films: those in which Hitchcock invites us to follow a murderer’s itinerary: Shadow of a Doubt, Stage Fright, Dial M for Murder and Psycho, and those in which the torments of an innocent wrongly accused of a crime are described: The Thirty-Nine Steps, ‘I Confess’, The Wrong Man and North by Northwest” (1984: 321). Indeed, Frenzy acts as a sort of epitaphic film that integrates Hitchcock’s favourite signatures and motifs coined in his silent films and recurrently revisited in subsequent cinematic productions. This is precisely what Tom Cohen’s extensive monograph in two volumes is mostly concerned with: Hitchcock’s idiosyncratic universe of “‘citational’ terms, objects, aural and visual puns, signature effects, and agents” (vol. I: 49). However, before proceeding further into the evaluation of Hitchcock’s Cryptonymies, it is essential to highlight that this study demands a genuinely specialised target audience. To begin with, Cohen’s approximation to Hitchcock’s motion pictures is asystematic insofar as the films he selects are mostly considered as a pretext or a point of departure to develop and reaffirm his poststructuralist theoretical views on teletechnics and deauratic and deautorised cinema. Furthermore, Cohen does not deliberate over what seems immediately perceptible onscreen, but is interested in the particular and more often apparently insignificant elements that, with absolute probability, will escape the scrutiny of the most attentive viewer. To cite a couple of examples, in considering one of the most successful films by Hitchcock, Psycho (1960), Cohen obliterates any allusion to the famous shower episode in the Bates Motel but, instead, concentrates on peripheral examinations such as the atopical location of Norman Bates’ mother, or the black hole capacity of the bog where Norman drowns Janet Leigh’s car (vol. II: chapter 5). Equally, when dealing with Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) – the first British talking ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 159–165 ISSN 0210-6124 160 Rosa María Díez Cobo film –, he articulates his exploration around three seemingly anecdotic moments that involve characters reading and, most particularly, the interruption of the act of reading (I: chapter 4). Otherwise, Cohen deploys an intricate network of poststructuralist argumentation that will most likely obfuscate those not too familiar with radical assaults on traditional epistemological parameters. Not in vain is Cohen a reputed expert on several of the pivotal poststructuralist figures such as Paul de Man or Jacques Derrida, and he has researched widely on the topic of anti-mimesis that he continues to expand all throughout his new publication. All these allusions to the considerable theoretical opaqueness of Cryptonymies are not meant as detrimental but, quite on the contrary, as an appraisal to his daring attempt. Hence, the cryptic aporias in Cryptonymies propitiate an authentic subversive rereading of Hitchcock’s films and cinema under the light of the evaluation of the aesthetic image, not as a reliable and straight reproduction of the object reflected, but as an autonomous constructed and mediated production, not specular anymore but spectral in a Derridean sense. The organisational frame of Cryptonymies in two volumes, subdivided into secondary thematic parts and a closing coda, replicates the poststructuralist singular logic of Cohen’s thrust since a precise theoretical internal division is almost imperceptible. Despite this playful disruption between the external demarcations and the contents, Cohen purports that the first volume analyses cryptonymies as “epistemo- political agents mobilized against the home state’s ocularcentric and auratic premises”, while its companion “asks how that ‘revolutionary uplift’ operates after that war’s end” (II: xv). Furthermore, the intricate theoretical intertwining of Cohen’s argumentation, its narrative style and the minute examination of minimal objects in the films selected, rather than the comprehensive consideration of whole plots, prevents the tracing of a definite structural articulation whatsoever. Nevertheless, a flexibility that seems perfectly attuned to Cohen’s theoretical framework can produce an inexplicable misplacement such as that observed in a chapter devoted to providing a general glossary of Hitchcockian tropes (I: chapter 2). This ‘User’s Guide to Hitchcock’s Signature Systems’ is awkwardly located in a specific thematic section despite its generality and overall applicability. Subsequently, from a theoretical perspective, it would seem more appropriate to place it independently as a way of introductory clarification. In addition, neither of the two volumes includes a standard bibliography and all the bibliographic citations are inserted into the final note sections, which will probably pose considerable difficulty for a reader interested in giving an overall glance at the bibliographic archive or looking for a specific reference. Leaving aside structural shortcomings, what makes Cohen’s ambitious project noteworthy is his endeavour to supersede previous theoretical approaches to Hitchcock’s films. In so doing, he dismisses the predominant trend in Hitchcockian criticism characterised by “an occlusion by and large of an entire order of signifying agents and writing experiments, … the dominance of ocularcentric and identificatory response (pro and con), an alliance between thematic and Oedipal modes, historicism and various rhetorics of ‘gaze’” (I: 5). This tendency was initiated with Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol’s Hitchcock (1957), and pursued by critics such as Paul Duncan or Thomas Leitch who have placed their focus of analysis on the factual dimension of ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 159–165 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 161 Hitchcock’s filmography. In their encyclopaedic projects, whose lack of critical relevance is rampant, these two authors have reiterated a diachronic revision of the director’s production. Thus, taking Duncan’s Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films (2003) as a paradigmatic example of this critical mode, we observe how his book follows a systematic linear pattern where the director’s biography is accompanied by a chronological revision of each of his films which, in turn, are solely regarded from a thematic point of view. Other approaches within this trend have been undertaken from historicist, social or gendered perspectives that, according to Cohen, have privileged anthropomorphic evaluations over the complex inner aesthetics of the films, consequently consolidating the dominant stereotyped canon of Hitchcock’s works as merely propagandist, monomaniac or misogynist. Cohen also refers to Elisabeth Weis and John Belton’s Film Sound (1985), Tania Modleski’s The Women Who Knew Too Much (1988), Thomas Leitch’s Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games (1991), or Peter Conrad’s The Hitchcock Murders (2000), which could be grouped as those timidly aiming at introducing alternative readings on Hitchcock, but irrevocably falling back on ‘theological inflections’ that emphasise mnemonic and empiric interpretations rather than allowing the necessary autonomy to cinematic practice as a self-contained, self- sustained performative construction. Nonetheless, there has also been a second movement in the theoretical corpus on Hitchcock, the one that Cohen exhausts and even surmounts in his analysis. Among those listed by Cohen as providing a real challenge to traditional heuristic approaches to cinema and to the premised binarism of the sign – which in this context takes the form of a cinematic image – we can find key names in the fields of deconstructivism and historical materialism: Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida or Fredric Jameson. In keeping with their praxis, Cohen aspires to break down to pieces the dominance of meaning consumption that propels commercial cinema and to confront it with the “secret visual elements … that traverse all of [Hitchcock’s] works linking each to each in perpetual if active interface” (I: xi). However, Cohen does not replicate these authors’ postulates acritically but, quite the opposite, reveals numerous instances where most of them proved to be too much threaded to the screen, unable to develop their arguments to the extent of rupturing completely a dependency on mimesis. Three essential and interlinked operations are those that constitute Cohen’s deconstructive enterprise in Cryptonymies: 1) The reconceptualisation of the notion of cinema by demolishing the ‘metaphysics of presence’ and revoking the potentiality of Benjamin’s aura – a term that can be translated as personification or anthropocentricism– in film studies. Therefore, the cinematic image, despite its visual immediacy and its apparent transparency, does not invoke by itself any inextricable mimetic connection, as Cohen demonstrates in his examination of the first version of Hitchcock’s classic thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (I: chapter 9). This movie is presented as a continuum of impasses articulated in the form of a relentless series of references to light and solar symbols in confrontation with blindness, black suns and visual occlusion. Paradoxically enough, light and solarity are but deceiving simulacrums that, in reality, constitute the “secret ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 159–165 ISSN 0210-6124 162 Rosa María Díez Cobo agencies” that from within the film itself are set to lead an undercover battle against “purely [visual] cinema” (I: 247). This dematerialising process achieves in Hitchcock’s works a rhythmic tempo that is translated into a multiplicity of ‘hosts’ whose objective is to sabotage the aesthetic structures they parasite. This operation even reaches epistemo-political dimensions since, as Cohen states: “From The Lodger to The Birds, something unrepresentable is avenging against a totality, a home state and police system routinely under threat of having its interiority turned inside out” (I: 99). Coming back to The Man Who Knew Too Much, this film is constructed as a peculiar Moebian strip where a superficial viewing will conclude that the film is but an ordinary thriller, whereas an exhaustive enquiry into its numerous and non-casual visual tropes will reveal an underlying system which by its mere existence calls into question any pretence of unambiguousness, while at the same time it challenges the cognitive abilities of the viewer. 2) Exposing the viewer overtly to the dilemma of meaning creation on the screen through two of the most remarkable Hitchcockian conflictive semiotic manoeuvres: the MacGuffin and the director’s own cameos. The former represents the very essence of what Cohen underscores in Cryptonymies, the conspicuous diatribe between ocularcentrism and the pecking out of the viewers’ conventional ways of seeing and interpreting. The MacGuffin – a random denomination without a proper definition– incarnates a zero function conceived with a self-cancelling logic.1 In The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935), one of Hitchcock’s more prominent espionage plots, the MacGuffin reaches colossal proportions, becoming almost synonymous with the film in its entirety. Briefly, its protagonist, Richard Hannay, is fiercely chased both by Scotland Yard and by the members of an obscure organisation, the Thirty-Nine Steps, in a constant exacerbation of motifs without any final resolution. Thus, as the film ends tracing a circular detour, we are perplexed by three questions: What exactly are the Thirty-Nine Steps? What is the vital secret they conceal? Does it justify the frenetic persecution suffered by Hannay? More than two decades later, in his series of Hollywood films, Hitchcock will resort again to the same tactics of the prolonged MacGuffin in his celebrated thriller North by Northwest (1959), which the director appraised as the best and the most derisory of all his MacGuffins (Truffaut 1984: 45). Precisely all the pre-eminence that most critics have conceded to the MacGuffin is undermined by Hitchcock himself when he declared that “the MacGuffin is nothing”. For Cohen this radical negation of any transcendental implication is a process of “deontologizing identification” (II: 156), a total subversion of the cinematic image “that is disclosed to be not 1 Hitchcock ironically ‘clarified’ to Truffaut the nature of this concept: “The word MacGuffin comes from a story about two men in an English train ... The first one says, “Well, what’s a MacGuffin?” “It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish highlands”. So the other says, “But there are no lions in the Scottish highlands”. And he answers, “then that’s no MacGuffin” (1984: 43). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 159–165 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 163 mimetic or representational but something else” (II: 259, emphasis in original). As a consequence, in The Thirty-Nine Steps or in North by Northwest there is no plausible explanation or resolution as there is no original to refer back to, no truth to be discerned, but just an obvious neutralization or implosion of meaning, in a sense parallel to that theorised by Jean Baudrillard in relation with the collapsing of reality and communication at the hands of mass media and hyperreality (2002: 79-86). Similarly, in every Hitchcock film we are exposed to the director’s unmistakable profile, his picture or his elusive role as an extra. These cameos do not indicate that we are facing the real director, nor even an actor, but a surrogate, an ‘external-internal’ figure, a parergon element or frame. This in- betweenness evidences that cinema can just be a self-conscious fiction: “a simulacrum [that] destroys auteuriality and authority, [and] voids the mimetic logic” (I: 242). The recurrence of Hitchcock’s cameos, as much as their potentiality to originate “the complex network of traces and effects that we call ‘Hitchcock’” (II: 261), makes Cohen designate this practice with a proper denomination: cameonomies. In addition, the functional analogies between the MacGuffin and the cameo are obvious, as Cohen explicates: “like the cameo, the MacGuffin voids referential contracts, converts objects into citations” (II: 156). 3) Revealing that the transition from “mimetic media’s representational humanism”(I: 12) to the era of teletechnics and globalisation is an integral part of Hitchcock’s filmography and in evident interconnection with Cohen’s interest in “[situating] ‘cinema’ in the accelerated histories of writing and memory systems, including, today, the entire advance of electronic image culture, media, artificial memory, techno-weapons, and global capital” (I: 249). Most specifically, Cohen emphasises the deluge of machines, transports and telecommunication mechanisms of the most variegated kind –telephones, radios, fans, telegraphs, mills, bombs, trains, etc.– that, from Hitchcock’s first silent films, inundate the screen. For instance, the opening scenes of his silent film The Lodger (1926) constitute an authentic barrage of images depicting enormous printing presses publishing information on the latest murder by the serial killer known as The Avenger. The Secret Agent (1936), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Strangers on a Train (1951) or North by Northwest are some of the various creations in which the central action or crucial moments of the plot take place on a train, one of Hitchcock’s favourite signatures symbolising, as Cohen interprets it, the motion of cinematic production. As stated by Cohen, this obsessive inscription of technological artefacts has been unjustly ignored by most critics when, in fact, it represents a basic clue to unearthing an internal anti-mimetic operation that illustrates “a transition from a bibliocentric culture to one of telemedia … or, beyond that, as a perhaps still unexplored event in a broader set of histories, say, in the globalization of what can be called the tele- archive and the epistemology of the image” (II: xiii). Also, in so doing, Hitchcock would be launching a war on cinematics through its very technical ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 159–165 ISSN 0210-6124 164 Rosa María Díez Cobo premises and their representation onscreen. Indeed, most of Hitchcock’s plots promote an inverted logic of the image and its inception since the filmic image is originated not in memory, analogy or mimesis but by means of the generating capacity of technology that precedes any promise of the anteriority of the senses. Cohen exemplifies this aspect referring to the editing of newspapers in The Lodger as a preoriginary momentum where “the giant machines issue dead repetitive prints” (II: 259). The centrality of the machine, as the origin or the centre of discourse in a sort of adamic conception, connects with the Derridean proposal on the immanence of the signature and its dependency on repeatability: the signature is detachable from the signatory, that is to say, it is an autonomous entity in a parallel sense to that of Hitchcock’s cinematics that “apprehends its technical premises as a war within and over the tele-archival, as anarchivist, which is also to say over the production of virtual pasts and alternative futures (II: 262). Accordingly, Hitchcock’s ‘war machines’ are allied to the cinematic project of suspending conventional notions of auterism and ocularcentrism. This disturbing awakening of the technological is emphasised in the lethal attack that birds unleash on the population of Bodega Bay in Hitchcock’s classic film The Birds (1963). As Cohen reiterates, the birds in the movie are not intended to represent living organisms in a biological sense; in fact they behave automatically with an inordinate fury and cruelty. What matters is the savage combat they, as animemes, unleash against their observers as responding to a blinding programmed revenge. Taken as a whole, what Cohen ultimately discusses in Cryptonymies is the undecidability –the play of presence and absence– at the origin of cinematic meaning and the sabotage potential of teletechnics, animemes and tropes. All aspects considered, it could be affirmed that Cohen echoes Nietzsche by proclaiming the death of cinema as traditionally conceptualised. This categorical assertion, which Cohen implicitly formulates throughout Cryptonymies, calls for a new set of definitions for a cinematic practice that refutes the very basis of cinema viewing and interpreting, and this is exactly what the author aspires to effect in these two volumes. Finally, it is always rewarding to come across a critical work that so audaciously escapes from theoretical stagnant conventions to magnificently achieve the aim of revealing and interpreting artefacts that are central in understanding Hitchcock’s filmography. Thus, despite the high level of epistemological complexity and its sinuous structure, Cryptonymies is a welcome contribution that will open promising new ways of readdressing the otherwise presumably exhausted field of Hitchcockian criticism. Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean 2002 (1981): Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P. Cohen, Tom 1994: Anti-Mimesis from Plato to Hitchcock. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Conrad, Peter 2000: The Hitchcock Murders. New York: Faber and Faber. Duncan, Paul 2003: Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films. Frankfurt: Taschen. Leitch, Thomas M. 1991: Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games. Athens: U of Georgia P. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 159–165 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 165 Modleski, Tania 1988: The Women Who Knew Too Much. London: Methuen. Rohmer, Éric and Claude Chabrol 1957: Hitchcock. Paris: Editions Universitaires. Truffaut, François 1984 (1983): Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster Weis, Elizabeth and John Belton, eds. 1985: Film Sound: Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia UP. Received 27 March 2008 Accepted 10 April 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 159–165 ISSN 0210-6124 Dirk Geeraerts, ed. 2006: Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. viii + 485 pp. ISBN: 13: 978-3-11-019085-4; ISBN: 10: 3-11-019085-0 Paloma Tejada Caller Universidad Complutense de Madrid [email protected] Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is not only a scientific approach to the study of language, but undoubtedly one of the most rapidly expanding schools in linguistics nowadays. As a dynamic and attractive framework within theoretical and descriptive linguistics, it proves to be one of the most exciting areas of research within the interdisciplinary project of cognitive science. Part of its seductiveness arises from the fact that CL aims at an integrated model of language and thought, at the building of a sharp theory of linguistic meaning that reflects the human construal of external reality, taking into account the way in which human beings experience reality, both culturally and psychologically (27). In its description of natural language, CL attempts to bridge “the distance between the social and the psychological, between the community and the individual, between the system and the application of the system, between the code and the actual use of the code” (26). However, as Geeraerts puts it, today’s CL constitutes “a flexible framework rather than a single theory of language” (2); “a conglomerate of more or less extensive, more or less active centers of linguistic research that are closely knit together by a shared perspective, but that are not yet brought together under the common rule of a well- defined theory” (2). CL integrates “branches that are not single, neatly delineated models of linguistic description, but rather bundles of closely related but at the same time competitive approaches” (466). Given its dynamicity, this ‘recontextualizing approach’, as it stands, is attracting an increasingly broader readership and has proved a fertile field for printing. Since its birth with Langacker’s lectures and Lakoff’s work on metaphor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, publishing in CL has been steadily increasing and has done so in successive stages. The late 1980s and 1990s saw an explosion of books in which innovations on the basic concepts and tenets were developed; from the turn of the century, good individual introductory handbooks were boosted (Ungerer and Schmid 1996; Violi 2001; Lee 2002; Taylor 2002; Dirven and Vespoor 2004; Croft and Cruse 2004; Evans and Green 2006). The year 2005 was the most fruitful for more definitive compilations and wider proposals showing relations between approaches and between CL and other domains of research (see pp. 469-85, and recent volumes, such as Ruiz de Mendoza and Peña 2005, enthusiastically and thoroughly reviewed in http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/18/18- 241.html). As CL seems to be now coming of age and presents itself as a mature theoretical and empirical enterprise, it demands a reliable consolidation and a firm popularizing of its basic tenets. Thus during the past two years we have witnessed something of a publishing marathon in which two teams of researchers, led by Dirk Geeraerts and Vyvyan Evans, respectively, have brought out their parallel series of ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 167–172 ISSN 0210-6124 168 Paloma Tejada Caller books, meant to give the wide and heterogeneous audience of CL a detailed state of the art and an unyielding foundation for future research. For that purpose, different kinds of books have been prepared: a) CL Readers, compiling foundational papers and illustrating fundamental concepts, as in the present volume and Evans et al. 2007; b) comprehensive and detailed introductions to CL (Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2007; Evans et al. 2006); c) volumes looking into the future introducing current developments and new trends (Kristiansen et al. 2006, deliberately conceived as a companion and complementary volume to Geeraerts’ Basic Readings and Evans and Pourcel forthcoming). To these may be added a so far unparalleled and necessary glossary of CL terms by Evans (2007) that is well worth mentioning,. Considering this lavish production, the purpose of this review will be very modest: to present and give a critical account of Geeraerts’ selection of articles, aims and achievements. The comparison with Evans et al.’s Reader will therefore not be stressed. Let it suffice to say that the two books are self-standing, serve similar purposes and prove equally successful and authoritative. Save for some formal and pedagogical choices, both volumes offer a broad overview for introductory readers and a final chapter for further reading. Although Evans’ Reader is more extensive and ambitious (28 articles, both classic and contemporary, selected to “represent the full range, scope and diversity of the Cognitive Lings Enterprise”), all the authors comprised in Geeraerts’, save for Tuggy, find their place in Evans’, and four articles in their selection coincide. In the book under consideration, Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings, Geeraerts offers a coherent collection of twelve key writings on CL, rounded up with a 28-page Introduction —‘A Rough Guide to Cognitive Linguistics’— and an Epilogue of similar extension, suggesting ‘Trajectories for further Reading’. According to the travel metaphor pervasive in his account, Geeraerts embarks the reader on a voyage of discovery, with the promise that travels teach one how to see, the aim being not so much to seek new landscapes but to get new eyes for language and meaning. The twelve chapters in the book correspond to twelve “fundamental parts of the theoretical conglomerate” constituting the discipline: cognitive grammar, grammatical construal, radial network, prototype theory, schematic network, conceptual metaphor, image schema, metonymy, mental spaces, frame semantics, construction grammar, and usage-based linguistics (2). Each of these concepts, which “far from being the only relevant or interesting” are “among the most basic ones” in CL (18), is introduced by a classic piece of CL writing, reproduced from the original with only formal modifications and some slight adjustments of chapter 4. The table of contents of the book reads as follows: Chapter 1: ‘Cognitive Grammar. Introduction to Concept, Image and Symbol’, by R. Langacker (1990, 1986); Chapter 2: ‘Grammatical Construal. The Relation of Grammar to Cognition’, by Leonard Talmy (1988); Chapter 3: ‘Radial Network; Cognitive Topology and Lexical Networks’ by Claudia Brugman and George Lakoff (1988); Chapter 4: ‘Prototype Theory: Prospects and Problems of Prototype Theory’, by Dirk Geeraerts (1989); Chapter 5: ‘Schematic Network: Ambiguity, Polysemy and Vagueness’ by David Tuggy (1993); Chapter 6: ‘Conceptual Metaphor: The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor’, by George Lakoff (1993); Chapter 7: ‘Image Schema: The Cognitive Psychological Reality of Image Schemas and their ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 167–172 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 169 Transformations’, by Raymond Gibbs, Jr. and Herbert L. Colston (1995); Chapter 8: ‘Metonymy: The Role of Domains in the Interpretation of Metaphors and Metonymies’, by William Croft (1993); Chapter 9: ‘Mental Spaces: Conceptual Integration Networks’, by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (1998); Chapter 10: ‘Frame Semantics’, by Charles Fillmore (1982); Chapter 11: ‘Construction Grammar: The Inherent Semantics of Argument Structure: The Case of the English Ditransitive Construction’, by Adele Goldberg (1992); and Chapter 12: ‘Usage-based Linguistics: First Steps toward a Usage-based Theory of Language Acquisition’, by Michael Tomasello (2000). Some remarks should be made on Geeraerts’ selection of articles. First, it pays due honour to introducers of concepts, that is, to key pioneering figures, such as Lakoff, Langacker, Talmy or Fillmore, even if the latter would not describe himself unreservedly as a cognitive linguist (24). These distinguished authors are brought together with representatives of what Geeraerts calls “first and second wave of researchers” (24): Fauconnier, Turner, Gibbs, Croft, Goldberg, Tuggy and the author himself, in the mid 1980s, and Tomasello, in the mid 1990s. Second and more important, in Geeraert’s selection, the aim of usefulness prevails over that of historical account. Thus, for the sake of clarity he often introduces longstanding concepts through innovative, though well consolidated, perspectives. Significantly, most of the articles included in Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings, except for Fillmore (1982) and Tomasello (2000), were written in the 1990s. As for its structure, it must be stated that Geeraerts’ book has been carefully and pedagogically designed, so that the above mentioned articles keep articulated in turn around four defining lines of CL. That is, the notions introduced are in turn grouped together into four subsets of concepts corresponding to the four features of meaning, specific to CL (4-5). As advocated by Geeraerts, linguistic meaning is said to be perspectival, dynamic, encyclopaedic and experience- and usage-based. a) Linguistic meaning is perspectival. The fact that meaning is portrayed as a way of shaping the outside world (4) requires the understanding of the first two concepts: cognitive grammar and grammatical construal. That is “[T]he typical formal categories of grammatical description have to be reinterpreted from a semantic point of view” (7) and conceptual construal systems that are typical for the grammatical rather than the lexical subsystem of natural languages must be defined (9). b) Linguistic meaning is dynamic and flexible. Geeraerts focuses now on the fact that meaning is sensitive to contextual effects (10) and that language users adapt their semantic categories to transformations of the circumstances (4). Accordingly, three cognitive models for the polysemic architecture of expressions are introduced: radial network (with a seminal analysis of the preposition over); prototype theory (taken to be a broad set of models) and schematic network, in which movements from more specific to more general levels of categorization are made explicit. Tuggy’s hypothesis that the relationship between vagueness and polysemy is a contextual one is emphasized. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 167–172 ISSN 0210-6124 170 Paloma Tejada Caller c) Linguistic meaning is encyclopaedic and non-autonomous. Under this heading, Geeraerts supports the idea that meaning has to do with the way in which we interact with the world. That is to say, meaning reflects our overall experience, biological, cultural and social, as human beings. The focus lies now on the well- known concepts of metaphor and metonymy, image schema and mental spaces, all of which receive a renewed and updated treatment. The notion of metaphor, probably the best known aspect of CL (11), and one occupying a major place in the cognitive research programme, is introduced through a recent systematic overview of the theoretical and practical features of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Similarly, the concept of image schema, devised back in 1987, is shaped through Gibbs and Colston’s account, which adopts a more psychological leaning and reinforces the need for experimental methods. As for metonymy, it is innovatively defined through the concept of domain matrix. d) Linguistic meaning is based on usage and experience. In this section, Geeraerts argues in favour of the importance of language use for our knowledge of language (5) and guides the reader to three main concepts: frame semantics, occupying a transitional position in his grouping of ideas, construction grammar and usage-based linguistics. As will be mentioned below, throughout the book Geeraerts defends the corpus research trend that is clearly emerging. In this respect, Tomasello’s analysis of observed speech in the field of language acquisition is given particular relevance as central in the CL debate on one of the main tenets of Generative Grammar. Geeraerts’ voice and authority are best to be found in his two, initial and final, contributions to the book. In his Introduction, Geeraerts provides the reader with a roadmap and presents his carefully designed book, together with his own view of CL and of the place this framework may occupy for the future of linguistics. CL conceptual cornerstones are mentioned as well as its theoretical and empirical convergences with functionalist approaches and other disciplines devoted to the exploration of specific forms of context, such as sociolinguistics, pragmatics and text linguistics, or its interaction with other sciences of the mind. The book, however, does not elaborate on these extensions. Nor will the reader find further development on grammaticalisation and other diachronic approaches, prevalent psychological standpoints, critical cognitive linguistics, cognitive stylistics or cultural cognitive studies. The aim of the author does not seem to be to explicitly build bridges with generative grammar either. All that is no doubt left to be discussed and illustrated in the complementary volume edited by Kristiansen et al.. But if Geeraerts’ initial chapter starts off with this brief general discussion of the scientific content of CL theory, it goes on to describe what the author calls the sociology of the discipline. Accordingly, the Introduction outlines the people it involves, the local and international conferences where they meet, the channels in which they publish or through which they communicate. Main CL representatives, events, mailing lists, journals and book series are collected in its pages (21-24). Despite the merits displayed in the introduction, the Epilogue proves most valuable and successful. Once the reader has left the introductory level (s)he may want to deepen ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 167–172 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 171 his or her understanding of the existing body of work in CL or of close domains. Therefore, the aim of this last chapter is to give a broadly conceived set of suggestions for further reading, in print or electronic, accompanying each of the chapters included in the collection. Geeraerts succeeds in giving the reader an idea of the vastness of the field and of the internal debates going on. On their voyage, readers learn that ‘there are plenty more fish in the sea’ and that ‘the more you dare, the more you win’. Geeraerts achieves his aim through a precise and brave labelling of the existing literature. Publications are categorized as representative, convincing, popularizing, broad, ground-breaking, or lively, among other adjectives. The reader is led to distinguish between comprehensive introductions, volumes and monographs of specific interest, individual accounts of relevant issues, critical questions and new attempts to refine traditional conceptions, alternative theoretical points of view, philosophical or other ramifications, areas of application of theories and combinations of approaches. And (s)he is drawn to identify pioneers from followers or popularizers of theories. Secondly, in his Epilogue Geeraerts deliberately signals some important research gaps, providing an encouraging point of departure for future investigation. He points to the lack of a systematic comparison between Langacker and Talmy (460); of a canonical position regarding problems of polysemy (462), of a theoretical status of the concept of frame (466), of more systematic work in variational (sociolinguistic) forces determining the occurrence of grammatical phenomena (468), or of sufficient attempts to formalize network analysis (461). However, his most repeated plea for the future refers to the need for intensifying experimentation and empirical research so that it becomes dominant in CL. It must be noted that both in his Introduction and Epilogue, Geeraerts’ suggestions are wrapped in a conspicuously close and friendly, colleague-like style. The pedagogical and inviting nature of his book is reinforced through this interpersonal, persuasive variety of language, used to advertise an enticing trip. The CL “archipielago” will “win your heart” (20), provided you take a good “roadmap” with you to know “your way around”. Geeraerts’ travel book offers you “routes to explore”, places to visit and the “top-twelve” delightful sights you should not miss. A hospitable, open-minded, exciting, wide-ranging and innovative intellectual climate is guaranteed. Last but not least, this (cheap) trip promises to clearly broaden the mind and raise the spirits of first time visitors. As will be clear by now, Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings is an authoritative and encouraging general introduction to CL by a professional whose longstanding devotion to cognitive semantics and innovative proposals within the field run unquestioned. The Reader proves both a coherent and representative collection of original papers covering all the major areas and key researchers of the field, and a motivating guide into CL. Thus, it will serve the needs both of undergraduate students who wish to gain a good understanding of the framework and of postgraduates who seek hints to study particular aspects of one topic in more detail. Just before ending, let me put forward a couple of minor suggestions. Readers unfamiliar with CL might benefit from the inclusion of a glossary, given the complex technical vocabulary that CL has generated by now. And as for the visual summary of fundamental features, concepts and fields of research included on page 19, an even ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 167–172 ISSN 0210-6124 172 Paloma Tejada Caller clearer representation might be useful. Could there not be an arrow linking construction grammar or frame semantics with the feature perspectival? Regarding formal aspects, future editions will surely avoid some printing errors in the book: Qunatitative (468), Francesco Ruiz (457). In sum, the book by Geeraerts turns out an excellent overview of CL, successful in its aims, and can be recommended without reservation to readers interested in the subject matters. We can add that in this case ‘the (reading) journey is the reward’. Works Cited Croft, William. and D. Alan Cruse, 2004: Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Dirven, René and Marjolijn Vespoor, 2004: Cognitive Explorations of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Evans, Vyvyan 2007: A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics. Utah: U. of Utah P. Evans Vyvyan and Melanie Green 2006: Cognitive Linguistics. An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Evans, Vyvyan, Benjamin Bergen and Jörg Zinken, eds. 2006 : Cognitive Linguistics. An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Evans, Vyvyan, Benjamin Bergen and Jörg Zinken, eds. 2007: The Cognitive Linguistics Reader. London: Equinox Publishers. Evans, Vyvyan and Stéphanie Pourcel, eds. forthcoming: New directions in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Geeraerts, Dirk and Herbert Cuyckens, eds. 2007: The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. New York: Oxford UP. Kristiansen, Gitte, Michel Achard, René Dirven and Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza, eds. 2006: Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lee, David 2002: Cognitive Linguistics. An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP. Ruiz de Mendoza, Francisco and M. Sandra Peña, eds. 2005. Cognitive Linguistics. Internal Dynamics and Interdisciplinary Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Taylor, John R. 2002: Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: Oxford UP. Ungerer, Friedrich and Hans-Jörg Schmid 1996: An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London: Longman. Violi, Patricia 2001: Meaning and Experience. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Received 15 January 2008 Accepted 5 February 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 167–172 ISSN 0210-6124 Carmen Muñoz, ed. 2006: Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters Ltd. xi + 283 pp. ISBN 1-85359-891-7 Melinda Dooly Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona [email protected] Research on the influence of the age factor in first and second language learning has been a centre of debate for some time but research on the age factor in foreign language learning is relatively new. While second and foreign language learning are often categorised together, there are substantial differences in the acquisition of second and foreign languages. Not least of these is the fact that second language acquisition (SLA) is embedded within a larger context (the host environment) where the target language is widely used (Dörnyei 1990). On the other hand, foreign language (FL) acquisition usually occurs in decontextualised settings of the classroom with little possibility of regular interaction with the target language community. Thus, within the framework of foreign language learning, this book examines data related to whether the age factor is relevant in foreign language acquisition – evidence based upon a longitudinal study carried out in Catalonia, Spain, and known as the Barcelona Age Factor (BAF) project. This project, financed in part by research grants from the Spanish Ministry of Education, aimed to study the effects of initial age of language instruction upon different aspects of language learning, all within a formal language teaching framework. The project was initiated in 1995 and data was collected between 1996 and 2002, thus allowing for longitudinal comparisons of the research data; diverse comparisons were made according to different areas of language learning. Three phases of comparison between early starters and late starters were used: the first phase after 200 hours of instruction, the second phase after 416 hours and the third after 726 hours. The book begins with a very thorough overview of research into the critical period hypothesis (CPH), situating the research within a theoretical framework concerning age, rate and language attainment (although it must be borne in mind that CPH is mainly concerned with second language acquisition and not foreign language learning). Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning takes up questions previously posed by García Mayo and García Lecumberri (2003) in their book entitled Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language, in which the issue of CPH and other age related factors in FL learning are studied (for a review of this book, see Celaya 2003). In answer to the authors in García Mayo and García Lecumberri’s collection, who pointed out the need for more longitudinal studies and for more reflection on how foreign languages are being introduced to different age groups, the various studies in Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning cover several years of data compilation and offer insights into the age factor in relation to diverse areas of foreign language teaching. Following the introduction, each chapter deals with a specific aspect of the research project which was studied independently (e.g. pronunciation, morphology, oral ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 174 Melinda Dooly fluency, etc.) together with the relationship between these areas and the age of initiation into language learning. Other chapters discuss aspects related to language learning but which are not specifically related to language form (e.g. learner strategies, interactional skills and motivation). As the editor states, there is often an assumed connection between ease of language learning and age – the common assumption being the ‘younger the better’ and there has been considerable investigation into the ‘age factor’ in recent years by researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Barring a few areas such as ‘authentic accents’ or phonetic imitation, these studies seem to indicate that efficiency in formal language learning increases with maturation, that is to say older students appear to have an advantage over so-called young learners under the age of twelve (Thompson and Gaddes 2005; Singleton and Lengyel 1995). Another research carried out by Lasagabaster and Doiz (2003) also found that the maturational factor was decisive, with older students showing more complexity in linguistic performance and achieving higher overall scores in the tests administered by the researchers. The evidence given in most of the different areas of study under the wider umbrella of the BAF project supports this hypothesis: within the context of foreign language learning (in this case the context is in Catalonia, Spain): older learners appear to be quicker in acquiring different language aspects, especially when dealing with explicit learning mechanisms. However, it should be pointed out that recent research has shown that carefully planned explicit teaching can actually be beneficial for young learners as well (see Goh and Taib 2006; Hall 2002), so arguably the debate is still open. Notwithstanding the similarities in results and conclusions of each chapter, the book itself does not propose overall conclusions nor advocate any particular pedagogical position. The book is meant to give the reader a review of the project and its results, and then allow the reader to make his or her own conclusions. One pedagogical implication which might be drawn from the evidence presented here is that foreign language instruction needs to adapt to the different maturation phases of the students, for instance, fomenting implicit learning with younger students and gradually moving into more explicit learning techniques as the students get older (and become more familiar with explicit learning strategies prevalent in most education systems). The findings described in the book may be, in part, a reflection of the mode of language instruction frequently used in Catalonia (with older students mainly) wherein the emphasis is placed on formal grammatical analysis. This would imply that the older students are more skilled in dealing with some of the tests and assessment tasks used in the research approach. Chapter One, written by Carmen Muñoz, outlines the BAF project in detail, beginning with, as stated earlier, a very precise theoretical background to the project, largely based on previous CPH research. In a nutshell, the idea behind CPH is that there is a biologically-determined critical period during which it is possible for a person to acquire a second (or third or forth) language with relatively high attainment levels (if the learning process continues). Following this period, the mental mechanism for language learning changes, resulting in lower levels of language learning. Importantly, the author is careful to point out that the hypothesis of a critical period of language acquisition is largely based on research of first and second (immersion) language ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 175 acquisition and not foreign language learning. The chapter describes the BAF project, explaining how the data was collected, verified and analysed. The author provides precise explanations of the different tests which were given to the subject groups and how these were assessed – in particular the tests that were qualitative and how they were scored. Finally, Muñoz presents some general results of the BAF project which support the hypothesis that an age-related difference does indeed exist in formal language learning, clearly in favour of students with higher maturation levels. Despite the precise descriptions of the way in which the tests were administered, more data concerning the type of language instruction would have been useful. For example, there is no discussion of whether the different study groups received comparable language instruction in questions of teacher-student ratio, materials and resources available in the classroom nor the teaching methodology the students were exposed to. There is a lack of information about the amount of learner interaction in the target language, the nature of tasks used (and thus which tasks the students are familiar with) etc. This type of information could have provided a more complete overview of the background to the study. This could also help avoid possible criticism concerning the focus of the research on only one variable – i.e. age – without taking into consideration other variables which inevitably influence the language learning process (Ellis 1992; Gardner 1993a, 1993b; O’Malley and Chamot 1990; Sternberg 1997; Wenden and Rubin 1987). In the following chapter, Natalia Fullana considers the age factor in relation to the acquisition of foreign language phonology (target language – English). In order to test the learners’ perception of English sounds, the learners were given a test of minimal pairs, while to test their phonological production the learners were asked to repeat words (imitation task) they heard from a tape (the voice belonged to a female native speaker of Standard British English). An SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was used for the analysis of significant differences in perception and production between the groups. Despite some differences between the groups in different tasks, the author concludes that the “starting age did not provide clear-cut evidence as to the perception of FL sounds in formal learning contexts by Spanish and Catalan learners of English” (57) and she calls for the need for further research. There are many relevant pedagogical implications in the chapter – the importance of both quality and design of target language input in the foreign language classroom versus a focus on quantity. Along similar lines, in Chapter Three Joan Carles Mora focuses on oral fluency development, using data compiled from a story-telling task. As the author points out, pinpointing a definitive factor for evaluating the notion of fluency is extremely complex (65). In the end, the analysis of the oral productions of the subjects in the research is based on native-speaker descriptors or native-speaker judgements of non-native speakers’ speech. Unfortunately, this seems to contradict an earlier position in the book that claims the research focuses on “optimal levels that are realistically attainable through school education, rather than on unattainable native- likeness” (vii). Still, the research into oral fluency provides a potent research background for further investigation into fluency in young learners – an area still largely unexplored. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 176 Melinda Dooly Chapters Four, by Immaculada Miralpeix, and Five, by Carmen Muñoz, examine vocabulary acquisition and morphological acquisition, respectively. Given the difficulties encountered in quantifying early learners’ vocabulary – often a problem for obtaining sufficient sample size – Miralpeix has found an innovative method of measuring vocabulary diversity using the D measure. This is a mathematical modelling approach which has the advantage of using the available data (even limited vocabulary production) so the formula is not a function of the number of words in the sample. Moreover it represents how Type-Token Ratio (TTR) varies over a range of token size for each speaker (McKee, Malvern and Richards 2000). As in other areas of the overall research, the results indicate that there is an advantage for late starters, in this case higher vocabulary production. In her research into morphological acquisition, Carmen Muñoz first reviews in Chapter Five other studies concerning the question of acquisition of grammatical morphology in English as a second language, in particular the contributions made by Krashen (1985, 1996, 2003) concerning the ‘natural sequence’ of morpheme acquisition. Muñoz reviews the different ways in which this hypothesis has been critiqued, noting in particular that the BAF project can help further research in the relevancy of foreign language classroom context, formal instruction of grammatical input and accuracy order of morpheme use in relation to the age factor. Using data from semi-structured interviews and picture-elicited narratives, the author shows that although there is similar ordering of morpheme acquisition between different age groups, the rates of acquisition of these are different: the older groups are faster. Thirdly, the research indicates that the acquisition is more closely related to proficiency level than age level. The pedagogical implications of this chapter are significant for teachers in that it highlights the role of input in language learning. “[A] certain amount of exposure will be needed to ensure accurate performance. (…) perhaps the relative frequency of various structures in the input becomes a salient factor for learners once they have enough of the second language to 'tune to the frequency’, that is, beyond the very elementary level of the less proficient learners in this study” (122). These conclusions bring new light to an important debate concerning the role of input in foreign language learning by foregrounding questions about the importance of vocabulary and syntax in teaching materials as well as how they should be organised according to CPH. This is supported by Esther Alvarez’s research concerning age and the nine levels of morphosyntactic development in Chapter Six. Similarly, Chapter Seven, written by Maria Rosa Torras, Teresa Navés, Maria Luz Celaya, and Carmen Pérez-Vidal, looks at the development of writing competence of EFL learners in relation to the amount of instruction and age range. Looking at the subjects’ writing – in particular, using a system of multivariate analysis of variance, the researchers look at the number and percentage of error-free sentences, complexity and other variants – the authors suggest that the starting age of language instruction and the amount of instruction have an effect on fluency and complexity, both lexical and grammatical. However these factors are not linked when it comes to accuracy. Significantly, the results seem to indicate that the amount of instruction makes more difference as regards complexity and fluency than does early initiation into language ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 177 learning – specifically around the age of 12, when complexity of writing begins to appear. As the authors point out, the two learning profiles which emerge – i.e. fluency and complexity – point towards the need for integrating different methodological approaches according to different age ranges, paying special attention to the needs of learners around the age of 12. The final three chapters deal with issues pertinent to language learning processes such as interactional skills, learner strategies and motivation. These are all examined relative to the ‘age factor’. The research in Chapter Eight by Gisela Grañena indicates that the more proficient the learner, the higher the tendency to engage in explicit requests for help when faced with communicative gaps, while, interestingly, the proficiency level of learners is not necessarily relative to the development of learning strategies, as shown in the following chapter written by Elsa Tragant and Mia Victori. The research carried out by Tragant and Victori highlights the need to provide learners with methodological and psychological support, both of which are essential to help them develop their language learning skills and learning strategies. In the final chapter, also by Elsa Tragant, the results of the research into language learning and motivation indicate that there is some correlation between students’ motivation to learn English and age; older students displayed more motivation. However, the motivation was notably more extrinsic. This seems to beg the question whether the effect of having spent more time in the education system – known for its emphasis on extrinsic motivation – is reflected in the results seen here (Ames 1992; Hidi 2000). An impressive amount of recent research on different areas of foreign language learning and their relationship to the age factor is compiled in this book, all of which make a timely contribution to the field of foreign language acquisition. A caveat may be in order: the reader should not necessarily extrapolate the research findings from this contextualised research project to an all-encompassing explanation of language learning processes. Inevitably, there are many variables that come into play when a child or adult learns a foreign language. Not only the learners’ attitudes, strategies and motivations, but also their attributes, needs, exposures, family environments and school environments are influential in the eventual language attainment. Bearing in mind that the research focuses only on one of these many factors – i.e. age – the book provides important input for language teachers and other language professionals about various maturational phases. All in all, the book presents an overview of extensive research into the issue of critical periods in language learning and its results provide food for thought for teachers interested in knowing more about the need for diverse types of language teaching approaches at different ages. Works Cited Ames, Carole 1992: ‘Classrooms: Goals, Structures, and Student Motivation’. Journal of Educational Psychology 84: 261–71. Celaya, M. Luz 2003: Review: García Mayo, María del Pilar and María Luisa García Lecumberri, eds. 2003: Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language. Atlantis XXV.2. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 178 Melinda Dooly Dörnyei, Zoltan 1990: ‘Conceptualizing Motivation in Foreign-Language Learning’. Language Learning 40.1: 45–78. Ellis, Rod 1992: Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford UP. García Mayo, María del Pilar and María Luisa García Lecumberri, eds. 2003: Age and the Acquisition of English as aForeign Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gardner, Howard 1993a: Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York: Basic Books. ––––– 1993b: Creating Minds. New York: Basic Books. Goh, Christine and Yusnita Taib 2006: ‘Metacognitive Instruction in Listening for Young Learners’. English Language Teaching Journal 60.3: 222-32. Hall, Tracey 2002: Explicit Instruction. Wakefield: National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum. Received 20 May 2007 Accepted 28 January 2007 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 173–178 ISSN 0210-6124 María del Pilar García Mayo, ed. 2007: Investigating Tasks in Formal Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. xii + 267 pp. ISBN 1-85359-927-1/EAN 978- 1-85359927-9 (hbk) ISBN 1-85359-926-3/EAN 978-1-85359-926-2 (pbk) Ana Fernández Dobao University of Washington [email protected] María del Pilar García Mayo edits the present volume with a clear and overtly stated purpose “to contribute to the growth of interest in task-based language learning and teaching that has been seen in recent years” (1). With this goal in mind the editor presents a collection of mostly empirical studies conducted by some of the leading researchers in the field. The studies selected examine a wide range of aspects of pedagogic task design, from different, but quite often complementary, theoretical and methodological perspectives. They have been conducted in different foreign language (FL) and second language (L2) contexts and involve an interesting variety of languages and language combinations. Taken all together, they offer an extensive and updated overview of what are considered to be the key issues of present-day task-based research, making, without doubt, an important contribution to the field. In the last two decades, tasks have become a central element in both language pedagogy and second language acquisition (SLA) research. With the communicative language teaching approach and its emphasis on the use of authentic language, tasks achieved a crucial status as the main unit of classroom design and, nowadays, task- based language teaching programs are being implemented in a growing number of L2 and FL settings. In the context of SLA research, they have received an equally increasing amount of attention, both as data elicitation instruments and as objects in need of investigation. An important, theoretically motivated line of research has developed aiming to explain the relationship existing between task design, learners’ performance and L2 learning. The results of this research are of major relevance for the development of both SLA theory and L2/FL pedagogy. A coherent and complete theory of task-based language learning should provide insights on how to manipulate task characteristics and conditions of implementation in order to achieve specific effects on learners’ production and interlanguage development within the classroom context. It should, as well, be able to provide empirically motivated criteria for task classification and sequencing in task-based syllabus design. It is therefore not surprising the amount of interest that tasks and task-oriented research have received in the last few years, not only from scholars and researchers but also from teachers, material designers and syllabus planners. As a result, the number of publications in the area is impressive. The volume here under review adds a new contribution to an already remarkable body of research – see, among many others, Nunan’s (1989) seminal work or, more recently, Bygate, Skehan and Swain (2001) and Ellis (2003). Task-based research has been approached from multiple theoretical perspectives. Interactionist research has focused on the interactive features of tasks, manipulating ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 179–184 ISSN 0210-6124 180 Ana Fernández Dobao them in order to determine which task types generate the most opportunities for negotiation of meaning – negotiation being considered, within this framework, as an effective context for SLA (Long 1983, 1996). This theoretical and methodological approach, particularly popular during the 80s and early 90s, can be found in Chapter 4 of the book here under review. Since the 90s, however, the heaviest bulk of the research on tasks has been conducted from an information processing perspective. Skehan’s Capacity Hypothesis (Skehan 1998) and Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson 2001, 2005) have provided the theoretical background for an impressive number of studies on the impact that cognitive task demands have on linguistic accuracy, fluency and complexity. The hegemony of this line of research is evident in Investigating Tasks – see Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 9 and 10. Finally, in more recent years, an increasing number of researchers, trying to distance themselves from these psycholinguistic approaches, have looked at task performance from sociocultural (Vygotsky 1978), socio-affective and socio-semiotic perspectives. This new approach to SLA informs the work presented in Chapters 5, 8 and 12. As already mentioned, the present volume brings together research conducted not only from different theoretical perspectives, but also on a variety of task-related issues and in a considerable range of settings. Some of the chapters examine oral production (from Chapter 2 to Chapter 4), whereas others focus on reading (Chapter 9) or writing tasks (from Chapter 5 to Chapter 8). Attention is paid to language use as well as language learning (Chapter 10 versus Chapter 9), at the level of lexis and pragmatics (Chapters 9, 10 and 11). Groups of learners from different proficiency levels and linguistic as well as academic backgrounds are also represented. We have, for instance, native speakers of Japanese (Chapters 2 and 7), Spanish (Chapters 3, 5, 10 and 11) and Dutch (Chapter 6) learning English as a FL. We also have learners of English as a L2 (Chapter 8), and Spanish, German and French as a FL (Chapters 4, 9 and 12). The volume offers in this way an open array of options and becomes of interest for different readers interested in different aspects of the language learning process. The book is organized into 12 chapters, each of which, except for Chapter 1, presents the results of an original data-based study. These 12 chapters are preceded by a foreword by Alison Mackey and an introduction by the editor, María del Pilar García Mayo. These two sections together with Chapter 1, by Peter Robinson, are a must to read. The introduction by García Mayo offers a general overview of the key issues covered by the different chapters in the book, while Mackey’s Foreword helps to place these different issues and studies within the general framework of task-based research. Peter Robinson – see Robinson (2001, 2003, 2005), opens the volume calling for a single classification system of pedagogic tasks able to “introduce order into the current data base of findings” (8). He reviews and compares the different sets of criteria for task classification employed in previous research, before presenting his own taxonomic system. This taxonomy is able to accommodate cognitive, interactional and learner- related factors, and is theoretically motivated, empirically researchable and operationally feasible. On this basis, Robinson argues that it can be used to promote answers to what he considers to be one of the fundamental questions in L2 task research: “how do teachers design and deliver a sequence of tasks that sustains learner ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 179–184 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 181 effort to use the L2, from beginning to end, and which simultaneously leads to L2 learning and development?” (7). This opening chapter is without doubt of major interest. It introduces much of the following research, which is situated within the framework of Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis, and provides a coherent set of guidelines to sort out the different approaches to task classification and analysis that the reader will encounter throughout the volume. For all these reasons, Chapter 1 constitutes a more than relevant introduction to the chapters that follow. These chapters, however, are fully independent from each other and therefore need not be read in any pre-established order. I would recommend the reader to find their own way through the book, in line with their personal interests and theoretical stance. In Chapter 2, ‘Information Distribution and Goal Orientation in Second Language Task Design’, Lambert and Engler examine the combined effect of two different task design factors on the nature of learners’ oral discourse. Thirty-six Japanese female learners of English as an FL were asked to complete six different types of oral tasks. The results of the experiment suggest that the manipulation of the information distribution variable can result in a trade-off between complexity and fluency/accuracy, and in this way serve to support a dual-mode processing system (see Skehan 1998). However, the effect of goal-orientation is not that clear. It seems that the two researched variables interact in complex ways with other task- and learner-related factors. In Chapter 3, ‘The Simultaneous Manipulation of Task Complexity along Planning Time and [+/– here-and-now]: Effects on L2 Oral Production’, Gilabert takes up Robinson’s research agenda. The final goal of the study is to identify how increasing the cognitive complexity of an oral narration task by manipulating pre-task planning time and the degree of displaced, past time reference can affect learners’ production. An experiment was conducted with 48 Spanish learners of English as an FL. The data obtained shows that an increase of complexity along the second of these two variables can serve to focus learners’ attention simultaneously on linguistic accuracy and complexity, thus supporting Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis versus Skehan’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model. Chapter 4, ‘Tasks, Negotiation and L2 Learning in a Foreign Language Context’, offers a different approach to tasks. From an interactionist perspective, Fernández García examines the opportunities that two different communicative tasks – a one-way shared background task and a two-way non-shared background task – offer for negotiation of meaning. Whereas most research on negotiation has been conducted in English L2 contexts and with intermediate or advanced level learners, Fernández García’s study examines oral interaction between 21 dyads of beginning level learners of Spanish as an FL. Evidence is provided of the usefulness of these two types of tasks to generate modified interaction leading to SLA, even at early stages of interlanguage development. In Chapter 5, ‘Attention to Form across Collaborative Tasks by Low-Proficiency Learners in an EFL Setting’, Alegría de la Colina and García Mayo adopt a sociocultural approach to examine learners’ interaction as they collaborate to complete three different types of writing tasks: a jigsaw, a text reconstruction and a dictogloss task. Previous research involving intermediate and advanced level learners suggests that these ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 179–184 ISSN 0210-6124 182 Ana Fernández Dobao three tasks are particularly effective to generate Focus on Form and metatalk. The results of the present study show that low level learners of English as an FL can also benefit from these collaborative writing tasks, particularly when allowed to metatalk in their L1. Chapters 6 and 7 evaluate again Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis against Skehan’s Limited Capacity Model. In Chapter 6, ‘Cognitive Task Complexity and Linguistic Performance in French L2 Writing’, Kuiken and Vedder examine the effects of task complexity on learners’ written performance by manipulating two cognitive factors: [+/– few elements] and [+/– reasoning demands]. Seventy-six Dutch learners of French as an FL from two different proficiency levels were asked to complete two different writing tasks. Learners performing the more complex version of the task produced more accurate and lexically complex texts. It seems that an increase in cognitive task complexity leads to more attention to language form and subsequent higher levels of linguistic accuracy and complexity, which supports Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis. Chapter 7, ‘The Effect of Manipulating Task Complexity along the [+/– here-and- now] Dimension on L2 Written Narrative Discourse’, by Ishikawa, follows a similar approach. The experiment designed by Ishikawa was completed by 54 Japanese learners of English as an FL and involved two different versions of the same writing task. The result obtained, again, support Robinson’s claims. The greater cognitive and conceptual demands of the [– here-and-now] condition direct learners’ attention to linguistic accuracy and complexity, leading them to produce linguistically more complex texts with a lower rate of errors. The author, however, points out the need for future research to pay more attention to individual variation. In Chapter 8, ‘Writing Tasks: The Effects of Collaboration’, Storch and Wigglesworth look at task-based language use and learning from the perspective of the sociocultural theory of mind. In their study 72 learners of English were asked to complete the same two writing tasks. Twenty-four students worked individually and 48 in dyads. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses conducted on the data show that collaborative writing leads to greater linguistic accuracy, because it offers opportunities for learners to discuss ideas, reflect on L2 form and provide each other with immediate feedback. On this basis, the authors argue that collaborative writing offers a positive site for language learning and therefore deserves a place in the L2 classroom. Chapters 9 and 10 shift the focus of attention to lexis. In Chapter 9, ‘L2 Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension: The Influence of Task Complexity’, Peters investigates whether it is possible to manipulate learners’ attention and enhance lexical development by altering the instructions of a reading task. Twenty-one Dutch students of German as an FL participated in the experiment. The results of the study show that manipulating students’ attention is quite an intricate issue. It is difficult to draw learners’ attention to vocabulary rather than meaning during reading tasks. We cannot forget that students bring to the task their own needs and goals, which lead their actions and shape their activities beyond the limits established by the researcher. In Chapter 10, ‘Task-Effect on the Use of Lexical Innovation Strategies in Interlanguage Communication’, González Álvarez analyzes the use of word coinage, foreignizing and code-switching communication strategies, across three different types ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 179–184 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 183 of oral tasks, by a total of 30 Spanish learners of English as an FL, from three different proficiency levels. The results obtained show that both the number and the type of lexical innovation strategies used are influenced by the proficiency level of the learner and the code and cognitive complexity of the task. Future research will need to investigate to what extent this impact on language use and word formation may also have an effect on L2 lexical development. In Chapter 11, ‘Fostering EFL Learners’ Awareness of Requesting through Explicit and Implicit Consciousness-Raising Tasks’, the focus shifts from lexis to pragmatics. Alcón Soler deals here with the problem of FL learners’ acquisition of pragmatic features. She compares the effect of three different instructional models – focus on meaning, focus on form and focus on forms – implemented with three different groups of Spanish secondary school learners of English as a FL. Evidence is obtained supporting the use of explicit consciousness-raising tasks to develop sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence in the FL classroom context. Most of the studies included in the book adopt a psycholinguistic perspective on task-based language learning, usually resorting to quantitative research methodologies and detailed statistical analyses. Notable exceptions are the investigations presented in Chapters 5 and 8 from the perspective of the sociocultural theory of mind, and the study that closes the volume in Chapter 12, ‘Interactive Task Design, Metachat and the Whole Learner’. In order to distance herself from cognitive ways of looking at tasks, Lamy resorts here to socio-affective and socio-semiotic frameworks of analysis. The focus of the study is on the metalinguistic conversations or metachat produced by 40 English- speaking learners of French as an FL as they perform different types of online tasks. To explain the occurrence of metachat, as well as its different functions, Lamy looks not only at task design factors, but also at the nature of the online social context in which the interaction takes place, analyzing individual and social variables such as group membership or group dynamics. More and more scholars are now pointing out the need for task-based research to look at data from more holistic approaches, paying closer attention to individual variation and the influence of the social context – see for instance Ortega (2007). In fact, some of the authors in this volume mention the need for further research to take a closer look at learners’ needs, goals and motivation in order to be able to clarify the complex relationship existing between task design and L2 production – see Lambert and Engler, Ishikawa or Peters. From this perspective, I believe this final chapter constitutes an important contribution to the volume. It serves to close the collection and at the same time encourage future research adopting alternative approaches to offer a more comprehensive view of task-based language learning and teaching. The book accomplishes with success the editor’s initial goal. It provides plenty of up-to-date information on tasks and an excellent overview of the current state of task- based research. As the editor herself points out, the variety of theoretical orientations, methodological approaches and task-related issues considered along the 11 data-based studies serve to “provide the reader with different options that can be tested in other contexts, with different language combinations and different groups of learners” (1). The book constitutes thus a main contribution for students and scholars interested in conducting research in the field. But it is of equal value for teachers and educators. The ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 179–184 ISSN 0210-6124 184 Ana Fernández Dobao results of these empirical studies have direct implications, widely discussed in the volume, for the FL teaching practice, and serve to inform pedagogical decisions concerning task selection and implementation in the classroom. In sum, the book makes a major and much needed contribution to the study of task-based language learning and teaching; it is therefore highly recommendable to both teaching and research professionals. Works Cited Bygate, Martin, Peter Skehan and Merrill Swain, eds. 2001: Researching Pedagogic Tasks: Second Language Learning, Teaching and Testing. Harlow: Longman. Ellis, Rod 2003: Task-based Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Oxford UP. Long, Michael H. 1983: ‘Native Speaker/Non-native Speaker Conversation and the Negotiation of Comprehensible Input’. Applied Linguistics 4: 126–41. ––––– 1996: ‘The Role of the Linguistic Environment in Second Language Acquisition’. William C. Ritchie and Tej K. Bhatia, eds. Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. San Diego: Academic P. 413-68. Nunan, David 1989: Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Ortega, Lourdes 2007: ‘Social Context in Task-based Language Learning: (How) Does it Matter?’ Paper presented at the Conference on Social and Cognitive Aspects of Second Language Learning and Teaching, University of Auckland, New Zealand, 12-14 April. Robinson, Peter 2001: ‘Task Complexity, Cognitive Resources, and Syllabus Design: A Triadic Framework for Examining Task Influences on SLA’. Peter Robinson, ed. Cognition and Second Language Instruction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 287-318. ––––– 2003: ‘Attention and Memory during SLA’. Catherine Doughty and Michael H. Long, eds. Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell. 631-78. ––––– 2005: ‘Cognitive Complexity and Task Sequencing: Studies in a Componential Framework for Second Language Task Design’. International Review of Applied Linguistics 43: 1-32. Skehan, Peter 1998: A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford UP. Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich 1978: Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Received 4 September 2007 Accepted 10 December 2007 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 179–184 ISSN 0210-6124 Nieves Alberola Crespo and Yvonne Shafer, eds. 2006: ¿Nimiedades para la eternidad? Pioneras en la escena estadounidense. Castellón: Eliago Ediciones. 209 pp. ISBN: 84-95881-97-7 Barbara Ozieblo University of Málaga [email protected] The volume ¿Nimiedades para la eternidad? Pioneras en la escena estadounidense is an essential purchase for any non-English speaking enthusiast of the American drama since it offers a unique opportunity to read Neighbors (Vecinos) by Zona Gale, Trifles (Nimiedades) by Susan Glaspell, Alice Gerstenberg’s Overtones (Directas e indirectas) and Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck (Impacto de color); the plays are accompanied by brief introductory essays. The translations of the plays are by Nieves Alberola Crespo. The four women authors selected wrote in the early years of the twentieth century and, as the title of the volume suggests, they should indeed be considered among the pioneer contributors to the serious drama of the USA. In keeping with the general approach to American culture that was prevalent in the middle years of the twentieth century, women dramatists were silenced and forgotten, and Eugene O’Neill was raised to the rank of father of the American Drama. Although I do not wish to dispute here the worth of many of O’Neill’s dramatic contributions, it does seem necessary to remind readers that earlier dramatists did write pieces of merit – Judith Sargent Murray, Louisa Medina, Anna Cora Mowatt to name just a few – and that the early twentieth century saw a burgeoning of regional, university and Little Theaters, all offering a stage to aspiring dramatists contemptuous of the demands of commercial theater. The volume under review redresses this imbalance by bringing the names of Zona Gale, Alice Gerstenberg, Susan Glaspell and Zora Neale Hurston to the attention of the reader. Of these four dramatists, Hurston – the only African American – is possibly the best known, thanks to the work of Alice Walker; Hurston’s novel Their Eyes were Watching God is frequently taught in American Literature courses, not only in the USA but also in Europe, and her short stories are anthologized in collections designed for high school and college courses. However, Hurston’s dramatic work continues to be little known. Susan Glaspell, on the other hand, although known and loved for her short play Trifles, is still, in spite of recent works of criticism and productions of her plays, not recognized as the significant modernist novelist and dramatist she undoubtedly was (see www.susanglaspell.org; Ben-Zvi 2005; Carpentier 2006; Carpentier and Ozieblo 2006; Ozieblo 2000; Ozieblo and Dickey 2008). The other two dramatists in this collection, Zona Gale and Alice Gerstenberg, are still to be reincorporated into the canon of American literature; Gale, better known as a novelist, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her play Miss Lulu Bett in 1921 – the first woman dramatist to be given the prestigious award which Glaspell would receive for Alison’s House ten years later. Gerstenberg devoted her life to the theater and was responsible for the first stage adaptation of Lewis ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 185–189 ISSN 0210-6124 186 Barbara Ozieblo Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Nevertheless, her work has been forgotten, except for Overtones, the play translated and reproduced in this volume. The plays selected are the better-known pieces of their authors, at least to students of American drama and thus the volume renders an important service to the disciplines of literature and drama by putting these previously untranslated plays in the hands of the Spanish-speaking reader. Although a number of anthologies of plays by American women have been published in the USA (see Barlow 1985 or Kritzer 1995) and others are forthcoming, these have not been translated into Spanish. The plays in ¿Nimiedades para la eternidad? exemplify the vitality of the American theater in the early years of the twentieth century and surely provide strong evidence of the value of women’s contribution to this theater. Gale wrote Neighbors in 1910 for Thomas Dickinson’s Wisconsin Players, a university theater devoted to the popularization of theater along the lines of the work that W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory were doing in Ireland with the Abbey Theatre. Thus it is hardly surprising that Neighbors falls readily into the category of local or regional drama: it is a realistic, comic and touching rendering of life in a small town which must have been easily recognizable by its early audiences and which does not fail to move the reader today. It is not easy to understand why Yvonne Shafer, author of the introductory essay on Gale, feels it necessary to demote the play to the status of “una obrita simpática” (21) and to consider Gale herself unworthy of serious critical and dramatic attention. Gale’s full-length Miss Lulu Bett was first written as a novel, but, although not theatrically innovative or experimental, displays a solid grasp of dramatic technique. Gale creates a situation and a group of characters that are memorably vivid, and she sustains the dramatic interest throughout, making Lulu’s predicament – that of the exploited and abused old-maid – not only heart-rending but also intriguing and compelling. The second play in the collection is Glaspell’s Trifles, written in the summer of 1916 for the group that, in the fall, would become the Provincetown Players. The genesis of Trifles is well-known; Glaspell’s husband demanded a play for a subscription season he had already sold tickets for, and so she sat on the stage and, in a few days, constructed a play from a disturbing experience of fifteen years before. At that time, she had covered a murder for the Des Moines Daily News; a farmer’s wife was accused of killing her husband and, although there was no hard evidence of her guilt, she was condemned. This was the story that Glaspell converted into the detective mystery with an absent protagonist that feminist critics of the 1980s picked out as emblematic of women’s silencing, men’s inability to understand the language of women and the need for bonding between women as a strategy of survival (Ozieblo and Dickey 2008). Curiously enough, most recent criticism of Glaspell’s work adopts a different approach, centering more on matters of culture or class than on gender (see Gainor 2001; Hinz-Bode 2006). Alice Gerstenberg’s Overtones played in repertory at the Washington Square Players’ Bandbox Theatre during their 1915-1916 season and has frequently been played since; a recent 2007 revival by Thespians Anonymous of Helsinki shows that the play still attracts an audience. Gerstenberg, following the highly fashionable craze for the Freudian concept of the subconscious that was sweeping America, divided her two characters into their cultivated and primitive selves and placed four actresses on the stage: thus Harriet/Hetty and Margaret/Maggie, while displaying their social graces to ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 185–189 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 187 one another,r are also allowed to say what they really think. The effect is an amusing criticism of social mores couched in an innovative stage technique that critics did not fail to remark on. The translation of Hurston’s Color Struck closes the volume; this short play, divided into four scenes, was awarded a prize in the 1925 Opportunity magazine literary contest, more – one imagines – for the theme of color prejudice it exposes than for its dramatic merit. The tragic ending is in sharp contrast to the gay, tumultuous beginning of the play, and Emma’s jealous reactions to Effie and lighter-skinned people of color are not sufficiently accounted for or developed. Although her play The Great Day (1932) would be a critical success, as was Mule Bone, the play she co-wrote with Langston Hughes but which was not staged till 1991, Hurston is best remembered for her novels and her anthropological work. As already indicated, each play is prefaced by a brief essay on the dramatist and her oeuvre. Alberola, who is the author of the pieces on Glaspell and Hurston, also translated Yvonne Shafer’s introductions to Gale and Gerstenberg. Shafer’s essays are taken almost verbatim (including the misspelling of Thomas Dickinson’s name) from her 1995 American Women Playwrights 1900-1950. Alberola’s pieces on Glaspell and Hurston, although relying heavily on Shafer’s earlier informative introductory essays on these dramatists, do also use other sources. We must remember that these pieces do not purport to be conclusive studies of the dramatists and their works: they are intended as brief introductions to a group of writers virtually unknown in Spain and as such they fulfill their purpose. Biographical data is supplemented by summaries of the plots of the most significant dramatic works of the writer, thus presenting a perfect starting point for anyone interested in women’s drama in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, it should be said that the editors do not seem to have clearly identified their ideal reader. Shafer’s essays mention a host of writers and prominent figures of the early twentieth century that the reader who is not conversant with the American cultural scene of this period cannot be expected to know, such as, for example, Edna Ferber, Louis Untermeyer, Richard LeGallienne or the afore-mentioned Dickinson. The piece on Hurston by Alberola is more aware of the probable lack of familiarity of the Spanish reader with figures such as Alain Locke, for example, and offers useful explanatory notes. The analyses of the plays tend to be superficial and limited to a brief account of the plot – which is understandable in short pieces that are merely introductory. However, the danger of such summary treatment of the oeuvre of a dramatist of the significance of Susan Glaspell can be exemplified by Alberola’s categorization of Close the Book and Woman’s Honor as expressionistic plays. The two are indeed comedies, as Alberola indicates but, although Christine Dymkowski (1988: 93) sees expressionism in the names of the characters of Woman’s Honor, it is difficult to identify other expressionistic features in these two plays. For J. Ellen Gainor, Woman’s Honor is an allegorical morality play, and, as she rightly notes: “Nothing in the style of Woman’s Honor otherwise suggests theatrical expressionism, but much in the play mirrors the morality focus of the late medieval form, including the intermingling of humor with a serious message” (Gainor 2001: 83). Theatrical expressionism is also totally absent from Close the Book, a short skit portraying family life and prejudices in a small town ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 185–189 ISSN 0210-6124 188 Barbara Ozieblo environment, which mingles stage realism with the melodramatic device of unexpected information coming to light at a crucial moment. However, Alberola is of course right when she states that Glaspell integrated expressionistic devices into many of her plays; this is most true of The Verge, in which the expressionistic décor reflects the state of mind of the protagonist. A similar use of setting and scenery can be found in Glaspell’s earlier plays, particularly the short play The Outside, in which symbolism merges with expressionism to create the grim interior of the life-saving station. The ways in which Glaspell contrived to blend nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European avant-garde theatrical devices with the Belasco style realism and melodrama of nineteenth-century American theater in the plays she wrote for the Provincetown Players attest to her skill as a playwright. For this reason, too, her plays are ideal teaching material for courses on American Drama and on the history of theater. The Introduction to ¿Nimiedades para la eternidad? is disappointingly short and offers no theoretical model for the analysis of the plays or criteria for the selection of the dramatists and their plays. Rachel Crothers, Zoë Akins, Sophie Treadwell, Angelina Weld Grimké, Edna Ferber, Marita Bonner are only a handful that must have jostled for space with the chosen four in this volume. These dramatists, together with others, are given brief chapters in Otros escenarios: La aportación de las dramaturgas al teatro norteamericano (Narbona and Ozieblo 2005). The obvious limitation in a volume such as that by Alberola and Shafer is that of space, nonetheless, since a full coverage of American women dramatists was obviously not the goal of the volume, it should have been possible to select plays that created a more harmonious whole. Gale’s Neighbors (Vecinos) deals with the life of rural folks, and could have been interestingly juxtaposed with any of Djuna Barnes’s so-called Irish plays, particularly with An Irish Triangle. Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (Nimiedades), given its detective play structure, strong feminist message and total lack of comedy, would have better complemented Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal than Gale’s light-hearted Neighbors, while Glaspell’s Suppressed Desires, a skit on psychoanalysis, would have worked well with Gerstenberg’s Overtones (Directas e indirectas) and with Treadwell’s In the Eye of the Beholder. However, these are mere quibbles given the inherent interest of the volume to American drama studies in Spain. Playwrights such as Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller have been translated and performed in Spain with relative frequency, and even recent Pulitzer Prize winning women such as Marsha Norman (‘night, Mother), Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) or Margaret Edson (Wit) have found their way into the theaters of this country. We should not forget that many American women had turned to the writing of plays before them, and ¿Nimiedades para la eternidad? will introduce four of them, Gale, Gerstenberg, Glaspell and Hurston to the Spanish reading public and, it is to be hoped, to theater audiences. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 185–189 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 189 Works Cited Barlow, Judith E., ed. 1985: Plays by American Women: 1900-1930. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers. Ben-Zvi, Linda 2005: Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Time. New York: Oxford UP. Carpentier, Martha C., ed. 2006: Susan Glaspell, New Directions in Critical Inquiry. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars P. Carpentier, Martha C. and Barbara Ozieblo, eds. 2006: Disclosing Intertextualities: the Stories, Plays, and Novels of Susan Glaspell. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Dymkowski, Christine 1988: ‘On the Edge: The Plays of Susan Glaspell’. Modern Drama 31.1: 91- 105. Gainor, J. Ellen 2001: Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture, and Politics 1915-1948. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Hinz-Bode, Kristina 2006: Susan Glaspell and the Anxiety of Expression: Language and Location in the Plays. Jefferson: McFarland. Kritzer, Amelia Howe, ed. 1995: Plays by Early American Women, 1775-1850. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Narbona Carrión, Mª Dolores and Barbara Ozieblo, eds. 2005: Otros escenarios: La aportación de las dramaturgas al teatro norteamericano. Barcelona: Icaria. Ozieblo, Barbara 2000: Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P. Ozieblo, Barbara and Jerry Dickey 2008: Susan Glaspell and Sophie Treadwell: Routledge Modern and Contemporary Playwrights. London: Routledge. Shafer, Yvonne 1995: American Women Playwrights 1900-1950. New York: Peter Lang. Received 15 October 2007 Accepted 18 February 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 185–189 ISSN 0210-6124 Jaydeep Sarangi and Bisnod Mishra, eds. 2006: Explorations in Australian Literature. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons. xvi +202 pp. ISBN: 81-7625-709-5 Eroulla Demetriou Universidad de Jaén [email protected] Traditionally Australian literature has been considered as little else than a little sister to British and American literatures, a literary sibling who has only recently come of age and therefore hardly deserved to be closely read and even considered as an independent relative. Indeed, up to 1898, when Henry Gyles Turner and Alexander Sutherland published The Development of Australian Literature, a first serious attempt to systematise the literature from down under, Australian literature was still virtually unthought-of in the books of any literary critic. Moreover, this has almost been the case up to only a few decades ago. Australian literature had not managed to attract much attention either until some meritorious handbooks saw the light in the second half of the 20th century, notably A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied (1961), by H. M. Green; The Literature of Australia (1964 and 1976), by Geoffrey Dutton; The Oxford History of Australian Literature (1981), edited by Leonie Kramer; The Penguin New Literary History of Australia (1988), edited by Laurie Hergenhan; and The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2000), by Elizabeth Webby, to name but a few of the best known. Scholars’ increasing interest in postcolonial studies during recent decades has encouraged the publication of new works on Australian literature and other English-speaking national literatures. So far, most analyses of Australian literature –quite numerous of late – have been carried out by Australian scholars and university lecturers, who are only naturally concerned about studying and dissecting their own literary production and constructing a canon. It was only fairly recently, in 1963, that a first professorship of Australian literature was created at Sydney University and only a handful of Australian scholars have made it possible since then to maintain an interest in pro-Australian literary studies. But apart from local literary critics, Australian literature had not managed to attract much interest internationally until 1973, when Patrick White became the first Australian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Therefore, it is in my opinion one of the main merits of Jaydeep Sarangi and Binod Mishra, editors of the recent book Explorations in Australian Literature (2006), to have made sure that most of its contributors are non-Australians: in fact, most of them are Indian, followed in number by three lecturers working at Australian universities and two more working at Spanish universities. This circumstance of international pre- eminence of non-Australian contributors grants the book a completely new perspective: the idea intended to be conveyed with this new publication is that Australian literature has reached a degree of maturity, meaning that it is also worth studying by non- Australians. Furthermore, as far as Indian scholars are concerned, it is clear that nowadays there is a clear interest among them in paying due attention to different ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 192 Eroulla Demetriou aspects of Australian literature. In her foreword Margaret Allen (U. of Adelaide) declares how pleasantly surprised she is to verify the interest that Indian universities have lately granted to studying Australian aspects of her culture and literature (vi). No matter how far Australia may be linked in spirit to Britain, in recent times she cannot but look to the Asian-Pacific region for political and cultural support. The relationship Asia-Australia is reciprocal. Indeed, proof of the recent interest of Indian (and other non-Australian) critics in the literature written and published down under is Explorations in Australian Literature. This book consists of a collection of selected essays written by eighteen specialists on contemporary Australian literature. The wide number of contributors goes hand in hand with the great variety of approaches presented in the book, a fact that seems to run parallel to the country’s multicultural and multiethnic reality. However, this book goes a step further in the ‘exploration’ of the most recent literature written by Australians. The main Anglophone literatures (British, American and to some extent Canadian) have already established a canon; Australian literature is on the way to doing so; and this book is evidence of this. Australian writers and literary critics are in the midst of a strenuous process of ‘glocalization’ of Australian literature within a massively unstoppable and unavoidable globalised world. In other words, they are searching for a specific literary identity within a globalised concept of the literary phenomenon, an identity which differentiates them from the heavy cultural and political influence of the ex-metropolis. Could this book be interpreted as a testimony of this struggle for un-globalization of Australian literature? The eighteen chapters of Explorations in Australian Literature are preceded by a Foreword, a Preface and Notes on Contributors. The chapters themselves, of varying lengths, are not placed in any easily perceived order, as it is neither chronological, nor alphabetical, nor thematic. They may appear to give the reader the impression of dispersion. However, as one begins to read the different chapters, one perceives that they can be classified into two groups: those that deal with individual authors and their works and those that approach a specific issue or trait of ‘Australianness’. In the first group we find articles on key 20th-century Australian writers reflecting Australian literary diversity such as Sally Morgan, Roberta Sykes (both of them studied by Elena Oliete), Murray Bail (by R. C. Sheila Royappa), Dorothy Porter (by Paul Sharrad), Fredy Neptune (by Pradip Trikha), Peter Carey (by Prashant Gupta and Sukhpreet Kahlon), Yasmine Gooneratne and Mena Abdullah (by Pradip Kumar Patra), Judith Wright (by Nandini Sahu), Patrick White (the only protagonist of two articles written by Ashok Kumar and by Kalpana Purohit), David Malouf (by Sriparna Dutta) and Les A. Murray (by Anurag Sharma). On the other hand, specific features of the two centuries of Australian writing dealt with in Dr Sarangi and Dr Mishra’s book are the following: Australian’s moral relativism (by Dennis Haskell), the refraction principle inherent in Australian literary works (by José Carlos Redondo Olmedilla), the issue of frontier history in Australian theatre (by C. Kodhandaraman), the concept of memory and place in Australian works (by S. Musali), the perception of Australian poetry by readers from other ex-British colonies such as Indian university students (by Malati Mathur), its multiculturalism (by Susan Cowan), aboriginal story-telling and the role of the family in its oral transmission (by Nalini G. Kapoor), among others. Today’s ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 193 relevance of women writers on the Australian literary scene is well represented in Sarangi and Mishra’s book. Out of twelve writers analysed, six are women. In addition to its preliminary pages, the book has been provided with a short index of names and main issues of Australian interest (198-202). However, alas, we find that some of the entries may be more misleading than useful: in between the names of Australian keynote writers we find terms such as American polities (should read American politics), Australian magia (repeated twice and nonexistent on page 55, where the index says it should appear), Hind against Mussulman (in any case, Hindu), King Lear (in the text where the term comes up, the context is the following: “Ellen is a female King Lear”), Magpie (201) (the name of a poem by Dorothy Porter, but not indicated as such), President of Good and Evil (201) (this is the name given to President George W. Bush by Peter Singer), Ufo (202) (another poem by Porter), Union of Soviet Socialist Republican (202) (no comment), United States (202) and United States of America (202). Unfortunately, the index cannot but convey some sense of unreliability and the reader may feel rightly compelled to steer clear of it. Although the fairly high number of chapters in the book may indeed be an asset for the confirmed scholar who wishes to be exposed to the different literary and ‘exploratory’ points of view by which the Australian literary phenomenon may be approached nowadays, it is also true that it may be discouraging for any literary reviewer for the obvious lack of space at his/her disposal. The chapters of this work effectively portray what is typical of Australian literature, paying detailed attention to landscapes of Australia (Royappa and Murali), its aboriginal population and literature (Kodhandaraman and Sahu), the question of multiculturalism (Kumar Patra and Malouf), its distinctive colloquial language (Trikha) and the history of this nation through its colonisers (Gupta and Kodhandaraman). Although some of these chapters are rather short, they contribute to the overall effect of giving an Australian distinctiveness to the whole. Nevertheless, if I were to pinpoint a few of these eighteen chapters that may be of more methodological interest for both the newcomer to Australian literature and the confirmed specialist, I would choose the Preface, written by the editors, and the chapters written by Elena Oliete (‘Voicing Historical Silences in Sally Morgan’s My Place and Roberta Sykes’ Trilogy Snake Dreaming: A Journey from the Margins to the Centre Through Two Different Paths’), José Carlos Redondo Olmedilla (‘Mapping Australian Literature: The Refraction Principle’), Malati Mathur (‘Australian Poetry in the Indian Classroom’), Ashok Kumar (‘Patrick White’s Contribution to Australian Literature: a Tribute to the Nobel Laureate’), Nalini G. Kapoor (‘Family – The Site of Story-telling in Aboriginal Women’s Writing’) and Anurag Sharma (‘The Realization of Kaivalya in the Poetry of Les A. Murray: an Indian Perspective’). Comprising seven chapters altogether, nearly half the book, they are enough, I believe, to give the interested reader a clear picture of the spirit of the book. They are chosen for discussion because they are distinguished by the fact that rather than just concentrating on Australian typicality and identity, they offer real ‘explorations’, as the title suggests, into innovative ways of studying this country’s literature. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 194 Eroulla Demetriou Needless to say, the Preface introduces the two main aims of this “anthology of essays”, as the editors put it: on the one hand, “to make the Australian literature more familiar in present day situations” (viii). The editors wish to grant special relevance to the incidence that Australian literature is currently enjoying in the academic curricula of Indian universities and colleges, a fact which justifies the compilation of this book. On the other hand, they endeavour to attract the literary critics’ attention towards the role that the Asian community in Australia is playing, as a result of the Indian diaspora, on the multicultural/multiethnic nature of Australia. After all, they conclude, “A settler colony is a space to reconcile indigenous and settler population” (viii). The originality of Ms Oliete’s essay (one of the most elaborate of the book) lies in the fact that she employs the autobiographies of two contemporary non-white women – Sally Morgan and Roberta Sykes- to demonstrate that, though written under the influence of similar background and life circumstances with the same purpose in mind (that is, to endeavour to escape from the Australian fringe), the perspectives of the same topic may differ greatly, and indeed they do, but the morale is the same. She uses the works of two black aboriginal authoresses to depict the hardships that they had to endure and at the same time denounces the painful silence/marginality/exclusion (in too many cases synonymous terms) that was ‘officially’ imposed on the non-white male and especially on the female population of Australia by men, white men and British white men. Ms Oliete’s intention in this chapter is therefore threefold. Dr Redondo Olmedilla’s main merit is that he employs –as far as I know, for the first time in Australian literary criticism, a fact that adds to its originality – the principle of refraction to explain how the main constituents that have shaped Australian society and culture (land, isolation, distance and climate and the environment) have been transformed from their originally British conceptions as if they had been sieved through a cultural and literary filter. According to him, when English literature touches Australian ground, it becomes distorted, it changes, it assumes new shades. His chapter also serves to delimit the borderlines of the literature at the other end of the world. Dr Mathur explains with evident didactic skill how easy his (Indian) university students find it to understand and interpret Australian literature. His ‘method’ is simple but effective: by appealing to the fact that both peoples, Australian and Indian alike, feel as if they are on the same wavelength, both having suffered the heavy burden of British imperialism and colonialism. This is a most daring and didactically innovative way of making his students interested in reading a foreign (although in the end not so foreign) national literary production, which is no small deal in today’s mass media age. Dr Kumar analyses in depth the literary career of one of the leading Australian writers of today, the only Australian writer so far who has reached the Olympus of universal literary recognition: Patrick White. The scholar’s main contribution lies in his insistence on presenting White’s fiction as an unorthodox pot where the latter mixes traditional Christian and Dantean issues with mysticism and Aboriginal mythological beliefs, emphasising the un-Australian aspects of his Australianness. In Kapoor’s chapter he concentrates on the key role of the family in Aboriginal women’s writing (oral folklore, autobiographies, biographies and family histories) as ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 195 the main transmitter of genuine Australianness. Its previously unwritten nature during the British domination makes it all the more interesting as it represents the way the Aboriginal ‘underground’ culture and heritage has survived throughout its years of anonymity in spite of the efforts made by the political and male powers that be of the metropolis to annul it and relegate it to the lowest profile possible. In the last two centuries, female Aboriginal literature has successfully contributed to constructing yet one more feature of Australian identity and this is effectively explained by Dr Kapoor. Dr. Sharma uses kaivalya (a Sanskrit term meaning isolation, self-realization, the final separation of the self from matter) to explain the poetic work of one of today’s best known Australian poets, Les A. Murray. Sharma’s originality lies in his attempt to justify the poet’s declared interest in integrations, in convergences, from a fully Indian perspective. As Sharman’s chapter constitutes the last of Sarangi and Mishra’s collection, the reader closes the book savouring the idea of the universal vocation of Australian literature in general and Murray’s verse in particular. By having chosen only seven of the chapters I do not intend to nullify the merit of the others. Sarangi and Mishra’s book is both honest and audacious as it allows the presentation of a wide range of perspectives, some obviously more fortunate than others, but nevertheless indicative and revealing enough of the kaleidoscopic nature of Australian literature during the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. One of the editors’ biggest merits, in my opinion, is to have been able to collect a group of essays that clearly depict this. There is, however, a slight blemish in the book, and this is the impression of lack of care in revising the texts that the book sometimes cannot help conveying, for there are some minor slips of the pen that could have been avoided had a more careful correction of the proofs been carried out. In spite of this, I must congratulate both the editors and the book’s contributors for their successful, inspiring and inspired presentation of the latest routes taken by experts of Australian literature in their attempt to analyse and define one of the newest but most interesting English- speaking literatures written today. The editors admit that their book is not definitive. Indeed, its very title implies its exploratory and tentative nature. Both the editors and contributors’ unstated aim seems to be, like that of many other pro-Australian handbooks, to find and explain the essence of Australian writing. Yet they do this by trial and error, by searching for Australian and un-Australian traits, by applying a non- Australian lens, which can be seen in the fact that there is such a large number of Indian critics and scholars who have contributed. However, I believe that from now on, whenever any expert wishes to work on Australianness, Explorations in Australian Literature will be included in the list of recommended reading. It is fit for explorers. Works Cited Dutton, Geoffrey 1964: The Literature of Australia. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––– 1976: The Literature of Australia. London: Pelham Books. Green, Henry Mackenzie 1961: A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied. 2 vols. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Hergenhan, Laurie, ed. 1988: The Penguin New Literary History of Australia. Ringwood: Penguin. Kramer, Leonie, ed. 1981: The Oxford History of Australian Literature. Melbourne: Oxford UP. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 196 Eroulla Demetriou Turner, Gyles Henry and Alexander Sutherland 1898: The Development of Australian Literature. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Webby, Elizabeth 2000: The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Received 7 June 2007 Accepted 10 April 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 191–196 ISSN 0210-6124 José R. Ibáñez, José Francisco Fernández and Carmen M. Bretones, eds. 2007: Contemporary Debates on the Short Story. Bern: Peter Lang. xi+240 pp. ISBN: 978-3- 03911-246-3 Gerardo Rodríguez Salas University of Granada [email protected] “The short story is experiencing nowadays an impulse that was unthinkable twenty years ago and the most striking feature of this surge of interest in the genre is the open- mindedness with which scholars are studying this narrative form” (7). With such a conclusive statement starts the introduction to this volume, which draws on the significant role of academics in the enthusiasm for the short story. It is true that its history as a modern literary genre is relatively new, if we trace its origins back to figures like Poe,1 and more so if we consider the first serious critical studies on this genre. Despite the publication of some well-known criticism before the sixties—Bates (1941), O’Connor (1963), Beachcroft (1968)—it is not until the late eighties that this genre starts to be taken seriously. Some pioneer anthologies of short story criticism from this time and later are most definitely responsible for the gradual prestige that this genre has been acquiring: the anthologies edited by Hanson (1989), Lohafer and Clarey (1989), May (1994), Ifterkharuddin, Rohrberger and Lee (1997) and Tigges (1999). Incidentally, some of these pioneer critics participate in the present volume (May and Ifterkharuddin). Thus, we could consider that the short story begins to gain higher academic respect from the late eighties onwards, as May confirms in his interview with Lohafer (Lohafer 1997: 188), and as Lohafer and Clarey stated in 1989: “No more than a decade ago, referring to a ‘field’ of short story criticism would have seemed odd” (1989: vii). The vigorous health of this genre nowadays justifies the proliferation of critical studies on the short story, and the volume edited by Ibáñez, Fernández and Bretones is a perfect case study. The selected chapters offer new and contrasting perspectives and the editors are conscious that theirs is a humble yet fundamental contribution to this critical domain. Part of this modesty derives from their awareness that the book is indebted to recent miscellaneous studies on short fiction. The Tales We Tell. Perspectives on the Short Story, edited by Lounsberry et al. in 1998, is a good example. Like the editors of Contemporary Debates on the Short Story, they include contributions by established authors, such as Joyce Carol Oates, and the volume is organised into different sections. Even more conspicuous is the link with the collection Postmodern Approaches to the Short Story, edited by Ifterkharuddin et al. in 2003. Ifterkharuddin et 1 This seems to be the general tendency, according to critics such as Ferguson (1989: 182) or Feddersen (2001: xvii-xviii). ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 197–202 ISSN 0210-6124 198 Gerardo Rodríguez Salas al.’s book offers a variety of perspectives on the short story, but fails to enlarge the theoretical problems of postmodernism in relation to this literary genre. One of the editors of Contemporary Debates, Fernández Sánchez, reacts against the “ease with which [the term postmodernism] is used to contain virtually any recent theoretical development” (2003-4: 232). Probably this is the reason that he and the other editors avoid the use of the label postmodernism and prefer the term contemporary approaches. Therefore, the association with, but also the departure from, previous collections is clearly evinced and explains the position of this volume in the larger frame of contemporary short story criticism. The selection of essays included in Contemporary Debates aims to be illustrative of the evolution of the short story since its inception as a literary genre. The book consists of nine chapters, an introduction, notes on contributors and an index. It starts with a chapter that sets an introductory theoretical background, followed by two articles on the great masters of the short story—Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James. Subsequently, there are two essays on Wyndham Lewis and Frank O’Connor, two writers who excelled in the short story in the 1920s and 1930s. The next section focuses on contemporary writers, such as Salman Rushdie, Judith Ortiz Cofer and Carol Swain, and the book concludes with another theoretical reflection on the short story that closes the volume cyclically. All in all, the compilers fulfil their aim: within the restricting boundaries of a volume of 240 pages, they manage to offer a comprehensive and illustrative panorama of the short story, from its modern origins in Poe to contemporary figures like Rushdie, an analysis that is based on, and accompanied by, solid theoretical foundations. The book opens with José Jiménez Lozano’s essay ‘Algunas reflexiones sobre el cuento breve’, which, being the only article written in Spanish, is accompanied by quite an accurate English translation by Andrew Taylor. Jiménez Lozano is a respected and prolific writer in contemporary Spanish literature. From this privileged standpoint, his essay is a liminal text, a subtle combination of academic writing and poetic prose, full of metaphors and images, which help the reader understand the slippery nature of the short story. He explains his intellectual affiliation with American writers such as Cather, Faulkner, Melville, Hawthorne and especially Flannery O’Connor, and deals with commonplace aspects in the short story. Lozano concludes by linking its shortness, compression and artificiality, fundamental in order to understand its nature. His most powerful images are spatial: the comparison of the short story with many painted or false doors without a real exit; and the story as a window of pure crystal through which the reader glances, just as the narrator does. ‘On the Margins of Mystery: The Detective in Poe and After’, by Thomas Leitch, elaborates on Poe’s use of mystery and his contribution to the modern short story. Leitch offers a factual introduction to Poe’s achievement as a theorist, reader and short story writer. The paper then calls attention to Poe’s innovation in using a detective rather than a criminal at the centre of his stories, thus creating the detective story. Leitch’s argument is that all Poe’s stories are constructed on the principle of deferred teleology and, therefore, they can be reduced to either a mystery story or a burlesque of a mystery story: in this latter case the mystery is not solved. Based on this dichotomy, Leitch defends the label of detective story in Poe, which inaugurates a long tradition of detectives in literature. His central argument is that Poe sets the ambiguity upon which ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 197–202 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 199 the genre of detective fiction has fluctuated since then: a reassuring tradition where the detective’s rationality solves the riddle and a counter-tradition of greater ambiguity and unsolved mysteries. The last section of the paper studies the impact of these two legacies on subsequent writers and more recent developments of the genre, such as the police procedural and the postwar detective story. This article serves as a valuable background to understand Gavin’s contribution later on in the volume. José Antonio Álvarez Amorós’s chapter—‘Reaching Out for Fictional Reality: Para- Derridean Forms of Différance in Henry James’s “The Coxon Fund”’— is the longest in the volume and conceptually the most complex since its theoretical frames are Bakhtinian dialogism and Derridean deconstruction. Álvarez Amorós sets the theoretical background by choosing two of Derrida’s most well-known works: his essay ‘Différance’ and Of Grammatology. He links Derrida’s concept of différance to those of relational rather than substantial existence, impressionism, absence vs. presence and lack of extra-textual meaning, and explains Derrida’s view that speech has been favoured over writing by Western metaphysics. To round up his theoretical premises, Álvarez Amorós connects Derrida’s relativism with Bakhtin’s idea of the self as in endless dialogue with the other, from which it obtains its selfhood. He then applies this theoretical framework to Henry James’s ‘The Coxon Fund’ to show indirection and deferral in this story. The first concern is with the type of narration, a variety of first- person narrative conducted through a first-person marginal narrator-witness. Álvarez Amorós explains that this type of narration goes in line with Derridean and Bakhtinian relativism since, rather than using an omniscient third-person narration, James prefers the relativising dialogue between the protagonist (Saltram) and the narrator-witness. ‘Visual Dynamics in “Bestre” by Wyndham Lewis’, the article by Laurent Lepaludier, insists on another dimension of the short story: its traditional association with a photograph, as opposed to the novel and its comparison with a film. The author’s innovation lies in linking the largely visual dimension of short stories with the interest in the image as dynamic, rather than its traditional perception as static. The focus is Lewis’s story ‘Bestre’, included in his collection The Wild Body (1927). Lepaludier presents the narrator, Ker Orr, as an eye-witness who adopts a two-fold tyrannical position. Through the power of his gaze and his discourse as a narrator he usurps the characters’ identities by presenting them as wild and grotesque bodies rather than human beings. The bodies are displayed as “a logorrhoea of heterogeneous images” (93). Vorticism, the art movement set up by Lewis and Ezra Pound, is central to this presentation of characters as a chaotic succession of images on the screen-body. Lepaludier goes so far as to suggest that the levels of mediation in the story are multiple: Lewis as an author is the professional eye who hides behind Bestre’s eye—the protagonist in the story— and Orr’s narrative. Eibhear Walshe deals in his article with a key figure in short story criticism and writing: Frank O’Connor. In his study ‘Frank O’Connor’s Lonely Voice: Dissent in the Modern Irish Short Story’, Walshe alludes to O’Connor’s pivotal study on short fiction, The Lonely Voice (1962), where he contended that the short story is the perfect medium to present marginal figures who are remote from the community. Even though O’Connor was a prolific writer, his production of short stories is the most significant and this is precisely the genre where he excelled. Like the outcasts in the short story, ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 197–202 ISSN 0210-6124 200 Gerardo Rodríguez Salas Walshe proves O’Connor’s marginality as a writer in his native Ireland. Together with O’Faolain and unlike Joyce or Beckett, he stayed in Ireland after its political autonomy in 1922 and during the extreme censorship that followed. Walshe’s argument is that despite O’Connor’s apparent popularity and accessible, conservative fiction, his “stories deconstruct most of the cultural and imaginative preoccupations of the New Irish state and thus his body of work can be read as a critique of the new state’s self image” (109). To underline his rebellious attitude, Walshe presents O’Connor as a victim of Irish censorship. In the second section of the essay, Walshe analyses five stories by O’Connor to illustrate the negative effects of censorship, loss of intellectual freedom, sexual loneliness and mass migration from the countryside, a criticism of the Irish state hidden behind O’Connor’s oral folk tradition. The only objection to Walshe’s article is his conclusion, which is too succinct for such a monumental analysis. In the next chapter, ‘Recalcitrant Discourse: The Uncompromising Content in East, West Stories’, Farhat Iftekharuddin focuses on one of the most international contemporary writers: Salman Rushdie. Iftekharuddin departs from Rushdie’s traditional preoccupation in his novels—the clash between the Indian Sub-continent and Western culture and its resulting issues of racism, discrimination and human exploitation—to prove that his short fiction is another instance of his politically charged narrative. Iftekharuddin briefly illustrates this topic in Rushdie’s best-known novels—Midnight’s Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses and Haroun and the Sea of Stories—and then, with this background in mind, analyses in greater detail each of the nine stories comprising the collection East, West Stories (1994). His conclusion is that, despite the existence of these two opposing philosophies that “survive through the macabre dance of mutual dislike” (151), cultural and racial assimilation are inevitable. Iftekharuddin’s greatest contribution is the detailed study of Rushdie’s short fiction in the light of his highly acclaimed longer narrative. Carmen Flys Junquera’s chapter is the one that most clearly exemplifies the potential and eclecticism of contemporary short fiction. ‘Fluid Boundaries in Judith Ortiz Cofer’s Silent Dancing’ is a case study of the difficulty to pigeon-hole new contemporary productions. The article starts by mentioning the difficulty that Cofer had to publish her 1990 work Silent Dancing due to the fact that it is a multi-genre book, including autobiographical essays, personal essays, poetry and short stories. Flys Junquera takes as point of departure Maggie Dunn and Ann Morris’s concept of a “composite novel”, along with Margot Kelly’s “novel-in-stories”, to prove that Cofer’s book is a hybrid text that allows the writer to “portray hybrid notions of identity and reality” (156) in line with her double marginal position as a postcolonial, ethnic woman writer. Although the article mentions other important critics who justify the combination of autobiography and fiction in Cofer’s book (Hesse and García Pinto), it focuses on Dunn and Morris’s five general principles of a composite novel, which Flys Junquera exemplifies in Cofer’s Silent Dancing: setting, a single protagonist, a collective protagonist, pattern and storytelling. The next chapter, by Adrienne E. Gavin, is a further illustration of eclecticism. It focuses on the rise of the graphic short story, which Gavin defines as “a form which draws on the traditions of fiction and comics to create stories that are told through both word and image” (186). Under the title ‘Painting it Black: Art, Crime and (Ir)resolution ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 197–202 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 201 in Carol Swan’s Graphic Short Story “come down town”’, this article claims the complexity and literary value of this type of fiction, particularly in revealing postmodernist innovations in form, content and style, such as the use of intertextuality, indeterminacy, circularity, filmic techniques and metafiction. Gavin takes Swain’s ‘come down town’ as an example to prove that what appears to be a straightforward detective story about the mystery of an elusive criminal who paints books and buildings black “becomes, in effect, a never-ending story which raises more questions than it answers” (186). This apparently transparent story involves deeper issues concerning censorship and the question of what is considered art, which could be, in my opinion, an allegory of the very status of the graphic short story as a literary genre. The mystery surrounding the Black Artist—an alternative to the canon—remains unsolved, and there is a hint that the detective himself could be the Black Artist. As Gavin proves, this is a text where opposites coexist: “artist/criminal, writer/painter, rejected/noticed, failure/success, censor/censored” (194). Hence, we have the rationale of postmodernism and the recognition of the value of alternative texts, which Ibáñez et al.’s volume supports. I wish to highlight Gavin’s own style, since she constructs her arguments and hypotheses with unresolved questions, very much in line with Swan’s discourse. ‘The Secret Life in the Modern Short Story’, Charles E. May’s article, closes the volume. His central argument is a commonplace in short story studies; namely, the problem for early nineteenth-century writers to combine newly developed eighteenth- century conventions of realism with the spiritual and allegorical meaning of the mythic romance. May believes that this change of focus “necessitated a new narrative form” (208) and speaks of a radical implication: the sacred is now viewed as a psychological projection, resulting in “the demythologizing of the outer world and the remythologizing of the inner self” (209), as represented by Irving, Poe and particularly Chekhov. After insisting on the mythical perception of temporality in the short story and its connection with mystery, mentioning critics like Cassirer and Eliade and writers like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty, May illustrates this focus on the secret life in the external world with the analysis of short stories by reputable writers such as Conrad, Joyce, Anderson, Munro, and Lordan. My only concern is with the presence of some errata in the volume that result in grammatical inconsistencies: “… then all this [sic] stories are in some sense mystery stories” (30); “The eye is lead [sic] away from its original function…” (101); “… the image is a also word [sic]” (104); “… they have sometimes been read as deceptively simply [sic] and artless…” (109); “The content of these stories attain [sic] universal relevance …” (152); “… arguing a [sic] an issue or principle” (160). Despite these minor formal issues, this is a work of great value and numerous strengths, a milestone for those interested in the short story and its most recent projections. The book’s interdisciplinary focus and its diachronic and representative selection of authors make it a notable and valuable addition to the dynamic and flexible field of short story criticism. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 197–202 ISSN 0210-6124 202 Gerardo Rodríguez Salas Works Cited Bates, Herbert Ernest 1941: The Modern Short Story: A Critical Survey. London: Thomas Nelson and Son. Beachcroft, Thomas Owen 1968: The Modest Art: A Survey of the Short Story in English. London: Oxford UP. Feddersen R.C. 2001: ‘A Glance at the History of the Short Story in English’. Erin Fallon, R. C. Feddersen, James Kurtzleben, Maurice Lee, eds. A Reader’s Companion to the Short Story in English. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. xv-xxxiv. Ferguson, Suzanne C. 1989: ‘The Rise of the Short Story in the Hierarchy of Genres’. Susan Lohafer and Jo Hellin Clarey, eds. Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State UP. 176-92. Fernández Sánchez, José Francisco 2003-4: ‘Review of Ifterkharuddin, F. et al., eds. 2003. Postmodern Approaches to the Short Story’. Journal of English Studies 4: 231-36. Hanson, Clare, ed. 1989: Re-Reading the Short Story. Basingstoke: MacMillan. Ifterkharuddin, Farhat, Joseph Boyden, Joseph Longo, and Mary Rohrberger, eds. 2003: Postmodern Approaches to the Short Story. Westport: Praeger. Iftekharuddin, Farhat, Mary Rohrberger and Maurice Lee, eds. 1997: Speaking of the Short Story: Interviews with Contemporary Writers. Jackson: UP of Mississippi. Lohafer, Susan 1997: ‘An Interview with Charles E. May’. Farhat Iftekharuddin, Mary Rohrberger and Maurice Lee, eds. Speaking of the Short Story: Interviews with Contemporary Writers. Jackson: UP of Mississippi. 181-88. ––––– and Jo Ellyn Clarey, eds. 1989: Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP. Lounsberry, Barbara, Susan Lohafer, Mary Rohrberger, Stephen Pett and R. C. Feddersen, eds. 1998: The Tales We Tell. Perspectives on the Short Story. Westport: Greenwood P. May, Charles E., ed. 1994: The New Short Story Theories. Athens: Ohio UP. O’Connor, Frank 1963: The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story. London: MacMillan. Tigges, Wim, ed. 1999: Moments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary Epiphany. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Received 19 June 2007 Accepted 17 February 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 197–202 ISSN 0210-6124 Cristina Suárez-Gómez 2006: Relativization in Early English (950-1250): The Position of Relative Clauses. Bern: Peter Lang. (Series: Linguistic Insights. Studies in Language and Communication). 149 pp. ISBN 3-03911-203-1 Mª Ángeles Ruiz Moneva Universidad de Zaragoza [email protected] Generally speaking, the study of the historical evolution of the English language has tended to focus upon the fields of morphology and phonology. As for syntax, reference may be made to the existence of highly acknowledged histories of English devoted to this level of linguistic analysis – most notably Rydén (1979), Traugott (1972) or Visser (1984) – as well as monographic editions of international conferences such as Gotti (1993) and the chapters devoted to this field in the volumes of The Cambridge History of the English Language (Hogg 1992). Likewise, some of the classic works devoted to a comprehensive account of the history of the English language also contained monographic chapters or sections on the evolution of syntax, such as Strang (1970), which covered all the fields both of the internal history of the language and also the social background. The work under consideration, Relativization in Early English (950- 1250): The Position of Relative Clauses, may be said to fill an existing gap, in so far as it offers the scholar a complete and rigorous analysis of the evolution of relative clauses during the Old and Middle periods of the English language. The treatment given to relative clauses in some of the most representative existing manuals of Old and Middle English has been succinct. Thus, in the chapter that approaches ‘Syntax’ in the Volume of The Cambridge History of the English Language devoted to the Old English period, Traugott (1992) focuses on the most significant differences between these constructions in Old and Present-Day English, respectively. Some of these concern the absence of a specific relativizer in Old English, or the inadequate application of the Modern English classification into restrictive and non- restrictive relative clauses to the Old English adjectival constructions. The approach to the structures of relative clauses during Middle English has tended to concentrate on aspects such as the progressive simplification of the paradigms inherited from Old English, or also the introduction of the interrogative pronouns as relativizers, particularly from the fourteenth century onwards. The contrasts between the relevant features of relative pronouns in the Middle and Modern English periods, respectively, which concern aspects such as animacy and information, have also been accounted for by authors such as Fischer (1992). Concretely, the work under analysis dwells upon the way in which the position of relative clauses with respect to the main clause has evolved throughout the history of the English language, in particular, during the periods corresponding to Late Old English and Middle English. Traditionally, under the so-called parataxis hypothesis, it has been generally maintained that relative clauses have evolved from being extraposed structures adjoined to the main clause, towards being positionally embedded structures ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 203–208 ISSN 0210-6124 204 Mª Ángeles Ruiz Moneva within the main clause. This change would be contextualized in the general evolution that accounts for hypotaxis – that is, the relation holding in constructions formed by main and subordinate clauses – as a subsequent development to parataxis as the relation holdng between independent clauses. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that the parataxis hypothesis has enjoyed remarkable popularity amongst scholars: to provide just one illustrative instance, this view can be found in the recently published one-volume A History of the English Language, edited by Richard Hogg and David Denison (2006), which is an updated synthesis of the highly reputed The Cambridge History of the English Language (Blake 1992). Thus, in the former, Fischer and Van der Wurff note: "Relative clauses may have had their origin in paratactic clauses" (2006: 127). The change just described would then have gradually taken place in the time span considered in the book under review. Suárez-Gómez also sets out to revise the hypothesis according to which the process of incorporation undergone by relative clauses and their corresponding close attachment to the main clause was produced through an intermediate stage of topicalization. Within this process, the relative clause must have been positioned following the main clause, while a cataphoric reference anticipated it. So as to fulfil the above commented purposes, the work is structured into five main chapters, namely an Introduction (Chapter One), three major chapters (Chapters Two to Four), and a Conclusion (Chapter Five). In addition, an Appendix contains a list of tables detailing the schema used to codify the data employed in the analysis, and, finally, the references employed in the study are detailed. Both the breadth and comprehensiveness of the material consulted by the author in the writing of the work must be emphasized, for it includes most of the relevant publications in the field of relative clauses during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to date. The first chapter, ‘Introduction and Methodology’, is a preliminary section devoted to background and methodological questions. It presents, therefore, an exhaustive and rigorous synthesis of the main trends developed with regard to the study of relative clauses, both synchronically and diachronically. These have come from various theoretical standpoints, most importantly formal, typological and variational. In this chapter, the author also explains the methodology adopted in the analysis, which is wholly consistent with her thesis: namely to explore the different positions occupied by the relative clause with respect to the main clause, with a view to accounting for the reasons for such variation. The author makes a distinction within the different kinds of relative clauses, depending on whether they have raised the interest of scholars, or have been neglected. Consequently, the study has focused upon those relative clauses which refer back to a nominal antecedent introduced by a relativizer, which is derived from the application of pronominal, invariable or gap relativization strategies. The reasons for such an analysis rest upon the author’s hypothesis that the present-day classification of relative clauses into restrictive and non-restrictive types does not seem to be formally supported in Early English. Accordingly, an analysis of structure in terms of the relativizer used has been applied, as a more consistent and suitable approach. It must justly be remarked that the methodology is subservient to one of the main merits of the study, namely to test the above-mentioned hypotheses regarding relative clauses in the period concerned, on the basis of the existing textual evidence, as ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 203–208 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 205 illustrated by representative corpora, of the ways in which different constructions were actually used in the different periods under consideration (Rydén 1979). The analysis focuses upon the reasons why the relative clause came to be embedded into the main clause, and also the factors involved in such a process. Chapter Two, ‘Relative Clauses in Early English’, offers a revision of the theoretical and grammatical background within which the study is placed. In this sense, to begin with, both the definition of the relative clause and its conventional classification into restrictive and non-restrictive respectively are examined, by focusing upon the ways that the above said classification can be applied to the periods under study. It also approaches the status of the relativizer and in this respect highlights the fact that, in contrast to Present-Day English, both Old and Middle English tend to use the same relativizer to introduce both restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. The chapter concludes by dealing with the internal structure of the relative clause and the syntactic functions that it usually performs. The structure of the relative clause is covered from a threefold perspective: first, according to the relativizer; second, according to the type of relative clause, whether restrictive or non-restrictive; and third, depending on the position of the relative clause, according to which criterion it may be embedded, extraposed or left-dislocated. Chapter Three, ‘Origin and Development of Complex Clauses: The Case of Relative Clauses in English’, analyzes relative clauses in early English, from a theoretical perspective, within the wider framework of complex clauses as a whole. The author revises the existent bibliography critically, with a view to clarifying the status of relative clauses in early English and also their origin. Three main approaches are examined, based on traditional and formal views, typological studies and grammaticalization studies, respectively. The Parataxis Hypothesis, named above, would stand for the prototypical explanation of relative clauses within traditional standpoints. Formal approaches, however, such as Rynell (1952), argued that such a hypothesis was not tenable, since both hypotactic and paratactic constructions are well documented since the earliest preserved texts. The choice between those would mainly be stylistic. Typological approaches – based on the works of authors such as Van Valin (1984), Foley and Van Valin (1984) or Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) – started to regard coordination and subordination as a gradual relationship. Thus, within a continuum, they also distinguish a third possibility, i.e. cosubordination, in between the former two, characterized by the existence of dependence and the absence of embedding. Finally, those approaches based on grammaticalization, most importantly Hopper and Traugott (2003), have regarded clause linkage as intra-clausal grammaticalization. The analysis of all these standpoints is characterized by its balanced position, relying as it does upon evidence. In order to test the main hypotheses, as well as these existing theories, the study is based on a textual sample chosen from The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal. The sample so selected for the study consists of 518 examples, taken from nineteen texts, of which twelve correspond to Late Old English and the remaining seven texts pertain to Early Middle English. Chapter Four, ‘Results and Analysis’, deals with the core analysis carried out in the work, namely the study of the diachronic evolution of relative clauses as far as their position in the sentence is concerned, both in Old and in Middle English. This is done ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 203–208 ISSN 0210-6124 206 Mª Ángeles Ruiz Moneva with a view to demonstrating whether relative clauses evolved during these two periods from being extraposed to embedded constructions, with left-dislocated constructions as a middle stage between the two. This hypothesis is mainly based on O'Neil's (1976) study on relative clauses, which had referred to several reasons that may account for this change, such as the increase in literacy amongst the Germanic people, perceptual factors or a process of topicalization of the noun phrase that eventually would have affected relative clauses. The main purpose of the chapter, therefore, and more generally of the work itself, is to see which hypotheses on the origin of relative clauses can be tenable and sustained on the basis of existing corpora. In addition, in Chapter Four, the results and findings obtained in the analysis are also provided. The analysis has covered the following areas: first, the time period concerned; second, the relativizer employed to introduce the corresponding relative clause; third, the type of relative clause; fourth, the syntactic function of the antecedent; fifth, the length of the relative clause; sixth, text type; seventh, dialectal variation. All these factors are then contrasted in a multivariate analysis. The results and findings of the work provide an in-depth description of the distribution of the existing relativization strategies in Late Old English and Early Middle English. They also account for the reasons why some relativizers are preferred in certain contexts. Finally, Chapter Five is devoted to synthesizing the conclusions of the study. The work done confirms the initial hypothesis, namely that relative clauses became progressively integrated and related to the main clause throughout the history of the English language. The study, therefore, may be said to provide a test and revision of the classical hypotheses regarding the development of relative clauses in the period considered, through the evidence provided by actual texts taken from The Helsinki Corpus and also through the implementation of contemporary influential theories such as typological and grammaticalization studies. The application of corpora together with theoretical background has enabled the author to offer a realistic analysis and conclusions based on sound evidence, which have led to a systematic account of the use of relativizers in the time span under study. Thus, some of the most valuable contributions of the work have to do with the explanation of the role taken by certain contextual factors in the selection of the relativizer used, such as stylistic choices, the genre of the text or its date. These have moreover been contrasted across different texts corresponding to the time span considered, in this way more accurately pinning down the evolution undergone by the relative clause in consonance with the factors analyzed in the corpus. The study confirms that a variety of factors has to be taken into account to trace and explain the evolution of the constructions analyzed. The most interesting conclusions of the study point to the fact that to account for the evolution of relative clauses in the time span considered involves taking into consideration not only the time factor, as previous studies such as O’Neil (1976) had done, but also other factors referred to above that are both of an intralinguistic and also an extratextual nature. In her analysis, the author highlights the lack of agreement among grammarians as to what should be regarded as a relative clause. The point is relevant for the study, in so far as the author shows how certain structures of Old and Middle English do not fit within contemporary definitions of relative clauses. The connection between relative ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 203–208 ISSN 0210-6124 Reviews 207 clauses and subordination is a case in point, which leads the author to search for other universal and necessary criteria that would identify a relative clause as such. Other aspects that show significant differences between Modern English and the preceding periods have to do with the classification into restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses and the nexus used to introduce them. On the whole, the work makes a truly remarkable contribution to the study of relative clauses in the period considered in the analysis. The study reflects the importance of taking into account not only intralinguistic aspects but also extralinguistic factors which are bound to account for the ways in which relative clauses are used. This places the work within the most influential and broadly held approaches of contemporary research in linguistics, not only diachronic but also synchronic. Thus, the study is significant, as it shows how the evolution undergone by relative clauses throughout history is not exclusively the result of the diachronic evolution of complex structures. These are the aspects that make Suárez-Gómez correct the traditional approach to relative clauses as based upon the parataxis hypothesis. The work is noteworthy for its scientific rigor, which does not prevent the author from making the exposition of the ideas and concepts as clear as possible. The accurateness and clarity in the use of terminology are also worth emphasizing. All these features make the work accessible for any scholar who may be interested in English diachronic linguistics, for both didactic and research purposes. The analysis carried out by the author shows a thorough knowledge of the subject, as does her exploration and revision of the relevant bibliography, which is always adequately mastered to sustain the author's views. In particular, such valuable qualities apply to the discussion of those cases which may admit more than one syntactic interpretation of the forms concerned. All in all, therefore, scholars currently working in the field of diachronic linguistics will welcome the work here being reviewed. Works Cited Blake, Norman F., ed. 1992: The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. II: 1066-1476. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Fischer, Olga 1992: ‘Syntax’. Norman F. Blake, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume II: 1066-1476. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 207-60. ––––– and Wim van der Wurff 2006: ‘Syntax’. Richard M. Hogg and David Denison, eds. A History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 109-98. Foley, William A. and Robert D.Van Valin 1984: Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Gotti, Maurizio, ed. 1993: English Diachronic Syntax. Proceedings of the Vth National Congress of History of the English Language. Milan: Guerini. Hogg, Richard M., ed. 1992: The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ––––– and David Denison, eds. 2006: A History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Hopper, Paul and Elizabeth C.Traugott 2003 (1993): Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. O'Neil, Wayne 1976: ‘Clause Adjunction in Old English’. General Linguistics 17: 199-211. ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 203–208 ISSN 0210-6124 208 Mª Ángeles Ruiz Moneva Rydén, Mats 1979: An Introduction to the Historical Study of English Syntax. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. Rynell, Alarik 1952: Parataxis and Hypotaxis as a Criterion of Syntax and Style (especially in Old English Poetry). Lund: G.W.K. Gleerup. Strang, Barbara 1970: A History of English. London: Methuen. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 1972: A History of English Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ––––– 1992: ‘Syntax’. Richard M. Hogg, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol I: The Beginnings to 1066. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 168-289. Van Valin, Robert D. 1984: ‘A Typology of Syntactic Relations in Clause Linkage’. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 542-58. ––––– and LaPolla 1997: Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Visser, F.Th. 1984 (1963): An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Vols. I-IV. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Received 2 November 2007 Accepted 5 May 2008 ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies. 30.1 (June 2008): 203–208 ISSN 0210-6124 209 Abstracts in Spanish Vision Metaphors for the Intellect: Are they Really Cross- Linguistic? Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Universidad de Zaragoza [email protected] Muchos estudiosos de la metáfora, especialmente dentro del marco teórico de la Lingüística Cognitiva, han afirmado que la relación conceptual entre la vista y el intelecto es universal. Sin embargo, existen numerosos estudios, principalmente antropológicos pero también lingüísticos, que contradicen no solo el carácter universal de esta metáfora sino también el papel predominante de la visión en la cognición. En este artículo, se estudia el papel que desempeña el concepto de ‘corporeización’ y la importancia de la ‘cultura’ en la creación y en la conceptualización de las metáforas de la percepción sensorial. El objetivo principal es mostrar que todos los seres humanos utilizamos los sentidos para recoger y procesar información, pero que la modalidad sensorial que cada uno escoge para acceder a dicho conocimiento depende de la cultura en la que desarrolla cada individuo. Primero se describirán las modalidades sensoriales en términos de ‘propiedades prototípicas’. Después se mostrará cómo las propiedades que se aplican a un sentido en una cultura determinada pueden ser aplicadas a otro sentido diferente en otra cultura. Más que identificar una modalidad perceptual específica con una capacidad cognitiva concreta (ENTENDER ES VER), es necesario formular estas relaciones a un nivel más general y abstracto (ENTENDER ES PERCEPCIÓN). Palabras clave: metáfora, percepción, corporeización, cultura Shelley’s Orientalia: Indian Elements in his Poetry Jalal Uddin Khan Qatar University [email protected] Shelley, uno de los más destacados poetas románticos ingleses, estuvo fuertemente influido por el pensamiento indio al cual tuvo acceso a través de las obras de los primeros orientalistas ingleses de su época. Aunque su sueño de visitar personalmente la India nunca se materializó, entre sus lecturas favoritas figuraban los poemas y ensayos de Sir William Jones sobre temas indios de la década de 1770, el ensayo ‘Monte Cáucaso’ del Capitán Francis Wilford (1801), El misionero: un cuento indio de Sidney Owenson (1811), y El imperio de las Nairs, o los derechos de las mujeres: un romance utópico, de James Henry Lawrence (1811). Este artículo versa sobre la influencia de estos trabajos en algunos de los poemas principales de Shelley (tales como La reina Mab, Alastor, La revuelta del Islam, Prometeo Liberado, ‘Himno a la belleza intelectual’ y ‘Adonais’) en cuanto a su localización, estilo y temas. Como revolucionario, Shelley recibió el influjo de los movimientos independentistas provenientes de los modelos orientales, en contraposición al usado y agotado neoclasicismo de la literatura europea. Este artículo argumentará sobre su esfuerzo para llegar a 210 una verdadera comprensión de la India como cuna de una civilización antigua ajena a la supuesta superioridad moral y racial occidental. Su visión creativa de la India abrazó un enfoque de la integración opuesto a la reacción victoriana de sentimientos encontrados. De hecho, la influencia india no sólo fue cuestión de embellecimiento estilístico diferente de lo tradicional, sino también un medio indirecto pero a la vez poderoso de atacar el sistema político occidental contra el cual Shelley se rebeló tan apasionadamente. Palabras clave: la controversia sobre el orientalismo, la teoría reduccionista, integración visionaria, civilización india antigua, libertad, trascendencia. Polyglot Voices, Hybrid Selves and Foreign Identities: Translation as a Paradigm of Thought for Modernism M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera Universidade de Vigo [email protected] En términos generales el Modernismo europeo ha trascendido a la historia literaria como la subversión de la tradición, fundamentalmente en lo que atañe a la relación entre lenguaje y realidad, en el contexto social y cultural que comprende desde finales del siglo XIX hasta bien entrado el siglo XX. Tomando como punto de partida la idea de que el modernismo literario se vuelca en la experimentación con el lenguaje, el artículo reconsidera las implicaciones ideológicas de la poética experimental modernista, prestando especial atención al modo en que los/las modernistas recurren a la traducción como modelo de composición literaria. Apoyándose en perspectivas teóricas traductológicas, el artículo desarrolla la tesis de que la traducción, en tanto que cuestiona la naturaleza y la función de la comunicación, es determinante para entender la epistemología modernista. A través del análisis de autores (en muchos casos también traductores) y textos emblemáticos, el artículo defiende que un gran numero de autores/as fueron sobre todo “extranjeros” a la búsqueda de modos alternativos a través de los que expresar “la diferencia” de sus identidades. En último término, el artículo plantea una conceptualización teórica sobre la traducción que pueda resultar útil como paradigma para repensar el modernismo. Palabras clave: Modernismo, traducción, alienación, reflexividad, exilio, identidad, extranjero, hibridez. A Feature Analysis of to-infinitive Sentences Ana Ojea Universidad de Oviedo [email protected] Este artículo analiza la estructura sintáctica de las oraciones de infinitivo con to en inglés a partir de los rasgos gramaticales que las caracterizan. En concreto se defiende que estas cláusulas están introducidas por los rasgos [±aserción] y [-indicativo], y que la partícula to tiene valor modal, heredado de su origen como preposición de destino. A partir de estas premisas se exploran las 211 semejanzas y diferencias de las cláusulas de infinitivo con to, no sólo con los complementos oracionales en indicativo o subjuntivo, sino también con otras formas no flexivas como las de gerundio o los infinitivos sin to. El análisis de rasgos que se defiende aquí, junto con la naturaleza preposicional de to, permite así mismo dar cuenta de ciertos contrastes significativos entre esta construcción del inglés y sus equivalentes en español. Palabras claves: Gramática, Sintaxis, Rasgos elocutivos, Modo, Oraciones de Infinitivo, Cláusulas no finitas, Programa Minimalista, Gramática Generativa From Balaclavas to Jumpsuits: The Multiple Histories and Identities of Doctor Who’s Cybermen Lincoln Geraghty University of Portsmouth [email protected] Mediante un análisis detallado de la evolución narrativa de los Ciberhombres y los cambios en la apariencia de los cyborgs, en este artículo se propone que la serie Doctor Who, durante la década en que se transmitió, abordó temores muy presentes en la sociedad británica: el miedo a la tecnología, a la pérdida de identidad, al poder económico norteamericano y al totalitarismo. Estos temores no sólo evolucionaron de forma paralela al aspecto físico de los Ciberhombres, sino que también cambiaron en cuanto a su importancia, debido a que las audiencias televisivas británicas iban aceptando las consecuencias de la asimilación tecnológica y mirando hacia el futuro con más anticipación que aprensión. El ámbito general de estudio del cyborg en la cultura popular se concentra en gran medida en los productos para la pantalla grande; el cine norteamericano es el foco de muchos trabajos en los que el cyborg se sigue examinando como una realidad predominantemente norteamericana; por ejemplo, los Borg de Star Trek dominan el trabajo realizado por los académicos en estos campos. El miedo a la tecnología, o el miedo al autómata, se describe como un miedo de algún modo intrínsecamente norteamericano. Este artículo, sin embargo, pretende corregir este desequilibrio y acercar la atención hacia los Ciberhombres como figuras televisivas tecnológicamente complejas, con una complejidad no necesariamente norteamericana ni del mundo del cine, sino británica y televisiva, por su origen y su naturaleza. Palabras clave: Ciberhombres; Doctor Who; cyborg; tecnología; televisión; Pedler, Kit; ciencia ficcion; cultura británica; historia; totalitarismo. 212 Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research: How Socio- linguistic Roles and Relationships Facilitate or Frustrate Second Language Acquisition Ian Clark Mukogawa Women's University, Osaka, Japan [email protected] Colby Toussaint Clark Portland State University, Portland, OR, US [email protected] Este artículo tiene dos objetivos principales. En primer lugar, discutir el incremento palpable del rendimiento que trae consigo un enfoque sociolingüístico y, en segundo lugar, resaltar la necesidad de una mayor cantidad y calidad de investigación en esta área. El artículo comienza con una discusión sobre el descontento existente en torno a los estudios que investigan la influencia de las variables sociolingüísticas en la calidad del aprendizaje en el aula. A esto le sigue una breve discusión sobre el ya maduro campo de la interacción en el aula, que reafirma el potencial de este acercamiento para proporcionar incrementos palpables de rendimiento a todos los niveles, antes de pasar a ocuparnos de la relevancia de estos conocimientos generales para la disciplina de la adquisición de segundas lenguas. El resto del artículo gira en torno a los papeles sociolingüísticos que juegan los estudiantes en las actividades en pareja o en pequeños grupos. Se ha escogido el trabajo de Noemi Storch como piedra angular porque presenta un argumento especialmente claro del potencial de la perspectiva sociolingüística. Palabras clave: sociocultural, sociolingüística, interacción, aula, parejas, colaborativo, ASL, segundas lenguas, inglés, lenguaje “Making Something Out of Nothing”: Lesbianism as Liberating Fantasy in The Children’s Hour Mª Isabel Seguro Filiación [email protected] Mercè Cuenca Filiación [email protected] La calumnia de Lillian Hellman obtuvo un éxito notorio cuando se estrenó en 1934, y también cuando se reestrenó en 1952, debido a su tratamiento del lesbianismo. Paradójicamente, las lecturas críticas de esta obra de teatro se han centrado en la representación simbólica de los efectos de la difamación, no en la representación de la homosexualidad femenina. Recientemente, se ha empezado a abordar el tema de la representación del deseo homosexual en la obra de Hellman; representación que se ha considerado explícitamente homófoba. En este artículo proponemos una relectura de la ideología inherente a la obra de teatro; argumentamos que la autora utiliza el lesbianismo para criticar la contención del deseo femenino, tanto político como sexual, que realiza el sistema patriarcal. 213 Palabras clave: teatro norteamericano, Lillian Hellman, historiografía literaria, feminismo, homofobia, deseo lésbico. Stance and Academic Promotionalism: a Cross-disciplinary Comparison in the Soft Sciences Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría Universidad de Zaragoza [email protected] El concepto de ‘evaluación’–o la expresión de la ‘voz’ del autor–en la prosa académica ha sido tema de investigación de especial interés. Sin embargo, los estudios sobre evaluación en las ciencias no experimentales han sido relativamente escasos comparados con los de las ciencias experimentales. Mediante la comparación de dos disciplinas no experimentales, este artículo explora los perfiles semántico y sintáctico de los adjetivos evaluativos en las introducciones de los artículos de investigación–una sección en la que los escritores crean un ‘hueco’ en la investigación para convencer a los lectores del valor y/o de la utilidad de su investigación. El artículo examina también la función de estos adjetivos como recursos retóricos que los escritores emplean para evaluar los procedimientos de la investigación y dar relevancia a los resultados de su investigación. Los datos cuantitativos muestran que los adjetivos evaluativos comparten un perfil semántico-sintáctico similar en las dos disciplinas. Sin embargo, el análisis retórico revela convenciones específicas para cada disciplina respecto al uso de los adjetivos evaluativos dentro del modelo CARS (Create-a-Research-Space) establecido para escribir introducciones. Dichas diferencias podrían atribuirse a la naturaleza del conocimiento disciplinar, así como a las convenciones de escritura científica de cada sub-comunidad académica. Palabras clave: evaluación; adjetivos evaluativos; ciencias no experimentales; retórica académica; comunidades disciplinares; promoción académica. 215 Contributors to this Issue Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano is Associate Professor at the University of Zaragoza. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh and has been a research fellow at the Univerity of California (Berkeley), the International Computer Science Institute (Berkeley) and the University of Deusto (Spain). Her research interests include issues related to cross-linguistic polysemy, constructions, semantic typology, sound symbolism, metaphor, perception, space and motion. She is author of Sound symbolism and motion in Basque (2006, Lincom Europa), and co-editor of Language, Mind, and the Lexicon (2007, Peter Lang). She has published in Cognitive Linguistics (2004) and, with Bohnmeyer et al, in Language (2007) among other journals. She has contributed chapters to edited volumes on Cognitive Linguistics (Benjamins 1999, 2006 and forthcoming). Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50.009, Zaragoza. Jalal Uddin Khan is currently teaching as a professor of English in the Department of Foreign Languages at Qatar University. Previously, he taught for many years at the International Islamic University of Malaysia. Following his undergraduate education in Bangladesh and his Master's on a Fulbright Scholarship from The American University, Washington D C, he earned a PhD from New York University (NYU), New York. His research interests include the English Romantic poets, on whom he has published in several literary journals. Department of Foreign Languages, Qatar University, POBox 2713, Dohar, Qatar. Teresa Caneda, PhD, has an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Vigo. Her research interests centre on Modernism and Postmodernism, Translation and Reception theories; Cultural and Literary Translation and James Joyce. Recent publications of hers include ‘The Untranslatability of Modernism’ in Modernism. Eysteinsson, Astradur and Vivian Liska, eds. Benjamins, 2007. Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Francesa y Alemana, Universidade de Vigo, E -36200, Vigo. Ana Ojea is Associate Professor at the University of Oviedo. Her research interests include generative grammar, syntax, language acquisition and contrastive grammar. She has published in Southwest Journal of Linguistics, Atlantis and Revista española de lingüística, among other journals. Departamento de Filología Anglogermánica y Francesa, Universidad de Oviedo, Campus El Milán, E-33011 Oviedo Lincoln Geraghty is Principal Lecturer in Film Studies and Subject Leader for Media Studies in the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at the University of Portsmouth. He received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Nottingham in 2005. He serves as editorial advisor for The Journal of Popular Culture, Reconstruction, and Atlantis with interests in science fiction film and television, fandom, and collecting in popular culture. He is author of Living with Star Trek: American Culture and the Star Trek Universe (IB Tauris, 2007) and American Science Fiction Film and Television (Berg, forthcoming). He is the editor of The Influence of Star Trek on Television, Film and Culture (McFarland, 2008), with Mark Jancovich The Shifting Definitions of Genre: Essay on Labeling Film, Television Shows and Media (McFarland, 2008), and Future Visions: Examining the Look of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (Scarecrow, forthcoming). School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of Portsmouth, Old Portsmouth, PO1 2HY, United Kingdom. 216 Colby Toussaint Clark holds an MA in TESOL. She began her teaching career as an elementary school teacher in the USA and continued her professional career as an instructor on the Intensive English Learning Program (IELP) at Portland State University (PSU). On finishing her three- year visiting professorship at Otemae University, Japan, she will return to PSU to continue her sociolinguistic research among L2 learners. Intensive English Language Program, Portland State University, PO Box 751, Portland OR, USA. Ian Clark holds an MA in Education and is a full member of the Teacher's College of England and Wales. He is particularly interested in sociocultural approaches in L2 learning and formative assessment interventions across the curriculum. He has taught for several years at Mukogawa Women's University, Osaka, Japan. He will shortly continue his research on a PhD programme at the University of Washington in Seattle into how instruction and assessment may be linked to improve learning outcomes. Department of Japanese Language and Literature, Mugokawa Women’s University; Hyogo 663- 8558, Osaka, Japan Mercè Cuenca is Lecturer in American Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Barcelona. Her research focuses mainly on mid-twentieth century American literature and on gender and lesbian studies, areas on which she has published chapters in edited books (Carme Riera et al., ed. 2005 and Elizabeth Russell, ed. forthcoming). She is currently writing her dissertation on the representation of lesbianism in Cold War American literature. Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de Barcelona, E-08007, Barcelona. María Isabel Seguro is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Barcelona, where she wrote her minor thesis on Caryl Churchill's play Cloud Nine. Her current research focuses on contemporary Asian American Drama. She authors articles in academic journals and chapters in edited collections. Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de Barcelona, E-08007, Barcelona. Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Auría obtained her PhD in 1993 and is Associate Professor in the University of Zaragoza. She teaches English grammar and applied linguistics, and is the academic writing instructor of the official Master in English studies at her university. She has published articles on pragmatics, rhetoric and genre analysis in national and international journals, and has co-edited English as a GloCalisation Phenomenon. Observations from a Linguistic Microcosm (2006) with Dr. Gibson R. Ferguson. At present she is engaged in intercultural research on academic written rhetoric. Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50.009 Zaragoza. Jesús Tronch, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the University of Valencia and member of the Instituto Shakespeare. His main interests are textual criticism (specifically on early modern drama), translation and the presence of Shakespeare in Spain. He has published A Synoptic ‘Hamlet’: a critical-synoptic edition of the Second Quarto and First Folio texts of ’Hamlet’ (2002), and Un primer ‘Hamlet’ (1994). He is currently co-editing a critical edition of The Spanish Tragedy for the forthcoming Arden Early Modern Drama series. Also forthcoming is an on-line monograph on Hamlet in Spain. Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de València, E-46010 València. 217 Rosa María Díez Cobo holds a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature. In 2007 she was the Head of the Spanish Department in the School of Literature and Language Studies at the University of Witwatersrand at Johannesburg (South Africa). She has been a visiting scholar at the Freie Universität (Germany), Pennsylvania State University (US), and Oxford University (UK). Recently, she was awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to carry out research in Argentina and the US. In her research, she has focused on multicultural narrative experiences concerning Hispanic communities on both sides of the US-Latin America frontier. She has authored the book Nueva sátira en la ficción postmodernista de las Américas (Universitat de Valencia: Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans, 2006). Centro de Letras Hispanoamericanas (CELEHIS), Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Funes 3259 7600 Mar del Plata, Argentina. Paloma Tejada is Associate Professor at Universidad Complutense. In 1987 she defended her PhD thesis on theme and rheme in Old English. She has authored the books El cambio lingüístico: claves para interpretar la historia de la lengua inglesa (Alianza Editorial, 1999) and ¿Cómo estudiar filología? (Alianza Editorial, 2000), coauthored with Antonio Guzmán Guerra. Her current research interests include the history of the English language, cross-cultural images of Englishness and contrastive syntax in English and Spanish, areas on which she has national and international publications. Departamento de Filología Inglesa I, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040, Madrid. Melinda Dooly graduated with an MA in Education from the Open University (UK). She lectures in English at the Universitat Autònoma, Barcelona. Her interests include ethnomethodology and conversation analysis in areas of education, especially in tele-collaboration and language learning. With Diana Eastment, she is co-editor of the book How we’re going about it: Teachers’ voices on innovative approaches to teaching and learning languages (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). Facultat de Educació, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, E-08193, Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vals. Ana Fernandez Dobao is currently Assistant Professor and Language Program Director at the University of Washington in the Division of Spanish and Portuguese Studies. Her research interests are Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Teaching Methodologies. Division of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Washington, Padelford C-104, Box 354360, Seattle, WA 98195, U.S.A. Barbara Ozieblo is Associate Professor at the University of Málaga. Her research focuses on American women writers, particularly women dramatists. She is the author of Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) and co-author of Susan Glaspell and Sophie Treadwell (Routledge Modern and Contemporary Drama Series, 2008). She is co-founder and current President of the Susan Glaspell Society. Dpto. de Filologia Inglesa, Universidad de Málaga, E-29071, Málaga. 218 Eroulla Demetriou, PhD, lectures in English at the University of Jaén. Her interests include English literature of the beginning of the 17th century and the Black Legend of Spain, and English travel literature on Cyprus. She has published in national and international journals, and authors two forthcoming books on literature for teachers of English and students of literature, written jointly with José Ruiz Mas. Departamento de Filologia Inglesa, Universidad de Jaén, Campus de Lagunillas, s/n, E-23071, Jaén. Gerardo Rodríguez Salas is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Granada. He has an MA. in Women’s Studies and obtained his European PhD with a thesis on Katherine Mansfield, written at the universities of Oxford (UK) and Wellington (New Zealand). His research interests are modernist and contemporary women writers, the short story genre and film adaptations of literary texts. His most recent publication is Hijas de la Diosa Blanca: ginocrítica y feminismo restaurador en la narrativa de Katherine Mansfield (Septem: 2007). Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Cartuja, E-18071, Granada. Maria Angeles Ruiz Moneva read her PhD thesis in 2003 and has been a lecturer in English linguistics and translation at the University of Zaragoza since 1994. She specialises in historical linguistics, translation and English for Specific Purposes (legal discourse), as well as pragmatic approaches to irony and relevance theory. She has reviewed Diccionario de términos jurídicos (7th. ed.) Alcaraz and Hughes 2003 (1993) in Translation Journal 8 (3) (2004) and Historical and Theoretical Approaches to English Satire, Elices Agudo, ed. (2004) in ES. 27 (2006-07). Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50.009, Zaragoza. 219 Acknowledgements The Editors wish to thank all those members of the Editorial Board of Atlantis who have generously contributed with their time and expertise to the preparation of this issue. We also thank those scholars who, while not official referees for Atlantis, have willingly collaborated with us by reading and assessing certain articles and reviews. 221 Instructions to Contributors What we publish Atlantis publishes articles, reviews and interviews in the field of Anglo-American studies. Contributions submitted to Atlantis should meet the following criteria: • Suitability for the aim and scope of the journal. • Originality and interest in relation to subject matter, method, data or findings. • Relevance to current research in the field. • Revision of previously published work on the topic. • Logical rigour in argumentation and in the analysis of data. • Adequate use of concepts and research methodology. • Discussion of theoretical implications and/or practical applications. • Command of recent bibliography. • Linguistic appropriateness, textual organisation and satisfactory presentation. • Readability and conciseness of expression. Concurrence: Authors are expected to know and heed basic ground rules that preclude simultaneous submission, duplicate publication or any other kind of self-plagiarism. Prospective contributors to Atlantis commit themselves to the following when they submit a manuscript: • That no concurrent consideration of the same, or almost identical, work by any other journal and/or publisher is taking place. • That the potential contribution has not appeared previously nor is about to appear within two years, in any form whatsoever, in another journal, electronic format or as a chapter/section of a book. • If, after two years, a contribution first published in Atlantis is to be reprinted elsewhere, permission is not required but the author should credit Atlantis for the contribution’s first appearance. If in doubt about any of the above, the author should consult the General Editor. What to send The recommended length for articles and interviews is between 6,000 and 8,000 words. Book reviews should be between 2,500 and 3,000 words. Manuscripts should be double-spaced with wide margins. The first page of each article must include a 100-200 word summary written in English, followed by a list of six to ten keywords. A similar summary and keywords are required in Spanish, on a separate file. These will be provided by the Editors for those contributors who do not handle Spanish. Your contribution should reach the Editor in THREE double-spaced, point 12 clear computer printouts with wide margins. Additionally, please send the General Editor an electronic version (MS Word for Windows) as an e-mail attachment. Please see the inside front cover for the Editor’s addresses. 222 Anonymity policy. All details of personal identification, including your name in citations and references, must be absent from both the hard copy and the electronic manuscript, as well as from the file properties. The author's name should be replaced by ‘author’ throughout the paper. If the submission contains any element of identification of the author, it will not be sent to referees. The author must submit the following information on a separate sheet. Personal details should be absent from the manuscript itself. • Title of the manuscript • Author’s name • Institutional affiliation and full postal address • Home address • Telephone numbers (both home and office) • Fax number and e-mail address (if applicable) • Word processor and version used to format the document • Total number of words, including works cited and notes Conventions and style Titles of contributions. For articles, type the title at the top of the page on which the text begins. Do not italicize your title or capitalize it in full. Italicize only a published work in the title or a cited word in a linguistic study. Capitalize only the first letter of the first word and of all significant words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) as well as proper nouns which appear in titles. Do not use a period after titles. The title should not carry a reference to a note, unless by the Editor; in articles or other contributions put necessary acknowledgements or explanations in a footnote to the first or last sentence of the first paragraph, not to the title. Quotation marks. Double quotation marks (“ ”) are used to enclose quoted speech or writing only. For quotations within run-on quotations use single quotation marks. If there are quotes within an indented quotation, the double quotation marks are used. Single quotation marks (‘ ’) are used in the following ways: a) to enclose titles of articles, essays, short stories, short poems, songs, chapters and sections of books, lectures and unpublished works other than dissertations; b) to enclose quotations within quotations; c) (usually called ‘scare quotes’) to indicate that the word or phrase is being used deliberately in an unusual or arguably incorrect sense, as well as for not yet wholly standard terms; d) for the meaning of words or phrases from a different language (agua ‘water’) Italics. Italics are used for a) titles of books, journals, long poems, newspapers, magazines, dissertations and films; b) foreign loanwords, except for common loanwords such as ad hoc, amateur, cachet, déjà vu; c) all cited linguistic forms (agua ‘water’); d) technical terms when first used or defined. Section headings. These must be kept to a minimum. They must begin from the left margin, with no period at the end. Bold type is used, with no capitalization of initial letters except for the first word. The use of Arabic numerals is recommended. Centred Roman numerals may be used when there is no heading title. If absolutely necessary, 223 further sub-headings should follow the same format used for section headings. They must be preceded by Arabic numbers separated by a full stop (e,g, 1.1). Punctuation. In general, make your usage as consistent as possible. Although the finer points of punctuation are often a matter of personal preference, the main purpose is clarity, and here it is wiser to follow established convention. Do not use commas (,) before “and” and “or” in a series of three or more. Never use a comma and a dash together. A comma can never precede a parenthesis; it must always follow it (such as this), if required by the context. A dash (–) is not the same as a hyphen (-). The former is used to introduce an explanation (you must arrive on time—not two hours late), and the latter joins words in a compound such as twenty-four. Do not confuse them. Question marks (?) and exclamation marks (!) should not normally be used in scholarly writing. Periods (.) close notes and bibliographical citations as well as complete sentences in text and notes. The period is placed within the parenthesis when the parenthetical element is independent: “. . . the language is both subliterary and transpersonal (in contrast, allegory, for example, is transpersonal but not subliterary)”. but “. . . the language is both subliterary and transpersonal. (On the other hand, allegory, for example, is transpersonal but not subliterary.)” Square brackets ([]) are used for an unavoidable parenthesis within a parenthesis, to enclose interpolations or comments in a quotation or incomplete data and to enclose phonetic transcription. (Slash marks [/] are used to enclose phonemic transcription.) Note that a period or comma is placed before a superscript indicating a note, for example: “…with whose king he has negotiated the monopoly of the sugar trade with England.14” Works Cited. In the titles of books and articles each main word is capitalized, i.e. nouns, adjectives, verbs and proper nouns. Authors’ and editors’ full first names should be used, rather than initials, whenever possible. Publisher’s names are appropriately abbreviated in the list of works cited. For example, Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc. becomes simply Macmillan. Any university press will be abbreviated according to one of two patterns: U of Miami P or Toronto UP. Bibliographical references should follow the following style: Motion, Andrew 1997: Keats. London: Faber and Faber. Bartsch, Renate 1984: ‘Norms, Tolerance, Lexical Change and Context-Dependent Meaning’. Journal of Pragmatics 8:367-393. Rogers, David and John McLeod, eds. 2004: The Revision of Englishness. Manchester: Manchester UP. Svoboda, Frederic J. 2000: ‘The Great Themes in Hemingway: Love, War, Wilderness and Loss’. Linda Wagner-Martin, ed. A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. New York: Oxford UP. 155-72. Rushdie, Salman and Elizabeth West, eds. 1997: Introduction. Mirrorwork. 50 years of Indian Writing 1947 -1997. New York: Henry Holt. vii-xx. For full details visit our website: www.atlantisjournal.org