Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos
Vol. 29, núm. 1 Junio 2007
29.1 (June 2007) 29.1 (Junio 2007)
General Editor Directora: Angela Downing Managing Editor Directora adjunta: Marta Carretero Assistant Ayudante de redacción: Juan Rafael Zamorano Mansilla Style supervisor Corrector de estilo: Jorge Arús Hita
Editorial Board
Board of Advisors
Andrew Blake University of Winchester Martin Bygate Lancaster University Teresa Fanego Universidad de Santiago de Compostela Fernando Galván Universidad de Alcalá de Henares Heinz Ickstadt Freie Universität Berlin J. Hillis Miller University of California at Irvine Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Universidad de La Rioja Susheila M. Nasta Open University
Board of Referees
Joan C. Beal (University of Sheffield) Jesús Benito Sánchez (Universidad de Valladolid) Marcella Bertuccelli Papi (Università di Pisa) Nilufer E. Bharucha (University of Mumby) Clare Birchall (Middlesex University) Anita Biressi (Roehampton University) Maggie Ann Bowers (University of Portsmouth) Rachel Bowlby (University College London) Kris Van den Branden (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) Mario Brdar (Josip Juraj Strossmayer University) Laurel J. Brinton (University of British Columbia) Manuel Broncano (Universidad de León) Christopher S. Butler (University of Wales) Graham D. Caie (University of Glasgow) Clara Calvo (Universidad de Murcia) Gordon Campbell (University of Leicester) Isabel Carrera (Universidad de Oviedo) Shirley Chew (University of Leeds) Robert Clark (University of East Anglia) Thomas Claviez (University of Stavanger) Tom Cohen (University of Albany) Juan Camilo Conde- Silvestre (Universidad de Murcia) Francisco J. Cortés Rodríguez (Universidad de La Laguna) Isabel de la Cruz Cabanillas (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares) Pilar Cuder (Universidad de Huelva) Daniela Daniele (Università di Udine) Rocío G. Davis (University of Navarra) Denise deCaires Narain (University of Sussex) Celestino Deleyto (Universidad de Zaragoza) Balz Engler (University of Basel) Susan M. Fitzmaurice (University of Sheffield) Javier Franco Aixelá (Universidad de Alicante) Cristina Garrigós (Universidad de León) Lincoln Geraghty (University of Portsmouth) Vincent Gillespie (University of Oxford) Cristina Giorcelli (Università di Roma Tre) José Luis González Escribano (Universidad de Oviedo) Manuel José Gómez Lara (Universidad de Sevilla) Francisco Gonzálvez García (Universidad de Almería) Agnieszka Graff (Warsaw University) Leighton Grist (University of Winchester) Adolphe Haberer (Université Lumière-Lyon 2) Pilar Hidalgo (Universidad de Málaga) Juan Carlos Hidalgo (Universidad de Sevilla) Ton Hoenselaars (Utrecht University) Jacqueline Hurtley (Universitat de Barcelona) David Johnson (The Open University) Stephan Kohl (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) Zoltán Kövecses (Eötvös Loránd University) Manfred Krug (Otto- Friedrich-Universität Bamberg) Merja Kytö (Uppsala University) Alberto Lázaro (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares) Ursula Lenker (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) María José López Couso (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela) Dámaso López García (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Ricardo Mairal Usón (UNED) Ana María Manzanas Calvo (Universidad de Salamanca) Javier Martín Arista (Universidad de La Rioja) John McLeod (University of Leeds) Lavinia Merlini (Università di Pisa) Rafael Monroy (Universidad de Murcia) Carmen Muñoz (Universitat de Barcelona) Jo Anne Neff Van Aertselaer (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Heather Nunn (Roehampton University) James Ogude (University of the Witwatersrand) Ana Ojea (Universidad de Oviedo) Mohamed-Salah Omri (University of Exeter) Klaus-Uwe Panther (Universität Hamburg) Pedro Javier Pardo (Universidad de Salamanca) Ruth Parkin-Gounelas (Aristotle University) Javier Pérez Guerra (Universidad de Vigo) James Procter (University of Stirling) Victor J. Ramraj (University of Calgary) David Richards (The Open University) Caroline Rooney (University of Kent) Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza (Universidad de La Rioja) Dianne F. Sadoff (Rutgers University) Jürgen Schlaeger (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) Elena Seoane (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela) Alasdair Spark (University of Winchester) M. S. Suárez Lafuente (Universidad de Oviedo) Juan Antonio Suárez (Universidad de Murcia) Henry Sussman (University of Buffalo / Yale University) Justine Tally (Universidad de La Laguna) Paloma Tejada Caller (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Geoff Thompson (University of Liverpool) I. M. Tieken-Boon van Ostade (University of Leiden) Harish Trivedi (University of Delhi) Carmen Valero Garcés (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares) Ruth Wodak (Lancaster University) Pilar Zozaya (University of Barcelona)
Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos
29.1 (June 2007) 29.1 (Junio 2007)
Table of Contents • Índice
Articles • Artículos
Masculinity, Violence, Resistance: A New Psychoanalytic Reading of Raging Bull Leighton Grist ...... 11
How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer...... 29
‘The Great Good Place’ No More? Integrating and Dismantling Oppositional Discourse in Some Recent Examples of Serial Killer Fiction Isabel Santaulària ...... 55
Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis Rosario Caballero...... 69
Negotiating Meaning in Interaction between English and Spanish Speakers via Communicative Strategies Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez...... 87
Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’: Susan’s Voyage into the Inner Space of ‘elsewhere’ Rula Quawas...... 107
“What Good Newes from Barbary?” Nascent Capitalism, North-Africans and the Construction of English Identity in Thomas Heywood’s Drama Jesús López-Peláez Casellas ...... 123
Interviews • Entrevistas
An Interview With Geoffrey Leech Paloma Núñez Pertejo...... 143
New Trends in Grammar Teaching: Issues and Applications An interview with Prof. Diane Larsen-Freeman Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada...... 157
Reviews • Reseñas
Ralph Hanna 2005: London Literature, 1300–1380 reviewed by Jordi Sánchez-Martí ...... 167
Coral Ann Howells, ed. 2006: The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood reviewed by Pilar Cuder Domínguez...... 173
Angela Downing and Phillip Locke 2006: English Grammar: A University Course reviewed by Mike Hannay ...... 179
Eric Ives 2004: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn Joanna Denny 2004: Anne Boleyn reviewed by Paula de Pando Mena...... 187
Alberto Lázaro 2005: El modernismo en la novela inglesa reviewed by Jefferey Simons ...... 193
Joan C. Beal 2006: Language and Region reviewed by Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre ...... 199
Katherine Romack and James Fitzmaurice 2006: Cavendish and Shakespeare, Interconnections reviewed by Ángeles Tomé Rosales ...... 205
Henry Fielding 2005: Don Quijote en Inglaterra reviewed by Pedro Javier Pardo ...... 211
David Mauk and John Oakland 2005: American Civilization. An Introduction Martin Gilbert 2006: The Routledge Atlas on American History reviewed by Felicity Hand...... 217
Isabel García Izquierdo, ed. 2005: El género textual y la traducción: Reflexiones teóricas y aplicaciones pedagógicas reviewed by Brian Leonard Mott...... 223
Mª Ángeles Orts Llopis 2006: Aproximación al discurso jurídico en inglés. Las pólizas de seguro marítimo de Lloyd’s reviewed by Ana Bocanegra Valle...... 229
ARTICLES
ARTÍCULOS
29.1 (June 2007): 11–27 ISSN 0210-6124
Masculinity, Violence, Resistance: A New Psychoanalytic Reading of Raging Bull
Leighton Grist University of Winchester [email protected]
Long regarded as a canonical text of recent Hollywood cinema, Raging Bull has enjoyed not inconsiderable critical attention. The film’s particularized representation of violent masculinity would correspondingly appear to invite psychoanalytic consideration. However, the influential analyses of Pam Cook and Robin Wood excepted, Raging Bull has received little detailed or sustained psychoanalytic examination. Attempting to rectify the situation, this article embeds psychoanalytic discussion within a close formal expounding of the text. In part the article builds upon the work of Cook and Wood, but it also significantly addresses the connotations of the seeming masochism of the film’s protagonist, Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro): a masochism that in discussions of Raging Bull has too often tended to be assumed as axiomatic. Taking a Freudian/Lacanian approach, the article ultimately contends that while Raging Bull can be considered, ideologically, as potentially progressive, the film reaches a conclusion that can be regarded, psychoanalytically, as radical.
Keywords: Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese, psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, masculinity, masochism.
In its representation of former world champion middleweight boxer Jake La Motta, Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) can be seen to present almost a psychoanalytic case history of violent masculinity. In psychoanalytically based criticism of the film, Jake’s violence has reciprocally been referred to a resistance to perceived threats against that masculinity. Influential have been the arguments propounded by Pam Cook and Robin Wood. Cook reads the film as centred upon “male Oedipal anxieties” (1982: 44), Wood foregrounds its “homosexual subtext” (1986: 109). Yet although these writings have set the parameters for much subsequent discussion of Raging Bull, further substantive engagement with the film psychoanalytically has been sparse. Working from within a Freudian/Lacanian framework, it is a sparsity that this article seeks to redress. Masculinity, violence and resistance will continue to be points of reference, and while both the film’s Oedipal and homosexual connotations will be revisited, the implications of the masochistic aspects of Jake’s representation will also be explored. Such masochism has been recurrently asserted within writing on Raging Bull. However, what exactly it might mean psychoanalytically, and what exactly its ramifications might be within the film, have remained largely unexplored. 12 Leighton Grist
I
Two scenes in Raging Bull are frequently adduced as displaying Jake’s masochism. The first is when, having argued with his first wife, Irma (Lori Anne Flax), Jake (Robert De Niro) impels his brother and manager Joey (Joe Pesci) to punch him in the face until his recently suffered cuts begin to reopen. The second is when Jake, in defiance of the well- worn pre-fight injunction on sex, allows his second wife-to-be, Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), to arouse him by kissing his cut and bruised face and body, upon which he drowns his erection with iced water. In ‘The Economic Problem of Masochism’, Sigmund Freud posits “three forms” (1991e: 415) of masochism, two of which would appear to be immediately relevant to these scenes. For Freud, erotogenic masochism is the “pleasure in pain” (1991e: 415) that is foundational to all masochism, while feminine masochism is, more contentiously, an implicitly masculine perversion that – with the masochist characteristically passive and receptive before hurt, humiliation and violation – positions him as “female”. In both scenes Jake’s pleasure in pain is implied. Witness his acceptance of Joey’s punches, his wincing reaction to Vickie kissing his injuries, or his self-punishing refusal of climax. Moreover, not only is Jake passive before Joey and Vickie’s contrasting attentions, but other elements underscore his “female” positioning. In the scene with Joey, Jake’s complaint that he is never “gonna get a chance to fight” heavyweight Joe Louis because of his small, “little girl’s” hands invites us to read his getting Joey to punch him as a displaced, coextensive acknowledgment of and punishment for his “femininity”. There are also the symbolic connotations of his cuts reopening, his wounds bleeding. In turn, whereas the scene with Vickie opens with a shot showing Jake’s legs as he lies on the bed and Vickie opening and standing behind the bathroom door, it closes with a shot showing, with pointed gender inversion, Vickie’s legs as she lies on the bed and Jake standing behind and closing the bathroom door. There are nevertheless complications – theoretical and narrative – that demand attention. In ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’, Freud contends that a sexual instinct is capable of undergoing a reversal “into its opposite” – that is, of changing from activity to passivity – and of turning round “upon the subject’s own self”: “vicissitudes” that are seen to find exemplary demonstration in the pairing sadism-masochism (1991c: 123, 124). Masochism thus becomes “sadism turned round upon the subject’s own ego”, a process in which the “person as object” whom the subject exercises “violence or power upon” is “given up and replaced by the subject’s self”, and in which an “extraneous person is once more sought as object” to “take over the role of the subject” (1991c: 124- 25). Jacques Lacan accordingly argues that as the masochistic subject makes itself the object of another, so it is actually the sadist who “occupies the place of the object” (1994: 185). If sadism is hence for Lacan “merely the disavowal of masochism” (1994: 186), then Freud elsewhere declares masochism and sadism as conjoined, that a “sadist is always at the same time a masochist” (1991a: 73). Lacan, moreover, regards feminine masochism “a masculine phantasy” (1994: 192), with respect to which not only does passivity in psychic terms refer to passive aims of always active instincts, but the opposition activity-passivity psychically precedes and is indivisible to that of masculinity-femininity. Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 13
Correspondingly, instead of assuming “feminine” passivity, Jake can in both scenes be considered masochistically to affirm his masculine dominance. It is, again, Jake who goads Joey into hitting him, then hitting him harder, with, then without, a tea towel as a boxing-glove: he questions Joey’s courage (“you afraid?”), imputes homosexuality (“faggot”, “You throw a punch like you take it up the ass”), asserts fraternal superiority (“I’m your older brother”), raises his voice and slaps him repeatedly in the face. Such provocation is, moreover, described by Theodor Reik not only as familiar to masochism, but as effacing “the boundaries between masochistic and sadistic conduct” (2002: 249). In turn, Jake calls Vickie from the bathroom and tells her to kiss his wounds and to remove his trousers and shorts and her panties, and his refusal of his – and Vickie’s – sexual satisfaction can be read as an assertion of control over himself and her. Even so, Jake affirms his dominance in the scene with Joey despite, or because of, his “little girl’s hands”, while in the scene with Vickie he finds it difficult to resist her attentions. There also remain the gendered implications of the scene’s closing shot. Similar masochistic connotations, and attendant complications, are apparent in the scene of Jake’s fight with Jimmy Reeves (Floyd Anderson) that opens the flashback that comprises most of the film’s narrative. The fight is joined in the penultimate round, at which point Jake is, in the words of the ringside commentator, “well behind” having “taken a lot of punishment”. Indeed, the scene begins with a close shot of Jake being punched in the face. Jake nevertheless rallies and, in the last round, and in an implicit “turning round” from masochism to sadism, knocks Reeves down three times: a violent expression of masculine irresistibility that is enhanced by his preceding, masochistic endurance of “punishment”. However, again complicating matters, Reeves is “saved by the bell”, and Jake loses the bout on points. Yet, in contrast to Joey, who is furious, Jake does not appear to be overly upset by the defeat, which, while his first, he celebrates as though a victory. Likewise, when Jake loses his second represented fight with Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes) “’cause he’s going in the army next week”, Joey rages and smashes a stool whereas Jake contents himself with bemoaning “I knocked him down, I don’t know what else I gotta do”. In both instances matters other than victory or defeat would seem to be in play. After losing to Reeves, Jake avers to Irma that, unlike the fight judges, “the people” know “who’s the boss”. Jake, moreover, wants to win the world title without the involvement of the Mafia: Joey tells Salvy (Frank Vincent) that Jake “just wants to do things for himself”, and local don Tommy (Nicholas Colasanto), for whom Salvy works, that “he likes to do things his own way ... he wants to make it on his own”. At issue for Jake would appear to be his integrity and self-sufficiency. In Oedipal terms, with Tommy positioned as a father-figure, the implication is of the denial of symbolic castration. Jake’s actual father is only significantly mentioned when Jake tells Vickie when in his father’s apartment that he bought the entire building for his father from his earnings from fighting. This nevertheless constitutes an effective assertion of phallic potency, and its implicit relation of boxing, money and the phallus recalls and reflects back on Jake’s forceful words to Joey about Tommy “taking” his money after Salvy and his associates Patsy (Frank Adonis) and Guido (Joseph Bono) turn up at the gym where Jake and Joey spar. Noteworthy in addition is the track toward Jake’s clenched fist in a bucket of iced water in the dressing-room following the second Robinson fight, the phallic 14 Leighton Grist connotations of which are underscored through its referencing of the erection and iced water incident.
II
In its implication with Jake’s masculine affirmation and corresponding Oedipal transgression, masochism would early on in Raging Bull appear to suggest a means of psychic-cum-physical resistance. Reik, moreover, writes not only that “defiance” and “rebellion” are the “basis and essence” of masochism, but that “in most cases” masochism constitutes a “symbolic displacement” of castration (2002: 360, 286). Raging Bull also situates Jake’s resistance within a society in which reactive and violent masculine assertiveness is seemingly endemic. Witness the fights that break out in the crowd during Jake’s bout with Reeves and upon the announcement of its result, or the aftermath of a fight that Jake passes through when he follows Vickie as she leaves the St Clare’s Church dance with Salvy. Further, that this affords Jake’s “pathology” an implicit contextualization is consonant with the preoccupation with cultural and psychosexual determination that is central to Scorsese’s authorial discourse (Grist 2000). However, if in Raging Bull boxing is implicitly but a professionalized extension of a more common violence, the representation of Jake’s boxing matches is marked by a foregrounded stylization that sets them apart from the encompassing narrative. Similarly, while the film’s combination of objective-subjective/documentary- expressionist perspectives is characteristic of Scorsese’s filmmaking, and while documentary and expressionist connotations are generated in both boxing and other segments, the stylization of Jake’s bouts, as it conveys a heightened, often troubling sense of violence given and received, also provides a more particularized expression of Jake’s subjective apprehension. Take the second Robinson fight. Shot with long lenses, on a smoke-filled sound stage and with flames positioned beneath the camera to create a hazy effect, the scene visually combines flattened perspectives, occasionally unclear images and frequently obstructed and/or off-centre framing to produce a sense of uncertainty, confusion and frustration commensurate to Jake’s baffled loss of the bout. This returns us to previous matters. For inasmuch as Jake’s masochism has been implicated with his coextensive masculine assertiveness and resistance, it is an assertiveness and resistance that remains compromised by fight judges, female sexuality, reopening cuts and “little girl’s hands”. Indeed, Jake’s clenching of his fist in the bucket of iced water suggests for Lesley Stern “an effort to negate” the last (1995: 22). Moreover, on Jake bemoaning his defeat to Robinson, he muses: “I’ve done a lot of bad things ... Maybe it’s coming back to me”. Wanting any particular application, Jake’s comments imply an abstract, generalized sense of guilt. Psychoanalytically, the suggestion is of an internalized super-ego and, correlatively, the third form of masochism that Freud posits in ‘The Economic Problem of Masochism’, moral masochism: a perversion in which the “ego’s own masochism” “seeks punishment” from the “sadistic” super-ego or “the parental powers outside” (1991e: 424). The super-ego, however, is installed upon the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, and its presence presupposes symbolic castration. Correspondingly, Jake’s Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 15 implied denial of symbolic castration, of lack, becomes reconfigured, with better psychoanalytic precision, as disavowal. As Jake sits with his hand in the iced water, he is in addition shot as reflected in and looking into the dressing-room mirror. Mirrors abound in Scorsese’s films, and at least up to Raging Bull partake of a consistent implication that renders them an authorial motif. Associated with the assumption of identity and/or accordant estrangement of self, mirrors condense what the films represent as their characters’ fundamentally alienating determination (Grist 2000: 24-27). In this, their use evokes Lacan’s concept of the mirror stage: the misrecognition of self as other that, typified by the mirror situation, founds the ego and serves as “the source of secondary” – and not least Oedipal – “identifications” (1977a: 2). Consistent with the motif, Jake’s dressing-room self-regard implies a (narratively coherent) alienation from self, while earlier Jake and Joey are shown checking their appearance, assuming an appropriate identity, in a mirror before leaving for the St Clare’s Church dance. In turn, when Jake pours iced water over his erection, and masochistically protects his pre-fight potency, he stands before and looks into a mirror. But while this further connects the scene to that in the dressing-room after the Robinson match, the suggestion is of Jake “facing down” his determination and, concordantly, his symbolic castration. Vickie, however, also enters the mirror’s space, which besides reflects another mirror, and tries to tempt Jake from his sexual denial. Moreover, the preceding bedroom incident between Jake and Vickie is intermittently reflected in a large dressing-table mirror, while another mirror is visible, from a reverse angle, behind Vickie. Compounding matters, Jake checks his appearance in the mirror before leaving precisely to see Vickie at the St Clare’s Church dance. Correlative to Vickie’s connection with the mirror motif, her relationship with and marriage to Jake can be read as figuring his Oedipal normalization. Not only is Vickie, in Joey’s words, “a neighborhood girl”, and thus not “the kind of girl you just fuck and forget about”, but, on first meeting Vickie, Jake indicatively takes her to his father’s apartment where, close upon his telling her about his purchasing of the building, they seemingly, as they move out of shot, and become visible only as blurred figures reflected, suggestively, in a mirror, have sex on his parents’ bed. Such Oedipal connotations clarify the “castrating” inversion of gender positioning in the closing shot of the erection and iced water scene, which takes place predominantly in the same parental bedroom. They similarly inform the montage sequence that summarizes Jake’s boxing career and life between 1944-47. For although the summation of six bouts via stills, slow motion and freeze frames serves to express Jake’s continuing, irresistible power, the representation of Jake’s boxing is subordinated to the “home movie” footage of Jake (and Joey)’s increasing domestication, which describes a conventional trajectory of courtship, marriage(s), house and children. The film, moreover, markedly cuts to the montage sequence from the track toward Jake’s fist in the iced water. It is also only after his marriage to Vickie that Jake is shown to suffer weight problems, initially in the scene in the kitchen of their Pelham Parkway house that follows the montage sequence. With respect to this, as the shot of Jake’s fist in the bucket of iced water implies the phallus, so it can yet further be considered an appropriately phallic metonym of his muscular fighting body. Conversely, Jake’s weight gain suggests another signifier of symbolic castration: a suggestion complemented, given the film’s association of boxing, money and the phallus, when Jake complains to 16 Leighton Grist
Joey during the scene about being contracted to fight Tony Janiro (Kevin Mahon) at 155lbs, or else losing $15,000.
III
When Vickie chips in to suggest that the Janiro match is a good idea because Janiro is an “up and coming fighter” who is “good looking” and “popular”, Jake reacts with jealous anger and, after ordering Vickie from the kitchen, evinces a suspiciousness that can justly be termed paranoid: he asks Joey whether he ever notices “anything funny going on” with Vickie and tells him “to keep an eye on her”. Freud considered paranoia as a defence against repressed homosexuality, and Wood uses the model of paranoia presented in Freud’s case history of Senatspräsident Schreber (1991b) as the basis of his unpacking of the “homosexual subtext” of Raging Bull. With reference to Janiro, Wood argues that the “threat” Janiro poses to Jake is “not of attractiveness” to Vickie, “but of attractiveness to himself” (1986: 113). This becomes near overt in the subsequent scene at the Copacabana when Jake, upon being called over to Tommy’s table, quips “I got a problem, if I should fuck him or fight him”: this after Tommy himself has asked whether Janiro has “to watch his ass” – to which Jake responds “I think he should” – and Jake has threatened to “open his hole”. Jake’s brutal beating of Janiro – a bout that is represented as a barrage of unanswered blows, mainly to Janiro’s face – would consequently seem to bespeak something more than professional necessity. Similar homosexual implications are, as Wood points out, apparent in Jake’s relations with Salvy, Tommy and Joey. A character that Jake dislikes implacably, Salvy is also a figure repeatedly implicated with Jake’s relationship with Vickie. Jake first sees Vickie at the neighbourhood swimming-pool as she sits with Salvy, Patsy and Guido and Jake quizzes Joey about her in part in terms of her relationship to them (“She knows them?”; “She go with them?”). Moreover, when Jake asks Joey whether Vickie is the young girl who Salvy “went with”, his words accompany a slow-motion close shot of Salvy. In Scorsese’s films slow motion is a privileged means of expressing subjective perception, and it recurs during the scene at the St Clare’s Church dance, when we are given slow-motion point-of-view shots of Vickie and of Vickie and Salvy as Jake looks across the room, and of Vickie and Salvy as Jake follows them from the dance and watches them drive off in Salvy’s car. The shots emphasize the raptness of Jake’s attention, the focus of which is ambiguous. Both scenes prompt the question of whether Jake is actually or only attracted to Vickie, of whether Vickie embodies in whole or to some degree a displacement of an “inadmissible” desire for Salvy that once more finds expression in hostility. The question is compounded by the scene at the Copacabana. We see Salvy greet and kiss Vickie from Jake’s point of view, with a slow-motion point-of-view shot employed as Salvy walks toward Jake. Jake can hardly bring himself to shake Salvy’s hand, responds to Joey’s comment that Salvy “looks good” by pretending to spit and questions Vickie incitingly as to whether she is “interested” in Salvy: all of which invites symptomatic interpretation. Further, when sitting with Tommy, and upon a “misheard” comment by Salvy, Jake asks him whether he wants Jake “to get” Janiro “to fuck” him: a query that can be read as having more than one displaced meaning. Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 17
Discussing the homosexual connotations of Jake’s relations with Tommy and Joey, Wood adduces Freud’s contention that Schreber’s first homosexual “love-objects” were, incestuously, “his own father and brother” (1986: 113). Jake’s “desire” for both Tommy and Joey also again implicitly finds displacement in his relationship with Vickie. The first time Jake sees Vickie as she sits at the swimming-pool she is actually being spoken to by Joey, and Jake’s quizzing of Joey in addition establishes that Joey has taken “her out” and tried to have sex with her. Jake’s relationship with Vickie is likewise related to Joey by the sight of Jake and Vickie kissing before a photograph of Jake and Joey striking boxing poses in Jake’s parents’ bedroom; there is as well Joey’s recurrent presence in Jake’s “home movies”. Moreover, if Jake’s relationship with Vickie implies what Freud more specifically termed the positive Oedipus complex, then Jake’s suggested homosexuality implies the so-called negative Oedipus complex: for the male child, the complementary desire for the father and hostility toward the mother that, as part of the complete Oedipus complex, equally has the potential to inform adult object choice. Implicit in Freud’s ascription of Schreber’s “incestuous” homosexuality, the negative Oedipus complex is particularly suggested in Raging Bull by Jake’s intimated “desire” for Tommy, his father-figure. Correspondingly, the insinuatingly tracking, slow-motion point-of-view shots as Jake looks toward Tommy at the Copacabana – including one in which Tommy, significantly, kisses Vickie – could be seen to express the “ambivalent attitude” toward the father that Freud declares “may even” be “attributed entirely” to the negative Oedipus complex (1991d: 372). Boxing has also itself been seen to have a “homosexual subtext”. Joyce Carol Oates, for instance, writes that no sport “appears more powerfully homoerotic” (1994: 30), following which we might again note that Raging Bull links penis and fist. Further connotations are thus potential to, say, Jake’s battering of Janiro, the photograph of Jake and Joey in boxing poses, or Jake’s feminine masochism when punched by Joey, during which Jake imputes homosexuality as he is “at his own request”, and in the words of David Friedkin, “being ‘banged’ by his brother” (1994: 123). Like connotations can be seen to accrue when Jake, in recompense for Joey inviting his “friends” to the gym, pummels Joey to the canvas, an assault that is as much aimed at Salvy, as a pair of cutaways that show him looking increasingly uncomfortable make clear.
IV
When Jake leaves his apartment with Joey for the St Clare’s Church dance, Irma vituperatively declaims that they are going to “suck each other off”, then shouts after Jake: “You fucking queer. Faggot”. At the gym, Guido remarks that Jake and Joey “look like two fags” as they spar. The comedian at the Copacabana (Bernie Allen) is shown making a gratuitous homophobic quip (“Bald-headed fag”). The commentator on Jake’s last fight with Robinson even refers to Robinson having Jake, after a spate of punches, “on Queer Street”. Such incidents and comments further reflect upon the intimation of Jake’s repressed homosexuality, but in their prevalence once more work to place both this and Jake’s reactive hostility within an implicitly determining context. Considered with regard to this, that diegetic references to and imputations of homosexuality are invariably derogatory – being used as insults, suggesting 18 Leighton Grist emasculation – impels an interpretative doubling back. For as the positive and negative forms of the Oedipus complex are combined in the complete complex, so the film’s homosexual references and representation of masculine enmity are not only open to discussion in terms of repressed homosexual desire, but can also be read in relation to the assertiveness and violence that are near-definitive of the represented society. Certainly, Jake’s variable animus toward and jealousy regarding Janiro, Salvy, Joey and Tommy – especially as refracted via Vickie – is as much ascribable to fraternal and sibling and (positive) Oedipal rivalry as to homosexual and (negative) Oedipal desire, albeit this is, with a suggestiveness evocative of the overdetermination of the psyche, less a case of either/or than both/and. For Lacan, moreover, paranoia is not a defence against repressed homosexuality but concomitant to the individual’s alienating determination: a determination that in addition has as a “correlative tension”, and with decided pertinence for Raging Bull, a no less concomitant “aggressivity” (1977b: 22). A representative complexity of meanings is accordingly generated by the sequence set in Jake’s Detroit hotel suite prior to his title fight against Marcel Cerdan (Louis Raftis). First, Jake, frustrated at the fight’s 24-hour postponement, responds with jealous aggression when Vickie, at Joey’s suggestion, decides to order a cheeseburger. Then, when Tommy visits, we are given a montage of slow-motion close-ups, from Jake’s point of view, that show Joey’s hands, one of which rests on Tommy’s shoulder, Tommy’s hands, Tommy again kissing Vickie, Tommy’s hands as he lauds Vickie’s beauty, and Vickie and Joey smiling delightedly. A charged series of images, within which the emphasis on hands continues to have particular symbolic resonance, the montage is followed, on Tommy leaving, by Jake nastily confronting Vickie, slapping her in the face and accusing her of “disrespect” and threatening Joey that he will “take care” of him later. Taken as a whole, the sequence can be read irreducibly to connote paranoid jealousy, sibling contention, Oedipal hostility, inadmissible homosexual desire and reactive and/or alienated aggression: with respect to which, mirrors, that largely reflect Jake, are recurrently in shot. Jake only gets his title chance after he finally accedes to the Mafia and, in specific reparation for Joey beating up Salvy during a second scene at the Copacabana, throws his fight against Billy Fox (Eddie Mustafa Muhammad). Meeting Joey, Tommy complains of Jake: “He’s got no respect for nobody. He doesn’t listen to nobody”. At issue psychoanalytically is, correspondingly, and in contrast to Jake’s earlier phallic resistance, his acknowledgment of Tommy’s “paternal” authority and, reciprocally, his own symbolic castration. If this in turn can be seen to inform Jake’s alienated aggression during the Detroit hotel sequence, as witness his own concern with respect, then the Fox fight and its aftermath present marked contrasts to previously represented matches. Whereas in the Reeves fight Jake masochistically accepts punishment before knocking Reeves down and de facto winning the bout, against Fox Jake’s first punch almost knocks his opponent out, and Jake is subsequently represented as receiving a number of anything but punishing blows before the fight is stopped. Similarly, whereas Jake has been shown previously responding to defeats with seeming self-sufficient calm, in his dressing-room after the Fox fight he cries piteously at his humiliation: symbolic castration can apparently no longer be disavowed. Even so, Jake’s refusal to “go down” makes the fix obvious. The suggestion is of a residual resistance, with the incident in its entirety inviting consideration in terms of moral masochism. As much can be regarded Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 19 as implicit to Jake’s acquiescence to the demands of the “parental powers” as embodied by Tommy, but it also shines a sidelight on the possible homosexual connotations of Jake’s repeated insistence that he does not go down “for nobody”. Freud not only regards moral masochism as a guilty displacement of the repressed desire for the father of the negative Oedipus complex, but observes that this familiarly achieves regressive articulation in “the wish” to be “beaten by the father” (1991e: 424). However, consistent with the transgressive affirmation latent to masochism, Freud further argues that “to provoke punishment” the moral masochist must, at an extreme, but with relevance to Jake’s not going down, “do what is inexpedient, must act against his own interests, must ruin the prospects which open out to him in the real world and must, perhaps, destroy his own real existence” (1991e: 425). Nevertheless, having acknowledged his symbolic castration, Jake does, with Oedipal suggestiveness, “obtain” the phallus, win the world championship. But this is quickly rendered hollow as the film cuts from Jake celebrating his victory to his Pelham Parkway house the next year. Serving as an interim narrative climax, the ensuing sequence draws together numerous strands of the film thus far, and from the first emphatically resituates Jake as symbolically castrated: his lack being broadcast whether one considers his impotent attempts at obtaining a picture from his television set as he eats a sandwich and drinks a bottle of beer, his styleless combination of open shirt, baggy shorts and dark socks, or his increasing physical bulk. On Vickie entering the house, Jake’s paranoid jealousy promptly appears. He questions Vickie about where she has been, and complains to Joey about his kissing her on the mouth, with Jake’s comparison of which to kissing one’s mother again evoking his marriage’s Oedipal connotations. Annoyed pointedly by Joey complaining about his weight gain, Jake proceeds from asking his brother about what happened when he beat up Salvy at the Copacabana, to asking “Did Salvy fuck Vickie?”, to asking eventually “You fuck my wife?” Questions redolent with obsessive, alienated aggression, they can once more be considered coextensively to imply hostile heterosexual contentiousness and displaced homosexual desire, as can his frustrated, agonizing and no less redolently alienated claim that Joey’s verbal association of himself with Salvy and Tommy – that Jake, if he is so tough, should “kill Salvy, kill Tommy Como, kill me” – “meant something”. Capping things, Joey’s words before he leaves compound the implication of Jake’s symbolic castration by linking his weight gain and paranoia to putative sexual insufficiency: “Try a little more fucking and a little less eating. You won’t have troubles upstairs in your bedroom and you won’t pick it out on me and everybody else”. Such connotations are redoubled when Jake goes upstairs to confront Vickie. After again asking where Vickie had been, Jake grabs her by the hair, enquires what happened at the Copacabana, slaps her three times and, grabbing her face in his hands, says: “Did you fuck my brother?” Vickie gets free and locks herself in the bathroom. Jake follows, asking “Why did you fuck Joey?” before breaking through the bathroom door and grabbing and twice slapping Vickie, who responds by tauntingly “confirming” his paranoia: “I fucked all of them.... Tommy, Salvy, your brother, all of them. I sucked your brother’s cock ... and everybody else on the fucking street too”. Expressed with an irony that Jake, in his paranoid obtuseness, does not “get”, Vickie’s words nevertheless once more imply a certain sexual inadequacy in Jake. This, moreover, is both complemented by another tacit linking of his weight gain and paranoia (“You’re 20 Leighton Grist nothing but a fat pig selfish fool”) and underscored by her closing shot, shouted as Jake, having again slapped her twice and shaped to punch her, leaves the house, that Joey’s “cock’s bigger than yours too” – a comment that, as it connects with the film’s preceding phallic references, takes us back especially to Jake’s “little girl’s hands”. Where in Raging Bull the expressionist stylization of the boxing scenes conveys a frequently unsettling subjective experience of violence, the more objective, documentary representation of violence outside the ring is no less unsettling in its harsh, awkward convincingness. Demonstrated in Jake’s mishandling and slapping of Vickie, such violence is maintained as the sequence proceeds with Jake tangling with Vickie in the street then bursting into Joey’s house where, amid cramped domestic space, he manhandles Joey to the floor, punches him, forces him through a French door, stomps on him and kicks him before punching Vickie, who has followed him into the house, and who, with Joey’s wife, Lenore (Theresa Saldana), has pulled him off his brother, cold. Moreover, while Jake’s assault on Joey is yet again referable mutually to sibling rivalry and repressed homosexual desire, the sequence rather positions both, not to mention Jake’s imputed sexual inadequacy, as symptoms of the symbolically castrating alienation that implicitly underpins masculine assertiveness and violence throughout; notably, when Jake enters Joey’s house Joey is threatening his son at the dinner table with a knife, a violent – and significantly phallic – reaction to domestic uncontrol that recalls his earlier aggressive response to Lenore’s offhand interjection in support of Vickie during the kitchen scene, for which he, like Jake with Vickie, orders her from the room. Indeed, the misogyny that patently informs Jake’s relations with both of his wives is characteristically situated as a broader and implicitly determining social fact. Hence when the fights in the crowd erupt during and after the Reeves match we respectively see and hear a woman scream and see and hear a woman scream as she is being trampled. Similarly, if the comedian at the Copacabana is homophobic, he is also misogynistic (“C’mon lady, laugh it up. I laughed when you come in”). Raging Bull might nevertheless be regarded as being complicit with the misogyny that it represents. Apart from representing women as agents of symbolically castrating domestication, the film would appear to bear out Jake’s suspicions regarding Vickie when Joey sees her with Salvy at the Copacabana when Jake is out of town. However, when confronted by Joey, Vickie vehemently defends herself by indicting Jake’s paranoid jealousy (“I feel like I’m a prisoner”), violence (“I look at somebody the wrong way I get smacked”) and sexual inattention (“He’s got he don’t even wanna fuck me”). Moreover, Vickie’s complaints that she “can’t work” and that she is “20 years old” but expected “to go home and sleep by myself every night” sets her, as she stands speaking before and as reflected in a mirrored alcove, as both agent and victim of the implied cultural and psychosexual order – as are, implicitly, all the characters in the film. Even so, that Joey should condemn Vickie for being at the Copacabana with Salvy having previously taken a woman other than Lenore to the Copacabana with Jake and Vickie suggests a hypocritical, misogynistic double standard. In turn, having loyally kept “an eye on” Vickie for Jake, Joey proceeds to uphold Jake’s – and his – masculine authority by beating up Salvy: this in another jarring representation of violence as Joey smashes a glass in Salvy’s face inside the club then hits him with a metal post, kicks him and repeatedly jams him in a taxi door outside and despite Salvy’s protestations, which Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 21 nothing in the film contradicts, that everything is “innocent”. The consequences of Joey’s actions, however, mordantly illuminate the obdurate dynamics of the represented society. On one hand, Joey’s upholding of Jake’s masculine authority results directly in Jake’s “castrating” cession of the same to Tommy. On the other, his understandable evasiveness and falsehoods and too ready anger when questioned by Jake during the Pelham Parkway sequence fuels Jake’s alienated suspicions and leads to Joey himself suffering an undeserved beating. Not that Tommy exists outside symbolic castration, with his lack being highlighted by, and admitted with regard to, his initial failure to control Jake: “He’s embarrassing me with certain people, and I’m looking very bad. I can’t deliver a kid from my own goddamn neighborhood”. If this further reflects upon Tommy and Jake’s shared concern with respect, it also clarifies the hollowness of his championship victory. For, according to Lacan, no-one can possess the phallus: there is, familiar Oedipal mystifications to the contrary, no phallus to be assumed. As D. N. Rodowick summarizes, “the phallus signifies nothing except the hierarchical organization of power according to patriarchal culture; and castration means nothing except the cultural violence that enforces submission to that authority” (1991: 73).
V
The Pelham Parkway sequence ends with a conciliatory embrace between Jake and a facially bruised Vickie. It cuts to Jake being punched in the face by Laurent Dauthuille (Johnny Turner) in the last round of a title defence. The logic of the editing would appear to suggest that Jake is accepting recompense for his preceding, violent actions. Again, the implication psychoanalytically is of moral masochism. However, from, in the words of the ringside commentator, “losing the title”, and “taking terrible punishment on the ropes”, Jake, in another implicit “turning round” from masochism to sadism, savagely attacks Dauthuille and knocks him out with “13 seconds left”. With the scene recalling the Reeves bout, the suggestion is of Jake’s reversion to his previously resistant, masochistically affirmed self. Jake’s oscillation between guilty self-surrender and defiant resistance in turn shapes the succeeding scenes. Prevailed upon by Vickie to phone and reconcile with Joey – she even dials the number – Jake declines to speak. Jake’s subsequent beating in his final fight with Robinson is nevertheless referred to Joey: the film cuts to the bout from a shot of Jake sitting in the phone booth, then cross-cuts to shots of Joey watching the match on television. Notwithstanding Jake delivering a typical flurry of punches, once more the connotation is of him accepting due reckoning, and, correspondingly, of moral masochism. The displaced, psychic reference of Jake’s suffering is underscored by the expressionist representation of his defeat. Having received a series of heavy blows, Jake, with his arms by his sides, but consistent with the intersubjective dominance that Lacan attributes the masochist, calls Robinson on, at which a simultaneous dolly in, zoom out and reduction of lighting renders Robinson an imposing and near-abstract figure of retribution. There follows a montage that predominantly comprises shots of disturbingly brutal, bloodily punishing blows to Jake’s head, before a climactic punch is shot, via a dolly in to close-up, and as it emerges from an ill-defined, smoke-filled space, as an almost metaphysical fact. Complementarily, Jake’s attempts to hold himself up on the ropes, and the shots of his 22 Leighton Grist blood-spattered legs and bowed, bloodied head, lend his beating an intimation of crucifixion. With the opening of the sequence in addition offering slow-motion, virtually silent and quasi-ritualistic shots of Jake’s body being bathed with a bloody sponge, Jake’s moral masochism could in the sequence be regarded implicitly to shade into the “Christian” variant outlined by Reik. Indeed, the male subject’s habitual acceptance of symbolic castration on the mystificatory promise of the assumption of the phallus can be seen to find an homology in the Christian moral masochist’s acceptance of “misery, humiliation, disgrace” on a faith in transcendence, a belief in “what is to come afterward” (Reik 2002: 363). Yet as there is no phallus for Jake to assume, so there is seemingly no available transcendence. After the referee (Harvey Parry) has stopped the fight, Jake – battered, defeated and held up by one of his handlers – “taunts” Robinson: “I never went down, Ray. You never got me down, Ray”. A display of empty bravado, it is a pitifully unconvincing attempt at resistant affirmation, that, in its desperation, and given both the correlation of moral masochism with the negative Oedipus complex and Jake’s choice of phrase, further lends the commentator’s words about Jake being “on Queer Street” more specific point, one that reverberates significantly with respect to the sequence’s relation of Jake’s battering to Joey. The sequence’s final image is a close-up of blood dripping from one of the ring’s ropes. A synecdoche of Jake’s “crucifying” defeat, this cuts to “Miami 1956”, and scenes that consonantly centre upon Jake’s lack. There is a visual emphasis on his now bloated body, whether as revealed as he is interviewed by his swimming-pool, as he sleeps and then sits on a cot in the back room of his club, or as he makes a phone call, gut front shot, from a glass booth. He also indicatively refers his retirement from boxing to his being “tired of worrying about weight all the time”. When Vickie likewise speaks to the interviewer of Jake now being at home “all the time”, Jake interrupts to mention that he has “just bought” the club. The implication is of an anxious disavowal of domesticity, and its attendant symbolic castration: witness accordingly his club’s phallic sign, or the phallic tower of glasses into which he pours champagne. It is further as he sits beside his swimming-pool that Jake is first shown smoking a similarly phallic cigar – a prop that is subsequently almost always present. While that the glib customer (Richard McMurray) and State Attorney Bronson (D. J. Blair) with whom Jake talks at his club should themselves smoke cigars continues the suggestion of a broader, determining context, as does Jake’s stage act’s indebtedness to that of the comedian at the Copacabana, then Jake’s clumsy joshing of both suggests a continued, alienated aggression that characteristically becomes most apparent when questioned about Vickie (“You think I’m gonna bring her ’round here and let you bums get involved with her?”). This correspondingly can be read to imply continued hetero- and displaced homosexual tensions, as can his stage act that, marked – unsurprisingly, given its source – by like alienated aggression (“I haven’t seen so many losers since my last fight at Madison Square Garden”), revolves around jokes that, to quote Friedkin, “play on the notion of women being shared by men” (1994: 129). That as Jake pours champagne into the tower of glasses he is watched by three young women, and that the waitresses at the club are all young and scantily clad, primarily sexual objects, suggests a bolstering of phallic self-esteem. Vickie, moreover, is only 15 years old when Jake meets her. That she does not visibly age during the film Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 23 likewise places her as primarily a sexual object. This invites further Lacanian consideration. For while no-one can posses the phallus, within what Lacan terms “the comedy” of heterosexual relations the woman is regarded to be a substitute for – “‘to be’” – the phallus for the man (1977c: 289). Correlatively, however, the man “has” the phallus for the woman, albeit only through “the intervention of a ‘to seem’ that replaces the ‘to have’” (1977c: 289). Such might be considered to inform the conciliatory embrace that closes the Pelham Parkway sequence, Vickie’s complaint at the Copacabana that Jake does not want to have sex with her, or her receptive, on floor response to Jake’s kisses and physical endearments following their dispute over Janiro. Similarly, while the photograph of Jake and Joey “boxing” before which Jake and Vickie kiss refers their relationship to Joey, Vickie’s preceding regard of it also implies her attraction to Jake’s “phallic” potency. Against this, Vickie’s decision finally to divorce Jake can be seen – for all his obvious abuses – to reflect once more on his lack; pointedly, Vickie tells Jake that she is leaving him immediately after he finishes filling his phallic tower with champagne. In addition, where Jake, having watched Vickie being driven from the St Clare’s Church dance in Salvy’s car, uses his own car, with familiar phallic connotation, initially to attract Vickie outside Jake’s club, Vickie, in an expression of symbolically castrating autonomy, drives off herself, leaving Jake standing alone in the parking lot. Jake’s phallic posturing is further punctured when he is indicted for introducing a 14-year-old, whom he had permitted to prove she was 21 by kissing him on the mouth, “to men”, the homosexual suggestiveness of which is underscored by Jake joking that he “introduced” one of the arresting officers “to men” (Friedkin 1994: 129). Symptomatically, Jake lacks the $10,000 needed to “get the case dropped”. Thrown forcibly and struggling into a prison cell, Jake proceeds repeatedly to butt, punch and hit his shoulders against a wall while shouting “Why?” and screaming incoherently. An explicitly masochistic “turning round” of sadism upon the self, this results in no self- affirmation, or correlative self-ruination, but only, as it culminates the film’s linking of fist and penis, and embodies another painful, failed actualization of phallic assertiveness, a confirmation of symbolic castration. Tellingly, the scene was originally written as one of unsuccessful masturbation (Kelly 1992: 124). In turn, as Jake sits overweight, in expressionist darkness and speaks while crying wretchedly, there is conveyed a sense of utter alienation from self: “You’re so stupid.... They called me an animal. I’m not an animal.... I’m not that guy”. His words carry corrosively ironic connotations. His earlier annoyance when, upon arguing with Irma, a neighbour shouts that they are “animals” and his calling Joey “an animal” in “explanation” of his brother’s failure to bed Vickie can be regarded a disavowal and a projection. Not only does Jake shout back that he will eat and will kill the neighbour’s dog, but Jake’s boxing nickname is The Bronx Bull, and he enters the ring in a leopard-skin robe. Such seeming embrace of his “animality” is, moreover, reflective of a potency that is indivisible from his boxing success and, concordantly, his transgressive phallic resistance. In the cell, by contrast, Jake is agonizingly disavowing a potency long lost. Scorsese has claimed that the scene sees Jake attain some kind of divine grace (Henry 1999: 91). This is difficult to credit. Apart from the scene’s unyielding painfulness for character and spectator, it cuts to Jake on stage, supporting a striptease act in a New York bar, somewhat chastened and constrained, but with sexually 24 Leighton Grist ambiguous material and alienated aggression intact (“Guy comes home, finds his wife in bed with another guy ..”/ “Give him another drink, piss in it for me”). Transcendence, much less God’s grace, would appear to continue to be unavailable. Further, while the film’s signifiers of Catholicism, such as the religious paintings and objects in Jake’s father’s apartment, the cross over Jake and Vickie’s bed, or the presence of the local priest (Paul Forrest) at the St Clare’s Church dance and in the home movie footage of Joey’s wedding, serve an uncontentious documentary function, the connotations of crucifixion that attend the representation of Jake’s last defeat by Robinson could be considered reflexively to situate religion as another subjecting mystification. This is perhaps unsurprising, for in Scorsese‘s films the representation of religion and “sacramental” incident is preponderantly ambivalent, contesting and/or an apparent “screen” for more materialist concerns. An analogously problematic claim is made by Wood regarding Jake’s “reconciliation” with Joey. Jake sees Joey across the street as he leaves the New York bar and follows him to a garage, where he hugs and kisses Joey repeatedly. Wood regards this as Jake savingly coming to terms with his homosexuality, “as an ironic inversion of the notion of the kiss as a privileged climactic moment of classical cinema, epitomising the construction of the heterosexual couple” (1986: 114). Joey, however, first tries to ignore Jake, then is resistant to his attentions, pushing him off and being seemingly eager to escape his bear-like embraces. Although Joey promises to phone Jake, the scene ends with Jake, in a reflection of the scene in which Vickie tells him she is leaving him, standing alone beside Joey’s car. Wood further posits that it is Jake’s coming to terms with his homosexuality that, through an implicit disjunction of diegetic chronology and narrative logic, enables him in the film’s next, final scene to rehearse his material with a competence lacking in the scene that opens the film in the same dressing-room and on the same night (1986: 114). This is again arguable. In his recitation of Terry Malloy’s “I coulda been a contender” speech from On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) Jake displays a hesitancy little different to that apparent when running through different material in the opening scene. Moreover, Jake’s cold, emotionally blank rendition of the speech contrasts markedly with Marlon Brando’s original, fluent and heartrending performance. Scorsese has nevertheless contended that such coldness effectively confirms the grace conferred on Jake in the prison cell by suggesting that he is “finally coming to some sort of peace with himself” (Christie and Thompson 2003: 77). However, as Jake intones the speech to his reflection in a dressing-room mirror, this would rather appear to confirm his post-cell, chastened alienation. That in the speech ex-boxer Terry accuses his brother, Charley (Rod Steiger), of betraying him, and particularly of getting him to throw a fight, and thus suggests parallels with Jake’s life, or Jake’s perception of it, likewise implies, once more pace Wood, a certain, unresolved animus toward Joey. Yet as Jake addresses himself – literally – as other, it is unclear exactly who it is he is accusing. Charley? Joey? Himself? Some displaced other(s)? Compounding the sense of alienation, the scene presents an unrecognizable De Niro playing an overweight Jake playing Brando playing Terry while rehearsing, in Terrence Rafferty’s words, “a movie- script version of one of the most painful experiences in the fighter’s life” (1983: 186). Despite a brief outburst of vestigial aggression when, prior to going on stage, and in recollection of his dressing-room warm-up before the Cerdan fight, he simulates Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 25 punches and chants “I’m the boss”, Jake seems reduced to an empty, symbolically castrated hulk, a logical but disquieting end-product of the alienating psychosexual and cultural determination evoked throughout the film.
VI
The alienation implicit to Jake’s recitation of Terry’s speech is in addition compounded by On the Waterfront presenting – via Terry – a textbook example of the very transcendence through Christian moral masochism that Raging Bull denies. On the Waterfront, moreover, barely dissimulates its underlying Oedipal structuration: Terry’s suffering and transcendence expressly evokes symbolic castration and assumption of the phallus. Yet while this contrasts with Jake’s demystified lack, Raging Bull nevertheless implies a nostalgia for a “lost”, potent wholeness even as its impossibility is proclaimed. Instructively, the nearest the film gets to an unproblematic representation of the potent Jake – as he shadow boxes and prowls in his leopard-skin robe in the ring in slow motion – is placed outside the narrative, during the film’s front credits, and accompanied by the yearning, romantic strains of the ‘Intermezzo’ from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Even so, Cook not only regards Jake’s “violence and animal energy” as “the source of both his drive for success and his resistance to exploitation”, but argues that “as such they are validated” (1982: 45). This, however, occurs mainly in the negative, in the frequently worrying painfulness of the representation of Jake’s inescapable, agonized and symbolically castrated alienation, and of his increasingly futile, destructive and self-destructive responses to and disavowals of the same. Further, in this painfulness, in the film’s representation of the existential and psychic consequences of the narratively implied structures of cultural and psychosexual determination, there lies an at least potential ideological progressiveness. Raging Bull, moreover, concludes offering connotations that are psychoanalytically radical. For as Jake is at the last represented as alienated, symbolically castrated and addressing his self as other before the dressing-room mirror, the closing scene – which concludes with the sight of the now “empty” mirror – can be read as stripping bare any illusions regarding the entirety or coherence of the self. In this, the scene intimates the unsparing end point of Lacanian psychoanalysis, that of the subject’s “traversing” or “going through” the fantasy, its enabling of the individual to confront finally the chasm at the heart of all subjectivity (Lacan 1994: 273-74). The succeeding title combines a Biblical passage from John 9, that, concerning a man regarded “a sinner”, concludes on the phrase “once I was blind and now I can see”, with a dedication to Scorsese’s film professor at New York University, Haig Manoogian. Scorsese has acknowledged that the title is self-referential, that both Jake and Manoogian were figures who helped him “to see more clearly” (Henry 1999: 99). If such explanation reflects once more upon the film’s religious significations, then the quoted passage might likewise be taken as having a reflexive reference to its presumed spectator, whom the film potentially allows to see more clearly the relationship of masculinity, violence and resistance. Functioning subjectively within culture outside of psychosexual determination and accordant, alienating lack is, in psychoanalytic terms, impossible. However, the specificities of that 26 Leighton Grist determination, while founded upon a constitutive void, are, like the resultant, determined self, not essential, but materially, historically contingent, capable of being changed. But before change comes perception, comes seeing. Hence the power, and the worth, of Raging Bull.
Works Cited
Christie, Ian and Thompson, David, eds. 2003: Scorsese on Scorsese. London: Faber and Faber. Cook, Pam 1982: ‘Masculinity in Crisis?’ Screen 23.3/4: 39-46. Freud, Sigmund 1991a (1905): ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’. Trans. James Strachey. Angela Richards, ed. On Sexuality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 31-169. ––––– 1991b (1911): ‘Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)’. Trans. Alix and James Strachey. Angela Richards, ed. Case Histories II. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 129-223. ––––– 1991c (1915): ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’. Trans. James Strachey. Angela Richards, ed. On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 105-38. ––––– 1991d (1923): ‘The Ego and the Id’. Trans. James Strachey. Angela Richards, ed. On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 339-407. ––––– 1991e (1924): ‘The Economic Problem of Masochism’. Trans. James Strachey. Angela Richards, ed. On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 409-26. Friedkin, David 1994: ‘Blind Rage and ‘Brotherly Love’: The Male Psyche at War with Itself in Raging Bull. Steven G. Kellman, ed. Perspectives on Raging Bull. New York: G. K. Hall. 122-30. Grist, Leighton 2000: The Films of Martin Scorsese, 1963-77: Authorship and Context. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Henry, Michael 1999 (1981): Raging Bull. Trans. Peter Brunette. Peter Brunette, ed. Martin Scorsese Interviews. Jackson: UP of Mississippi. 84-99. Kelly, Mary Pat 1992: Martin Scorsese: A Journey. London: Secker and Warburg. Lacan, Jacques 1977a (1949): ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock. 1- 7. ––––– 1977b (1948): ‘Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis’. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock. 8-29. ––––– 1977c (1958): ‘The Signification of the Phallus’. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock. 281-91. ––––– 1994 (1973): The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Oates, Joyce Carol 1994: On Boxing. Hopewell: Ecco. Rafferty, Terrence 1983: ‘Martin Scorsese’s Still Life’. Sight and Sound 52.3: 186-92. Reik, Theodor 2002 (1949): Love and Lust: On The Psychoanalysis of Romantic and Sexual Emotions. New Brunswick: Transaction. Rodowick, David 1991: The Difficulty of Difference: Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference and Film Theory. New York: Routledge. Stern, Lesley 1995: The Scorsese Connection. London: BFI. Wood, Robin 1986: ‘Raging Bull: The Homosexual Subtext’. Movie 31/32: 108-14.
Masculinity, Violence, Resistance 27
Films Cited
On The Waterfront. Dir. Elia Kazan, 1954. Raging Bull, Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1980.
Received 12 September 2006 Revised version received 2 January 2007
29.1 (June 2007): 29–54 ISSN 0210-6124
How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured?
Jesús Fernández-Domínguez Universidad de Jaén [email protected]
Ana Díaz-Negrillo Universidad de Jaén [email protected]
Pavol Štekauer Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice [email protected]
Morphological productivity has become a central issue in present-day English word- formation over the past decade. However, most proposals for assessing productivity have focused on the most productive processes and how to measure them, to the detriment of processes which give rise to fewer items than the ones usually studied in analyses of word- formation productivity. The present paper looks at the major models for productivity measurement and applies them to a BNC-based 5,891-item corpus to test how they account for low productivity. The results obtained highlight significant differences between various productivity counts in an area which, from this point of view, needs further methodological development.
Key words: English morphology, present-day word-formation, low productivity, productivity measurement, constraints, corpus-based research.
1. Introduction
Defined as “… the possibility for language users to coin, unintentionally, a number of formations which are in principle uncountable …” (Schultink 1961), morphological productivity has been neglected for decades. Today this topic attracts the attention of many scholars, so much so that a considerable number of publications have been made in the field over the last decade (Baayen 1992, 1993, 1994, 2003; Bauer 2001, 2005a, 2005b; Kastovsky 2005; Plag 1999, 2003, 2006; Štekauer 1998, 2001, 2005a, 2005b, 2006).1
1 Acknowledgements are due to Dr. Salvador Valera Hernández, University of Jaén, for his elucidating commentaries on the content and formal aspects of this paper. We are also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers who offered a number of useful suggestions to give this paper its final shape. 30 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
The above-mentioned growth in studies of this type has meant an increase in proposals for productivity measurement, most of them with a primary focus on the study of high productivity. Using the models available usually applied to the study of high productivity, this paper examines low productivity, and specifically, aims to explore: i.) the implementation procedures of existent productivity measurements for the study of low productivity, ii.) corpus-based low productivity areas according to each model, and iii.) the potential of each model on the grounds of low productivity measurement. To this end, six models of productivity measurement have been selected, often preferred for their simplicity of application (see 4.1.1 and 4.1.2), or ability to predict future formations (see 4.2) (cf. Bauer 2005a). They have been applied to a 5,891-item sample of the British National Corpus (hereafter BNC), after which the ten least productive affixes from each model are extracted and studied as representative of low productivity with respect to the points mentioned above. Following this introduction, section 2 reviews theoretical grounds for low morphological productivity on the basis of productivity constraints. The methodology is described in 3, and the major models for productivity measurement are tested and assessed in 4. Section 5 discusses the results and other remaining issues concerning productivity measurement, while 6 offers some conclusions.
2. Constraints on Productivity
While there are factors that seem to favour productivity, such as semantic coherence or naturalness (cf. Aronoff and Anshen 2001: 246; Bauer 2001: 20; Kastovsky 1986: 586), the coinage of a word also has to overcome difficulties at the levels of both language use and language structure before it becomes materialized. In the remainder of this section, some of the constraints responsible for low word-class productivity are arranged for review under structural constraints, pragmatic constraints and blocking.
2.1. Structural Constraints
Structural constraints relate to the form of items at various levels of description, namely phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Phonological constraints are usually associated with cacophony and the possible ill-formedness of the potential word (*elderlily, *wordlily), but other types of phonological constraints are mentioned in the literature (Bauer 2001: 128-29; cf. also Aronoff and Fudeman 2005: 216; Giegerich 1999: 3-5; Katamba 1993: 74-75; Rainer 2001: 881; 2005a: 344-45; Yip 1998) on the grounds of:
How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 31
i.) the segmental constitution of the word, as in (1), where the suffix -en is appended only to words ending in a stop or a fricative:
(1) neaten, quieten, smarten and tighten (Marchand 1969: 213) ii.) its suprasegmental structure, as in (2), where the suffix -al is appended only to verbs stressed on the final syllable:
(2) arrival, rebuttal (Bauer 2001: 129) The morphological structure of the base may also condition a potential formation (Bauer 2001: 130-31; cf. also Aronoff 1976: 51-63; Aronoff and Fudeman 2005: 217; Katamba 1993: 76-77; Rainer 2001: 881-82). Two well-known particular conditions for a formation to be produced are: i.) the base has to belong to a morphologically-defined class. Example (3) shows how verbs ending in -ize accept nominalization by -ation, but not by other suffixes:
(3) colonization vs. *colonizement, *colonizal, *colonizage (Plag 2006) ii.) either there has to be a specific affix or not, as in (4), where the denominal suffix -ity is attached to bases not ending in -ory:
(4) polarity, peculiarity, scalarity vs. *notorious-ity, *adventurosity (Plag 1999: 88- 89) In syntactic constraints, the focus is on the restriction of word-formation processes to members of certain syntactic categories (Bauer 2001: 133; Plag 2003: 63). For instance, the prefix un- is largely limited to adjectives and some verbs, and the suffix -able is attached only to transitive verbs, as in (5):
(5) comparable (Plag 1999: 56) vs. *becomable (Bauer 2001: 133) Finally, in semantic constraints the concern is the referent of a given word, such that there can be a limitation in relation to what things there should be a word for.2 A classical example for this is adjectives ending in -ed, where “the base must be inalienably possessed by the head noun that the adjective modifies” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1329; cf. also Katamba 1993: 78; Rainer 2005b):
(6) blue-eyed, three-legged, red-roofed vs. *a black-shoed lady, *a two-carred man (Quirk et al. 1985: 1329) Despite the ruling role they generally play, it should be noted that constraints are rarely infallible. Exceptions to constraints have been mentioned by Bauer (2001: 130),
2 An important distinction is made by Bauer (2001: 133) between semantic and lexical constraints: the latter refer to the fact that, in non-productive affixation, the stock of words to which a given affix can be added is limited, often due to historical constraints (cf. Plag 1999: 35, 45), as in bishopric (Bauer 2001: 135, showing the suffix -ric) and laughter, slaughter (Bauer 2001: 135, showing the suffix -ter). 32 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer who cites sillily, as a contradiction to the phonological constraint above mentioned (cf., however, Plag 1999: 47 for the opposite view).
2.2. Pragmatic Constraints
Pragmatic constraints may also affect the coinage of a neologism, and impose conditions on the possibility of the coinage. Some pragmatic constraints are: i.) there has to be a need, otherwise the item would be redundant for language use (Kastovsky 1986: 595; Lieber 2004: 96; Plag 1999: 39), as illustrated in (7):
(7) “…and whether your own conversation doesn’t sound a little potty. It’s the pottiness, you know, that’s so awful” (Kastovsky 1986: 595, italics as in the original) ii.) the object denoted must be nameable, i.e. something we can think of when we hear the word. For instance, it would be improbable to have a verb- forming category that creates items with the following meaning:
(8) grasp NOUN in the left hand and shake vigorously while standing on the right foot in a 2.5 gallon galvanized pail of corn-meal-mush (Rose 1973: 516) iii.) the object of the label needs to exist, so only existing things can be named. This constraint has been referred to as Hypostasierung (‘hypostatization’) (Lipka 1977: 161-62), as shown in (9):
(9) time-machine, warp speed, beam me up (Hohenhaus 2005: 356)3 Finally, fashion – or aesthetics – has also been associated with pragmatic constraints. It is said to bear influence on the use of certain prefixes or suffixes which people prefer to make use of at some time or another according to language trends, as those in (10):
(10) mega-, giga-, supra- (Plag 1999: 39) Alongside structural and pragmatic constraints, a third type is sometimes cited, sociolinguistic constraints, which inhibit a person’s creating a new word. The studies made on sociolinguistic constraints often intertwine with pragmatic constraints, so little can be discerned about this at this stage (cf. Bauer 2001: 135; Plag 2003: 60; Quirk et al. 1985: 1531; Rainer 2001: 883).
3 Plag (1999: 40) notes that existing here means not only happening in the real world strictly speaking, but also fictional existence, i.e., “any new derivative must have some kind of referent or denotatum”. An exception to the rule, however, occurs when a word is created before the denotatum exists, i.e., the speaker first invents a word and then the object referred to by that word (Plag 1999: 39-40; cf. Hohenhaus 2005: 356), frequent in child language. How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 33
2.3. Blocking
Also known as Avoid Synonymy Principle (Kiparsky 1983: 15), blocking explains the non-occurrence of a word due to the existence of an item with the same meaning or form. Blocking does not avoid the coining of a word itself, but rather its institutionalisation among speakers, i.e. its wide usage in the community (Bauer 2003: 80-81). This implies that a new word may appear in the language, be used for a short time, and then rapidly disappear in favour of a previously existing one. Two categories have been distinguished in relation to blocking: homonymy blocking and synonymy blocking (Bauer 2001: 136; cf. also Plag 1999: 50, 2003: 64; Spencer 1991: 89). Homonymy blocking explains the non-occurrence of a new formation when a formally identical form already exists; here, the two items would overlap formally and cause ambiguity, as in (11): (11) ?liver vs. liver ‘someone who lives’ ‘inner organ’ (Plag 1999: 50) In turn, synonymy blocking is one of the devices language uses to avoid exact synonyms: a potential item is blocked, if there is already an existing item in the language which denotes the same reality. A classical example of this is (12):
(12) thief vs. *stealer (Plag 1999: 50)4 Token-blocking and type-blocking have sometimes been described as subtypes of synonymy blocking (Bauer 2001: 137-38). The former refers to the blocking of potential words by actual words, and is influenced by synonymy, productivity and frequency (the more frequent the word, the more likely the blocking of a potential item). Token- blocking is the most common type of blocking and affects the profitability of word- formation processes (Aronoff 2001: 347; Aronoff and Anshen 2001: 240; Bauer 2001: 137, 2003: 80-81; Plag 1999: 51, 2006: 126, 2003: 67-68; Rainer 2005a: 336-37).5 By contrast, type-blocking affects word-formation processes. It takes place when one process blocks another, and thus prevents the creation of new words. For example, the suffix -ness blocks the suffix -ity, for both create deadjectival nouns, and the process can be applied only once. Since it does not affect individual items, frequency does not play a relevant role here, which means that type-blocking is influenced only by synonymy and productivity.6
4 Synthetic compounds are however not equally affected (cf. sheep-stealer vs. *stealer, Bauer 2003: 81). 5 Profitability stands in opposition to availability (Corbin 1987: 177) and is one of the basic concepts in productivity studies. The former is the extent to which a process is productive or not, while the latter refers to whether the process can be used or not. Profitability is a matter of degree, while availability is a yes/no question (cf. Plag 2006: 122). 6 In the literature, although type-blocking has been studied by some authors (Aronoff 2001: 347; Bauer 2001: 138; Rainer 2005: 337-39), others have rejected the notion on the grounds that it “...rests on false assumptions about the meaning of putatively rival affixes and that it cannot account for the empirical facts” (Plag 2003: 67-68). 34 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
3. Data Preparation
The study sample used for this paper is made up of derived words in present-day English as attested in: i.) ten BNC frequency lists (Leech, Rayson and Wilson 2004), one for each of the main word-classes, namely noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, determiner, determiner pronoun, preposition, conjunction and interjection, ii.) The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Murray et al. 1971), A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (Burchfield 1987) and The Oxford English Dictionary (Simpson and Weiner 1989; all cited hereafter as OED); this was also used to verify directionality in cases of conversion, and iii.) a BNC-based frequency list (Kilgarriff 1996) with a frequency range from 6,187,267 to 1; this was also used to retrieve the lexical bases of derived words and hapaxes7 necessary for application of some productivity measurements (see 4.2).8 The 5,891 words in the lists cited under i) above were screened for irrelevant units, after which 2,538 items remained. This process excluded records which were apparently not actual words (£1, **base/basis, 50%), multi-word entries (according to, in the light of), items which are formally identical today but which come from formally different Old English (hereafter OE) words (fire, murder), and words which seemed morphologically simple, but which the OED proved to be complex (biology, capacity). Extraction of these units and others pertinent for the analysis was made manually. Once all morphologically complex items were filtered, they were analysed and tagged accordingly. Tags were tailor-made and provided the following information: input word-class, affix involved and output word-class.9 The illustration below shows that the affix -ish is appended to nouns to create adjectives:
(13) N-ish>AJ Tagging was done manually and served for the retrieval of varied items (not only the lexically-dependent), and for easier examination of the tendencies of the affixes studied in terms of the word-classes involved. The labels used are shown in Table 1:
7 The notion of hapax legomena is used in various senses in the literature, since certain items can be argued to be hapaxes or not. The term is here used in the general sense and refers to words with frequency 1, independently of any other relationship. For instance, if disposal, refusal and survival had frequency 1 and were the only elements including the suffix V-al>N in the study corpus, the value for hapax legomena for such suffix would be 3 (cf. Bauer 2001: 151; Plag 1999: 28-29; Plag et al. 1999: 215; Štekauer 1998: 32; Tournier 1985: 404). 8 Kilgarriff’s (1996) list was used as a reference for BNC frequencies. 9 Such tagging is in accordance with the Unitary Base Hypothesis (cf. Aronoff 1976, Scalise 1984), which argues that affixes do not attach to any type of word-class, but opt for only one specific category. For example, if -able can attach to verbs (acceptable) and to nouns (charitable), this hypothesis requires recognition of two homophonous affixes, one V-able>AJ and another N- able>AJ. How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 35
Code Word-Class AJ adjective AV adverb D determiner N noun O ordinal V verb
Table 1. Word-class tags
4. Productivity Models
The study sample was used for the implementation of the major models of productivity measurement, here grouped under: i.) frequency models, which cover type frequency, token frequency and relative frequency, ii.) probabilistic models, which cover productivity in the narrow sense, global productivity and the hapax-conditioned degree of productivity, and iii.) the onomasiological model.
4.1 Frequency Models
Frequency models rely on the assumption that frequency of occurrence is related to productivity, either directly or indirectly. In all the three cases considered here, frequency procedures are applied in the literature reviewed only to items formed by affixation.
4.1.1 Type Frequency
This model is widespread in morphological productivity studies and is based on the concept of type, customarily defined as each different word that has been coined by means of the word-formation process under study (cf. Bauer 2001: 47-49; Plag 2003: 52-55). Accordingly, the proposed procedure is to sum up the number of types containing the relevant process, so that the higher the figure obtained, the more productive the process is. The following are the ten least productive affixes in our corpus according to type frequency:
36 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
Affix Frequency 1. AJ-ancy>N 1 2. AJ-er>N 1 3. N-ful>N 1 4. N-hood>N 1 5. AJ-ian>N 1 6. N-ish>AJ 1 7. N-ive>AJ 1 8. V-tion>N 1 9. un-AV>AV 1 10. up-N>AV 1
Table 2. The ten least productive affixes for the type frequency model10
As has been mentioned, the study was undertaken only on affixated items: in this case 902 affixated types out of 1,468 complex types. One outstanding feature of the affixes in Table 2 is that they are all derivational (cf. Baayen and Lieber 1991: 823). Thus, the word-class of the bases involved are adjective, adverb, noun and verb. Out of these ten affixes, six form nouns, which to a certain extent can be representative of real language, where nouns are the most frequent word-class (the word-class noun is the most frequent in Leech, Rayson and Wilson’s 2004 list with 3,030 units, followed by verb with 1,112 units). Suffixation surpasses prefixation in these results, with eight suffixes and two prefixes. This model has been usually rejected in the literature on the grounds that it cannot relate past productivity to future productivity (cf. Bauer 2001: 48-49; Hay and Baayen 2002: 2 et passim; Plag 1999: 11; Štekauer et al. 2005: 12-13), and it cannot tell about the availability of the process under study. Additionally, Aronoff (1976: 36; cf. Baayen 1992: 110-11) explains that affixes cannot be compared simply by contrasting their frequency, because not all affixes are freely attachable to a base (see 2).
4.1.2 Token Frequency
In this case the basis for computations is a token, which here is a synonym for occurrence. As in type frequency, an estimate is obtained by summing up all words containing a given affix; accordingly, the higher the figure obtained, the higher the productivity. Token frequency seems to measure more variables than type frequency since it is able to display a more refined picture of the occurrences (Baayen and Lieber 1991: 804-5; Bauer 2001: 147; Hay and Baayen 2002: 204; Plag 2003: 205). Here the
10 Please note that since 33 affixes had frequency 1 in the list of results, the number of affixes taking part in the study is greater than in other cases. The ten affixes shown in Table 2 have been randomly selected for illustration, while all affixes with frequency 1 are displayed in Table 11. How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 37 total number of complex tokens in the corpus is 59,900, and the number of affixated tokens is 32,835. Among them, the following are the ten least productive:
Affix Frequency 1.off-V>V 10 2. un-AV>AV 10 3. infra-N>N 10 4. AJ-ism>N 10 5. N-y>N 10 6. under-N>PR 10 7. AJ-cy>N 11 8. in-N>N 11 9. out-N>AJ 11 10. AJ-er>N 12
Table 3. The ten least productive affixes for token frequency
Here the number of prefixes is larger than the number of suffixes, which is remarkable considering that our study included in its computations 91 different suffixes and 33 prefixes.11 Some of the prefixes shown do not seem, a priori, highly productive, such as under-N>PR (which creates closed word-class lexemes, as in underneath) or out-N>AJ (as in outdoor). However, the high figures they display may be justified by the high frequency of the derived units in which the affix appears. So, although token computations may disclose more refined results, they may also be ambiguous, which is a major drawback of this model (cf. Bauer 2001: 147; Lyons 1977: 20; Plag 2003: 50). Other major criticisms coincide with those levelled at the type frequency model, and relate to its great reliance on frequencies and its incapacity to determine availability and to explain future or past productivity (cf. Bauer 2001: 48-49; Hay and Baayen 2002: 2 et passim; Plag 1999: 11; Štekauer et al. 2005: 12-13).
4.1.3 Relative Frequency
Unlike type and token frequency, relative frequency takes into consideration the frequencies of both the derived word and its lexical base, and maintains that a word- formation process is more productive when the derived items are less frequent than their lexical bases. An explication for this is found in the concept whole word access (Hay and Baayen 2002: 204, 2003: 102-4), which explains that, in cases where the derived word is more frequent than its base, the speaker tends to see the formation as
11 Only the elements regarded as affixes in the OED were considered as such for this study. Once the affixes were retrieved, the word-class tags appended (see Table 1) were used for identification and analysis (see 3). 38 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer an indecomposable entity, which may ultimately contribute to the unproductivity of the affix. In this case, figures are obtained by dividing the frequency of the derived word by the frequency of its lexical base, that is, an inversely proportional operation such that the lower the results, the higher the productivity. Table 4 shows the ten least productive affixes in our corpus according to relative frequency:
Affixes Figures 1. AJ-ian>N 133.30 2. AJ-ic>AJ 30.60 3. V-ion>N 13.50 4. N-ar>AJ 12.12 5. V-our>N 11.68 6. N-ish>AJ 6.90 7. N-y>N 6.71 8. N-ish>AJ 5.79 9. V-ee>N 5.38 10. under-N>PR 4.50
Table 4. The ten least productive affixes for relative frequency
Here, nine out of the ten affixes form either nouns or adjectives and, except for under-N>PR, all of them are related to open word-classes, both in their base and in their derived term. In this sense, results according to relative frequency seem to closely reflect the linguistic reality in that the number of words in our corpus with those affixes is relatively low; for instance, 5 for V-ee>N, 3 for AJ-ic>AJ, 1 for AJ-ian>N, or 1 for under-N>PR. In compounds, problems of measuring are encountered in the computation of the frequency of the base, since there are various possibilities: i) summing up the frequencies of the separate constituents, ii) summing up the frequencies of the separate constituents and dividing them by the number of constituents, and so calculating the average, or iii) using only the frequency of the head. As shown (Fernández-Domínguez 2006), each possibility yields different results, and thus may raise doubts about the consistency of the present model.
4.2 The Probabilistic Models
Probabilistic models rely largely on Baayen’s research (1992a, 1992b, 1994, Baayen and Lieber 1991), which develops from Aronoff’s principle that token frequency is related to semantic complexity. Thus, token frequency is central to Baayen’s models. Specifically, his computations are based on the notion of hapax legomena. The relationship between hapaxes and productivity is that, in a productive word-formation process, there are more words with low frequency (such as hapaxes) and fewer with How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 39 high frequency. In unproductive processes, the tendency is the opposite: there are more items with high frequency and fewer items with low frequency, hapaxes among them. The justification for this is that, if a process is productive and creates a large number of new lexemes, their frequency is distributed among all of them, thus resulting in a lower figure. If the process is unproductive, the same items will be used more regularly, so their frequency value will be higher. This model, then, assumes a correlation between the number of hapaxes and the number of neologisms, which over time is an indicator of productivity. As in the frequency models, Baayen’s models deal only with affixation.
4.2.1 P – Productivity in the Narrow Sense
The first model is called productivity in the narrow sense. Here, Baayen and Lieber (1991: 809; see also Baayen 1992: 115-16, 1994: 450-51; Hay and Baayen 2003: 101) propose an indirect relationship between the number of hapaxes and the token frequency in a given affix, and express it with the formula:
n P = 1 N where P is the measurement of productivity, n1 is the number of hapaxes that contain the affix under study and N is the token frequency of all items with that affix. Hence, the higher the value of P, the higher the probability of finding a new coinage with a given affix (cf. Bauer 2001: 147-48, 2005a: 325-26; Plag 2003: 56-59). The following are the ten least productive affixes in our corpus according to P:
Affix Figures 1. down-N>AV 0.001 2. N-ern>AJ 0.002 3. N-ly>AJ 0.002 4. en-AJ>V 0.002 5. N-ful>AJ 0.003 6. cor-N>N 0.003 7. V-ment>N 0.004 8. AJ-wise>AV 0.004 9. dis-V>V 0.004 10. N-ship>N 0.005
Table 5. The ten least productive affixes for P
In some cases, the existing words with the affix under study are certainly very few, as in N-ern>AJ, which is mainly restricted to eastern, western, southern and northern, or down-N>AV, in our corpus represented by downstairs. So it could be said that P is quite 40 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer accurate in reflecting language reality. Similarly, no inflectional affix occurs in the list, which would agree with the general tendencies stated in the literature (cf. Baayen and Lieber 1991: 823; Roeper 2005: 126). The methodological procedures have raised some criticism, for instance Plag (1999: 28), who explains the difficulties in the computation of hapaxes. Some remarks on the foundations of the model are Baayen and Lieber’s (1991: 816-17), which admit that the model cannot account for potential formations, i.e. future productivity; this has been alleged to provide an incomplete picture of productivity (Štekauer et al. 2005: 5). To Baayen and Lieber’s shortcoming, Bauer (2001: 151-53) adds the impossibility of the model to determine the availability of the process. Finally, Baayen (1992b: 117) also acknowledges the variability of P with respect to the size of the corpus as a further disadvantage.
4.2.2 P* − Global Productivity
Baayen’s second proposal is global productivity, symbolized P*, where V, type frequency, is computed together with the figure of productivity in the narrow sense, P. Thus, P* is calculated in a two-axis chart, in which the value of V is shown on the y axis and the value of P on the x axis. Each word-formation process is represented on a chart by a dot, and the rationale is that the closer a process is to the bottom left-hand corner, 0 in the x and y axes, the less productive it is (see Fig. 1). The display of the results in this type of chart is advantageous since it allows observation of more nuances of productivity than a single figure does (as in the frequency models, in P or in P*), since others measures of productivity are also described, type frequency (4.1.1), here V, and productivity in the narrow sense (4.2.1), here P. Two suffixes, N-ern>AJ and AJ-ency>N, have been chosen from Fig. 1 to illustrate this point. Here, N-ern>AJ has a V value 4 and a P value 0.02, AJ-ency>N has a V value 2 and a P value 0.03, while both suffixes seem to be at the same distance from the 0 in x and y axes. The nuances here are the following: while both suffixes seem to be equally productive for the present model, their V and P values show that according to their type frequency AJ-ency>N is less productive than N-ern>AJ and, according to productivity in the narrow sense, N-ern>AJ is less productive than AJ-ency>N.
How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 41
V 4.5 N-ern>AJ 4 3.5
3 2.5 AJ-ency>N 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 P 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035
Figure 1. Global productivity (P*) of suffixes12
AJ-bility>N N-ful>AJ N-ly>AJ AJ-en>V N-ful>N V-our>N AJ-ency>N N-hood>N AV-case>AV N-ern>AJ AJ-ically>AJ AV-ward>AV N-ese>AJ N-ise>V AJ-wise>AV V-fication>N N-less>AJ N-y>AJ
Table 6. Suffixes displayed by P*
7V
6
5
4
3
2
1 P 0 P 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035
Figure 2. Global productivity (P*) of prefixes
12 Please note that the chart illustrates productivity of the fifteen least productive affixes because the model’s requirements made it objectively impossible to select the ten least productive ones. The number of affixes differs from the ten selected from other models for comparison. However, here this is not relevant since its comparison is from the start hindered by its own format. 42 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
back-N>N en-AJ>V off-V>V cor-N>N en-V>V out-V>V dis-V>V fore-V>V un-AJ>AJ down-N>AV infra-N>N under-N>PR en-N>V inter-AJ>N under-V>V
Table 7. Prefixes displayed by P*
While the visual display of the chart can be advantageous, as explained above, it may also stand as an important limitation when it comes to comparing it with other models where results are in figures (Baayen and Lieber 1991: 818; cf. Plag 1999: 32). Similarly, P* cannot be used to compare suffixes among themselves directly, because V and P do not allow unified calculation (Baayen 1992: 123). Besides, Bauer (2001: 154) explains that the values of V and P in the above charts are not significant, since their combination is arbitrary and does not provide significant results about the productivity of an affix.
4.2.3 P* − The Hapax-Conditioned Degree of Productivity
The hapax-conditioned degree of productivity is intended to compare the number of hapaxes from a given word-class in the corpus with the total number of hapaxes in the same corpus. The formula set for this is:
n1, E, t P* =
ht where n1 is the number of hapaxes that contain the affix under study, E is a given morphological category,13 and t and h are the number of tokens and the total number of hapaxes in a corpus respectively (Baayen 1994: 451; cf. Hay and Baayen 2003: 101). The following are the ten least productive affixes in our corpus according to P*:
13 The term morphological category is used here to mean the particular affix studied. For instance, one morphological category could be the prefix -down added to nouns and creating adverbs (down-N>AV), and another, the suffix -ment added to verbs to create nouns (V- ment>N). How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 43
Affix Frequency
1. under-N>PR 0
2. cor-N>N 0.00001
3. AJ-ancy>N 0.0001 4. N-ern>AJ 0.0001 5. N-ful>N 0.0001 6. AV-case>AV 0.0001 7. AJ-acy>N 0.0002 8. AJ-en>V 0.0002 9. V-fication>N 0.0002 10. AJ-hood>N 0.0002 Table 8. The ten least productive affixes for P*
The results obtained by P* are very closely related to those by P (see 4.2.1), since both formulas list affixes with few items formed nowadays. The results in P* include five verb-forming affixes. This is outstanding in comparison with the results in other models, where the output word-class is usually either nouns or adjectives. Besides, the number of suffixes shown by P* is also relevant, eight out of the ten, all of which occur in low-frequency items in our corpus; for example, 18 for cor-N>N, 18 for AJ-ancy>N, 17 for AJ-acy>N or 12 for AJ-hood>N. Bauer (2001: 155; cf. 2005a: 326) has some reservations about this model specifically about “… whether P* is measuring the right thing” (2001: 155), i.e. if hapaxes can be taken as a sign of possible coinages. Moreover, for him the figures of hapaxes are not clearly relevant for the prediction of coinages (see also Plag 1999: 33).
4.3. The Onomasiological Model
The main representative figure of the onomasiological model is Štekauer, whose work on word-formation differs from the models described above in that it goes from meaning to form (onomasiological approach), rather than from form to meaning (semasiological approach). For him, word-formation processes come into play when the speaker has a specific need for a Naming Unit (hereafter NU, a synonym for word, lexeme or lexical unit) which is not contained in the Lexical Component, i.e. the lexicon of a language. One basic feature is that, in contrast to analysts who support the higher productivity of syntax and inflection (Chomsky 1970, Baayen and Lieber 1991, Roeper 2005), word-formation patterns are here claimed to be regular, predictable and absolutely productive (Štekauer 1998: 73-25; 2001: 6-7; Štekauer et al. 2005: 3-4). The former position traditionally leads to perceiving productivity as a rule-governed and limited phenomenon vs. creativity as a hotchpotch of idiosyncrasies sheltering all remaining output of language. Such a view is automatically declined in the onomasiological approach where, instead, both notions are related by a conception of 44 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer word-formation as “...creativity within productivity constraints” (Štekauer et al. 2005: 15). Štekauer et al. (2005: 15-16) illustrate the above point for better understanding: if twenty people are asked to provide a new NU for “a person who meets space aliens on behalf of the human race”, it will rarely be the case that all twenty participants utter the same word, and they will probably supply a range of NUs with different morphological realizations. Table 9 presents a number of possible NUs for the above referent together with their corresponding onomasiological word-formation type:
Word-formation type Possible morphological realizations
Theme – Action – Agent human race representative, homosapience representative
Location/Theme – Action – Agent earth-representative, world ambassador
Location – Action – Agent intergalactic diplomat, interstellar diplomat
Object/Location – Action – Agent extra-terrestrial greeter, outerspace wellcomist
Object – Action – Agent contactee, greeter
Table 9. Word-formation types vs. possible morphological realizations
In this model, complex units are classified on the grounds of conceptual fields (Agent, Instrument, Action, Object, Locative, etc.), while the division into word- formation processes is not fundamental. It is precisely in the variety of morphological realizations that the above-explained view of word-formation becomes apparent, in that language users evade productivity constraints to coin the needed NU. In this model, the conceptual labels compete for the naming of an entity, and it is precisely this that justifies the view of word-formation as a creative phenomenon, for it is the speaker that selects the labels and formal composition of NUs (see Table 9). An advantage is that the division into word-formation processes (affixation, compounding, conversion, etc.) is eliminated, which minimizes the heavy weight traditionally given to the formal makeup of coinages. This, plus the sheer weight of conceptual fields and creativity establishes the present model as opposed to other form-oriented approaches. For the computation of productivity, five onomasiological types are proposed according to the internal constituency of NUs: – Type I: Complete Complex Structure (hereafter CCS). – Type II: Incomplete Complex Structure R (hereafter ICSR). – Type III: Incomplete Complex Structure L (hereafter ICSL). – Type IV: Simple Structure (hereafter SS). – Type V: Onomasiological Recategorization (hereafter OR). How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 45
Type I is the closest to explicitness of expression (e.g. landowner), and occurs in units which encompass, for instance, an Object (land), an Action (own) and an Agent (-er), while type V is the closest to economy of speech, represented by the process of conversion (e.g. intellectualN derived from intellectualAJ); the remaining three types take intermediate positions. Thus, type II and III occur when the right-hand or the left-hand constituent is left unexpressed, respectively. In the former case, it is the so-called determined constituent of the onomasiological mark that is elided: an item such as writer comprises Action (write) and Agent (-er). In the latter case, i.e. type III, the missing element is the determining constituent of the onomasiological mark: in honeybee, only the Object (honey) and the Agent (bee) are present. As to type IV, it includes items where the onomasiological mark cannot be analysed into the determining and determined parts, and are hence regarded as simple structures in this model, as in lionhearted. These five types are included under a Word-Formation Type Cluster (WFTC) which is 100% productive according to the four broad conceptual categories, namely SUBSTANCE, ACTION, QUALITY and CONCOMITANT CIRCUMSTANCE. Since the total productivity of the WFTC is 100%, the internal productivity percentage of each onomasiological type can be measured. This, along with conceptual computations, favours comparisons between different onomasiological types.14 Table 10 illustrates the computation of the productivity of the WFTC nouns with label Agent (other labels being Instrument, Quality or Action) in our corpus, where some of the items included under this WFTC are: – Type I – CCS: landowner, shareholder, taxpayer. – Type II – ICSR: committee, singer, researcher. – Type III – ICSL: headmaster, photographer, teenager. – Type V – OR: conservative, feminist, resident.
Total number of NUs 106 100% Type NUs Productivity Onomasiological Type I – CCS 4 3.773% 1. SUBSTANCE – SUBSTANCE (a) Obj – Act – Ag 3 2.830% 2. CONCOMITANT CIRCUMSTANCE – SUBSTANCE (a) Temp – Act – Ag 1 0.943% Onomasiological Type II – ICSR 63 59.433% 1. ACTION – SUBSTANCE (a) Act – Ag 62 58.490%
14 The reader is referred to Štekauer (1998: 180-207; 2001: 10-21, 2005b: 221-22) for a full account of the onomasiological types. 46 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
(b) Act – Pattern – Ag 1 0.943% Onomasiological Type III – ICSL 33 31.132% 1. SUBSTANCE – SUBSTANCE (a) Obj – Ag 14 13.207% 2. QUALITY – SUBSTANCE (a) Qual – Ag 13 12.264% 3. CONCOMITANT CIRCUMSTANCE – SUBSTANCE (a) Loc – Ag 5 4.716% (b) Temp – Ag 1 0.943% Onomasiological Type IV – SS 0 0% Onomasiological Type V – OR 6 5.660% 4. QUALITY – (Ag) – SUBSTANCE 6 5.660%
Table 10. Productivity of the WFTC Agent
As shown, the total 106 items carrying this conceptual label yield the 100% of the productivity. Each unit is encompassed by one of the five onomasiological types and the productivity figures are shown in percentages, so that the global value of different clusters allows comparison within the model. In this case, the most productive type is onomasiological type II, with 59.433% of the productivity, while the least productive one is onomasiological type IV, since it is empty of NUs (i.e. it has 0% productivity). Even if formal comparisons with the rest of the models are unfeasible, it may be helpful to establish rough correspondences where possible. For example, type III can be approximately matched to root/primary compounds, or type V to conversion (cf. Štekauer 2001: 12-18). A closer looks reveals that most NUs (62) are included under onomasiological type II with the semantic labels Act – Ag, as in builder, employee or survivor.
5. Discussion
In section 4, six models were described and applied to our corpus for measurement of low productivity. The results disclosed by each of them were presented and described individually with a view to providing an account of areas of low productivity and a general picture of the procedures implemented in each model. The present section discusses the comprehensiveness of the models on the basis of the results provided and procedures used by each of them. It has been observed, for instance, that the implementation procedures and areas of low productivity largely vary across the models studied, mainly because results are always given in figures which must then be accounted for. Such an interpretation depends on the rationale underlying the model under study which, as seen, may be of various kinds. First, there are models which focus on the frequency of attested items by How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 47 summing up the total number of derived items (type frequency, see 4.1.1), by summing up the frequencies of such derived items (token frequency, see 4.1.2) or by calculating the average between the base and the derived words (relative frequency, see 4.1.3). The results from our corpus show, among other features, a pre-eminence of noun-forming derivational suffixes for type frequency and of prefixes for token frequency, while affixes forming either nouns or adjectives are prevalent for relative frequency. It may be this discrepancy of results, together with their simplicity of application, that has led most scholars to reject these models for inaccuracy of conclusions (cf. Aronoff 1976: 36; Baayen 1992: 110-11; Plag 1999: 11; Bauer 2001: 48-49; Hay and Baayen 2002: 2 et passim; Štekauer et al. 2005: 12-13; Fernández-Domínguez 2006). Second, there are models which, together with token frequency counts, add hapax legomena to their computations on the basis that this allows the making of predictions about the productivity of a given affix. Such models may display results in figures (see 4.2.1 and 4.2.2) or on a chart (see 4.2.3), which opens up the opportunity to approach each affix from diverse perspectives. In the case of P and P*, the results obtained are quite parallel, with hardly any inflectional affix and a number of suffixes coming from low-frequency items in both models. P*, alternatively, makes use of graphic representation for display of results which, although advantageous in a sense, prevents further comparison with other models (see Figs. 1 and 2). In consequence, even if probabilistic models stand as a more valid alternative than frequency models, they are inevitably restricted to affixation and are reported to lack a satisfying methodology (see Plag 1999: 33; Bauer 2001: 155; 2005a: 326). The results of each model explicated, we are now in a position to assess the comparability of results across models. To this end, Table 11 displays all affixes studied, with a dot marking the affixes that are listed by each model among the ten least productive. All in all, 55 affixes have been studied in this paper. Occurrence under one model, which indicates very low correspondence in the results, is the most usual (39 affixes); occurrence under two models, suggesting that models match to a certain extent, is less frequent (14 affixes); while occurrence under three models is rare (2 affixes) and indicates a higher degree of correspondence.
Frequency Hapax
Type Token Relat. P P* AJ-acy>N ● AJ-age>N ● AJ-ancy>N ● N-ar>AJ ● ● AJ-ate>V ● cor-N>N ● ● AJ-cy>N ● ● dis-V>V ● down-N>AV ● ● 48 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
N-ed>AJ ● V-ee>N ● en-AJ>V ● ● en-N>V ● en-V>V ● AJ-er>N ● ● AV-er>AJ ● N-ery>N ● N-ern>AJ ● N-ess>N ● fore-V>V ● N-ful>AJ ● N-ful>N ● AJ-hood>N ● N-hood>N ● AJ-ian>N ● ● AJ-ic>AJ ● N-ier>N ● in-N>N ● infra-N>N ● ● N-ish>AJ ● ● N-ish>AJ ● V-ion>N ● AJ-ism>N ● ● V-ism>N ● N-ive>AJ ● D-ly>AV ● N-ly>AJ ● V-ment>N ● off-V>V ● ● N-ory>AJ ● V-our>N ● ● out-N>AJ ● How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 49
N-ry>N ● N-ship>N ● AJ-ster>N ● V-th>N ● V-tion>N ● un-AV>AV ● ● under-N>PR ● ● ● up-N>AV ● AV-ward>AV ● ● AJ-wise>AV ● N-y>N ● ● ● N-y>N ● V-y>V ●
Table 11. Affixes considered in the study15
The results from Table 11 lead to two conclusions. First, except for the matches mentioned above, the differences are significant. In fact, most affixes (39 out of 55) appear under only one model, which means that there is practically no agreement in the results obtained with each of the models. Second, as explained in 4, the models tested usually give an account of how to measure high productivity where, the higher the figure obtained, the more productive the process. No reference is made, however, to whether the opposite correlation also occurs, i.e. whether the lower the figure, the less productive the process. Thus, from the above results, it can be gathered that, while high figures usually equal matching results among models, accuracy decreases parallel to the figures. In contrast with the frequency or probabilistic models, a different trend is represented by the onomasiological approach (see 4.3), where the focal point is meaning. Here, all traditional word-formation processes are arranged into five onomasiological types not aimed at comparison with traditional productivity measurements. Instead, productivity is computed on the basis of the word’s semantic, and not structural, makeup. In our case, the onomasiological model was applied to all nouns in our corpus carrying the semantic label Agent. Table 12 illustrates that type IV is noticeably the least productive one (0%) followed by type I (3.773%) which, as stated above, would indicate a low productivity of the traditional process of conversion (type V). As observed above, an analysis in terms of conversion in the rest of the models would be inconceivable due to the lack of formal marks.
15 Please note that this table includes only results from compatible models, which excludes the onomasiological model (see Table 10) and global productivity (see Figs. 1 and 2). Affixes occurring more than once are shaded grey. 50 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
Type Productivity Onomasiological Type I – CCS 3.773% Onomasiological Type II – ICSR 59.433% Onomasiological Type III – ICSL 31.132% Onomasiological Type IV – SS 0% Onomasiological Type V – OR 5.660%
Table 12. Summary of results from the onomasiological model
In view of the characteristics of application of the existent models, a number of limitations become apparent in relation to their comprehensiveness for low productivity measurement. First, most models seem to examine profitability and fall short for the study of availability (see fn. 5). Although not explicitly specified in the literature, this can be seen in that most models are based on formulas for computing the number of items created by a given process (profitability), while the issue of whether the process studied is currently in use (availability) is neglected by this methodology. Both notions are equally relevant in productivity and, as suggested in the literature, they are issues which require a different treatment: the fact that a process has proved highly productive does not necessarily mean that it should be available at present (Bauer 1983: 55; Corbin 1987: 177; Plag 2003: 52). Despite being a complex notion, this is an area still to be explored, and one without which the study of productivity is incomplete. A second limitation, common to all models except for the onomasiological, is that they seem to be designed for the study of affixation alone. In some cases, the models can be applied to items obtained from other word-formation processes without difficulty, since the procedure is easy to apply. For instance, in type frequency, and similarly in token frequency, computations of the productivity for compounding are made by summing up the number of types and tokens. Nevertheless, in other cases, application of the formulas to items from other word-formation processes where there is no detachable element comparable to an affix poses difficulties (Fernández-Domínguez 2006). This can be illustrated by trying to obtain the productivity for compounding or acronymy in relative frequency, where the frequencies of the derived unit and of the base unit are needed. Provided the frequency of the derived unit is available, the main problem remains unsolved: how is the frequency of the base obtained? The problem holds in Baayen’s models: if we apply P to the suffix -ment, retrieval of the hapaxes for this suffix would require searching for all words ending in -ment, checking them individually and summing the partial figures. This cannot be done with processes such as conversion, where there is no detachable element that can be searched for and finally summed up (but see type V of the onomasiological approach). This shortcoming seems to hold in all processes except for affixation. As seen in 4.3, however, this is not the case with the onomasiological approach, since its computations are based on semantics. While affixes are exclusive to affixation, or multiple words to compounding or blending, semantic labels occur in all word- formation processes in one form or another. Štekauer’s approach can thus account for How is Low Morphological Productivity Measured? 51 all word-formation processes, taking productivity as a non-universal term, as an epiphenomenon.16 Indeed, the productivity of a process is agreed to be influenced by multiple factors, such as constraints or the speech community, which may affect its output, but these are rarely taken into consideration by other models. Therefore, it seems to us that such a semantic-based approach overcomes the limitations of strictly form-based models, which often seem to lack objectivity due to the self-imposed requirement to choose among formal processes (cf. Štekauer 2001: 29-30).
6. Conclusions
The tendency among scholars to focus on high productivity measurement has made of low productivity a somewhat neglected area. In this context, this paper has served to show that this is a developing area attracting the attention of scholars where agreement is still to be reached. From this study the following conclusions can be gathered: i.) Each model is based on different computations and each of them provides different areas of low productivity, which leaves an incongruent picture of the phenomenon. This, however, should not be perceived as an inherent drawback to the models, but rather as an evidence of the number of proposals that are being made in this area, which only serves to show the interest that productivity measurement is generating nowadays. ii.) In all models, the interpretation of figures for low productivity resulting from their application is ambiguous. Whereas high figures unequivocally correspond to high productivity, it is not entirely clear whether low figures correspondingly match low productivity or whether they imply a decrease in measurement accuracy. iii.) Every model has advantages but also disadvantages in its application. For example, conventional models are restricted to affixation measurement, which overlooks many other means of linguistic innovation and thus gives incomplete results for productivity. Similarly, the probabilistic models seem to rely too much on figures for interpretation of data. On the other hand, the semantic-based approach of the onomasiological theory is at the same time a plus and a minus; a plus in that it represents a step forward in productivity measurement, and a minus in that it isolates such an approach from the rest. iv.) Little attention is paid to non-quantitative aspects in these computations, such as availability or the needs of the speech community. In our opinion, it is necessary for models to come to take these notions into consideration for a full understanding of morphological productivity.
16 Plag (1999: 11-13) uses the term epiphenomenon to emphasize that productivity is influenced by various factors and is not an absolute term. 52 Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, Ana Díaz-Negrillo and Pavol Štekauer
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Received 10 October 2006 Revised version received 12 March 2007
29.1 (June 2007): 55–67 ISSN 0210-6124
‘The Great Good Place’ No More? Integrating and Dismantling Oppositional Discourse in Some Recent Examples of Serial Killer Fiction
Isabel Santaulària Universitat de Lleida [email protected]
Serial killer narratives delight in portraying a gothic social landscape of pervasive and endemic crime, violence and evil in a postmodern context of apathy, indifference and institutional incompetence. In this paper I analyse the extent of the critique of contemporary society in this popular genre. Using some recent examples of serial killer narratives – both novels and films – as case studies, I argue that, even though they accommodate a discourse that jeopardises the comfortable imagining in detective fictions of an innocent society threatened by occasional crime, serial killer narratives ultimately endorse the status quo and the state apparatuses that regulate it and guarantee its preservation.
Key words: popular narratives, genre narratives, detective fiction, gothic, serial killer narratives, discourse
The progress of detective fiction in general is one that goes from order disrupted to order re-established; from the smell of corruption pervading all to the identification and removal of the party that caused this corruption. Progressively, the comforting imagining in detective narratives of an innocent society – the Great Good Place as W.H. Auden called it in his seminal essay ‘The Guilty Vicarage’ (1980:19) – threatened by a single criminal individual who is no longer in a state of moral grace has given way to apocalyptic depictions of wastelandish cityscapes rife with violence and corruption, morally irredeemable modern worlds “slouching toward the much-needed clarity of Armageddon” (Simpson 2000: 200). Situated in these metaphoric hells, the “idler” – using Peter Messent’s terminology – has become the flaneur (1997:5): the almost super- human amateur detective whose unempathetic intervention guaranteed community health has developed into a doomed searcher, a fated crusader whose involvement in corruption either hardens his soul to the point of nihilistic detachment or ultimately plunges him in a pool of despair from which there is no escape. These postmodern reconfigurations, however, have done little to dismantle the conservative ideological trappings that have characterised the genre ever since its origins in the narratives of Edgar Allan Poe featuring Auguste Dupin, or Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories and novellas. Detectives, both amateur and professional, still strive to preserve the maintenance of the status quo. No matter how high the price they pay in emotional investment, it is still the function of detectives to restore a sense 56 Isabel Santaulària of coherence to a community ruptured by crime and, through their apt performance, to sanction the necessity of the law-enforcement institutions that protect the stability of the system. Increasingly responsive to an audience or readership assailed by paranoid fears of destabilisation by a threatening, alien Other in a society characterised by global fundamentalism, detective narratives disclose the endemic problems in the social fabric while, simultaneously, positioning the law-enforcement agents as the last line of defence, whose methods, even when expedient and ruthless, serve to maintain a semblance of harmony and peace after the forces of chaos have been destroyed. As Peter Messent phrases the idea:
There has traditionally been an ambiguity at the heart of the private-eye form that renders it (in the majority of cases) inevitably conservative, in the genre’s endorsement of the status quo whatever the failures in the fabric of ... economic and political life it reveals. . . . [Detective narratives] both endorse the status quo and, in addition, consign crime to the realm of the morally monstrous. . . . [S]uch a tactic may be symptomatic of a deep-rooted need for social reassurance on the part of the contemporary audience for which such texts are written. (1997: 3)
The serial killer subgenre is no exception. This relatively recent variation came into being in the 1970s with the coinage, and subsequent popularisation, of the term serial murder by Robert K. Ressler, an FBI Behavioural Unit agent working in the investigation of what was previously known as stranger murders. The media notoriety of multiples such as Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Dennis Nilsen, Peter Southcliffe, Andrei Chikatilo or Jeffrey Dahmer turned the figure of the serial killer into “one of the superstars of our wound culture” (Seltzer 1998: 2), and the lives and atrocities committed by serial killers inspired the creation of fictional villainous murderers such as Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter and Jame Gumb – both based on Ed Gein – or Poppy Z. Brite’s Andrew Compton and Jay Byrne in Exquisite Corpse (1998) – based on Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer respectively. Simultaneously, a horde of fictional profilers and other law-enforcement agents and professionals such as Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, James Patterson’s Alex Cross, Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme, Val McDermid’s Tony Hill, Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan, Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware, or Samantha Waters in the television series Profiler, to mention just a few, have been engaged in various narratives to stop the trail of murder and mayhem left by serials. The serial killer subgenre – which, as Seltzer explains, has “by now largely replaced the Western as the most popular genre-fiction of the body and bodily violence in our culture” (1998: 1) – focuses on the investigation of the (often ritual) murders committed by serial killers, where the role of the detective figure is to literally read the bodies of the victims and the scenes of crime in order to find clues that can lead to the apprehension of the criminal. Profiling as a method is often questioned in these narratives. Inspector John Rebus, for instance, has to face the reprimand of his opposite number in Scotland Yard, George Flight, when he suggests profiling may help advance the ongoing serial killer investigation in Ian Rankin’s Tooth & Nail: “Don’t think there’s anything in all this psychology stuff. It’s too much like guesswork and not enough like science. I like something tangible” (2000: 77). Clinical psychologist Tony Hill’s intervention in Val ‘The Great Good Place’ No More? 57
McDermid’s The Mermaids Singing, to mention another example, is dismissed by Detective Superintendent Tom Cross in the following terms:
You can remove yourself from my crime scene right now. The last thing we need is bleeding-heart liberals telling us we are looking for some poor sod who wasn’t allowed to have a teddy bear when he were a lad. It’s not mumbo jumbo that catches villains, it’s police work. (1999: 36-37)
This critique, when it occurs, turns out to be anecdotal, a narrative device that keeps the story going and helps maintain the hard-boiled notion of the detective figure as the lonesome hero fighting corruption single-handedly in the face of institutional incompetence. Profiling is ultimately enthroned as an effective tool to stop the crimes committed by serial killers, and law-enforcement agents – armed with science, technology and/or the security of being morally right – single out and capture the subversive agent and re-establish a sense of order. Without their intervention, these narratives imply, society would be submerged in chaos and the existence of law- enforcement agents, quite simply, turns out to be essential. This idea is epitomised in the following quotation from Kathy Reichs’ Déjà Dead:
Dr Brennan, you are right. No one should die in anonymity. Thanks to you, these women did not. Thanks to you, Leo Fortier’s killing days are over. We are the last line of defence against them: the pimps, the rapists, the cold-blooded killers. I would be honoured to work with you again. (1999: 509)
This is not to imply that serial killer narratives cannot and do not accommodate an oppositional discourse that cuts through the conservative closure that characterises the genre. In fact, as Philip L. Simpson argues, “very real possibilities of subversion and reform of established order do coexist, side by side, with the counter-subversive voice of . . . serial killer fiction” (2000: 19). The integration of subversive voices in the interstices of the predominantly conservative generic edifice is in fact propitiated by the genre itself. Positioned as Other, marginal or liminal, the fictional detective hero has traditionally been “antipathetic to state bureaucracy and authoritarianism” (Munt 1994: 198). As Sandra Tomc explains, detectives, by definition, “opt for an all-out rejection of structures of oppression” (1995: 50). The marginality of the detective is systematically established in recent examples of serial killer fiction. Sex, sexuality, race, profession, professional approach, academic stature, authority, familial disruption, personal trauma, or a combination of those are used to distance the detective figure from sanctioned state apparatuses and patriarchal institutions. Thus, and to mention just a few, the profession of Val McDermid’s Tony Hill (he is a clinical psychologist whose expertise the police dismiss as guesswork) and his sexuality (he has an addictive relationship with a telephonic transsexual whore) position him as Other, not ‘one of the gang’; James Patterson’s Alex Cross, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme, William Somerset and David Mills in the film Se7en (1995) or John Prudhomme in Resurrection(1999) have all experienced loss and/or physical and psychological trauma as a direct result of their involvement with criminal investigations and remain distanced from the policemen around them who approach crime with cold- 58 Isabel Santaulària hearted detachment; profession, authority, academic background and sex position Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta and Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan as victims of a misogynist backlash; the race and ruthless methods of James Patterson’s Alex Cross, together with his academic background and authority, marginalise him from both the ghettoised background he was born in and the upper-middle-class sphere he has ‘invaded’. This liminality, as I have pointed out before, helps maintain the ideal of the lonesome white knight in the mean streets that so characterises detective narratives. At the same time, it allows detectives to observe society and its institutions from a distance and gives them space to articulate a critique of the iniquities of modern life. As the detectives move about the streets in the pursuit of the serial killer, they take in the devastating panorama of dirt, pollution, poverty and evil the city has to offer and rub our noses in it, making us aware of the ills in our social environment. In Tooth & Nail (2000), for example, John Rebus turns our attention to London pollution when he describes the Thames as “dark and poisonous, chilled and most probably the consistency of soup” (2000: 11). Eco-deterioration is also highlighted in Jonathan Kellerman’s Monster (2000) in which Alex Delaware describes an industrial area on the outskirts of the city as a “wasteland” with “[m]ounds of rotting machinery, slag heaps, muddy trenches, planes of greasy dirt”; something that “under a gray sky . . . could have passed for hell” and on that particular day “looked like something you kept from the voting public” (2000: 58). The pervasiveness of crime and evil is highlighted again in Rankin’s Tooth & Nail where London looks “nothing very different from any other city . . . breathing with envy and excitement . . . [a]nd with evil” (2000: 274) in the form of “child molesters, beggars, blank faces, punks and pimps” (2000: 260). Cruel immigration policies are brought to the surface in Philip Kerr’s A Philosophical Investigation where Chief Inspector ‘Jake’ Jakowicz observes the “many Russians and East Europeans waiting patiently in the lobby for whichever jobsworth Home Office clerk would interrogate them about their status” and realises some of them “would have been waiting there for several days” without any one caring “much for their comfort or their convenience” (1993: 278). The problems surrounding orphanhood generated by poverty in ex-communist countries come to the forefront in Donald James’ The Fortune Teller, where the detective, Vadim, describes Russia as a “land adrift with [orphaned and abandoned children] undersized, swaddled figures who live among the ruined areas of our cities or hang around the bus stations and airports, begging, stealing, renting themselves out for a living” (2000: 5-6). In James Patterson’s Along Came a Spider poverty materialises in the form of “men with dirty rags who [wash] your windshield at every corner” (1994: 18-19). Above all these examples of decay, evil and deterioration lurks the ghost of the indifference of citizens who only “want to feel better right away” (Patterson 1994: 226), develop “a thick skin and temporary blindness” and “shut it all out because to acknowledge what they [are] going through [is] to realise the monotony, the claustrophobia, and the sheer agony of it all” (Rankin: 2000: 65). This indifference is particularly dramatised in the film Se7en (David Fincher 1995). When his partner, David Mills (Brad Pitt), proclaims his ultimate belief in justice, William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) highlights that the only thing people want is to “eat cheeseburgers, play the lotto and watch television” (Se7en, screenplay). Apathy emerges as both cause and effect of crime, since it is “easier to lose yourself in drugs than to cope with life. It’s ‘The Great Good Place’ No More? 59 easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It’s easier to beat a child than to raise it” (Se7en, screenplay). All in all, society is trapped in a vicious circle. The institutions that should guarantee social reform remain apathetic and people have no choice but to close their minds to the ills around them if they are to carry on with their lives without going insane, thus contributing to maintaining a moral vacuum that irredeemably precludes a demand for social reform. This idea can be appreciated in the following quotation:
A tramp actually entered his carriage at one stop and as the doors closed and the train pulled away again he began to rave, but his audience were deaf and dumb as well as blind and they successfully ignored his existence until the next stop where, daunted, he slouched from the carriage onto the platform. . . . They had closed off their minds, refusing involvement. Would they do the same if they saw a fight taking place? Saw a thick-set man stealing a tourist’s wallet? Yes, they probably would. This wasn’t an environment of good and evil: it was a moral vacuum and that frightened Rebus more than anything else. (Rankin 2000: 66)
When not indifferent, sanctioned state apparatuses are often revealed as downright obtrusive, hindering rather than helping advance criminal investigations and, incidentally, guaranteeing the maintenance of the chaos they ultimately need in order to justify their existence as social regulators. In serial killer narratives with female investigators as protagonists, for example, the masculinist and patriarchal premises that still regulate women’s exchanges with men in the public world systematically jeopardise the investigations, as women have to contend with institutional misogyny as well as with crime. Instead of propitiating female integration, men consistently fight female encroachment into the traditional male arenas of power. Men objectify women and turn them into sexual objects; question their proficiency – forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, for instance, has to face up to comments such as, “Maybe you ought to forget cutting up dead bodies and open up a restaurant” (Cornwell 1995: 167); deny them co- operation – in Cornwell’s All That Remains, Scarpetta complains, “I was not given copies of the confidential sections of the police reports, scene photographs, or inventories of evidence” (1995: 22-23); or do not allow them promotion even when they single-mindedly devote their lives to their career:
Starling had succeeded in FBI training because she had nothing to fall back on. She survived most of her life in institutions by respecting them and playing hard and well by the rules. She had always advanced, won the scholarship, made the team. Her failure to advance in the FBI after a brilliant start was a new and awful experience for her. She battled against the glass-ceiling like a bee in a bottle. (Harris 2000: 32)
Institutional misogyny is not the only aspect that is criticised in serial killer fiction. The law and the mass media are also put under critical scrutiny and are pictured as entities that propitiate, rather than prevent, crime. Lawyers are often presented as self- seeking individuals who, under the pretence of serving justice, are ready to argue any case for a fee. In Se7en, for example, serial killer John Doe engages the help of a lawyer, a Mr Swarr, who claims he can clear Doe of charges by “plead[ing] insanity across the 60 Isabel Santaulària board” (Se7en, screenplay). He is even in the position of blackmailing the police into accepting Doe’s terms by threatening to inform the press about Doe’s two other undetected murders. Swarr says, “My client would like to remind you that two more are dead. The press would have a field day if they were to find out the police didn’t seem too concerned about finding them, giving them a proper burial” (Se7en, screenplay). Even when lawyers are ultimately honest, they are not infallible and fall easy prey to the mental games of serial killers. In the film Just Cause (Arne Glimcher 1995), for example, lawyer Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery) is manipulated by multiple murderer Bobby Earle (Blair Underwood) into believing in his innocence and ‘purchasing’ his freedom. Consequently, the law is presented as intrinsically flawed and lawyers as either money- minded or as too naive to cope with crime. The mass media, on the other hand, is pictured as far from the objective information network it ideally should be, but instead as an entertainment industry that thrives on sensationalist crime and as a playground for criminals who turn newspapers, television and the Internet into stages from which to dramatise their megalomaniac endeavours and achieve notoriety. In Patterson’s Along Came a Spider, to mention one example, the mass media grant serial killer Gary Soneji the attention he ultimately pursues in committing his crimes:
News bulletins were flashing on the television screen every fifteen minutes or so. Gary Soneji was right there on the high and mighty tube. . . . So this was fame! This was how fame felt. He liked it a lot. This was what he’d been practising for all these years. ‘Hi, Mom! Look who’s on TV. It’s the Bad Boy! . . . I’m the only star here’. (1994: 51)
In serial killer fiction, therefore, inwrought social ills in an ethos of institutional apathy and incompetence challenge the comforting notion that the community is essentially benevolent and crime exceptional. Unease about the nature of humanity and the world we have created is further generated through the figure of the serial killer. Presented as a threatening monster whose aberrant crimes destabilise social order, his function is that of precipitating the intervention of the law-enforcement machinery. As a monster, the serial killer also functions as a showcase gallery of the individual and social evils that he epitomises and reflects back to us, a function that is contained in the etymology of the word ‘monster’ itself. As Ken Gelder explains:
[T]he word monster is linked to the word demonstrate: to show, to reveal. This link reminds us that monsters signify, that they function as meaningful signs. In this respect, their role may not have changed much since the Renaissance, where monstrosity often served as a portent, a warning. Monsters were seen as a peculiar, even ‘accidental’ kind of abnormality, but they also carried a message that was central to the culture that gazed upon it. Their function was, and still is, critical: they always brought bad tidings. (2000: 81)
This role of the serial killer as monster or ‘discloser’ is derived from the neo-gothic tradition which, as Philip L. Simpson argues, serial killer fiction incorporates as part of its generic trappings, especially neo-gothic iconography – the dark ‘bad place’ or the monster’s lair, nocturnal rainy cityscapes, or exuberant gloomy woods – and pattern of action – which includes victim girls chased by a villainous monster and a “limited, ‘The Great Good Place’ No More? 61 naive, but intellectually curious protagonist [placed] into a claustrophobic environment” and “faced with a mysterious potentially fatal set of circumstances that, while threatening, also educate the innocent seeker . . . into the destabilising grayness of worldly experience” (Simpson 2000: 32). Like other monsters in gothic narratives, serial killers signify “something about culture” (Gelder 2000: 81) and, therefore, culture can be read through serial killers who become, in Richard Davenport-Hines’ words, “emblems of the evil duality supposedly haunting every modern individual: they are the external embodiment of all the inner anxieties, interdictions and guilt of the age” (1999: 314). In serial killer narratives, the revelatory potential of the monster is exploited in three different ways. In some cases, the serial killer erects himself as moral agent and directly voices the many ills he detects, thus revealing a society so ridden with perversity and degeneration that it provides serial killers with a raison d’être and a moral justification they can adhere to in order to indulge their blood-lust. This is the case, for example, of John Doe (Kevin Spacey) in Se7en, who sees himself as a scourge against the sins people, with their indifference, tolerate. He says, “I’m setting the example” (Se7en screenplay). His atrocious murders, he elaborates, are basically intended as a nasty but salutary shock to awake people from their lethargy and apathy and to make them aware of the evil undercurrents that run through our defective social framework. Wittgenstein, the serial killer in Kerr’s A Philosophical Investigation, to mention another example, has a similar ‘moral’ purpose. In a futuristic society in which gynocidal murder, as a reflection of patriarchy-gone-nastily-awry, has become epidemic and in which the potential for serial killing can be predicted on a scientific basis, he becomes a murderer of possible serials and, like Doe, sees himself as a cleansing agent whose ‘executions’, as he calls them, should be rewarded instead of punished:
You know, instead of trying to hunt me down, you should be grateful to me, Policewoman. Just consider how many of my brothers might have turned into killers of women. Tomorrow’s gynocidal maniacs. . . . Anyway, you just ask yourself how many more lives may have been saved as a result of the few that have been sacrificed? (1993: 165)
In other examples of serial killer fiction, the monster is presented as a product of social institutions theoretically charged with protecting individuals from external aggression and/or responsible for character formation and for preventing malfunctioning social interactions. Social institutions thus become actual focuses of infection whose deficiencies and inadequacies materialise in the form of psycho- and socio-pathologies. The family – even when apparently stable – is particularly presented as a site of emotional hazard, psychic scarring and physical violence. In many serial killer narratives, childhood trauma and subsequent pathological development originate in defective family environments, which suggests that the ideal family unit based on love and mutual respect is an aspirational imagining rather than a fact. It is further highlighted that society itself generates family dysfunction by both ignoring, and thus not legislating against, domestic violence and by failing to redress the social conditions – poverty, insufficient benefits for single parents, prostitution – that underlie defective family formations. This is the case, for instance, in novels such as Caleb Carr’s The 62 Isabel Santaulària
Alienist, Donald James’ The Fortune Teller, Ian Rankin’s Tooth & Nail or Val McDermid’s The Mermaids Singing (1999). In The Alienist, for instance, Joseph Beecham’s pathology is the product of traumatic “formative childhood experience” (1998: 165), which society generates and tolerates:
[John Beecham] was – perversely, perhaps, but utterly – tied to . . . society. He was its offspring, its sick conscience – a living reminder of all the hidden crimes we commit when we close ranks to live among each other. He craved human society, craved the chance to show people what their ‘society’ had done to him. . . . We revel in men like Beecham, Moore – they are the easy repositories of all that is dark in our very social world. But the things that helped Beecham what he was? Those, we tolerate. (1998: 607- 608)
Other forms of institutional anomaly are presented as contributing to the formation of criminal pathologies. In Jeffery Deaver’s The Bone Collector 1997), for example, an ineffective system of justice gives rise to the serial killer and the vengeance he wreaks upon those he regards as the cause of the situation in which he lived as a child. At the age of ten, the serial killer, James Schneider, “saw his father dragged away by constables only to die in prison for a robbery which, it was later ascertained, he did not commit”. Following this unfortunate arrest, “the boy’s mother fell into a life on the street and abandoned her son, who grew up a ward of the state”. In order to bring to the fore “the ineffectualness of the protectors of the citizenry”, Schneider committed his crimes “to fling derision into the face of the constabulary which had . . . destroyed his family” (1997: 635). In Hannibal, to mention another example, Thomas Harris presents the machinery of war and the chaos and atrocities inexorably linked with it as directly responsible for the formation of Hannibal Lecter’s pathology. At age six, during World War II, Hannibal and his sister, Mischa, “managed to survive the artillery and machine gun fire in the fighting that left [their] parents dead and the vast forest on their estate scarred and blasted”. He and Mischa then fell prey to a “mixed bag of deserters who used the remote hunting lodge and ate what they could find”. When game became unavailable in winter, the deserters consumed the only thing alive that was available: children like Mischa and Hannibal whom they held captive in a barn. Eventually they took Mischa, a few of whose milk teeth Hannibal later saw “in the reeking stool pit his captors used between the lodge where they slept and the barn where they kept the . . . children who were their sustenance in 1944 after the Eastern Front collapsed” (2000: 299-300). Finally, even in the cases in which the serial killer is not presented as an outspoken moral agent or as a product of the social order, the monster turns out to be revelatory nonetheless. In narratives such as Patricia Cornwell’s Postmortem (1993), Kathy Reichs’ Déjà Dead (1999), Jonathan Kellerman’s Monster or Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse or films such as Just Cause (1995) or Se7en, serial killers are variously referred to as “predators that feed on those around them . . . not the species [but] mutations of the species” (Reichs 1999:508); “right nutter[s]” (Kerr 1993: 163); “crazy ... Choo choo goddamn bang bang” (Kellerman 2000: 215); or “flawed human being[s]” (Kellerman 2000: 486). There is even an open dismissal of the idea of the monster as social product. Blair Sullivan (Ed Harris), one of the two serial killers in the film Just Cause, for ‘The Great Good Place’ No More? 63 example, says, “There ain’t no formula for people like me. What we are dealing with here is just a predisposition for an appetite. You know, good parents, bad parents. Ain’t no cause and effect. It’s just an appetite” (Just Cause, screenplay). In a similar fashion, forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta explains:
There are some people who are evil . . . Like dogs . . . Some dogs bite people for no reason. There is something wrong with them. They are bad and will always be bad. . . . Sometimes there isn’t a reason. In a way, it doesn’t matter. People make choices. Some people would rather be bad, would rather be cruel. It’s just an ugly, unfortunate part of life. (Cornwell 1993: 34)
Even when society is not pictured as inherently evil and when aberrant appetites are presented as anomalies, serial killers are still human and, as such, through the heinousness of their acts, they confirm our fears about human nature, the fact that “horror is not merely among us, but rather part of us, caused by us” (Simpson 2000: 11). Serial killers dramatise Stevenson’s influential dictum in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde that “man is not truly one, but truly two” (1979: 82), and demonstrate human potential for depravity. When faced with the serial killer, detectives ultimately find, “A man – it always [comes] down to just a man” (Kellerman 2000: 486), for “the real monster . . . is Man himself – a savage, selfish, murderous brute” (Kerr 1993: 235). Indeed, serial killers act as mirror images of our darkest selves, frightening reminders of the human monster that lies latent in Everyman. Ultimately, these fictions suggest, anyone, everyone, could be – in fact, in theory, we all are – John Doe. As Michael Marshall expresses in his novel The Straw Men: “It’s not monsters we’re afraid of. Monsters were only a comforting fantasy. We know what our own kind is capable of. What we are frightened of is ourselves” (2002: 140). In spite of the grim intimations about human nature and our social formations in serial killer fiction, the genre does not contemplate a disruption of the status quo or, for that matter, the possibility of social reform. The selfsame generic parameters that propitiate the inclusion of a subversive voice that belies the perception of our society as the Great Good Place, occasionally threatened by external and anomalous criminal agents, work together to negotiate a conservative closure that overrides and ultimately prevents a destabilisation of the social order. There is no denying that the genre cultivates what David Punter, making reference to gothic fiction, terms a “dialectic of disturbance” (1980: 423). Indeed, serial killer fiction promotes a strong sense of unease by destabilising the reliability we place on the idea that our society is not yet beyond redemption. Not unlike what Michael Holquist calls “metaphysical detective narratives”, serial killer fiction:
. . . does not have the narcotising effect of its progenitor; instead of familiarity, it gives strangeness, a strangeness which more often than not is the result of jumbling the well- known patterns of classical detective stories. Instead of reassuring, they disturb. They are not an escape, but an attack. (1983: 173)
Yet, this sense of unease is minimised by the coexistence in serial killer narratives of what could be referred to as a ‘poetics (and politics) of terror’, the generation of a, so to 64 Isabel Santaulària speak, “gothic state of mind . . . a paroxysm of horror, fear and fascinated disgust” (Davenport-Hines 1999: 313), which dulls our senses and, consequently, ultimately precludes challenge and subversion. Even though, as Schmid explains, “[t]here is … ample evidence to suggest that … interest in serial murder is not exclusively condemnatory” (2005: 112), the serial killer in these narratives is presented as a bogeyman, ultimately designed to terrorise his audiences. The characterisation of the serial killer turns this figure into a very real, frighteningly unpredictable, threat, exaggerates his destructive potential and promotes abhorrence and disgust. Serial killers, we are told, proliferate. Not only is the serial killer presented as “a one-man plague”, but there is also “a psycho army out there” (Kellerman 2000: 125) of “spree murderers, blood drinkers, cannibals, sodomisers, child-raperss, chanting zombies” (Kellerman 2000: 149). When a serial killer goes rampant, a copycat follows in his tracks (Tooth & Nail 149; The Mermaids Singing 284-287). Serial killers also form macabre working alliances (Copycat, Just Cause, Kiss the Girls) or sinister underworld organisations (The Straw Men). Indeed, in serial killer narratives there is an epidemic of serial killers invading cities and they come “in all shapes and sizes, all races and creeds and genders” (Patterson 1994: 435); “[f]rightening, isn’t it?” (Rankin 2000: 105) Serial killers are not only an epidemic, but also invisible, which is offered “as an explanation of the difficulty in singling out and apprehending these killers” (Seltzer 1998: 128). Chameleon-like, they pose as “one of the lads”, “regular sort of chap[s]” (Dunant 1998: 261). Apparently “well-adjusted . . . courteous and well-mannered” (Kerr 1993: 36); often “popular at work” (Kerr 193: 350), “kindly neighbour[s] whose advice [is] sought after, whose presence is reassuring” (James 2000: 206), or “the all- American Father[s]” (Patterson 1994: 173); they “live what [are] outwardly quite ordinary lives” for “[r]eal evil . . . [does] not always adorn its home with velvet curtains and human skulls for ashtrays” (Kerr 1993: 343). Their sheer ordinariness and anonymity multiplies their power to terrorise since they can be “anywhere . . . [can] be anyone, anyone at all in this city of ten million faces, ten million secret lairs” (Rankin 2000: 46). They also kill apparently at random for their motives are “not the kind the public can relate to” (Kellerman 2000: 34) and are difficult, when not impossible, to catch. They are not “disorganised asocial[s]”, but “cunning, methodical, calculating” (Kerr 1993: 119), “control freaks” (Patterson 1994: 93), “playing with [detectives] like [they] were clockwork” (Rankin 2000: 141). They are even presented as “smarter than the police” (McDermid 1999: 237) that do not always manage to apprehend them since “there are major unsolved crimes that go back . . . far” (Patterson 1994: 353). Many, indeed, outmanoeuvre the police. Some, like Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’s novels, escape apprehension. Some others, like John Doe in Se7en, give themselves in but finally win by causing pain and destruction that outlives their media notoriety and even their own lives. Some others, like Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick Jr) in the film Copycat (John Amiel 1995), manipulate a network of serial killers from the prison where they have been secluded. Invisible and almost omniscient, serial killers lead outwardly ordinary lives and look like ordinary individuals. Yet, they are repulsive nonetheless, a repulsiveness that manifests itself or is brought to our attention in various ways. They have some sort of physical flaw, “gnomic features” (Kerr 1993: 80) or “strangely contoured craniums” (Kellerman 2000: 122). They are animal-like, referred to as sharks (Harris 2000: 265), ‘The Great Good Place’ No More? 65 foxes (Harris 2000: 354) or snakes (Kellerman 2000: 357). They are even likened to the devil itself, “fiend[s] of unbelievable satan-like proportion[s]” (Kellerman 2000: 249). Emotionally detached and uninvolved, serial killers have no connection with human beings and kill “in cold blood” (Kerr 1993: 139) with no sense of “sadness or . . . remorse” (Kerr 2000: 217), craving only for “degradation . . . suffering and . . . death” (Harris 2000: 324). Their only raison d’être is their urge to kill, which “nobody can . . . stop” (Rankin 2000: 114) and which “[l]ike a roller-coaster” grows stronger for “each high needs to be bigger to compensate for the inevitable low that has preceded it” (McDermid 1999: 212-213). They kill because they enjoy it, so they are “fun-killer[s]” (Kellerman 2000: 384) addicted to their urge like junkies needing “a fix” (Patterson 1994: 49). Even though they kill in cold blood, their murders are far from clinical or aseptic; instead, they are horrific dramatisations of their fantasies, shocking blood- baths, acts of bizarre perversity intended to reflect the destructiveness of their instincts. An example will suffice to illustrate the point:
Milo exposed the face. What was left of it. Deep slashes crisscrossed the flesh, shearing skin, exposing bone and muscle and gristle. What had been the eyes were two oversized raspberries. The hair, thick and light brown where the blood hadn’t crusted, fanned out on the steel table. Slender neck. Blood-splashed but undamaged; only the face had been brutalised. The eyes ... the slash wounds created a crimson grid, like a barbecue grilling taken to the extreme. I saw freckles amid the gore, and my stomach lurched. (Kellerman 2000: 425)
Generic parameters not only regulate text, but also subtext. The manner in which serial killers are constructed, according to critics such as Philip L. Simpson (2000:19- 20), turns them into figures of transgression that allow us to vicariously trespass the boundaries that separate a civilised from an uncivilised instinctual existence unfettered by law, precepts or custom, and in which morality ceases to operate as a controlling factor. Human nature is revealed as dual, polarised into saintly and sinful, and goodness as fragile and constructed, operative only if policed by authoritative external agents in a nonetheless defective society. Gothic and detective elements converge to offer an altogether pessimistic message. However, they do not allow the subversion of the social order. Serial killer narratives magnify the destructive potential of the serial killer, who is presented as a more real and frightening social phenomenon than poverty, drugs, inner city decay and related violent crime. The serial killer as bogeyman guarantees a response of fear and activates the intervention of the sanctioned agents of the law and order. In turn, their effective handling of the investigations works to guarantee a semblance of order and, therefore, justifies the existence of and the methods used by law- enforcement institutions. Even when these institutions are not completely effective, the status quo, no matter how diseased, is still presented as something worth preserving, an idea that is epitomised in Somerset’s last words in the film Se7en: “Hemingway once wrote: ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for’. I agree with the second part” (Se7en, screenplay). The figure of the serial killer, therefore, functions as an agent of fear whose existence is guaranteed in paperback after paperback, film after film, where there will always be a nutter ready to destabilise order. The heinousness of the serial killer’s 66 Isabel Santaulària crimes and the pervasiveness of the threat he poses advocate for more stringent law- enforcement methods. In serial killer fiction, all in all, fear regulates order. In Along Came a Spider, and to conclude, James Patterson writes, “[Serial killers] keep shit interesting. Imagine life without the really bad guys. Very boring” (1994: 332). Boring, indeed, for those who delight in serial killer fiction. Also inconvenient. Maggie Kilgour, writing about gothic fiction, explains that the genre, like the carnivalesque, “delights in rebellion, while finally punishing it, often with death and damnation, and the reaffirmation of a system of moral and social order” (1995: 8). Likewise, serial killer fiction – through the manipulation of fear and a closure that involves a restabilisation of the social order or a defence of the need to fight for its preservation – ultimately articulates a socially conservative discourse.
Works Cited Primary Sources: Novels
Brite, Poppy Z. 1998: Exquisite Corpse. London: Phoenix. Carr, Caleb 1998: The Alienist. London: Warner. Cornwell, Patricia 1993: Postmortem. London: Warner. ––––– 1995: All That Remains. London: Warner. Deaver, Jeffery 1997: The Bone Collector. London: Coronet. Dunant, Sarah 1998: Transgressions. London: Warner. Harris, Thomas 2000: Hannibal. London: Arrow. James, Donald 2000: The Fortune Teller. London: Arrow. Kellerman, Jonathan 2000: Monster. London: Warner. Kerr, Philip 1993: A Philosophical Investigation. London: Arrow. Marshall, Michael (2002): The Straw Men. London: HarperCollins. McDermid, Val 1999: The Mermaids Singing. London: HarperCollins. Patterson, James 1994: Along Came a Spider. London: HarperCollins. Rankin, Ian 2000: Tooth & Nail. London: Orion. Reichs, Kathy 1999: Déjà Dead. London: Arrow. Stevenson, Robert Louis 1979 (1886): Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories. London: Penguin Classics.
Primary Sources: Films
Copycat (Jon Amiel 1995) Just Cause (Arne Glimcher 1995) Kiss the Girls (Gary Fleder 1997) Profiler (TV-Series, Cynthia Saunders 1996-2000) Resurrection (Russell Mulcahy 1999) Se7en (David Fincher 1995)
Secondary Sources
Auden, W.H. 1980: ‘The Guilty Vicarage’. Robin W. Winks, ed. Detective Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. 15-24. Davenport-Hines, Richard 1999: Gothic: Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin. New York: North Point Press. ‘The Great Good Place’ No More? 67
Gelder, Ken, ed. 2000: The Horror Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Holquist, Michael 1983: ‘Whodunnit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Detective Stories in Postwar Fiction’. Glenn W. Most and William Stowe, eds. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction and Literary Theory. New York: Harcourt. 149-74. Kilgour, Maggie 1995: The Rise of the Gothic Novel. London and New York: Routledge. Messent, Peter, ed. 1997: Criminal Proceedings: The Contemporary American Crime Novel. London: Pluto. Munt, Sally R. 1994: Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel. London and New York: Routledge. Punter, David 1980: The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fiction from 1765 to the Present Day. London and New York: Longman. Schmid, David 2005: Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Seltzer, Mark 1998: Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. New York and London: Routledge. Simpson, Philip L. 2000: Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through Contemporary American Film and Fiction. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP. Tomc, Sandra 1995: ‘Questing Women: The Feminist Mystery After Feminism’. Glenwood Irons, ed. Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction. Toronto: The U of Toronto P. 46-63.
Received 10 September 2006 Revised version received 28 January 2007
29.1 (June 2007): 69–86 ISSN 0210-6124
Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis
Rosario Caballero Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha [email protected]
In this paper, I explore the presence and function of English motion patterns in a corpus comprising various narrative genres, and suggest ways in which research into their rhetorical function might complement other approaches in the literature as well as help teachers introduce Spanish learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to this idiosyncratic feature of English narratives. The working hypothesis is that the use of motion patterns may also be influenced by genre. This genre approach to motion patterns may, on the one hand, shed some light on the rhetorical or communicative motivation of motion patterns in English and, on the other, help teachers choose and exploit the best input in order to include such patterns in the EFL classroom in a way that goes beyond a lexical- or grammatical-only approach, that is, one that focuses on the pragmatic aspects involved in the use of motion patterns.
Keywords: manner of motion verbs, narrative genres, input, cross-linguistic influence, typological differences, EFL teaching-learning
The role of the native language (NL or L1) in shaping the interlanguage of people trying to learn a language different from their own (i.e. ‘transfer’ or ‘cross-linguistic influence’) has received great attention by Foreign Language Teaching and Second Language Acquisition scholars (e.g. Lado 1957; Faerch and Kasper 1983; Davies et al 1984; Kellerman and Sharwood-Smith 1986; Odlin 1989; Gass and Selinker 1992). Among the factors involved, much discussion has focused on the weight of input in cross-linguistic influence. For rather than being unrelated, both affect each other, as summarized by Selinker in the following terms:
Language transfer is best thought of as a cover term for a whole class of behaviours, processes and constraints, each of which has to do with CLI, i.e. the influence and use of prior linguistic knowledge, usually but not exclusively NL knowledge. This knowledge intersects with input from the TL and with universal properties of various sorts in a selective way to help build IL.1 (1992: 208)
1 The abbreviations correspond to the following: CLI: Crosslinguistic Influence; NL: Native Language; TL: Target Language; IL: Interlanguage. 70 Rosario Caballero
The expression of motion events is one of the topics where the impact of cross- linguistic influence and input appears to be particularly noteworthy. For instance, Bowerman (1996) has pointed to the significance of the input language in the way children learn how to express spatial notions (and, among them, motion) in their L1. In turn, Berman and Slobin (1994) conducted cross-linguistic research where they claim that the impact of L1 on the outcome of children in describing motion events rests upon typological differences across languages. One such difference involves the lexicalization of manner in the main verb of expressions conveying the displacement of a given entity from one place to another (motion patterns hereafter), which is a conspicuous characteristic of languages like English. In contrast, Spanish motion verbs are typically concerned with the trajectory of motion, and additional information (e.g. manner or cause of motion) is expressed by means of adverbial phrases and other constructions playing an adverbial role. Accordingly, Spanish students tend to use a verb like go to convey a motion event in English, and use various linguistic devices (typically, ‘-ing’ forms and prepositional phrases) to express the way it was effected. Consider, for instance, sentences like He went running to his house or He went to the bathroom in a hurry (retrieved from my students’ production), both of which are congruent with the linguistic realization of motion events in Spanish. Bearing in mind these issues, the question is how Foreign Language teachers can overcome some of the problems derived from cross-linguistic influence – particularly, in those cases where the L1 and the L2 are typologically different. Given the weight of input in the process, the importance of choosing the language data most appropriate to cover the learners’ needs cannot be underestimated. The first thing to be addressed, then, is how teachers can identify such input. The present paper is concerned with exploring the way manner of motion verbs occur in English narratives since this is the context where they are typically used and, in this regard, it attempts to provide some answers to the foregoing question. The verbs are approached from the vantage point of genre, that is, the emphasis is placed on how they are used to describe agentive displacements – motion events – in several narrative genres (i.e. in communicative situations involving concrete participants, clear rhetorical goals and recognizable textual artifacts). Together with responding to a professional concern (the expression of agentive motion being one of the puzzles Spanish students need to solve in order to use English in a native-like fashion), the research into how manner of motion verbs are used in various narrative genres described here may well exemplify the first step in choosing input to teach those verbs in the L2 classroom. In this sense, although my main objective here is to discuss the diverse aspects underlying the use of the motion verbs in English narratives, insights gleaned from this description may have pedagogical implications as well.
1. The expression of agentive motion across languages
The lexicalization of manner in the main verb of a clause is a conspicuous characteristic of languages like English, and nowhere is this more evident than in motion verbs (see, for instance, the detailed list of such verbs in Faber and Mairal 1999: 280-83). The topic Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 71 has been approached from various perspectives which may be broadly seen as responding to two types of concern. Some researchers have framed it within the discussion on the lexico-semantic properties of verbs and their effect on the syntactic behavior of the patterns – or ‘constructions’ in certain approaches – where they appear (Fillmore, 1968, 1977; Lehrer, 1974; Guerssel et al 1985; Jackendoff 1990; Van Valin 1990; Dowty 1991; Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1992; Levin 1993; Tenny 1994; Kaufmann 1995; Goldberg 1995, 1998; Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998; inter alia). The phenomenon has also been approached from a typological or contrastive perspective, which has given rise to a growing interest in how motion events are expressed in languages such as Basque (Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2006), Japanese (Kita 1999), French versus Germanic languages (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958; Malblanc 1968) and Spanish versus English (Slobin 1996, 2004; Mora Gutiérrez 2001; Morimoto 2001), to list but a few of the languages under survey. Given the weight of the typological differences between the learners’ L1 and the L2 in the learning process (and, particularly, in the above-mentioned phenomenon of language transfer or interlanguage), the insights derived from contrastive approaches to the expression of motion across languages are particularly relevant for the purposes of this paper. Indeed, English and Spanish epitomize two discrepant strategies for conveying motion events, and are set up as the prototypical exponents of what are known as ‘satellite-framed languages’ (henceforth S-languages) and ‘verb-framed languages’ (henceforth V-languages) after the work by Talmy (1985, 1988, 1991). The main parameter underlying this typology concerns the ways in which languages express the trajectory or path of movement in motion descriptions, that is, whether path is lexicalized as a satellite of the main verb in the clause or as the verb itself. In English (and other S-languages like Dutch or Danish) verbs often encode rich information concerning manner, cause and/or movement but need an adverbial (the ‘satellite’) to convey the path of motion. In contrast, in Spanish and Romance languages in general, verbs are mainly concerned with trajectory or path, and additional information (manner or cause of motion) is expressed by means of sentence constituents playing an adverbial role. By way of illustration, consider the following example:
(1) El hombre salió de su casa de puntillas The man went out of his house on tiptoe “The man tiptoed out of the house”
In (1) the direction of motion is conveyed in the main verb in the clause (salir), and other information is articulated by means of the verb complementation (de puntillas). In contrast, the various dimensions of motion subsumed under the general notion of manner are conflated in the main verb (tiptoe) in the English version, while a prepositional group (out of the house) expresses the direction (out of) and landmark (the house) of motion. These typological differences have been seen as underlying differences of rhetorical style across languages, which have been explained as resting upon those motion aspects backgrounded or foregrounded by their linguistic expression (Talmy 1985, 1991; Slobin 1996, 2003, 2004). Thus, verbs in S-languages usually encode rich information about the particulars of motion, and their lexicons have developed well-furnished repositories 72 Rosario Caballero of manner of motion verbs. This lexical richness has been aided by another characteristic feature of some such languages, namely the possibility of turning nouns into verbs by means of adjoining a motion particle to them (e.g. herd in/out/off, pirouette in/out/off). A final characteristic feature of S-languages is the possibility of accumulating several paths within the same linguistic expression (what is known as ‘event conflation’), which is usually done by adding diverse particles or prepositional groups to a single verb, as in Jill skated up and down along the fence. Conversely, event conflation is rare in V-languages. Thus, the Spanish equivalent to the example above would require the use of as many verbs as paths are involved in up, down and along or, simply, the choice of a neutral expression and the omission of certain details. In other words, V-languages tend to use path verbs with satellite manner expressions. As a result, path of motion is backgrounded in the expressions while the particulars of motion (when specified) are placed after the verb and, hence, are foregrounded. In contrast, S-languages downplay motion itself as well as manner or cause of motion by expressing these aspects through the main verb in the clause, and place the focus on path via the verb complementation. Accordingly, narratives written in a V-language like Spanish have been characterized as particularly focused on static- scene elaboration whereas narratives written in English and other S-languages are characterized by placing narrative attention on the path(s) of motion, that is, on the very dynamics of movement. Such differences as these among languages may exert a greater degree of cross- linguistic influence on the development of learners’ interlanguage than might be the case where the L1 of the foreign language learners and the target language are typologically close. Thus, a Spanish learner of English may either transfer L1 patterns in his/her interlanguage (producing I came down to university walking, for example, rather than the preferred English expression I walked down to university) or avoid or under-use the lexical resources of the target language by preferring to use verbs that express path at the expense of manner of motion (for example, by producing He crossed the river instead of the also possible He jumped/leaped/swam/waded across the river). This tendency may be present not only in early stages of acquisition, but may later fossilize and become a defining feature of the interlanguage of Spanish speakers of English. Cadierno’s (2004) research into cross-linguistic influence in the expression of motion events by Danish learners of Spanish finds evidence of L1 influence on L2 production, which she relates not only to the learners’ general proficiency but also to their awareness of the similarities and differences between these two languages. These findings suggest that learning to use motion verbs in a typologically different language will involve learners’ having sufficient exposure to the way the target language encodes motion events in order to develop this awareness of differences as well as a familiarity with the preferred target language patterns. In short, providing V-language learners of an S-language (for example, Spanish learners of English) with textual input rich in motion verbs may be crucial in fostering the learners’ command of this aspect of the language they are attempting to learn. However, locating and identifying texts which display these features is not always a straightforward matter, as discussed in the next section. Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 73
2. Choosing input: method and results
One of the starting premises of the research summarized in this paper is that, although typological differences between Spanish and English have an impact on the learners’ production of motion expressions, this may not be the only factor involved. Indeed, given the premise that the different way(s) in which languages are used to communicate respond to factors other than the lexico-grammatical resources available, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that in order to make an appropriate use of motion verbs (in fact, of any other language device) one needs to know not only the what and the how, but also, and most importantly, the when and what for aspects underlying their use. The need to adopt a discourse approach in order to explore the expression of motion events is also posited by Slobin as follows:
The satellite- versus verb-framed typology … is not particularly satisfying for discourse analysis, because what is most interesting is the impact of various additional options on the structure of narrative and the allocation of attention – especially to features of path and manner. Rather than put languages into typological categories, it might be more profitable to lay out the collection of factors that, together, interact to contribute to particular rhetorical styles. The linguistic locus of path expression is only one of such factors … cultural patterns of narrative style can act to foster or limit repetition and elaboration of path components (2004: 24-25).
Taking Slobin’s caveat as the starting point, an exploration of the form and function of motion verbs in English narratives was deemed a necessary prerequisite for designing classroom activities on the topic which, in turn, required building a narrative corpus. Two criteria determined the compilation of the texts in the corpus. In the first place, narrative was seen as a ‘macro-genre’ or ‘genre colony’ (Bhatia 1999) that subsumes several narrative genres which, although they broadly share a similar concern with recounting events and display a recognizable narrative rhetorical patterning at a basic level, may be further differentiated from each other in agreement with their prototypical participants (both authors and audiences), purposes, topics and, presumably, use of language. Given the hypothesis that differences – albeit subtle ones – among narrative genres might determine the use of motion expressions, the corpus needed to include texts illustrating different narrative genres. The choice of texts was also influenced by the – future – pedagogical applications of the study. Accordingly, the narratives finally chosen were those that dealt with topics regarded as appealing to 18-to-20 year-old undergraduates, and that illustrated various English dialects (British and American) as well as discourse modes (oral and written). The resulting corpus comprised the following texts retrieved from both written and online sources: 74 Rosario Caballero
• 16 recollections (10,874 words) • 47 folk stories (10.497 words) • 7 literary fairy/ghost stories (11.148 words) • 94 anecdotes written by teenagers (11,171 words) • 18 historical and biographical texts (9,401 words) • 24 news reports (10,777 words)
These 206 texts (63,868 words) were examined with the help of a concordancer in order to see how many motion verbs occurred in them. Although the exploration yielded numerous instances, not all the occurrences were taken into account. Bearing in mind a class of learners with an intermediate level of competence in English, only those cases expressing actual, physical motion were chosen for analysis. This criterion ruled out language concerned with figurative or fictive, that is, non-physical motion (e.g. fixed expressions like jump out of one’s skin). These were kept for a further study into the figurative uses of motion verbs (see Lindstromberg and Boers 2005 in this respect). Finally, the analysis pivoted on three research questions: (1) How often are motion constructions used throughout the corpus and across different genres? (2) How often are manner verbs used overall and across genres? and (3) What rhetorical purpose motivates the use of motion constructions? The corpus data yielded 524 motion instances (tokens) incorporating 99 different types of verb. These are shown in Table 1:
Nº of instances Verbs More than 100 instances go (114) 50-100 instances get (65), come (60) 25-50 instances run (30), walk (27) 10-24 instances sit down (10), turn (16), fall (14), rush (11) 5-9 instances jump (9), move (9), climb (6), hang (6), return (5), swim (5) be on one’s way (4), pull (4), head (4), travel (4), sneak (4), start off/out (4), wander (4), bump (4), burst (3), leap (3), drive (3), set off (3), fly (3), march (3), step (3), bolt (2), stand 2-4 instances up (2), circle (2), clamber (2), crash (2), cross (2), descend (2), gather (2), land (2), lie down (2), lunge (2), make (2), pop (2), stumble (2), tumble (2) arrive, blade, continue, cordon, crawl, creep, curl, cycle, dance, demonstrate, feel one’s way, file, flail, flee, fold, follow, help, hurl, hurry, knock, launch, lean, let, lift, mess, nip, paddle, 1 instance parade, perk, pile, pirouette, race, ride, roam, roll, scamper, screech to a halt, scuttle, settle, ship, sink, skid, slam, slow, spin, splash, spring, swerve, take off, tear, topple, twist, waddle, wave
Table 1. Types and tokens of motion verbs in corpus
Verbs such as hang, start or tear are included in table 1 because they occur with motion particles which turn them into motion verbs (e.g. I noticed a group of fit guys hanging out across the street or We started off in pouring rain). This is also the case with Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 75 the verbs sit down, lie down and stand up – unconcerned with motion without their particles. Of course, the high occurrence of verbs like go, get, come, walk or run was expected. Added to those occurring at least 10 times in the corpus, these represent 66.2% of the motion expressions in the corpus. This not only confirms the productivity of such verbs (most of which are manner neutral), but also appears to support the arguments towards their archetypal, conceptually basic nature in Clark (1978), Bowerman (1989), Langacker (1991) and Goldberg (1995), inter alia. Thus, as pointed out by these scholars, verbs such as go, get or come are among the first verbs that children acquire, as well as among the verbs most frequently used to describe personal experiences. The other 33.8% comprise expressions with less ‘everyday’ verbs, most of which convey motion in a more graphic or vivid way (e.g. file, pirouette, nip, tumble, waddle or topple). A more detailed account of the meaning potential of such verbs is provided in section 3 of this study. In order to explore whether the use of motion verbs responded to genre constraints, I started by quantifying the motion instances in the corpus, which meant paying attention to (a) the number of instances per genre and their percentage in the corpus, and (b) the lexical density regarding motion displayed by each genre (i.e. the ratio of verb ‘types’ to all the occurrences of motion expressions or ‘tokens’)2. This quantification rendered the following results:
Nº of instances Lexical Genre % in corpus Nº of types (tokens) density Recollections 69 13.1% 19 27.5 Folk stories 133 25.3% 23 17.3 Literary tales 96 18.2% 32 33.3 Anecdotes 184 35% 62 33.7 Historical and 20 3.8% 8 40 biographical narratives News stories 22 4.6% 12 54.5
Table 2. Motion patterns across genres.
As shown in table 2, the largest number of motion verbs in this particular corpus is found in personal anecdotes, folk stories and literary tales, which are also the genres displaying both the widest range of particles and event conflation instances in the corpus – the latter largely responsible for the dynamism attributed to S-languages. This appears to explain the propensity of certain narrative genres to use motion expressions. Corpus data also suggest that dynamism and lexical density are not necessarily related. Thus, although less dynamic than other genres in the corpus, both news stories and historical texts show the highest lexical density when compared to folk stories and anecdotes, which display a lower lexical density.
2 Lexical density is the result of dividing the number of verb types by the number of motion tokens and multiplying it by 100. 76 Rosario Caballero
Nevertheless, although quantification may help confirm the dynamism displayed by English narratives in general, exploring whether the use of motion expressions is genre- sensitive required a more qualitative type of research. This involved paying attention to the verbs used in each genre since the tone or coloring and, to a large extent, the rhetorical effects of the texts, largely depend on the verb used to articulate how a given displacement took place. In other words, choice of verb points to those aspects other than lexical availability underlying the various ways of reporting events in narrative texts. Among these pragmatic and, more specifically, genre-related aspects we find the topic, participants (together with the related notion of register) and rhetorical goal(s) characterizing different narrative genres.
3. The rhetorical motivation of motion patterns in narrative genres
The genres in the corpus may be broadly classified into two types according to their planned or unplanned (and, accordingly, formal or informal) nature. The first group comprises news stories and historical texts, both prototypically written genres characterized by the professional status of their authors and their recognizable topics such as history, politics, society and the like. The second group consists of recollections and folk stories, both originally oral genres (an origin often traceable in their written form) dealing with diverse topics. Teenage anecdotes would fall somewhere in between. Thus, although written to be published in magazines (which suggests that some attention has been paid to the language used in them), their authors are teenagers who appear to write as they talk. The texts are therefore often reminiscent of their oral counterparts, yet devoid of interjections, pauses, repetitions and so forth. Likewise, literary tales are difficult to classify: they originate from those folk narratives and tales in the second group, as illustrated by some of the tales’ features, typically register, yet are often written by well-known or professional authors who pay attention to the language resources used in them. In this sense, they might well be included in the first group of narratives.
3.1. The participants, topic and spatiotemporal context of genres and the use of motion verbs
The above classification, albeit somewhat simplistic, can be useful in order to explain the differences in the use of motion verbs across the genres in the corpus, particularly those responding to such factors as the genres’ typical participants, topic(s) and the spatiotemporal context reflected in the texts. Concerning the first aspect, differences may be broadly seen as responding to the planned nature of the narratives in news stories or historical texts and to the more literate quality of their respective authors – and plausibly, their readership – which contrasts with the somewhat less planned, more vernacular style of recollections and folk stories. In this sense, we must bear in mind that the authors of news stories and historical texts are paid for their narratives: writing stories is their job, and language is their main working tool – and, of course, one that requires a high level of proficiency. Accordingly, they need to pay attention to vocabulary in order to avoid repetition and/or to achieve rhetorically effective texts. Literary tales also display a rich Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 77 vocabulary, partly because of their literary status – which, to some extent, differentiates them from their oral, folk-like counterparts – and partly because they may be seen as largely contributing to developing the literacy of their often very young readers. At the same time, the topics dealt with in these three genres may influence the diversity of verbs found in them. Thus, tales often deal with adventurous events and, therefore, need verbs such as roam, climb, crawl, clamber, descend, spring or rush to convey their characters’ tribulations. In turn, news reports use motion verbs to describe either the displacements of the people in the news (e.g. cross, travel, fly, flee, often involving means of transport) or their – usually political – actions (e.g. demonstrate, march, cordon). In other words, many such verbs are indicators of the topic(s) of the stories they help narrate. Together with topic, the particular use of the language of recollections and folk tales also appears to respond to the specific spatiotemporal context and knowledge shared by their discourse participants. Most of these narratives belong to the oral and written lore of rural and fishing communities. Accordingly, the language used in them reflects their participants’ daily lives and routines, which may well motivate the use of such ‘colorless’ verbs as walk, jump, come, turn, go and run, as well as verbs like paddle (the latter less common in other contexts, yet highly recurrent in communities whose life pivots on water resources). In short, the vocabulary (motion or otherwise) used in the stories written by and for such communities reflects their particular concerns, hobbies and daily routines. The verbs found in teenage anecdotes also point to the topics dealt with in the stories, most of which concern their authors’ interactions with their various crushes and classmates, and their displacements to and from school, to their friends’ or to the places where they spend their leisure time. It is not surprising, then, to find verbs like cycle, dance, swim, hang around and, of course, the all-pervasive walk, run, come and go. The high occurrence of the verb get to refer to all sorts of actions and the use of sneak, nip or pop in the texts may also be indicative of their authors’ age, as well as of a particular aspect of register, namely, group solidarity. A case in point in this respect is the propensity of the authors of anecdotes to use terms like boyf, bf or comfy instead of boyfriend, best friend and comfortable respectively. Likewise, their use of certain verbs may also reflect a particular, age-specific use of language – possibly encouraged by the very magazines in which the anecdotes are published, whose occasional contributors and regular writing staff use the same expressions. A final aspect worth noticing is the number of verbs that carry negative, even violent connotations in the teenage corpus (e.g. bump, crash, knock, skid, stumble, topple) or verbs with an evaluative bias, that is, which encode the authors’ stance or subjective views towards the motion events they help articulate (e.g. sneak, mess or waddle).3 In this regard, apart from the greater or lesser motion-specific information encapsulated in the verbs in the corpus, an interesting issue worth investigating is the type of predication conveyed through some such verbs in certain genres, particularly
3 My use of evaluative covers such notions as ‘perspective’, ‘subjectivity’, ‘point of view’ or ‘authorial stance’, and draws heavily upon the all-encompassing definition provided by Hunston and Thompson (2000) in their introductory chapter of a book on the subject. In Stein and Wright (1995) the notions above are subsumed by the cover term subjectivity. 78 Rosario Caballero those typically used to predicate something of non-human animate subjects. In other words, whereas verbs like arrive, go, hurry or walk refer to human displacement, other verbs are typically used to refer to the actions of non-human entities, often animals (e.g. bolt and waddle bring to mind horses and ducks respectively). As happens with the various types of figurative language instantiating cross-domain mappings, such verbs carry entailments related to the attributes of the animals whose movement they express. In this sense, the verbs may be seen as slipping information from those non-human domains of experience and entities into the predication of their human subjects. The interest of these verbs, then, lies in the quality of the information added, and, often, in the positive or negative connotations of the predication conveyed through them. This is the case of verbs such as bolt, creep, lunge, roam, scamper, waddle, crawl, nip and spring, all of them typically associated with animal movement. Together with helping to provide a vivid picture of how a given motion took place, these verbs convey some kind of evaluation, as also noted by Slobin (2003). This is shown below:
(2) The Uncles sat in front of the fire, took off their collars, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch-chains, groaned a little, and slept. Mothers, aunts, and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. (Recollection. From Dylan Thomas’ A Prospect of the Sea, 1986)
This passage describes the after-dinner doings of some people after a Christmas lunch, portrayed in a different way depending on whether they concern men’s or women’s actions. Thus, whereas those of the former are rendered in fairly neutral terms, women are described as scuttling to and fro, which suggests the quick, endless motion of mice or any such small creature. The choice of verb scuttle and the contrast of this term with those used in the description of the men’s actions is, in this sense, highly evaluative. Another interesting set of verbs comprises cycle, launch, land, skid, skate, swerve or spin, most of which bring to mind vehicles, some of them related to sports. Their occurrence in the corpus may be explained in different ways. In the first place, many such verbs occur in the anecdote set within the corpus. In this sense, they reflect some of the texts’ topics, that is, the typical comings and goings of people of a certain age (and, hence, actions like rollerskating, cycling and the like). The verbs also help authors economize words: by describing a given motion event as screeching to a halt we may infer that the people involved were driving a vehicle at high speed. At the same time, some verbs point to the influence of certain domains of experience in the development of the English lexicon. Thus, given the pervasiveness of vehicles in our society, it is not surprising to find that human motion is, indeed, described by means of vehicle-related verbs regardless of whether the motion thus portrayed actually involves the use of any such vehicle or artifact. For instance, although the verb skid is usually associated with cars or skates, in the sentence I didn’t notice the chipolata sausage I’d dropped until I trod on it, skidded and smacked my head on the fridge door! the verb skidded does not imply the use of any such vehicle – the typical sense of the term being thus extended to refer to human sliding motion. Skid could well be included in the type of motion verbs referred to in Levin (1993: 264-65) as “roll verbs”, and described as related to manners of motion characteristic of Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 79 inanimate entities and where the displacements denoted by the verbs are not controlled by the protagonist. Interestingly, the instances where such verbs are used to describe human motion always appear in the narrative climax of the anecdotes, which suggests that this use – or ‘alternation’ in Levin’s sense – may also be rhetorically determined. This is also the case of verbs that suggest the violent, colliding or sudden quality of the motion event thus referred to (e.g. pop, nip, crash, flip, knock or slam). Indeed, it may be argued that the rich information and graphic potential of many of the verbs used in this way is both a response to and an indicator of all the different aspects underlying certain narrative genres. The evaluation issue briefly outlined here is addressed in the ensuing section.
3.2. The purpose(s) of genres and the use of motion verbs
The authors’ choice of verb in the narratives of the corpus cannot be explained solely by alluding to the topic or participant/register aspects determining the various genres represented. Rather, it appears to respond to whether the texts’ purpose is to inform, describe or, simply, entertain – that is to say, to the genres’ goal(s). The rhetorical possibilities and constraints of motion expressions in English are again best illustrated by anecdotes from teenager magazines. These are usually published in a distinct section under such suggestive titles as ‘Desk Dodgers’ and ‘Show off Cringes’ (Bliss), ‘Traumarama’ (Seventeen), ‘How Embarrassing’ (Sugar) or ‘Prom Screams’ (Cosmogirl), to list some of the repertoire offered in the magazines’ anecdote section. The expectations set by such titles with regard to the nature of the anecdotes are fully met by the texts. Moreover, the frequently negative quality of the topics covered in them may also underlie the frequent use of verbs with a negative and/or evaluative bias discussed earlier. For the more embarrassing and/or funny the story, the higher the chance of getting it published and, of course, of being judged the best anecdote in the section. Motion is important, but manner is paramount because it is precisely how something happened that is the source of embarrassment, humor, etc. in these narratives. Of course, given the small size of the texts, motion patterns barely amount to more than two or three instances. However, regardless of this relatively small number, the constructions are very effective for setting the tone of the narrative and, most importantly, for describing the events in them in a vivid, graphic manner. By way of illustration, consider the following two anecdotes from the corpus:
(3) [M]y Mum wouldn’t let me quit [ballet classes] and every year I had to take part in this stupid dance recital in the town hall. Last year I was so fed up that I ‘accidentally’ pirouetted into the scenery and dragged it down on top of all of the other dancers. It made the local newspaper, and got me kicked out of the dance school. Result!
(4) I thought I’d play a prank on my mate one night when I was staying at her place. … I put my sleeping bag over my head, zipped it up, and waddled out into the hallway. I couldn’t see a thing, but … I ran at my friend yelling: “I’m a big snake, raaaaahhhh!”
The climax in both anecdotes comes with the portrayal of how these two girls entered and exited from the places in their stories. Thus, if we substituted pirouetted 80 Rosario Caballero into the scenery in (3) for neutral motion verbs like enter or get the anecdote would be substantially deprived of the main source of its protagonist’s embarrassment (and, hence, the readers’ amusement). Likewise, the verb waddle in (4) is prototypically predicated of ducks, yet here describes the somewhat unconventional and laughable exit of the author of the anecdote. In this sense, we may contend that the verbs’ role is to help readers imagine or ‘see’ the whole scene and then laugh at the ludicrous events recounted in them. The colorful quality of such verbs and, in many cases, their evaluative bias is, in this sense, justified. Moreover, the use of verbs like waddle or lunge involves a first evaluation by the author of the events in the anecdote, whose recreation in written form via such verbs will influence the way her readers will read the text and react to it. Furthermore, as pointed out in the vast discussion on storytelling, it is not only believability but durability that makes a good story. This is nicely summarized in Bhaya Nair (2003), where the main function of narrative is seen as:
mak[ing] some parts of a communicative loop or chain … both potentially detachable and iterable. A ‘good story’ is one that can be ‘taken away’ by listeners and/or tellers and repeated in other conversations, other contexts, other cultures. … The structure of narrative appears beautifully adapted to time-transfer, to taking away, to having and holding in some kind of formal permanence. (Bhaya Nair 2003: 5)
Of course, should we have to choose between the accurate telling of events and a more expressive, vivid performance so that our stories can be ‘taken away’ the latter would undoubtedly come first (consider, for instance, the weight of manner-concerned language for enjoying and remembering jokes). In this light, the higher percentage of manner verbs in anecdotes is far from surprising: they focus on how the events in them took place because this is what makes them tellable in the first place, and in so doing, the narratives become worth reading and, presumably, memorable or durable (see also Slobin 2003 in this respect). Likewise, literary folk/fairy tales are characterized by the graphic potential of some of the verbs used for describing their characters’ tribulations, even if, in this case, the weight of verbs concerned with telling what happened is heavier than that of those devoted to describing how this took place in most cases.4 In contrast, the non-literary folk stories and recollections in the corpus appear to be more sober, even if still highly dynamic. The motion verbs in them are used to provide information about the comings and goings of the people in them (the what), rather than making audiences imagine how those took place. A possible explanation may lie in the texts’ topics which, in turn, may well be related to the kind of experience shared by narrators and narratees. The following has been extracted from a recollection of a hunting day:
4 Although the vividness of many such stories via the verbs in them should not be underestimated, the high percentage of graphic verbs in extremely short texts such as anecdotes is outstanding, and suggests that their use is a useful device to foreground manner at the expense of any other aspect of the anecdote. Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 81
(5) I had a bad time one fall when I went up the river there. … One morning I was going to [my brother’s] cabin to have lunch. There was a great big rock there, so I paddled out around it on the tide. I looked up and I saw two caribou just above. So I let my canoe come back down around the rock and I went ashore, and I tied her on. … They started to swim across the Churchill River. I shot near them to see if I could drive them back to my side. They turned around hard, but like a fool I had one more shot and drove them back to the other side again. I let them get partway across the river, so that when I got to the other side I’d be close to them. I got over. The gun only held three cartridges. One got out of the water on the bank and I killed him. I fired the next shot at the cow one. I pumped in the third cartridge, held up the gun and fired again. I didn’t see another thing in the world until I saw the palm of my hand, full of blood.
This narrative explains its author’s tribulations in skinning a caribou with only one hand. Of course, the topic itself (hunting) may well justify the abundance of motion events in the story: if he is to be praised for his deed, the audience needs a detailed account of the hunting scene (i.e. of what happened). Actually, the quick succession of events seems to be the main reason why this person did not notice that his gun barrel had exploded until he felt the wound in his hand. In other words, the topic asks for a rapid account of what happened because this is what matters, rather than a colorful portrayal of the caribou’s and hunter’s movements. Moreover the story is aimed at people who, presumably, go hunting themselves and, therefore, not only share similar knowledge, but surely have certain expectations concerning what a good story is or should consist of. Put another way, other considerations apart, the audience would not expect the narrator to use expressions like The caribou rushed/popped/nipped to the other side of the river to indicate the way in which certain actions took place. Overall, we may venture that this is a story to inform and share, rather than a story to laugh at or remember (actually, there is nothing laughable about having a wounded hand and having to manipulate game). In this sense, anecdotes on the one hand and folk stories and recollections on the other illustrate two different ways of using motion verbs to narrate motion events. Thus, whereas anecdotes are mostly concerned with a graphic description of how events happened, folk stories and, above all, recollections are primarily concerned with narrating the events themselves (the what). Of course, narrative genres hardly ever consist of one or the other aspects but, rather, usually combine both. However, all in all the narrative focus or weight in the genres under consideration tends to suggest the said two tendencies. Finally, the least manner-biased narratives in the corpus are historical narratives and news stories.5 Although congruent with the informative goal of these genres, the relatively colorless quality of the motion verbs used in news stories is surprising,
5 The present discussion concerns only the data found in the corpus and, in this sense, may not illustrate the findings of other researchers dealing with the same topic. Thus, although Slobin (2003) points to the graphic descriptions of motion in news stories, those explored in the present research were not particularly outstanding in this respect, probably because only short news rather than features or long news stories were included in the corpus for the reasons explained earlier. 82 Rosario Caballero particularly if we take into account the genre’s concern with detail and, hence, journalists’ resourceful use of vocabulary. However, most of the lexis rhetorically exploited in news involves nouns and adjectives rather than motion verbs. This may happen for a number of reasons. First, news stories need not be particularly concerned with motion events. Second, these texts have a very short life; accordingly, the memorability and durability aspects mentioned earlier are not particularly felicitous for describing media narratives in general, except for a few stories that do happen to remain in the collective memory. Finally, media texts are characterized by their multimodal nature, that is, news items are not only verbally conveyed but also graphically illustrated. Given the impact of images, the fact that manner-of-motion verbs are not particularly relevant in many news stories (at least, the ones in the corpus here analyzed) is far from surprising. In sum, both the quantity and quality of motion patterns in narratives appear to respond to various aspects related to the genres they illustrate. The foregoing discussion has suggested that the way motion patterns are used to convey motion events, and particularly, that the choice of verb in the expressions may well respond to the topic(s), participants, register and rhetorical goal(s) characterize the rationale of the different narrative genres incorporating the patterns. The question that remains is whether insights from this exploration may be usefully applied to FLT.
4. Enriching input from genre analysis
The main purpose of this paper has been to describe the presence and function of motion constructions in a small text corpus comprising various narrative genres. The starting premise was that the expression of motion events and, particularly, the choice of verb could respond to the topic(s), participants, register and rhetorical goal(s) characterizing the rationale of different types of narrative. This exploration was motivated by the awareness that V-language learners attempting to learn an S-language – in this case, Spanish learners of English – often find it difficult to acquire such idiosyncratic and important patterns. Studying the phenomenon as it appears in various communicative contexts was considered a necessary step before deciding upon the methodological strategies most useful for introducing this topic in the FL classroom. This is because, as surveyed earlier, motion verbs and, particularly, those specifying manner of motion are a given for speakers of an S-language like English: from childhood, they are recurrently exposed to all sorts of input full of rich descriptions of motion events. In this sense, their conspicuously graphic verbalization (and, presumably, conceptualization) of the motion domain is the effortless product of a long process of becoming full members of the English-speaking community (see also the discussion in Gentner and Boroditsky 2001 in this respect). In contrast, EFL Spanish learners, like others whose native language belongs to the V-framed type, lack the cognitive frame and rich repository of motion verbs and, accordingly, need to become aware of how motion events are expressed in English and other S-languages. Sometimes they need to learn these verbs from scratch, particularly in the early stages of their training. Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 83
An important component in this acculturation process is, of course, the quality of the input used in the classroom. In this regard, the research here described has attempted to show that not all narrative genres are equally rich in motion verbs, and that their use is determined by discourse factors other than resource availability. Moreover, given the differences across genres with regard to topic, audience and purpose, it may well be argued that not all genres are equally suited for all learners. Thus, if motion verbs and, particularly, manner of motion verbs are to be introduced in a classroom mainly composed of young learners, fairy tales might provide a good – and, given the learners’ age and interests, particularly interesting – source of data for designing classroom activities and tasks. These may involve (a) showing students flashcards illustrating the motion events described in the stories in order to help them learn such verbs, (b) making learners match flashcards with the corresponding motion expressions in a given story, (c) making one student enact the motion denoted by the verbs found in stories read in class (following Total Physical Response techniques) and asking his/her classmates to guess the verb, or (d) tell students to make up a story in groups and perform it in front of their classmates, who will have to write it down afterwards, and vice versa. If, in contrast, we are dealing with teenagers with a pre-intermediate level of English, anecdotes seem to be the best option (see the discussion in Lindstromberg and Boers 2005 in this regard). Some of the activities described earlier for younger learners may well be used with these learners (e.g. the use of flashcards to help them learn the verbs, or making them enact those verbs and guess their meaning), as well as structural exercises where students are asked to turn sentences with adverbials specifying how a given displacement took place into sentences where the specifics of motion are expressed by the main verb (e.g. She left the room in a hurry versus She hurried out of the room). However, both the age and English proficiency of these students allows for more ‘sophisticated’ activities and tasks. Thus, teachers can give students several anecdotes and ask them to underline or highlight every verb expressing motion events. After looking them up in dictionaries (bilingual and monolingual), learners may be asked to explain why they think such verbs are used in the texts. They can also substitute the verbs for ‘neutral’ or less manner-biased verbs and discuss the change provoked by this in the texts. After making students aware of the importance of manner of motion verbs in the genre, teachers may (a) give them texts previously edited (i.e. only using manner- neutral verbs) and ask the students to rewrite them in a more graphic or appropriate fashion, (b) give students texts in which verbs have been deleted and ask them to write a suitable verb (e.g. from a list provided by the teacher until they are able to think of a verb by themselves), or (c) write an anecdote using verbs chosen by the teacher in advance. Finally, more advanced learners may be engaged in more complex tasks involving the exploration of how motion patterns are used across different narrative genres – becoming, thus, researchers of the L2. The activities may range from those aimed at less proficient learners – which may be used to make students aware of this particular lexico-grammatical resource or as warming-up activities – to tasks where learners compare the use of motion verbs in different genres. The latter may involve the use of a small corpus (like the one used in the research described in the present paper) and computing tools such as a concordancer – both fully compatible with the growing 84 Rosario Caballero interest and use of new technologies in Foreign Language Teaching. Since most manner of motion verbs occur with particles, students can start by searching for these in the corpus in order to explore the verbs that occur with them. These may then be discussed, classified according to the type of motion they express, etc., thus engaging students in both qualitative and quantitative research on how motion verbs are used in the genres under focus. In short, given the importance of input in learning a second/foreign language – indeed, in learners’ acculturation to a different way of construing the world through language – an unavoidable first step is a thorough investigation of what input may be best in order to design classroom activities and procedures for the purpose of teaching a particular language topic or use. However, more research into both the impact of typological differences across languages as well as the pragmatic aspects involved in particular uses of language is still needed in order to gain insights applicable to designing FLT materials combining both dimensions.
References
Berman, Ruth A. and Dan Slobin 1994: Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bhatia, Vijay K. 1999: ‘Integrating Products, Processes, Purposes and Participants in Professional Writing’. Christopher Candlin and Ken Hyland, eds. Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices. London and New York: Longman. 21-40. Bhaya Nair, Rukmini 2003: Narrative Gravity: Conversation, Cognition, Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Bowerman, Melissa 1989: ‘Learning a Semantic System: What Role do Cognitive Predispositions Play?’ Mabel L. Rice and Richard L. Schiefelbusch, eds. The Teachability of Language. Baltimore: P.H. Brookes. 133-69. ––––– 1996: ‘The Origin of Children’s Spatial Semantic Categories: Cognitive versus Linguistic Determinism’. John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson, eds. Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 145-76. Cadierno, Teresa 2004: ‘Expressing Motion Events in a Second Language: A Cognitive Typological Perspective’. Michel Achard and Susanne Niemeier, eds. Cognitive Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Foreign Language Teaching. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 13-50. Clark, Eve V. 1978: ‘Discovering What Words Can Do’. Papers from the Parasession on the Lexicon CLS 14: 34-57. Davies, Alan, Clive Criper and Anthony P. R. Howatt, eds. 1984: Interlanguage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Dowty, David 1991: ‘Thematic Proto-roles and Argument Selection’. Language 67: 547-619. Faber, Pamela and Ricardo Mairal Usón 1999: Constructing a Lexicon of English Verbs. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Faerch, Claus and Gabriele Kasper 1983: Strategies in Interlanguage Communication. London: Longman. Fillmore, Charles J. 1968: ‘Lexical Entries for Verbs’. Foundations of Language 4: 373-93. ––––– 1977: ‘Topics in Lexical Semantics’. Current Issues in Linguistics Theory. Ed. Roger Cole. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 76-138. Gass, Susan and Larry Selinker, eds. 1992: Language Transfer in Language Learning. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Textual Input and Learning Outcomes: Enriching Input Through Genre Analysis 85
Gentner, Dedre and Lera Boroditsky 2001: ‘Individuation, Relativity and Early Word Learning’. Melissa Bowerman and Stephen C. Levinson, eds. Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 215-56. Goldberg, Adele 1995: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago and London: The U of Chicago P. ––––– 1998: Semantic Principles of Predication. Jean-Pierre Koenig, ed. Discourse and Cognition: Bridging the Gap. Stanford CA: CSLI Publications, Stanford U. 41-54. Guerssel, Mohamed, Kenneth Hale, Mary Laughren, Beth Levin and Josie Eagle 1985: ‘A Cross- Linguistic Study of Transitivity Alternations’. William H Eilfort, Paul D. Kroeber and Karen L. Peterson, eds. Papers from the Parasession on Causatives and Agentivity CLS 21.2. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 48-63. Hunston, Susan and Geoff Thompson, eds. 2000: Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP. Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide 2006: Sound Symbolism and Motion in Basque. LINCOM Studies in Basque Linguistics 06. Munich: Lincom. Jackendoff, Ray 1990: Semantic Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT P. Kaufmann, Ingrid 1995: ‘What is an (Im-)possible Verb? Restrictions on Semantic Form and their Consequences for Argument Structure’. Folia Linguistica 24: 67-103. Kellerman, Eric and Mike Sharwood-Smith, eds. 1986: Cross-linguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon P. Kita, Sotaro 1999: ‘Japanese Enter/Exit Verbs without Motion Semantics’. Studies in Language 23: 317-40. Lado, Robert 1957: Linguistics across Cultures. Ann Harbor: U of Michigan P. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Vol. 2: Descriptive Application. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford UP. Lehrer, Adrienne 1974: Semantic Structure and Lexical Fields. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Levin, Beth 1993: English Verb Classes and its Alternations. Chicago: U of Chicago P. Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav 1992: ‘The Lexical Semantics of Verbs of Motion: The Perspective from Unaccusativity’. Iggy Roca, ed. Thematic Structure: Its Role in Grammar. Berlin: Foris. 247-69. Lindstromberg, Seth and Frank Boers 2005: ‘From Movement to Metaphor with Manner-of- Movement Verbs’. Applied Linguistics 26.2: 241-61. Malblanc, Alfred 1968: Stylistique Comparée du Français et de l’Allemand. Paris: Didier. Mora Gutiérrez, Juan Pablo 2001: Directed Motion in English and Spanish. Retrieved from http://elies.rediris.es/elies11. Morimoto, Yuko 2001: Los verbos de movimiento. Madrid: Visor. Odlin, Terence 1989: Language Transfer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin 1998: ‘Building Verb Meanings’. Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder, eds. The Projection of Arguments: Lexical Compositional Factors. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. 97-134. Selinker, Larry 1992: Rediscovering Interlanguage. London: Longman. Slobin, Dan 1996: ‘Two Ways to Travel: Verbs of Motion in English and Spanish’. Masayoshi Shibatani and Sandra A. Thompson, eds. Grammatical Constructions: Their Form and Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 195-220. ––––– 2003: ‘Language and Thought Online: Cognitive Consequences of Linguistic Relativity’. Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow, eds. Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT P. 157-92. ––––– 2004: ‘The Many Ways to Search for a Frog: Linguistic Typology and the Expression of Motion Events’. Sven Strömqvist and Ludo Verhoeven, eds. Relating Events in Narrative. Typological and Contextual Perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 219-57. Retrieved from http://ihd.berkeley.edu/slobinpapers.htm 86 Rosario Caballero
Stein, Dieter and Susan Wright, eds. 1995: Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Talmy, Leonard 1985: ‘Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms’. Timothy Shopen, ed. Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Vol. III: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 57-149. ––––– 1988: ‘Force Dynamics in Language and Thought’. Cognitive Science 12: 49-100. ––––– 1991: ‘Paths to Realization: A Typology of Event Conflation’. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. 480-519. Tenny, Carol 1994: Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Van Valin, Robert D.J. 1990: ‘Semantic Parameters of Split Intransitivity’. Language 66: 221-60. Vinay, Jean-Paul and Jean Darbelnet 1958: Stylistique Comparée du Français et de l’Anglais. Paris: Didier.
Received 5 May 2006 Revised version received 6 November 2006
29.1 (June 2007): 87–105 ISSN 0210-6124
Negotiating Meaning in Interaction between English and Spanish Speakers via Communicative Strategies
Ana M. Fernández Dobao Universidad de Santiago de Compostela [email protected]
Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez Universidad de Santiago de Compostela [email protected]
The main purpose of this paper is to describe and understand how learners and their interlocutors manage to communicate meaning through the use of communication strategies (CSs). Drawing on the collaborative theory of communication, CS episodes are identified and examined to describe how learners and their interlocutors co-construct meaning. The data analyzed in this study was collected at the University of Santiago through a task-based experiment, which was both audio and video recorded. Thirty-two subjects were paired on four different dyad conditions: four dyads of intermediate learners, four dyads of advanced students, four dyads of intermediate learners interacting with native speakers and, finally, four dyads of advanced students in interaction with native speakers. For the CS identification process three different sources of evidence were used: problem indicators, native language base line and retrospective interviews. The results obtained show different kinds of communication grounding techniques. In some cases CSs are accepted by the addressees (acknowledgments, displays and demonstrations, initiation of a relevant next contribution and continued attention) while in some others the initial CS uttered by the learner is not accepted and has to be followed by a negotiation of meaning process. The conclusions reached are mainly based on a qualitative analysis.
Key words: strategy, communication, negotiation of meaning, interlanguage, language interaction
1. Introduction
When learners attempt to communicate, they may need to resort to communication strategies – hereafter CSs – in order to get their meaning across. In this paper we set out to describe and understand how learners and their interlocutors manage to achieve 88 Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez successful communication of their messages when a CS needs to be used in a face-to- face oral interactional context.1 With the term CSs we make reference to all those techniques language learners use when, in their attempt to communicate in the foreign language with a reduced interlanguage system, they find that the target language items or structures desired to convey their messages are not available. In order to keep communication steady, learners may circumvent linguistic difficulties by changing or reducing the content of their messages. In other words, they may avoid reference to a concept or topic in order to overcome the lack of the target language term or expression needed to convey this meaning. These strategies are usually known in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) research as “avoidance” (Tarone 1981) or “reduction” (Færch and Kasper 1983; Dörnyei and Kormos 1998) CSs. More often, however, learners are able to keep their communicative goals and convey the original content of their messages by developing an alternative means of expression. For this purpose they resort to “achievement” (Færch and Kasper 1983) or “compensatory” (Poulisse et al. 1990) CSs, such as the use of an approximate term, a descriptive circumlocution, a word coinage, a native language transfer, a gesture or an appeal for assistance. These different kinds of techniques can be used to compensate for or avoid all sorts of interlanguage deficits: lexical, grammatical, pragmatic or sociolinguistic. In this study, however, attention is focused on the use of CSs to compensate for lexical difficulties, i. e. on lexical compensatory strategies. Most research into CSs so far has focused almost exclusively on the strategies in isolation. This paper, however, will look at how the strategies operate in the context of the ongoing interaction. We approach the study of foreign language strategic interaction building on the belief that communication of meaning, whether strategic or not, is always a collaborative activity between participants (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986). For communication to succeed, speakers and addressees need to work together and coordinate their individual actions and beliefs in order to build a mutual agreement on the content of their messages. From this perspective, we consider that communicative problems arising in foreign language interaction are mutually shared problems, in the sense that their solution is the responsibility of all the interactional participants and that, subsequently, CSs need to be considered in relation to “a mutual attempt of two interlocutors to agree on a meaning in situations where requisite meaning structures do not seem to be shared” (Tarone 1981: 288). In the present study we analyze a sample of foreign language interactional data extracted from SULEC (Santiago University Learner of English Corpus) with the aim of describing how to accomplish this process of building a mutual agreement on meaning. Drawing on previous research carried out in the field of SLA, as well as on L1 communication studies conducted within the framework of the collaborative theory of communication (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986; Clark and Schaefer 1987, 1989; Wilkes- Gibbs 1997), firstly we intend to identify what actions are taken by both the learner and their addressee when the target language lexical items desired to convey their messages
1 The research here reported has been funded through the grants PGIDIT05PX1B20401PR and HU2006/14-0, financed by the Xunta de Galicia. These two grants are hereby gratefully acknowledged. Negotiating Meaning in Interaction 89 are not available. Secondly, we want to analyze how the two of them coordinate their individual actions and beliefs in order to establish the desired final agreement on meaning. Thirdly, we will examine to what extent the communicative outcome of this strategic exchange results from the collaborative effort of all the interactional participants.
2. Review of the literature
The study of CSs has received quite a lot of attention in the field of SLA and, as a result, a considerable amount of both theoretical and empirical research has been accumulated in this area. This work has been conducted from two main theoretical perspectives: the psycholinguistic and the interactional. Psycholinguistic researchers, interested in the cognitive processes the learner engages in when becoming aware of a linguistic difficulty, have defined CSs as internal and individual mental plans, and tried to explain CS use by drawing on cognitive models of speech production (Færch and Kasper 1980, 1983, 1984; Bialystok 1990; Poulisse et al. 1990; Poulisse 1993, 1997; Kellerman and Bialystok 1997). Interactionist scholars, however, following Váradi (1973), Tarone (1977, 1981) and Corder (1978), have treated CSs as elements of discourse and focused their attention on the linguistic realization of CSs. In this light, CSs have been traditionally agreed on as illustrated in the taxonomy presented in table 1 below, which is, in fact, a reworking of the list of strategies proposed among others by Tarone (1977, 1980, 1981) and Poulisse (1993, 1997).
Communication strategy Description of strategy AVOIDANCE STRATEGIES a) Topic avoidance The speaker, lacking the necessary vocabulary to refer to an object or action, avoids any mention to it. Eg. ‘wears a … pair of enormous trousers’ (braces) b) Message abandonment The speaker begins to talk about a concept but, feeling unable to continue, stops before reaching their communicative goal. Eg. ‘a shirt with … eh … umm … … I don’t know’ (tie) c) Semantic avoidance The speaker says something different from what was originally intended. Eg. ‘an eye mm … very damaged’ (black eye) d) Message reduction The learner reduces their original message, reports the same idea but with less precision and detail. Eg. ‘some kind of … uniform’ (school uniform) ACHIEVEMENT STRATEGIES 1 Paraphrase a) Approximation The speaker substitutes the desired unknown target language item for a new one, which is assumed to share enough semantic features with it to be correctly interpreted. Eg. ‘you can see aaa … a pigeon hole’ (letterbox)
90 Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
b) Word coinage The learner makes up a new word following the target language rules of derivation and composition. Eg. ‘houseshoes’ (slippers) c) Circumlocution The learner describes an object or action instead of using the appropriate target language item. Eg. ‘it´s like ja- jacket without the arms?’ (waistcoat) 2 Conscious transfer a) Borrowing The learner uses an L1 item or structure modified in accordance with the features of the target language. Eg. ‘a bit more … a bit more debilish no well’ (weak) b) Language switch The speaker uses an L1 item with no modification at all. Eg. ‘and he has mm… umm … unha pucha’ (cap) 3 Appeal for assistance The learner asks the interlocutor for lexical help. E.g. ‘how do you call this?’ (chin) 4 Mime The learner uses a gesture or any other paralinguistic form. E.g. ‘(learner mimics knocking)’ (doorknocker)
Table 1: Communication strategies taxonomy
From both perspectives, the analysis of CSs has been approached as a study of learner language. Interactionist and psycholinguistic scholars have relied on corpora of interlanguage data for the purposes of their research. The main concerns of this kind of corpus-based research have been to identify the different types of CSs available (Tarone 1977, 1981; Færch and Kasper 1980, 1983; Poulisse et al. 1990; Poulisse 1993; Dörnyei and Kormos 1998); the factors affecting the learner’s choice of specific CS types, such as proficiency level (Tarone 1977; Bialystok 1983; Paribakht 1985; Poulisse et al. 1990; Jourdain 2000; Fernández Dobao 2001, 2002), native language (Palmberg 1979; Si-Qing 1990), personality and learning style (Haastrup and Phillipson 1983; Luján-Ortega and Clark 2000; Littlemore 2001), or task-demands (Galván and Campbell 1979; Bialystok 1983; Poulisse et al. 1990; Luján- Ortega 1997; Fernández Dobao 2001); the potential communicative effectiveness of the different types of strategic utterances produced by the learner (Ervin 1979; Palmberg 1982; Bialystok 1983; Poulisse et al. 1990); and finally, the possibility of instructing the foreign language learner on the effective use of CSs (Færch and Kasper 1986; Dörnyei and Thurrell 1991; Dörnyei 1995; Scullen and Jourdain 2000; Faucette 2001; Jourdain and Scullen 2002). With these objectives in mind, researchers from both approaches have focused on the language produced by the learner. They have treated CSs as independent and isolated units of analysis, paying little or no attention at all to the interactional context in which they are used or to the possible collaboration of the interlocutor in the strategic communication of the meaning process. CSs have thus been generally studied as part of the learner’s use of the language and not as the product of the interaction taking place between a learner and, at least, one other interlocutor. In the last few years, however, new studies have appeared adopting what can be considered as a strictly interactional approach to the description of CS use. Following Negotiating Meaning in Interaction 91
Yule and Tarone’s (1991) claim that for a comprehensive understanding of strategic communication, attention needs to be paid to “both sides of the page”, i.e. to the actions of both learners and interlocutors, scholars, such as Wagner and Firth (1997), or Anderson (1998), have tried to describe strategic communication as an interactive activity. In these studies CSs are analyzed as elements of the ongoing and co- constructed context of the interaction and their communicative function is established by taking into account the actions of all the conversational participants. The work conducted from this perspective is still limited in scope and has not yet offered a model of analysis able to describe in a systematic way how learners and their interlocutors manage “to agree on a meaning in situations where requisite meaning structures do not seem to be shared” (Tarone 1981: 288). However, studies carried out on L1 communication within the framework of the collaborative theory have been able to outline a theoretical framework that accounts for communication of meaning as a collaborative activity, co-constructed by the speaker and the interlocutor: the collaborative model of communication (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986; Clark and Schaefer 1987, 1989; Wilkes-Gibbs 1997). The starting point of the collaborative model is the assumption that communication of meaning is a “common ground” building activity (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986: 7; Clark and Schaefer 1989: 260). This mutual agreement on meaning is achieved through a “grounding process” (Wilkes-Gibbs 1997: 239), in which the addressee accepts the speaker’s presentation providing some kind of evidence of their understanding, and the speaker recognizes and accepts this evidence. If addressees believe they have not been able to understand the speaker’s presentation, i.e. what meaning they are trying to contribute with their utterance, they are expected to show their difficulty and initiate a “side sequence” (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986: 7; Clark and Schaefer 1989: 278). The initial presentation is then refashioned until a new version is achieved that can be correctly understood and accepted by all the interlocutors. In this view, any communicative act involves the specification and understanding of content, plus its grounding, i.e. the speaker and the addressee building the mutual belief that the content contributed to the discourse has been correctly understood and satisfactorily added to their shared common ground (Clark and Schaefer 1987: 20; 1989: 262). In this study we draw on the collaborative model, originally designed to account for L1 non-strategic communication, to analyze foreign language strategic interaction. We intend thus to explain strategic communication as a collaborative creation of meaning process involving the joint action and effort of all the conversational participants.
3. Method
The data for the present study was collected at the University of Santiago de Compostela between 2001 and 2004. A task-based research experiment, specifically designed to elicit samples of interactional discourse, was performed by a total of sixteen dyads of subjects. With the aim of enhancing the representativeness of our data and the generalizability of our results, we decided to analyze interactions involving Spanish learners of English as a foreign language with two different proficiency levels, 92 Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez intermediate and advanced, working either with other same level learners or with English native speakers. The English language learners who participated in the project were, at the moment of the collection of the data, undergraduate and graduate students at the English Department of the University of Santiago de Compostela. They were selected on the basis of their results on a proficiency level test – The Oxford Placement Test (Allan 1999). Twelve of them had an intermediate level while the other twelve were advanced students. The English native speakers, a total of eight, were international students, taking Spanish language courses at the Modern Languages Centre of this same university. As shown in table 2 below, these thirty-two subjects were paired on four different dyad conditions: four dyads of intermediate level learners of English as a foreign language (INT), four dyads of advanced level learners (ADV), four dyads of intermediate learners interacting with English native speakers (NS), and four dyads of advanced learners working in interaction with native speakers. This means that twelve of them were intermediate learners, a second group of twelve were advanced students and the remaining eight were native speakers of English.
DYAD TYPE N INT/INT 4 ADV/ADV 4 INT/NS 4 ADV/NS 4
Table 2: Dyad distribution of subjects participating in the study
We thought it important to have native and non-native informants in order to see whether they used similar or different interactional procedures. Furthermore, we also thought it would be interesting to see to what extent the level variable was responsible for any changes in the learners’ behaviour when they negotiated meaning in order to decode and finally understand a given message. However, this factor was not closely surveyed in the present paper since it has been left for further research in a subsequent study. Most previous research in the field has relied on the use of photograph description or picture-story narration tasks for the purposes of data collection (Váradi 1973; Tarone 1977; Hyde 1982; Ellis 1984; Palmberg 1984; Marrie and Netten 1991; Anderson 1998; Gullberg 1998; or Wongsawang 2001). In order to elicit the use of CSs, learners are given a set of images and are asked to describe them and/or narrate the story they illustrate. The images provide a well-defined and stable content which forces the subject to communicate about pre-selected topics, while at the same time allowing considerable freedom for individual variation. In this way the researcher can obtain representative samples of unplanned and extended interlanguage discourse while maintaining a certain degree of control of the content. The constant content facilitates the study of CSs and makes it possible to establish comparative analyses across subjects. For the purposes of the present study, the traditional picture-story narration task was adapted and converted into a spot-the-difference activity. Each member of the dyad Negotiating Meaning in Interaction 93 was given a different version of the same picture story and asked to describe it in as much detail as possible so that they could identify the differences existing between their two sets of pictures. We encouraged our participants to ask each other as many questions as necessary in order to be able to identify the differences without looking at each other’s pictures. We managed thus to keep the necessary level of control on the content of the data while at the same time fostering interaction between our participants. The set of pictures given to the learner included a total of thirty-two referents that were missing in the interlocutor’s pictures. These thirty-two elements involved objects, such as a waistcoat or braces, and actions, such as to punch or to roll up. They were selected on the basis of a previous piloting experience, which guaranteed that they would pose frequent linguistic difficulties to both intermediate and advanced level learners. We intended in this way to encourage our different dyads of subjects to try to establish a mutual agreement on the same fixed set of items. The CSs used to communicate about these pre-selected referents would constitute the object of our analyses. After the performance of this task, learners were asked to make a second, native language description of the pictures. This second version is assumed to reflect the intended meaning, that is, what the subjects would have said if they had not been constrained by an imperfect command of the target language (Tarone 1977; Hyde 1982) and, in this way, provide native language baseline data for the analysis of CS use. The spot-the-difference task was followed by a post-interview in which the researcher asked the participants to listen to their performance of the task and to comment on the linguistic difficulties they had encountered and how they had tried to overcome them. The purpose of this interview was to elicit retrospective data to be used in the identification and analysis of CSs, since it is known from previous studies that there are always some instances of CSs which can be only identified with the speaker’s help (Poulisse et al. 1987, 1990; Tarone and Yule 1989). The performance of the spot-the-difference task was audio and video recorded. Video recording was used to analyze paralinguistic features which could represent possible examples of CSs. The interlanguage data collected was then transcribed following conversation analysis conventions of transcription (Atkinson and Heritage 1984; Edwards 1993; Lazaraton 2000) and computerised by means of the SULEC application tool.2 We were thus able to elaborate a dataset of interactional data containing almost twelve hours of transcribed interactions between dyads of English language learners and dyads of learners and English native speakers. The native language version of the task and the retrospective interview provided the necessary additional data for this data to be analyzed in search of possible CS uses. In our analysis we will be mainly using the notion of CS episode, which will be explained in greater detail in the following section. The CS episode involves actions from both the speaker and the interlocutor, and may consist of a variable and unpredictable number of turns.
2 For further information about this corpus being compiled at the University of Santiago, visit the following website
4. The analysis of the corpus data
The procedures designed for the collection of the data provided us with a raw database of complex and unplanned interactional discourse, which was later on computerised and organised as part of the SULEC corpus. This dataset forms a monitor corpus and at the moment of writing contains over 400,000 words of written and spoken learner language. Three language levels are represented: elementary, intermediate and advanced. This corpus also includes a computer tool to conduct analyses of different nature, considering both textual and personal variables. Although the spot-the-difference task imposed a certain control on the content of the data, participants had a considerable degree of freedom to decide on the specific aspects of the content they wanted to focus on, and how or when they were going to try to communicate those aspects. We intended, in this way, to make our data as close as possible to spontaneous and unplanned naturally occurring foreign language interactions. This posed, however, an added difficulty for the researchers, who had to screen learners and interlocutors’ interlanguage performance in order to identify the lexical difficulties confronted and the CSs used to solve them. We explain here how we conducted these initial analyses on the corpus. Following Tarone’s (1981) description of CSs, and taking into account the interactional approach adopted in our study, we consider that a CS is used when:
1) The speaker desires to communicate an intended meaning to the interlocutor. 2) The speaker and/or his/her interlocutor believe the lexical item desired to communicate this meaning is unavailable in their interlanguage system. 3) The speaker and/or their interlocutor choose to a) avoid – the speaker does not attempt to communicate the intended meaning – or b) try out an alternative means of expression to communicate the intended meaning.
Drawing on this working definition of CSs, we initiated the CS identification process. In order to guarantee the highest possible degree of reliability and consistency, we decided to rely on a triangulation of three different sources of evidence: problem indicators, native language baseline data and retrospective comments. Problem indicators include errors, non-native like forms, non-fluencies, such as pauses or pause fillers, hesitation phenomena, such as repetitions or false starts, and explicit statements, like I mean or how do you say...? These become highly frequent when linguistic difficulties are being confronted and they often served as evidence of instances of CSs. As already explained, the native language data elicited was assumed to reflect the learner’s originally intended message, that is, what the learners would have actually said if they had not been constrained by an incomplete command of the target language. Differences between the content of this version and that of the foreign language one were taken as possible indicators of linguistic difficulties and subsequent CS uses. Negotiating Meaning in Interaction 95
The subjects’ retrospective comments on their performance turned out to be the most fruitful and reliable source of evidence for identification purposes of CSs. They served to corroborate the results of the problem indicators and native language data analyses, to clarify certain ambiguous uses of CSs and to disclose new instances of CSs impossible to identify through external observation. We have seen that most previous research on CSs has focused almost exclusively on the analysis of the strategic utterances produced by the foreign language learner. In this study, however, we intend to analyze CSs as elements of the interaction and to describe strategic communication as a collaborative process jointly co-constructed by the speaker and the interlocutor. Therefore we need to consider CSs within a higher order, as a more encompassing unit of analysis, able to capture the interactional nature of the process involving strategic communication of meaning. In order to establish the limits of what we consider to be strategic interaction, we elaborated the concept of CS episode. The CS episode begins with the learner’s intention to communicate a message and the realization that the target language lexical items or structures desired to convey this message are not available. It ends when the speaker and the interlocutor establish a mutual agreement on the learner’s originally intended meaning or, in the case of failed communication, when they decide to abandon their attempt to agree on this meaning and to move on to the next topic in the conversation. Within this process, learners and their interlocutors may use one single CS or a combination of different CSs, and resort to both verbal and nonverbal behaviour.
5. The analysis of CS episodes
The main objective of our research is to describe and understand how learners and their interlocutors manage to communicate meaning through the use of CSs. Building on the collaborative theory of communication (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1986; Clark and Schaefer 1987, 1989; Wilkes-Gibbs 1997), we analyze here the CS episodes identified in our corpus in an attempt to describe strategic communication of meaning as a collaborative process, co-constructed by the learner and their interlocutor. We understand that communication is a common ground-building activity and that learners use CSs to present the content they want added to their interlocutors’ shared common ground. However, for communication to succeed, this content also needs to be grounded. The speaker and the addressee need to establish the mutual belief that the meaning of the CSs uttered by the speaker has been understood by the addressee well enough for the current purposes of their interaction and satisfactorily added to their shared common ground. In other words, they need to coordinate their individual actions and beliefs in order to establish a mutual agreement on the meaning of the CSs. In the following pages we analyze a set of selected CS episodes in order to illustrate how this grounding process is carried out. These episodes exemplify the different kinds of grounding techniques identified in our data. We pay attention, first, to the grounding of those CSs which were directly understood and accepted by the addressee. We then examine those CS episodes in which the initial CS uttered by the learner could not be accepted by the addressee and had to be followed by a negotiation of meaning process before the desired mutual agreement on meaning could be established. 96 Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
5.1. Acceptance grounding procedures in CS episodes
Analysing L1 non-strategic communication, Clark and Schaefer (1989) identified five different categories of grounding devices addressees may use in order to indicate their understanding and acceptance of a just uttered presentation: acknowledgments, displays, demonstrations, initiation of a relevant next contribution and continued attention (Clark and Schaefer 1989: 267). The following examples illustrate how these different kinds of grounding procedures work in foreign language strategic interaction.
5.1.1. Acknowledgements
In the first extract of interaction, CS episode 1, an advanced level learner, Raquel,3 desires to communicate the meaning rolled up to her native speaking interlocutor, Anne. She needs to present an utterance that can specify this content, but in the attempt to do so she finds that the target language lexical item she wants to use in her presentation, i.e. rolled up, is not yet part of her interlanguage system. In order to compensate for this interlanguage gap, she decides to try out an alternative means of expression. She uses an approximation CS, that is, she presents a related interlanguage term, up, which she believes shares enough semantic features with the originally intended one to be correctly interpreted by her interlocutor. She also gestures the action of rolling up a sleeve, hence supporting the oral approximation strategy with a nonverbal CS.
CS EPISODE 1: 1 Raquel: he remains with the:: tch {with the:: (0.5)4 sleeve (0.5) of 2 {A’s LH mimics rolling up her 3 right sleeve} 4 Raquel: the tshirt (1.8) up? 5 Anne: {{uhuh}} 6 {{B nods}} 7 Raquel: a::nd an:d now the man with glasses, (0.5) seems to be 8 very: happy
The CS episode enters thus the grounding phase, in which the addressee, Anne, is expected to provide some kind of evidence of her state of understanding of Raquel’s CS. Here the addressee believes she has been able to identify the content of the speaker’s
3 We used pseudonyms in order to safeguard our informants’ identities. 4 The following transcription conventions have been adopted: A stands for speaker A’s turn and B for speaker B’s turn; (0.6) pause measured in tenths of seconds; wo:rd indicates the lengthened sound or syllable, more colons prolong the stretch; (,) non-falling or continuing intonation contour; hhh, audible inhalation; .hhh audible exhalation; (xx xx) unintelligible speech, each double x represents one unintelligible word; heh, laughter; more laughter symbols indicate laughter of extended duration and, finally, ˚word˚ means soft speech, quieter than surrounding talk. Negotiating Meaning in Interaction 97 intended message and shows this by offering an asserting “uhuh” and a head nod. Within the collaborative theory framework these are considered to be acknowledgments, i.e. affirmative verbal or nonverbal signals offered by the addressee in order to assert their acceptance of the previous presentation (Clark and Schaefer 1989: 267, 280-281). For agreement on meaning to be reached, the learner also needs to accept these acknowledgments as enough evidence of the addressee’s satisfactory understanding of her intended message. In lines 7 and 8 of the transcript we can see how Raquel initiates a new contribution. By allowing the conversation to proceed to the next topic, Raquel is accepting the evidence of understanding offered by Anne, i.e. the speaker is acknowledging the addressee’s acceptance. Mutual acceptance is thus established. Raquel and Anne have built the mutual belief that what the speaker meant with her initial CS has been correctly understood by the addressee. The joint and coordinated actions of Raquel and Anne along three different conversational turns have allowed them to establish a mutual agreement on the meaning rolled up. The successful communication of the learner’s originally intended message has been collaboratively achieved. It has involved the learner’s use of a combination of oral and nonverbal CSs, and the learner’s and the interlocutor’s collaborative effort to ground the meaning of these CSs.
5.1.2. Displays and demonstrations
Studies on L1 non-strategic communication have shown that addressees sometimes repeat or paraphrase speaker’s presentations in order to provide evidence of their state of understanding (Clark and Schaefer 1989: 267). They intend thus to display or demonstrate what they have actually understood. In the analysis of strategic interaction we have found that on certain occasions interlocutors repeat learner’s CSs for grounding purposes although, more often, they attempt to paraphrase them. They try to reformulate the learner’s original CS in order to provide a more appropriate or comprehensible target language form to convey the intended message. In this process both native and non-native speaking interlocutors are sometimes able to offer the learner the target language lexical item they are struggling for. That is, they are able to infer not only the learner’s intended meaning, but also what target language expression they are trying to compensate for, and to offer it as a form of corrective feedback. In CS episode two an advanced level learner, Silvia, unable to retrieve the target language lexical item letterbox, resorts to a combination of oral and nonverbal CS. She first makes clear to her interlocutor that she has encountered a linguistic problem by an indirect appeal for assistance strategy: “I don’t know how to say it”. She then describes the meaning she is trying to communicate: “the place where you introduce the letters”. Simultaneously, she illustrates the content of her message representing with gestures the object of reference, a letterbox, and an action related to this object, i.e. the action of dropping letters in a letterbox.
CS EPISODE 2: 1 Silvia: and a:::, {i don’t know::,} how to say it, (1.2) e::h the 2 {A’s II draw a rectangle in the air} 98 Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
3 Silvia: {place where you: introduce the:: (1.2) the: letters,} 4 {A opens her RH and mimics dropping letters in a letterbox} 5 (1.8) 6 Olvido: oh! the letters! the letterbox
Olvido, another advanced learner, is able not only to understand that Silvia is trying to convey the meaning letterbox, but also to infer that she is making use of a CS in order to compensate for the lack of the target language lexical item letterbox. In her response she offers this item to the learner. With her prompting she is demonstrating her understanding of the speaker’s message and in this way she is collaborating to build an agreement on the meaning letterbox. Furthermore, she is also negotiating for a more accurate native-like expression to express this meaning. Olvido’s movement is not only an acceptance signal but also corrective feedback and new input for the learner. By allowing the conversation to continue, Silvia shows that she accepts Olvido’s prompt. This means that she recognizes letterbox as the correct target language lexical form to express her message. Agreement on both meaning and form is thus collaboratively reached, through the joint and coordinated actions of all the interlocutors taking part in the interactional exchange.
5.1.3 Initiation of a relevant next contribution and continued attention
By offering acknowledgments, displays and/or demonstrations, addressees assert their understanding and acceptance of the learner’s previous CS, but acceptance can also be presupposed. Addressees may allow the speaker to proceed with the conversation by showing continued attention or by initiating a relevant next contribution that evidences, in its structure and/or content, the correct understanding of the preceding utterance (Clark and Schaefer 1989: 267, 270-271). CS episode three is initiated by an intermediate level learner, Lola, presenting a question for her interlocutor to answer. Within this question the speaker intends to make reference to a knocker and, lacking in her interlanguage system this target language lexical item, she describes the object of reference with a circumlocution CS: “the thing to knock”. This circumlocution is accompanied by a nonverbal strategy that illustrates the oral description: gesturing the action of knocking on a door.
CS EPISODE 3: 1 Lola: you: you still watching the:, (1.2) {the:: thing to knock. 2 {B’s RH mimics knocking 3 on a door} 4 Lola: (1.0) on the door?=} 5 Carla: {=no!} because the door is completely open, 6 {A shakes her head}
The utterance by the addressee, Carla, another intermediate level learner, of a relevant and expectable answer shows that she understands what the learner intends to mean. Following Clark and Schaefer (1989: 271), we can say that Carla is providing evidence of her understanding at three different levels. She is passing up the Negotiating Meaning in Interaction 99 opportunity to ask for a repair, which is taken as an implicit acceptance of the presentation. By initiating an answer she is recognizing that a question has been asked and, through the content of this answer, she is also displaying her correct understanding of the question. The speaker, Lola, now moves on to the next topic in the conversation; this, definitely, indicates that she has accepted Carla’s response. Lola and Carla establish thus the mutual belief that the question has been satisfactorily asked and answered, and the content contributed to discourse added to their shared common ground. The communication of the meaning knocker has been collaboratively established through the speaker and the addressee’s coordination of their individual actions and beliefs.
5.2. Non-acceptance grounding procedures in CS episodes
CSs are never, by definition, the learner’s preferred means of expression to convey their messages and, quite often, they result in erroneous or non-target-like utterances that cannot always be interpreted in their literal sense. Strategic utterances require, in general, a higher level of inference on the part of the addressee than non-strategic speech. Problems of understanding are, therefore, relatively common in strategic interaction. In this section we analyze those CS episodes in which the original CS offered by the learner could not be fully understood by the addressee. As already explained, in this kind of situation addressees are expected to make known their trouble to the speaker. The analysis of our data reveals that for this purpose they make use of two different kinds of negotiation of meaning strategies: confirmation checks and clarification requests. In this way they initiate side sequences in which all the interlocutors collaborate in order to solve the comprehensibility problem encountered, refashioning the initial CS as many times as necessary until a mutual agreement on its meaning can be satisfactorily established. The following CS episodes illustrate how this process is carried out.
5.2.1. Confirmation checks
The use of confirmation checks involving a variety of contexts and speakers in foreign language interaction has been widely documented in the literature on the negotiation of meaning (Long 1981, 1983; Pica et al. 1987; Pica 1994). The analysis of CS episodes reveals that, in order to check for confirmation, addressees may repeat all or part of the learner’s preceding strategic utterance with rising intonation. However, they may also try to guess the speaker’s communicative intention and, sometimes, even the learner’s desired but unavailable target language lexical item. The next excerpt of interaction, CS episode four, illustrates a use of the confirmation check strategy. This episode is initiated by Bárbara, an advanced level learner, who, lacking the TL (target language) lexical item braces, decides to make use of a nonverbal CS. 100 Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez
CS EPISODE 4: 1 Bárbara: e::h (1.8) {he’s wearing::, hhh} e:h 2 {A’s HH point to where the braces would be on 3 her body and mimic stretching them} 4 Sean: braces? 5 Bárbara: {{yeah!}} heh} heh [heh heh] heh 6 {{A nods}} 7 Sean: [heh heh]
Her native speaking interlocutor, Sean, is able to infer that she is trying to convey the meaning braces and also to offer this target lexical item. The rising intonation reveals, however, that he is not totally confident that he has understood the learner’s intended meaning and, consequently, needs some kind of confirmation. The addressee is showing that he believes the previous presentation has not been understood well enough for current purposes; furthermore, he is making it clear that he has really understood that part of the message, and what lexical item he assumes may be the correct target language form to present the speaker’s originally intended message. Sean’s move can therefore be seen, not only as a confirmation check, but also as a form of corrective feedback. The acknowledgements provided by the learner in lines 5 and 6 of the transcript serve to confirm the correctness of the addressee’s understanding. Bárbara accepts “braces?” as evidence of understanding, which also means that she has been able to recognize the input offered by the native speaker. Accepting Sean’s contribution, she is also accepting braces as correct target language lexis to communicate her originally intended message.
5.2.2. Clarification requests
When the speaker’s strategic presentation cannot be directly understood by the addressee, they can show this by means of a clarification request, that is, an expression “designed to elicit clarification of the interlocutor’s preceding utterance(s)” (Long 1983: 137). Clarification requests imply a lower level of understanding on the part of the addressee, who is asking for an explanation of the words or expressions that have not been understood. They therefore tend to require more collaborative effort than confirmation checks. In CS episode five, an advanced level learner, Isabel, tries to compensate for the unavailability of the target language lexical item frowning with a combination of a circumlocution and a nonverbal strategy. She tries to describe the action of frowning by making reference to the related position of the eyebrows, which she depicts with an outlining nonverbal strategy.
CS EPISODE 5: 1 Isabel: the: father has a:: an upset face, (0.8) because 2 (0.5){his eyebrows are 3 {A’s II outline the shape of frowning eyebrows on 4 her face, B is not looking} Negotiating Meaning in Interaction 101
5 Mary: what do you mean (heh)upset?} 6 (0.7) 7 Isabel: he’s upset. (0.6)like,(.) that. (1.2){his eyebrows are 8 {A’s II outline 9 the shape of 10 frowning eyebrows 11 on her face ×2} 12 Isabel: going like that, (.) you know? 13 Mary: {{(heh)completely like that?} }} 14 {{B’s RI draws a downwards line in the air, B holds the 15 gesture}} 16 (0.5) 17 Isabel: {yeah, 18 {A’s II form a vi over her eyebrows} 19 Mary: {{his eyebrows are like (heh)that?=}} 20 {{B’s HH form a vi in the air}} 21 Isabel: =yeah.} (0.5) like when you’re (0.4) upset. 22 Mary: yeah
The nonverbal strategy is, however, ignored by her native speaking addressee, Mary, who, as a result, cannot understand the meaning the learner is trying to convey. She shows her non-acceptance with a clarification request: “what do you mean ‘upset’?” The learner responds to this request by expanding her initial oral CS and repeating the previous nonverbal strategy, which is now attended to by her interlocutor. Mary needs to check for confirmation on two more occasions, lines 13-15 and 19-20 of the transcript, before being totally confident of her understanding of the speaker’s CS. At the end, lines 21 and 22 of the transcript, learner and addressee accept each other’s contributions, thus building the mutual belief that the message originally intended by the speaker has been successfully understood by the addressee. Agreement on meaning is established after a relatively complex and long negotiation of the meaning process in which both learner and interlocutor collaborate to achieve the final successful communication of the message.
6. Conclusions and suggestions for further research
The CS episodes analyzed here show that strategic communication cannot be simply accounted for as the result of the learner’s utterance of a CS alone. To understand how meaning is communicated, attention always needs to be paid to the two sides of the conversational exchange. Focus on the foreign language learner’s actions, and the analysis of strategic utterances ignoring the interactional context in which they are used, can only provide a partial understanding of the process of strategic communication. Drawing on the collaborative model of communication, as described in Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs (1986), Clark and Schaefer (1987, 1989) and Wilkes-Gibbs (1997), we have been able to identify the different procedures that learners and their interlocutors use in order to solve their communicative difficulties, and to describe in a systematic way how they coordinate them in order to establish the final agreement on meaning. We have thus contributed to the interactional study of CSs at both a theoretical and a 102 Ana M. Fernández Dobao and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez practical level, by showing that strategic communication in face-to-face interaction is a collaborative activity and by outlining a model of analysis able to explain this collaboration. The results of our analyses reveal that both native and non-native speaking interlocutors, independently of their foreign language proficiency level, collaborate with both intermediate and advanced level learners by making use of the same kind of interactional procedures. This supports the global nature of our model and suggests its suitability for following research on foreign language strategic interaction. In the present study we have not carried out comparative analyses across different proficiency level groups of students or different dyad conditions. The corpus of interactional data compiled for the purposes of our study is, however, open for future research comparing CS use and collaborative work in CS episodes involving intermediate versus advanced level learners and native versus non-native speaking interlocutors. This kind of research should be able to answer some pending questions: do intermediate level learners need to make more effort than advanced level students in order to be able to establish with their interlocutors an agreement on the meaning of their CSs? To what extent does the interlocutor influence this process? Do learners need to devote more time and effort to build this agreement with other students of the same language level than with native speakers? To what extent do the type and features of the CSs used by intermediate and advanced level learners have an effect on collaboration in strategic interaction? To what extent does all this data reveal new aspects of strategic interaction in SLA which completely differ from their equivalents in the acquisition of the native language? The analyses conducted on our data also reveal that when a CS is used by the learner, the interlocutor is sometimes able to infer, not only the meaning the speaker is trying to convey but also the target language lexical item they are compensating for. In the process of trying to achieve a mutual agreement on meaning, they may respond to the strategic utterance providing this target language lexical item; that is, offering new input for the learner. This particular kind of behaviour, occurring in certain CS episodes as a direct result of a CS use, also needs to be discussed in further detail. Future research should be conducted in order to identify whether the strategic interaction context offers the necessary conditions for this new input to be internalized by the foreign language learner and, subsequently, whether CS episodes can also be seen as an occasion for language learning. In sum, the results of our study suggest that future research adopting a strictly interactional approach to the analysis of CSs can provide new and interesting insights on CS use. This kind of approach, able to provide a more comprehensive account of the complexity of the process of strategic communication of meaning, can help to clarify pending issues concerning CS use and in this way enhance our understanding of foreign language communication.
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Received 12 July 2006 Revised version received 22 January 2007
29.1 (June 2007): 107–122 ISSN 0210-6124
Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’: Susan’s Voyage into the Inner Space of ‘elsewhere’
Rula Quawas University of Jordan, Amman [email protected]
For there is never anywhere to go but in.
Doris Lessing, Epigraph to Briefing for a Descent into Hell
She must learn again to speak starting with I starting with We starting as the infant does with her own hunger and pleasure and rage.
Marge Piercy, ‘Unlearning to not Speak’
Doris Lessing draws extensively on women’s inner, private experiences and on their departure from the unsatisfactory reality of life in an alienated and alienating society. In ‘To Room Nineteen’ (1978), she depicts a woman who wearies of the role of sustainer and comforter, and having had her fill of everything, resists the culturally stultifying enclosures and constraints, discards the various garments and social roles she has worn and adopted, retreats into her own room and experiences her own ‘elsewhere’, that consciousness that she retreats to for renewal, which bespeaks a world of potential actions and possibilities for human renewal. Her self-willed death is not a defeat. Rather than regressing back to the old self and abdicating self-knowledge and self-rule, she decides to remain true to the authentic self that she has discovered. Her death is a means of resisting the crushing, culturally enforced image of woman, and of positing a new politics of identity, as a first step toward bringing into the culture new formulations, new cultural alternatives, new language, for experiences which patriarchy has forced into repression.
Key words: Alienated and alienating society; social roles and masks; inner space; feminine consciousness; realm of ‘elsewhere’; authentic self 108 Rula Quawas
Doris Lessing is a supremely gifted, enigmatic and diverse writer, never wasting a word, and equally at home presenting precisely crafted plot, incident, meditative or reflective description that suggests the workings of deep layers of the psyche, and so may powerfully engage the reader. Patrick Parrinder sums up the diversity and plurality of Lessing’s fields in her works and points out: “Readers throughout the world have followed her progress, in the last three decades, from orthodox Communism towards feminism, irrationalism, Sufism, anti-psychiatry and – most recently – cosmic mysticism” (1980: 5). Truly, Lessing’s fiction, which is inclusive, spiritual and intricately woven, embodies and displays a spacious panoply of themes specific to late-twentieth- century consciousness: race; the conflict of the generations; the psychological dimensions of male-female relationships; women and women’s experiences; politics; philosophical questions about life; the nature and planes of reality; the labyrinths of the human mind; explorations of madness; and mystical forms and modes of consciousness. It is important to remember that Lessing is a seeker who is not afraid to question the status quo and to try out new ways of communicating to her audience. An “alchemical writer”, (Kaplan and Rose 1988: 5) Lessing challenges her readers and changes them; she alters their consciousness, educates their human hearts and radicalizes their sexual and personal politics. Margaret Drabble describes her as a writer who “changes tense, tone, place, . . . skips decades, moves from the past to the future, documents, speculates, describes, with relentless urgency” (1972: 52). She characterizes Lessing as one of the few writers who insists on deciphering our world, and she also asserts that “for a writer who consistently foresees and confronts the worst, [Lessing] is neither depressing nor apparently depressed” (1972: 50). Indeed, Lessing neither escapes into “simple statements of faith” nor submits to the “pleasurable luxury of despair” (Lessing 1957: 194). As an “architect of the soul” (Lessing 1957: 190), she assists us in achieving the precarious balance between a “vision of a good which may defeat the evil” and an unflinching recognition and a deepening understanding of “the nature of the world we live in” (Lessing 1957: 190). She shows, for example, the harm done by racism, capitalism and communism in Children of Violence (1952-1969), the repercussions of male hegemony in The Golden Notebook (1962) and The Summer Before the Dark (1973), and the outcome of religious and scientific bigotry and materialistic greed in Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979-1983). While Lessing consistently refuses to align herself with any kind of movement or any traditional label or any form of ism, it is possible to see her humanistic commitment to the liberation of women and men in this world and her engagement with women’s search for identity. Not a collective, imposed identity, however, but personal identities painfully sought out and worked for through the gradual shedding of social trappings and the stripping off of masks, disguises, roles, attitudes and customs. Over the course of her fictional works, Lessing draws extensively on women’s inner, private experiences and on their departure from the unsatisfactory reality of life in an alienated and alienating society. Her heroines, like Martha Quest in Children of Violence, from the very first volume to the last, act out their lives in roles proffered them by society, roles they consciously or unconsciously assume, until through painful growth, or through the rejection of certain roles, they come to awareness of who they are. Not until the final volume when Martha is to achieve wholeness and to bring the Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ 109 fragments of her life together, does she finally realize the difference between what is essentially her true role and that which was a reflection of others. Clearly, post-structuralism has brought into question the humanist belief in the autonomous self. Post-structuralist theories of subjectivity set up a much more complex problem by recognizing the influence of economic, historical and social constructs which not only affect but also work to construct the individual. For a post-structuralist, the individual is no longer the Individual, but rather a subject constructed by cultural codes and belief systems. At this time, the question at issue for some feminist theorists attempting to formulate a theory of female subjectivity is the question of the relationship between contemporary feminist theory and the humanist tradition whose ‘crisis’ might be called post-structuralism. The question of defining the inner world of the ‘self’ has become problematic for feminist theory since the late twentieth century, and perhaps it is no coincidence that just as the feminist theorist begins to address the issue of the politics of women’s experiences and women’s identity, the male theorists argue that there is in fact no self free of cultural ideology, no autonomous identity free of social encoding. We must then ask the following questions: If the concept of the unitary self is no longer historically feasible for some theorists, is it possible then to formulate a theory of female subjectivity and female agency? How can a feminist theorist acknowledge the crisis of the theory of identity and at the same time formulate a theory for female subjectivity? What are the advantages for a feminist theorist today if she repositions herself in relation to the male discourse surrounding the theories of subjectivity which never included the issue of female subjectivity to begin with? Could repositioning ourselves in relation to these two historical discourses lead the feminist theorist to recognize that she inhabits a position that is both ‘inside’ and simultaneously ‘outside’ the male discourse? Could this recognition allow a feminist theorist to read feminist narratives in such a way that she could identify in those narratives what Elaine Showalter calls a “double-voiced discourse” of women’s writing (1985: 263), or what Teresa de Lauretis calls the “view from ‘elsewhere’”? (1987: 25). Showalter bases her theory of the double-voiced discourse of women’s writing on a cultural model of female experience which explains that there is a “complex and perpetual negotiation taking place between women’s culture and the general culture” leading to “women liv[ing] a duality – as members of the general culture and as partakers of women’s culture”; that is, women “constitute a muted group” within the “dominant (male) group” (1985: 261). Recognizing that “women live a duality”, we can begin to recognize “that women’s fiction can be read as a double-voiced discourse, containing a ‘dominant’ and a ‘muted’ story, what Gilbert and Gubar call a ‘palimpsest’” (1985: 266). If we can name and describe the double-voiced discourse of feminist narratives, we should be able to formulate a theory of female subjectivity that does not succumb to privileging the feminine and, at the same time, does not create a “generic human subject . . . which turns out to be genderless” (Alcoff 1988: 424). While Showalter talks about the double-voiced discourse of feminist narratives based on a cultural model of female experience, Teresa de Lauretis uses the language of film theory to describe what she calls the “view from elsewhere”. De Lauretis argues that the “view from elsewhere” is a “movement in and out of ideology, [a] crossing back and forth of the boundaries . . . of sexual difference(s)”, and of course she very carefully 110 Rula Quawas explains that this is not to say there is ever any movement that goes beyond or outside the socially constructed sex-gender system of a particular society (1987: 25-26). Rather, de Lauretis’s ‘elsewhere’ is the movement which the female subject constantly makes between her experience of herself as Other in the dominant discourse and her experience of herself as Subject in the muted discourse or the ‘space-off’ of her own position which is invisible but nonetheless present. Teresa de Lauretis argues that women are both inside and outside male discourse, and Elaine Showalter states that women writers are “inside two traditions simultaneously” (1985: 264). The double experience of female subjectivity addressed by these two theorists derives from the fact that historically the female subject has entered the dominant discourse as objectified ‘Woman’, as ‘Other’. However, the representation of women as Other is not simply discarded as women writers attempt to find a voice for female subjectivity. The muted discourse of female subjectivity is not a discourse in simple, direct opposition to the dominant discourse, for the problem of women’s Otherness also enters the muted discourse and becomes a complex issue of representation even for the feminist writer. The contradictory experience of female subjectivity derives not only from being “inside two traditions simultaneously”, but also from the contradictions of the muted discourse, since it is in the muted discourse that we encounter the feminist’s writer’s internalization of the historical representation of Woman. In her fiction, Lessing pushes the boundaries of realistic fiction beyond its limits and allows us to see that indeed there is no Other but rather a subject-as-other perceived and defined simply as Other. She comes to explore the dis-integration (between body and self, image and identity and woman and society) at various points in her characters’ lives and to examine the development of female identity and the characters’ struggle to come into being. As Elizabeth Wilson has observed, Lessing stands as a “Cassandra of women’s experience that was everywhere silenced, concealed and denied” (1982: 57). Lessing is an author who has spent her life writing about the subject of women and their inner voyage into the self and psyche. Her preoccupation with the dimensions of the female mind, which are not part of our shared, socially acknowledged experience: the mind’s soliloquy in solitude “rather than the psychology of personal intercourse” (Woolf 1966: 225) is surely a remarkable manifestation of her feminist tendencies. It can be said that identity – the processes of its construction and deconstruction, the roles of others in its definition, the necessity of growth through continual redefinition, its enabling and crippling properties – and the inscription of female subjectivity are certainly the most central and urgent themes of ‘To Room Nineteen’, a story which has been the site of two critical studies, one by Eva Hunter (1987) and another by Linda H. Halisky (1990). In this long story, Lessing appears to be testing the angst of identity or what might happen in the new feminist era to a woman of the old dispensation who is not only enwebbed in the image of the cultural construct of Woman but who has also accepted her traditional roles of mothering and nurturing and of what has become too often a part of the territory – the role of the betrayed wife. Susan Rawlings, who feels locked into her own cocoon of stereotypical roles and who is seen through her various collectively imposed identities – the suburban, understanding wife, the ever-available mother and good time party girl – wearies of the role of sustainer and comforter, and having experienced a psychic death and a state of Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ 111 catatonia, resists the culturally stultifying enclosures and constraints, discards the various garments and social roles she has worn and adopted, and retreats into her own room. Through her over-a-year daily visits to room nineteen in Fred’s Hotel near Paddington Station and through her own self-communings, she battles to wake up out of the web of ‘non-being’ or nothingness and begins slowly to strip away the masks of social roles and to search for her autonomous self, which is now a persistent pattern of female heroism in literature. She confronts the fact that she has been virtually a non- person all her life and comes to know that there is a core of genuine identity which can only be confronted if she chooses to live outside the cocoon of social approbation. Susan’s reclusive stay in room nineteen serves a healing, redemptive function enabling her to break down her emotional sterility and isolation and find more satisfying ways of being-becoming. Her inner voyage into the psyche delivers her into autonomy and into another region of being, perception and experience, and her retreat into the space of the ‘elsewhere’ of consciousness is a liberation, a release from the cage of labels and culturally defined roles and expectations or what one can call the represented consciousness of the collective society that would fix her identity. Lessing’s representation of Susan’s statement about herself, that suicide to sustain and preserve her autonomous self, amounts to a rejection of the classic female condition of acquiescence. Like Nora in A Doll’s House, Susan is not prepared to return to children and husband. When Matthew’s enquiries intrude on her precious solitude, she prefers to die than to capitulate to conventionality. Rather than continue to live in a radically alienated position, she chooses the only healing she can find through death. She chooses death over compromise with the crushing image of the ideal Woman, the monolithic scripted self which patriarchy has called upon women to produce and create. She remains true to herself, which she discovers and creates through her introspection, the “real” authentic self that has been in “cold storage” (Lessing 1978: 311) during her married life. As a series of fragmented commentaries, in the traditional discourse of sexual power politics, Lessing’s story engages in a recognizably feminist dialogue, speaking back to the patriarchal order in a way that resembles Luce Irigaray’s feminist critique of Freud. In ‘Speculum de l’autre femme’ (1982), Irigaray speaks back to Freud’s 1933 essay on ‘Femininity’. Indeed, in her deliberately non-theoretical way Lessing explores the same territory that contemporary feminist theorists arrived at fifty years later. Through her stories of doomed dissenting women, she exposes the interests at stake in male centered psychoanalytic constructs of the feminine, just as she explores collaborative sexual fantasies where women are perceived and perceive themselves as objects of the male gaze, which is nothing more or less than scopophilia. Not only does her fiction represent women’s attempts at intervention into patriarchal discourse, but this is itself a form of écriture féminine in her writing of the female body as, quite literally, le corps souffrant. Lessing offers alternative versions to traditional stories of patriarchy which are ignored or unheard within the fictions themselves because they are unspoken, for as she shows, her female protagonists are silenced by the very orders of that discourse. In ways that are again very similar to Irigaray’s encounter with Freud’s master text on woman, Lessing questions patriarchal pronouncements and offers a radical investigation of the social and psychological constructions of gender. She writes in suppressed female narratives which not only deconstruct ready-made definitions of Woman in favor of 112 Rula Quawas representations of individual women but also investigate into the split between Woman as object of representation and the representation of ‘women’ as historically defined speaking subjects. It is in this invention of a dialogue situation that her fictions are so innovatory and avant-garde. It is worth saying that Lessing has always been interested in space and foreign territories: from the vastness of the African veld to the female spaces of rooms, houses and flats. Her interest in psychopolitics and in mental landscapes or mind-spaces with their own invented territories is therefore not an altogether unexpected matter. The unbounded realm of psychic space encloses and encodes the ‘elsewhere’ of consciousness, which is described by Teresa de Lauretis as “the spaces in the margins of hegemonic discourses, social spaces carved in the interstices of institutions and in the chinks and cracks of the power-knowledge apparati” (1987: 25). De Lauretis was perhaps the first to develop an exploration of ‘somewhere else’ by showing us how the space of ‘elsewhere’ is not some ‘real place’ beyond or outside of discourse, but “a movement from the space represented by/in a representation, by/in a discourse, by/in a sex-gender system, to the space not represented yet implied (unseen) in them” (1987: 26). She attests that it is not that ‘elsewhere’ does not exist, but that it is as yet unrecognized:
For, if that view is nowhere to be seen, not given in a single text, not recognizable as a representation, it is not that we – feminists, women – have not yet succeeded in producing it. It is, rather, that what we have produced is not recognizable, precisely, as a representation. For that ‘elsewhere’ is not some mythic distant past or some utopian future history: it is the elsewhere of discourse here and now, the blind spots, or the space- off, of its representations. (1987: 25)
We can find in the ‘elsewhere’, to literalize a metaphor of Adrienne Rich, “a whole new psychic geography to be explored” (1971: 35). In ‘To Room Nineteen’, Susan enters the ‘elsewhere’ of consciousness, the primary place of identity and enunciation of female experience and subjectivity rather than the socially produced ego with all its negative defenses; it is a psychological state of being in that it provides an alternate ground for subjectivity, and it is a mode of consciousness that helps women to enter an imaginable, yet inhabitable, universe where they can review their lives and seek self- knowledge and from that vantage point come to understand the wider world. Lessing makes it clear that Susan’s quest involves ontological space, who she is rather than where she is. She strongly suggests that in order to survive we must find the presence of ‘elsewhere’ by exploring human consciousness beyond the cultural constructs of gender, class and race. This is exactly what Susan does. As she becomes someone else, she comes to respond to the change by placing herself somewhere else. Betrayed by her husband, she cannot place herself among her family and friends. She resorts to a trick of her own imagination, recreating and replacing herself. In this trick, she opens a door onto ‘somewhere else’, that consciousness that she retreats to for renewal, which bespeaks a world of potential actions and possibilities for human renewal, a world that is considerably more diverse than our present, dulling reality. Susan’s ability to be elsewhere gives her voice a formal power in the story even as she becomes most socially powerless. Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ 113
Recently, a questioning of the agreement about reality which we call reality or about one special type of consciousness has become fairly widely acceptable. Individual psychologists like R. D. Laing and Robert Ornstein have shared similar views on the nature of human consciousness. They maintain that beyond our culture’s ‘normal’ consciousness, which they call egoic or rational-analytic, there is a different mode of cognition, which they term non-egoic or intuitive.1 For them, the rational or egoic mode, which dominates our civilization, is characterized by the sense of “a consistent identity, a me-here over against a you-there, within a framework of certain ground structures of space and time” (Laing 1967: 113). It is “outward-oriented, involving action for the most part. It seems to have been evolved for the primary purpose of ensuring individual biological survival, for which active manipulation of discrete objects, . . . separation of oneself from others, are very useful” (Ornstein 1972: 17) and its essence are “the concepts of causality, linear time and language” (Ornstein 1972: 46). In contrast to this, the ‘other’ mode of consciousness is receptive rather than active; it reveals “patterned wholes” rather than the linear sequences of causally connected events; it does not operate in terms of linear time and it is essentially non-verbal (Ornstein 1972: 17). Clearly, in her attempt to locate the gap between the culturally produced norm Woman and the specific historical subject, Lessing goes beyond our culture’s ‘normal’ consciousness and locates ‘elsewhere’ for women in order to explore the ‘other’ mode of consciousness that points to the place of female subjectivity. In response to the traditional social dictates of Woman, Susan turns away from the social prescriptions for her or from her egoic identity and embarks on a journey toward self-discovery, for the first time leaving her family and marriage – her identity – behind. She begins to ask Woolf’s questions: “Who am I?” and “How can I tell the truth about myself, my body?” In her internal quest for authentic selfhood, she finds a gap between the dominant cultural ideology or her social role as Woman and her own lived experience as a woman. She slips into de Lauretis’s “chinks and cracks”, into the other consciousness which she finally recognizes the culture would consider mad. Because the masculinist point of view is by definition the rational and intelligible one, anyone occupying the cultural position of Woman and expressing another point of view is to utter truths by convention so unimaginable that they are likely to be dismissed as gibberish, mere symptoms of hysteria. Although Susan tries to search for words to express the place of ‘elsewhere’ and to claim it as a foundation for a new identity, a provisional definition of a self authorized and validated by the historical female in the moment, as opposed to a monolith, ‘universal’ self manufactured and imposed by the phallogocentric society, she is unable to articulate her subjectivity from this place and to integrate it in any significant way with her culturally produced self and identity. She, however, becomes absorbed in the other reality and becomes conscious of the collapse and disintegration of her egoic identity (culturally produced ego) which to her is now like a dress off the rack which she can choose to put on or not. Understandably, Susan cannot numb herself and live a lie for the rest of her life, and she cannot find a compromise she can accept with the figure Woman. Her greatest forte is not only her dis(un)covering of the deep
1 Laing uses the terms egoic and non-egoic, while Ornstein speaks of the rational-analytic and the intuitive modes of consciousness. 114 Rula Quawas ramifications of the split between Woman and women, but also her passionate desire for freedom, self-determination and self-satisfaction. Rather than be annihilated, Susan annihilates herself. She moves progressively away from the cultural and social trappings that have defined her life and enters the realm of death willingly. On the surface, Susan has had a good life: a successful marriage by most standards; the successful raising of four children; and friends. It is a life characterized by intelligence, humanity and love, which are usually considered the highest attributes of mankind, but in the story they are displayed as superficial and ineffective. Apparently happy, married to Matthew who works on a newspaper, and mother of four children, Susan seems to have no aspirations beyond the roles of wife and mother she more than competently fulfills. She has lived for twelve years as a wife and mother; this is how she defines herself, how she feels she must define herself, how everyone else defines her. One comes to understand why one day after twelve years of contended yet complacent marriage, Susan feels pangs of “bitterness” (309) and is “more and more often threatened by emptiness” (311). The situation that causes her severe psychic disruption is her husband’s infidelity. For ten years, Susan, as Woman, has functioned to bolster her husband’s sense of himself, as the looking glass of A Room of One’s Own “possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size” (1929: 35). He, in the meantime, dallies in sexual liaisons but with a discretion based on guilt; in him fidelity is hypocrisy and self–indulgence. Lessing portrays Susan’s husband as a dependent baby, demanding emotional support from others while remaining blissfully ignorant of those others’ emotional needs. Even though Susan tries to deny the painfulness of her husband’s betrayal and to treat it as “banal”, “not important”, and resort to her props of “education . . . discrimination . . . and judgment”, (308) she is left feeling “irritable”, “bad-tempered, annoyed”; there is, she finds, “something unassimilable” about Matthew’s infidelity and confession (309). She cautiously allows herself “understanding” but not “forgiveness”, since forgiveness belongs to the “savage old world” of wickedness and brute passion (308). But her misguided behavior wears her out and her traditional feminine virtues of endurance, renunciation and compassion which uphold the patriarchal status quo weigh her down. As time goes by, Susan begins to feel confined to her home in Richmond, burdened by intense feelings of hurt, anger and jealousy. Having denied validity and expression to her intensely felt emotions and having turned solely to her reason, for her marriage was “grounded in intelligence” (305), Susan begins to feel “arid”, living in a state of exilic consciousness (borrowing the term from Ibrahim Huma 1996) which in this case involves an unfixed identity, and to her everything seems “absurd” (309). She capitulates to housewifery, and de facto if not de jure matrimony, and submerges her subjectivity in the patriarchal paradigm. Susan’s effacement into the household as general factotum, child superintendent, counselor and sometime sexual counselor of the male head of the house exemplify the transpersonal selves that Susan lives and leads. To accept such a role, as Simone de Beauvoir and the existentialists have pointed out is to accept being an object; it is to deny the subject-self that is autonomous and creative. The denial of the subject-self necessarily means a fundamental falseness. It means engaging in a perpetual lie. But Susan must move beyond these socially determined, limiting personas into a sense of self which is both wholly her own and thoroughly disconnected from everything she Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ 115 believes unique to Susan Rawlings. She must separate what she really feels from the socially fabricated and break the vicious circle of convention that defines and determines women and reinforces the conventional notion that a wife and mother should be self-sacrificing, dutiful, good, kind and above all, calm and controlled. She must assert herself and stop assuming the self-sacrificing role which she had previously felt she must assume, even when she herself had felt oppressed by it. Yet, for now, all Susan knows is that she is trapped in her own house and feels like a long-term prisoner, living out a “prison sentence” (316).2 Her sense of identity has been lost in the Sturm and Drang of her marriage and her life has been a masquerade and a performance to gratify other people. She is constantly tethered to her family, weighed down by their demands and the “pressure of time” (315). When she takes a holiday alone, she desires to move beyond the isolated world of her familial duty, reinforcing her individual network of identity, but as she prowls “over wild country” (322), she begins to see how her job as the hub of the family or the Angel in the House has occupied and consumed ten years of her life. After all, she has been at everybody’s beck and call, always available, always the supplier of love and food, always held to her “duty like a leash” (322). Susan herself acknowledges that she is no longer sure that the “marriage, four children, big house, garden, charwoman, friends, cars . . . and this thing, this entity” (307) revolve around her. She feels that she is no longer herself, that she is no longer anybody. The “essential Susan”, she feels, is “in abeyance, as if she were in cold storage” (311). Boredom and weariness are made tolerable only by her belief that “in another decade, she would turn herself back into being a woman with a life of her own” (311), but after having looked forward to when “the children would be ‘off her hand’” (311), Susan is unable to go back to her earlier self. She feels tense and jittery, busying herself with unnecessary work. She used to feel that her soul belonged to her children, conceding however that her children “can’t be a center of life and a reason for being” (306). Now she is alienated from them that she no longer regards them as her own. She experiences a “human cage of loving limbs” when her twins hug her and feels that her husband is more absent to her than ever (318). Surely, Lessing refuses the conventional wisdom that marriage and family will remain the automatic equivalent of feminine self-fulfillment. Lessing wants us to see Susan not only as a woman who has been caught up in the enmeshing web of the social roles of her community but also as a woman who tries to step out of a constrictive world into another world of her own making. She uses the third-person narrator, who could be described as omniscient, using panoramic sweeps as well as the detailed presentation of specific scenes, and switching freely from summary to direct speech, from objective description to the subjective perspective of the protagonist, from mere factual reporting to analysis and commentary. The text not only draws attention to Susan’s stress and distress, to her loss of faith in love, to her self- sacrifice and self-denial, to her detachment from her own feelings and self-division, to her social roles and inner conflict, but it also invokes an atmosphere of protest against the world as it is and depicts the creation of an alternative reality that is unacknowledged in our world. As Susan sees herself entombed in her own world, she contemplates what she is feeling, what she is becoming, what she wants. Her double-
2 Elaine Showalter (1977) raises the question of the “family home . . . as a prison house” (168). 116 Rula Quawas voiced discourse, represented by her interior and intervening discourse and by her asides, hedges and negations, begins to question the validity of the words that Susan speaks and those she hears in conversations around her. Remembering the first time she had sex with Matthew, Susan describes their “delight” parenthetically as “a very long shadow at sundown”, then muses, “(why did I say sundown?) (309). “And that word bondage – why had she used it?” she wonders when contemplating her good marriage, the house, the children (317). Susan’s italicized musings throughout the story are significant, for they hint at or suggest a growing newly found self that attempts to find an alternative reality, a new way of fitting into the world. Even though Susan’s bracketed or parenthetical thoughts are placed on a retrospective level, they themselves maintain the immediacy of the present tense, and thus the reader retains the impression of having direct access to them. Certainly, Lessing is convinced that the only hope for securing our life does not only lie in unspeaking the already spoken and unlearning the already learned but also in the individual’s journey ‘back and in’ to his self. Lessing’s critique of the cult of domesticity is a forceful attack on the virtues of the Victorian ideal of womanhood which has been dubbed the Angel in the House by feminist writers and literary critics. Virginia Woolf, in fact, appropriated the term for feminism in a speech, in 1931, before the National Society for Women’s Service. Speaking on professions for women, Woolf blamed her inertia on a creature whom she named “a villain”, who was, she said, not a man, but a woman. She was a “phantom”, an “ideal”, who dictated to Woolf that she be, always charming, available, ready to sacrifice herself to the demands of others. Woolf’s response was to get rid of her:
I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself. . . . I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. (1979: 59)
Interestingly enough, in 1963, Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique, also examined the figure of the Angel of the House and the behavior it demands. Using her forceful voice, she attacked, with pity and anger, the ideals of the cult of domesticity. She showed the way American society, along with its consumerist tendencies, seduced women into tailoring their inner and outer reality to a fluffy image of femininity. The happy suburban wife was, according to Friedan, miserable, frequently neurotic, condemned to live an emotional and intellectual death. From a loving wife who feels bound to her family, content with being nothing except the roles that went with being Mrs. Matthew Rawlings, Susan gradually changes into a woman imbued with a sense of spiritual sterility and despair. She sits in the garden and confronts what she calls the “enemy” (312) who represents, quite simply, her introjected, conditioned weaknesses and her strongest feelings or impulses of restlessness, rage, irritation and resentment that she projects or externalizes. An intelligent and introspective woman, Susan is intellectually and emotionally aware of her crisis and feels depressed. She begins to look on her mothering skills and her years of household management as a form of dementia rather than a virtue and becomes increasingly aware of something in herself that has remained unfulfilled. Manifestations of hollowness in herself drive her to the point where she can no longer stay in her Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ 117 house, having lost touch with her inner self. Instead, she rents a cheap room in Fred’s hotel, and, in solitude and isolation, through self-analysis and fertile meditation, she confronts her ‘essential’ self, a daring act which shows an evidence of the subtext to the scripted self. Like Virginia Woolf, Lessing believes that a woman, particularly at middle-age, must find a room of her own and spend some time discovering who she really is. No longer mistress, wife, mother, organizer, Susan is free of the restraints of being Mrs. Rawlings. For the first time in her life, she negates her negations and escapes her social role and the strangling formalities that gird her spirit by changing her name and paying off the hotel owner. Since names both identify and constitute identity, the act of giving up the name under which one has known and been known is in many respects an act of consenting to become someone else. Now, Susan has the time for self-reflection; she is alone and moves beyond what is expected of her, the prepackaged set of Woman. She retreats from outward-oriented activity, through abandoning herself to receptivity and discovers that she has been playing a role, wearing a set of masks that had received her family’s approval but limiting her life and existence and inspiring only ennui. She comes to break out of the cultural construct Woman and to grow out of the nannying role, whether in relation to her own children or to her husband. She sheds the ideology of Otherness she has internalized and forges her identity in terms of her own needs, experiences and perceptions. She engages an au pair girl who takes over this role and experiences the collapse of the social mask, the role, the persona. Lessing makes it clear that Susan’s marriage is an episode in her continuous growth rather than the raison d’etre for her entire existence. Buildings and rooms have a special meaning for Doris Lessing. They are a running motif in her work as she, in 1980, acknowledged to Minda Bikman, an interviewer. Anna Wulf’s room in The Golden Notebook, the various rooms and houses Martha Quest inhabits in Children of Violence, Kate Brown’s hotel room and Maureen’s flat in The Summer Before the Dark, the rooms behind the wall in Memoirs of a Survivor – all these offer women an opportunity and a space to explore possibilities for growth within and beyond the perimeters of their social identity. In ‘To Room Nineteen’, Susan’s self- imposed, utterly necessary exile from her home and family and former identity offers her time and space to review her life and to explore what it is like not to be a Woman or a self-in-society. By refusing to obey assigned roles and rules, Susan is free of her family’s hold, free of the will to please, free of appearances, free of an identity based on self-abnegation. Her struggle against the mental entrapment of traditional female roles and her desire to satisfy her own needs, to minimalize her parental obligations and to seek her freedom, independence and old self are a lucid rebellion against adherence to defined orders, to socialized sanity. Room nineteen gives Susan a reassuring presence. In it, she finds peace and knows that it is here she belongs:
What did she do in the room? Why, nothing at all. From the chair, when it had rested her, she went to the window, stretching her arms, smiling, treasuring her anonymity, to look out. . . . She was Mrs. Jones, and she was alone, and she had no past and no future. . . . And she leaned on the sill, and looked into the street, loving the men and women who passed, because she did not know them. She looked at the downtrodden buildings over 118 Rula Quawas
the street, and at the sky, wet and dingy, or sometimes blue, and she felt she had never seen buildings or sky before. And then she went back to the chair, empty, her mind a blank. . . . For the most part, she wool-gathered – what word is there for it? – brooded, wandered, simply went dark, feeling emptiness run deliciously through her veins like the movement of her blood. (327)
For Lessing, a room can be a sanctuary or a place of love and visionary experience or the site of a mystical journey as well as a prison. For Susan, room nineteen, unlike the spare room in her house which represents limits, acts as a buffer, a place of refuge against the traditional roles of wifehood and motherhood that are characterized by Judith Gardiner as in themselves “existentially dead and death-creating” (1975: 286). It is the symbol of Susan’s nay-saying to the rational, death-creating patterns that seek to contain her. Susan permeates the room with a creative force and endows it with a redemptive, salvational meaning not only through the power of her acuity and honesty but also through the power of imagination, of ‘wool-gathering’, that turns her microcosmic space into a macrocosm that flows with human potential. Despite the appearance of stalemate, Susan’s inner life becomes as lively as ever. She sits quietly in a meditative position and engages in a reciprocal process of inner questioning, outward activity and inner growth. She spends some time with her thoughts and begins to see that wifehood and motherhood are obsessive fussing rather than a loving concern. She realizes that there is a part of herself that she wanted to nurture but which had been neglected in favor of the social self. As Susan wool-gathers or reflects, she feels she has found her subject-self, an existence behind the surface that others see, “Here I am”, she thinks, “after all these years” (327). Susan begins to achieve freedom, to break from her prescribed role and to establish her core and identity apart from that decreed by others. Since Lessing wishes us to see that someone exists behind the masks, she comes to portray an activity in which the ego is orderer rather than ordered. Susan is much closer to understanding and accepting the creation and emergence of her potential self than she has ever been and is free to reshape her life instead of being shaped herself. It is important to remember that Susan’s most important experience, wool- gathering, is non-verbal, and the narrator never explains it except that in some way it represents the shedding of the baggage that Susan once saw as her life and the rebirth of her authentic self, a self which has particularized itself against the crowd, which has realized itself. In the story wool-gathering comes to represent the ‘elsewhere’ of female experience, these feelings which are not accounted for or recognized by masculine culture, which are often forbidden, and this takes up a shadowy residence in the unconscious. Its fluffy presence also suggests Kristeva’s semiotic, not conveying abstract, absent, carefully controlled meaning, but a physical, nurturing, accepting presence.3 In a non-verbal way, wool-gathering becomes the home of Susan’s true self, the space of her own authority, prompting the possibility of self-authentication or self- realization toward welding wholeness, a wholeness in which the oppositions between body and soul, nature and spirit or freedom, rationality and emotions are overcome.
3 The term semiotics occurs in the work of Julia Kristeva to describe a disposition which is contrasted to the symbolic order identified by Lacan. Kristeva sees the semiotic as a means of undermining the phallocentricism of the symbolic order. Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ 119
More importantly, the narration links Susan’s sense of authenticity with her experience of observing with her appraising eye a stream of unknown people and merging with them in her mind. Her independent observing eye sees the whole push and thrust and development of the world outside and watches other people in a turmoil of living. The emptiness of peace, which is the state of Susan the observer, makes room for the possibility of new mental constructs of wifehood and motherhood that will be more comprehensive and becomes an invitation to potentially healing new insights: about the right to have greater individual freedom and self-development, about the need to forge a healthy self and social world, about the need for a new organization of consciousness, about the need to speak with an authentic female subjectivity and to communicate it to other women. After Susan finds her ‘real’ self, the Other Susan as speaking subject or the consciousness that is ‘elsewhere’, she begins to speak to Matthew from this new self. When Susan speaks to Matthew from her new self, it is usually with Susan in front of a mirror brushing her hair, quite a provocative position from a psychoanalytic perspective. In the mirror is the self which Matthew recognizes as the ‘real’ Susan, the prim and proper image of Woman. In the chair looking into the mirror is the Other Susan, who Susan begins to identify more and more as her ‘real’ self. As an observer of her reflection in the mirror, Susan has the authority of the observer over the observed, of the self-subject over the object-self. She is more the watcher and the observer of herself than she used to be, more the subject than the commodified object she has been. Patricia Meyer Spacks explains how the mirror interested both Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir as “metaphor and reality . . . a key to the feminine condition” (1975: 23). The mirror confronts Susan with the split between what she is and feels and the façade she presents to the world. Susan perceives herself dually: Matthew’s wife or her fictive other and her authentic self. For the first time in her life, Susan learns to heed her own perception of herself or the alternative self she has created instead of the internalized patriarchal portrait of femininity that usually dominates the mirror, and she begins to reinscribe her own subject position, to rewrite her reality, and to grow stronger. Lessing suggests the strength to be gained when a woman turns to her own self-portrait or new perspective of self instead of the self within the masculinist framework of femininity. Lessing takes a conventional image of woman’s enclosure and transforms it into an image of empowerment. Room nineteen not only suggests a place that is security and a space that is freedom, but it also represents a symbol of growth and fulfillment rather than a demeaning emblem of a woman’s place. Over the course of her sojourn in the hotel room, Susan grows and develops her unique (and uniquely female) self, which she significantly regards as one of her most important possessions. But before Susan has the opportunity to close the gap once and for all between Susan the wife and mother and the Other Susan, she is interrupted. Her tremendous freedom in being anonymous and free is broken, her connection with ‘elsewhere’ is severed, and her quest for the Other Susan is thwarted when Matthew, believing her to have a lover, has her followed and she is no longer free. After her hideaway is discovered, Susan’s peace of mind in the room gives way to a sense of imprisonment, for the room which was once a learning- ground that has fostered her self-discovery now yields only a deep sense of ennui and resentment. Lessing does not underestimate Susan’s pain and difficulty in dealing with 120 Rula Quawas her dilemma and her sense of self. Thereafter, “several times she returned to the room, to look for herself there, but instead she found the unnamed spirit of restlessness, prickling fevered hunger for movement, an irritable self-consciousness . . .” (330). Susan feels like “a moth dashing itself against a window-pane, sliding to the bottom, fluttering off on broken wings, then crashing into the invisible barrier again” (330). She also feels exposed like “a snail pecked out of its shell and trying to squirm back” (330). Confronted with the threat of non-being, Susan feels it is her responsibility to protect her authentic self and deliver it to total emancipation. She must assert a sense of self that must be met and remain in the process of becoming; to remain static would be to return to her previous life and externally imposed sense of self, defined conventionally and unequivocally. It is not surprising then that Susan stays in motion and moves toward a conscious and meaningful choice. She chooses to die rather than lose herself and compromise her reality; she chooses personal truth and personal awakening rather than renunciation and despair. Her final emotions as she drifts off into the “river”, which is an alternative to an imprisoning rigidity, is contentment and tranquility (336). Susan’s self-willed death is not a defeat. Rather than regressing back to the old self and abdicating self-knowledge and self-rule, Susan decides to remain true to herself – the self she has discovered and created through her wool-gathering or introspection. Significantly, Susan has begun the process of staking out a new place of female enunciation for female subjectivity. She has not only rejected the demands of the image of Woman created by patriarchal culture, but she has also moved beyond her culturally produced sense of self. When the real world becomes uninhabitable, she experiences her own ‘elsewhere’, that consciousness that she has retreated to for renewal, and makes the realm of ‘elsewhere’ inhabitable. Her daring, conscious voyage into the ‘elsewhere’ of consciousness, which is certainly a journey of self-discovery, opens regions beyond culturally prescribed identities and helps Susan to pursue and find what truly counts, which is her true self. As Susan digs under layers of encrustation of stereotypical roles, habit and custom, and as she searches through the emotional debris of a twelve-year marriage to reassess who she is and what she has accomplished for herself, she comes to question rigid social patterns and personal fears, to slay the demons, to create an identifiable self beyond the roles assigned to her by her husband, children and family, and to seek self-rule. Susan’s death is a means of resisting her culturally conditional roles and the crushing, culturally enforced image of Woman, and of positing a new politics of identity, as a first step toward bringing into the culture new formulations, new cultural alternatives, new language, for experiences which patriarchy has forced into repression. Susan has reached psychic maturity, and her death is a transcendence, a liberating form of self-assertion. She has finally dropped her mask, her fictive other and, rather than being limited to her own social and cultural alienation, she chooses to die in an attempt at completion, at restituting her identity. It is true that Susan does not use her voice or mode of discourse to express values that must be brought before the reader in dialogic exchange, but her rejuvenating efforts to open the gate toward the articulation of authentic female subjectivity is felt by the readers who come to deliver Susan’s pregnant silence into what we can call everywhere else and to release feminine consciousness from the bonding forces of society. Susan’s silence, one might add, is not a silence of absence, Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ 121 of emptiness or of passivity. It is a silence of presence and fullness. Feminine silence is described as absence because one notices only the surface of a gesture, a look or a text, and fails to attend to the language of the interior. One must listen very closely for both the richness and the barrenness of silence, since what appears to be a whisper may be the echo of a laugh, or a scream transformed. As Kate Millet has perceptively maintained, it is essential to alter “the socialization process of temperament and role differentiation” (1970: 178), and to reshape the most intolerable areas of “basic attitudes, values, [and] emotions” in order to change the formal superstructure (177). Also, feminist critics such as Chris Weedon (1987) and Patricia Waugh (1989) have argued that the female subject is not a static object but rather is always ‘in process’ as it continuously moves toward a ‘becoming-other’ than itself. As a lord of consciousness and a prophet of a possible new world, Lessing dismantles the traditional notions of Woman and moves toward the delineation of a new female subject that appeals to our freedom that we should “become what we are capable of being” (Lessing 1957: 17). Women readers of Lessing are faced with the choice of being collaborative critics enjoying the pleasures and pains of recognition, or of being resisting readers or – a third possibility – of oscillating between these two positions as Judith Gardiner suggests in her essay ‘On Female Identity and Writing by Women’ (1982). But since Lessing has decided that fiction could be a medium for expressing profound truths, perhaps we should listen to what she is saying before it is too late.
Works Cited
Alcoff, Linda 1988: ‘Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity of Crisis in Feminist Theory’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3: 405-36. Beauvoir, Simone de 1961 (1949): The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Bantam. Bikman, Minda 1980: ‘A Talk with Doris Lessing’. New York Times Book Review 30 March: 24-7. De Lauretis, Teresa 1987: Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Drabble, Margaret 1972: ‘Doris Lessing: Cassandra in a World under Siege’. Ramparts 10.8: 50-4. Friedan, Betty 1997 (1963): The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton. Gardiner, Judith K. 1975: ‘“A Sorrowful Woman”: Gail Godwin’s Feminist Parable’. Studies in Short Fiction 12.3: 286-90. ––––– 1982: ‘On Female Identity and Writing by Women’. Elizabeth Abel, ed. Writing and Sexual Difference. Brighton: Harvester. 177-92. Halisky, Linda H. 1990: ‘Redeeming the Irrational: The Inexplicable Heroines of “A Sorrowful Woman” and “To Room Nineteen”’. Studies in Short Fiction 27:1: 45-54. Huma, Ibrahim 1996: Bessie Head: Subversive Identities in Exile. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia. Hunter, Eva 1987: ‘Madness in Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen”’. English Studies in Africa 30:2: 91-104. Irigaray, Luce 1982: ‘Speculum de l’autre femme’. Jane Gallop, ed. The Daughter’s Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Ithaca: Cornell UP. 56-79. Kaplan, Carey and Ellen Rose 1988: Doris Lessing: The Alchemy of Survival. Athens: Ohio UP. Kristeva, Julia 1986: The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia UP. Laing, Ronald D. 1967: The Politics of Experience. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Lessing, Doris 1978: Collected Stories. Vol. 1. London: Jonathan Cape. 305-36. 122 Rula Quawas
––––– 1957: ‘The Small Personal Voice’. Declaration. Ed. Tom Maschler.London: MacGibbon and Kee. 187-01. ––––– 1952-1969: Children of Violence. Five Volumes: Vol. I: Martha Quest. London: Flamingo, 1952; Vol. II: A Proper Marriage. London: Flamingo, 1954; Vol. III: A Ripple from the Storm. London: Flamingo, 1958; Vol. IV: Landlocked. London: Grafton Books, 1965; Vol. V: The Four-Gated City. London: Grafton Books, 1969. ––––– 1962: The Golden Notebook. London: Grafton Books. ––––– 1973: The Summer Before the Dark. London: Grafton Books. ––––– 1975: Memoirs of a Survivor. New York: Knopf. ––––– 1979-1983: Canopus in Argos: Archives. New York: Knopf. Millet, Kate 1970: Sexual Politics. Garden City: Doubleday. Ornstein, Robert E. 1972: The Psychology of Consciousness. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. Parrinder, Patrick 1980: ‘Descents into Hell: The Later Novels of Doris Lessing’. Critical Quarterly 22.4: 5-25. Rich, Adrienne 1979: ‘When We Dead Awaken: Rewriting as Revision (1971)’. On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978. New York: Norton. 33-50. Showalter, Elaine 1977: A Literature of Their Own. British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton UP. ––––– 1985. ‘Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness’. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New York: Pantheon Books. Spacks, Patricia Meyer 1975: The Female Imagination. New York: Knopf. Waugh, Patricia 1989: Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern. New York: Routledge. Weedon, Chris 1987: Feminist Practice and Poststructuarlist Theory. New York: Basil Blackwell. Wilson, Elizabeth 1982: ‘Yesterday’s Heroines: On Rereading Lessing and de Beauvoir’. Notebooks/Memoirs/Archives. Ed. Jenny Taylor. London: Routledge. 57-74. Woolf, Virginia 1957 (1929): A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt. ––––– 1966: ‘The Narrow Bridge of Art’. Collected Essays II. New York: Harcourt. 218-29. ––––– 1979: ‘Professions for Women’. Virginia Woolf, Women and Writing. Ed. Michele Barrett. New York: Harcourt. 57-63.
Received 20 March 2006 Revised version received 11 February 2007
29.1 (June 2007): 123–140 ISSN 0210-6124
“What Good Newes from Barbary?” Nascent Capitalism, North-Africans and the Construction of English Identity in Thomas Heywood’s Drama
Jesús López-Peláez Casellas Universidad de Jaén [email protected]
During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries England experienced an epistemological transition that entailed the construction of a still precarious identity. This process involved the adoption of a new economy (nascent capitalism) and the shaping of a proto- racialist project of exclusion, which was mainly addressed towards the Muslim Other. In this paper I will show how a corpus of four plays by the Elizabethan playwright Thomas Heywood problematizes this project by simultaneously reinforcing and interrogating it: I will suggest that whereas the new economy is apparently privileged and celebrated and Islam still appears to be approached without racialist assumptions, the plays develop some strategies that nostalgically question nascent capitalism and its consequences, as much as they start to display a process of racial stereotyping towards North-African Muslims. The four plays studied are Parts 1 and 2 of The Fair Maid of the West (ca. 1599-1603 and 1625-1630) and If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody (Parts 1 and 2) (ca. 1604 and ca. 1605). In order to explore these texts, and to define how the plays engage with these processes, I will employ Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotic notion of the semiosphere.
Keywords: Thomas Heywood, drama, Early Modern period, Islam, economy, capitalism, race, semiosphere, Lotman, The Fair Maid of the West, If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody
In his 1999 influential study on the relations between England and Islam in the Early Modern period, Nabil Matar explains how Muslims were not, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the object of English colonial depredation simply because, far from being able to engage in the military conquest of Muslim countries, Britons feared and admired Islam as an advanced community from economic, social and military perspectives (Matar 1999: 5-12, 1998: 7-35).1 Indeed, England did not become a colonial
1 Since in the Early Modern period Muslims and Islam were, in Edward Said’s terms, the chief Others on English soil (Matar 1999: 3-5), they were unambiguously associated with two major locations: North Africa (Barbary, mainly) and the Ottoman Empire (Turks). Side by side with the terms Muslim and Black there appeared the derogatory term Moor, as a concept which, itself, vaguely included a variety of types and origins: from the Blackamoors of the Sub-Saharan regions, through North-African (black or not) Muslims from Barbary (modern day Morocco, 124 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas power until the late seventeenth century: the first English colony in America (the settlement of Virginia) was only created after Elizabeth’s death, in 1607, and was slowly followed by other precarious settlements throughout the century, to the extent that English colonial possessions well into the seventeenth century were still considerably inferior to those of Spain. In relation to North-African Muslims Queen Elizabeth did try to establish relations with Moroccan rulers, but of a commercial and military, not a colonial, nature: first with King Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik (1576-78), and later with his successor (and last Saadi monarch before the division of the kingdom) King Ahmad I al-Mansur (1578-1603) (Bak 1996: 197-210; Matar 1998: 3-20, 1999: 7-12).2 Under both kings Elizabeth sent as many as four embassies to Morocco: both the London merchant Edmund Hogan and, later, ambassador De Cardenas explored possible military alliances against Spain but, above all, they tried to negotiate beneficial trade agreements for English factors working in North Africa, in a clear economic move intended to promote commercial agreements between equals. At the climax of these relations a Moroccan embassy arrived in England in 1600, and stayed in London (significantly by the Royal Exchange) for more than five months (D’Amico 1991: 33-38; Matar 1999: 10-12). Nabil Matar has brilliantly written about the symbolic significance of the portrait of the Moroccan ambassador painted during this visit: the Muslim Other defiantly posing at the heart of the European metropolis, an image which Matar contrasts with the contemporary painting of the Flemish artist van der Straet. The latter portrays Vespucci, the European subject, gazing at a naked Indian (an object of consumption) in the colony, i.e. America, as an example of the different status that Muslims and Indians enjoyed for the English (Matar 1999: 11-2). The fact that England did not envisage the possibility of colonising Morocco necessarily led to other, mainly commercial, kinds of relations, which were fostered by the fact that Moroccan Muslims were not major enemies of England (Bak 1996: 199-205) and both Moroccans and English had Spain as a major military rival and commercial competitor (Bak 1996: 216; Dimmock 2005: 3). Basically, what England lacked in order to be able to conceive of the geography of Islam as a colonisable location was technological superiority and a system of economic organization that we may today identify as capitalism, and to a great extent the former depended on the latter. There is not a final agreement about when capitalism actually appeared in England, and even Karl Marx himself referred in an ambiguous manner to the origins of capitalism in England and elsewhere. In Capital he firstly mentioned the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the period when something we might call nascent capitalism emerged in England only to acknowledge, a few pages later, that and parts of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya), to tawny Moors from North Africa. On its part, the ‘Turke’, although Muslim, was not usually associated with blackness or with Africa. See Hall 1995: 3-24; Bak 1996: 197-212; Vitkus 1999: 7-12. On the specific treatment of black-skinned people, see Tokson 1982: 4-14. On the representation of Turks, and its role in Early Modern English society and politics, see Dimmock 2005. For a detailed survey of plays of specifically Ottoman content, see McJannet 1996. 2 The English did attempt to colonize North Africa, but since they lacked the necessary military and economic resources they failed conspicuously: the only post they had been able to occupy, Tangier, had to be abandoned in a rather unheroic manner in 1684, two years after they had arrived (Matar 1999: 15-16). “What Good Newes from Barbary?” 125 what appeared then was only the prelude to the revolution that laid the foundations of capitalism (in Halpern 1991: 67). If we identify the origins of capitalist formations with the rise of primitive accumulation,3 then we can determine that the development of proto-capitalist modes of production in seventeenth century England was a more or less immediate consequence of, basically, the expropriation of agricultural land (by means of enclosures and dispossessions, and of land used for investment of capital); of the expansion and consolidation of the market; of the discharge of feudal retainers; of the introduction of a repressive legislation; of the price rise and the (partially state- controlled) decline of wages; and of the accumulation of capital proceeding from slave trade, piracy, the dissolution and plunder of the monasteries and the new agriculture (Halpern 1991: 63; Hill 2002; Howell 2002: 17-21). From all these features we can then safely maintain that there was a transition towards something we may call nascent capitalism in the seventeenth century.4 And, as Christopher Hill among others has claimed, this transition, beyond the merely economic, produced a major epistemological shift in the construction of what we may call – for want of a better term – English identity: “This was in itself a moral as well as an economic revolution, a break with all that men had held right and proper, and had the most disturbing effects on ways of thought and belief” (2002; Howell 2002: 17-22). English auto-images and hetero-images, or the image that the English had of themselves and that which they constructed about others – in short, English identities – were thus conflictively altered by means of these two elements: the economic and epistemological transition to a new kind of society, first, and also the relations established with a new and until then unknown culture, which was threateningly and radically Other especially because it was dangerously powerful, a culture that significantly played a leading (and also new) role in the new economic and social scenario (Hoenselaars 1992: 10-15; Hill 2002). That all this had an impact on the cultural production of the age is logical if we consider the importance of, most notably, drama in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. David H. Sacks has explained how the theatre contributed to arrange the apparently disparate economic consumption and modes of production into orderly and meaningful activities, and this not the least by means of the nearly fifty million visits to English playhouses registered between 1567 and 1642. The concern with a new English society, and the preoccupation with the existence of the Muslim Other, were both produced and reproduced by contemporary
3 By primitive accumulation, a termed initially coined by Karl Marx although never very clearly explained, we mean “the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as ‘primitive’ because it forms the pre-history of capital, and of the mode of production corresponding to capital” (Marx 1977: 874-75). As can be seen from this definition, it constitutes the origins of capitalism. 4 This ‘nascent capitalism’ (in Raymond Williams’ terms an ‘emergent’ idea) can be more specifically characterized by an incipient desire for profit (Marx’s view); the increasing production and commercialization of commodities; the progressive consolidation of absolute private property; and a strong concern with economic rationality (in Max Weber’s classical approach). Also, capitalism (either ‘nascent’ or ‘full’) is best understood as a process based on the commodification of the forces of production (human capacity for labor): the capitalist pays for labor-power obtaining a surplus-labor that eventually will become surplus value (Cohen 1985: 162-163). 126 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas drama, which actually created “a marketplace of … personal identities” (Sacks 2002: 154-55) since, in short, the “text ... portrays and constitutes culture and identity” (Harding 2002: 133). My discussion stems then from the belief that whereas so called “urban drama” (Howard 2002: 163-67) contributed to a conflictive debate on nascent capitalism, especially in its London (and most significant) location, plays about Islam and accounts by travellers, theologians and polemicists “created the representations that would define early modern Britain’s image of the Muslims…”, an image pervaded by “racism and bigotry” (Matar 1999: 12-13). I am persuaded that Thomas Heywood’s drama constitutes an illustrative example of this because, among other things, like much popular culture from any age, it is capable of engaging with and responding to the conflicts of the period in meaningful ways, simultaneously capturing and (re)producing the tensions, contradictions and uncertainties of the age. I maintain this (like Charles Crupi) against the widespread view of Heywood’s drama (and popular culture, for that matter) as a “formulaic appeal[s] to simple emotions and widespread beliefs” (Crupi 2004: 299), and also against a perception of plays such as, for example, The Fair Maid of the West, as an instance of adventure drama of the kind that “uses incident to cancel [philosophical] matters” and that attempts “to replace subtlety with simplicity”, preventing, by means of “swiftness of movement [,] ... any significant meaning from arising” (Turner 1968: xv). In this essay, then, I will analyze The Fair Maid of the West (FMW) Part 1 (ca. 1599-1603) and Part 2 (1625-1630), and If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody (IYK) Part 1 (ca. 1604) and Part 2 (ca. 1605), in the context of nascent capitalism and its relation with Islam, to explore how this bears a significant relevance in the process of construction of an English self-image or identity. One of the most powerful approaches to all kinds of communities qua cultures (communities and cultures from all ages) is the one proceeding from the ranks of cultural semiotics as developed by Juri Lotman and the semiotic School of Tartu.5 To be sure, the relations established between England and Islam are evidently, and among other things, relations between cultures. Equally so are those developed within England among the different participants in the transition towards early modernity and capitalism, and as such they are all to a great extent conditioned by semiosis, that is, the production and exchange of meaning and symbols. Lotman developed in the nineteen eighties the notion of the semiosphere as “the semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages” (2001: 123) and, although his initial approach was certainly structured around a linguistic model, he later qualified this definition to expand languages in order to include texts and cultures (roughly, Foucauldian discourses). In short, Lotman’s semiosphere can be defined as the space where all semiosis takes place and outside of which no semiotic process is possible. It is characterized, firstly, by its heterogeneity: the semiosphere is composed of a diversity of languages and texts that “relate to each other along the spectrum which runs from
5 The best compilation of Lotman’s thought, apparently fragmentary as it is, is the Spanish edition in three volumes by the Cuban critic Desiderio Navarro (with Manuel Cáceres), La semiosfera. Arguably, and given the nature of most writings by Lotman, we cannot find a more comprehensive and informed edition in any other language, including Russian. See Lotman 1996; 1998; 2000. “What Good Newes from Barbary?” 127 complete mutual translatability to jus as complete mutual untranslatability” (2001: 125). And, secondly, it is also qualified by the notion of the boundary or frontier, “the outer limit of a first-person form” (2001: 131), which functions as one of the primary mechanisms of semiotic production of meaning. The simplest model that a culture makes of itself is canonical, and it is inevitably based on boundaries, the limits that separate a space characterized as ‘cultured’, ‘civilized’, ‘safe’, ‘central’ or ‘unmarked’, from that considered as ‘natural’, ‘hostile’, ‘wild’, ‘peripheral’ or ‘marked’. In short, the ‘canonical’ separation between ‘Culture’ and ‘Nature’ and all other oppositions derived from it. The boundary will not only separate the outside from the inside, but will also act internally, to signify inner alterity or diversity, which is always defined by non-reciprocity (Sonesson 2005), as is the case with social, cultural or economic minorities, immigrants, marginalized communities, and so on. This heterogeneity will ultimately lead to the negotiation of conflict, which implies contradiction, but also dialogue. Indeed, the main function of the boundary is as much to separate as to translate texts of an alien semiotics into our recognizable language, and this is achieved by performing the function of a membrane that controls, filters and/or adapts (that is, ‘translates’) the external text, as a way to re-structure, come to terms with, or even re-invent it (Lotman 1996: 24-29, 2001: 131-140). So, in order to introduce an external culture into the semiosphere, this culture and its texts must be ‘translated’ or explained in our terms: otherwise they will remain as absolute aliens (Lotman 1996: 61-73). This model helps to account for the ambiguous and conflictive relations established in Early Modern England between the residual feudal episteme (or semiosphere) and a new, emergent and still uncertain semiosphere of nascent capitalism, as we shall see. Lotman’s translation, however, although a form of dialogue among cultures, has also to be qualified, and we must distinguish cultures from non-cultures and extra- cultures. In the Freudian terms of ego-id-alius, culture is the realm of the subject, while extra-culture is the reign of the non-subject, and non-culture the space of the non- person. Culture may enter some form of dialogue with extra-culture, but may only – at most – talk about non-culture (Sonesson 2005).6 Following this pattern, Muslim culture belongs in the Early Modern period (in principle, as we shall see) to extra- culture: it can be translated, albeit with difficulty, to a relatively recognizable language, whereas Muslims, on their part, not only considered Britons as inferior but did not even recognize them; that is, they saw them as non-culture (Bak 1996: 197-200, 212-16; Matar 1999: 1-5). How Islam was displaced to a non-culture position has to do with a colonial narrative that began to be developed in the second half of the seventeenth century.
6 This classification can be exemplified by Todorov’s classical analysis of the attitudes of the Spaniards towards the peoples and cultures they encountered in the New World: Whereas for Columbus Indians belonged to non-culture and so he listed them together with the animals and plants he found, being consequently uninterested in interacting with them, Cortés, on the contrary, tried to learn the Indians’ languages and to find out about their political and cultural structures, since for him they constituted an extra-culture. Conversely, the Indians did not see the point in sacrificing Spaniards since, they believed, the gods would not understand them as Spanish culture was ‘non-culture’ and the language of the Spaniards was untranslatable (Todorov 1982: 23-41, 106-37; Sonesson 2005). 128 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas
The four plays under analysis here present, in principle, a generally coherent view of trade as positive for the country and for society at large. Part 2 of If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody exemplifies, in the historical figure of Sir Thomas Gresham,7 the benefits of capitalism, trade and mercantilism. When devising the building of the Royal Exchange, his great work for posterity, Gresham envisages a utopic world of domestic and international commerce, a world built, like the Royal Exchange itself, on a hierarchy of maids, prentices and masters that profit economically, socially and – one would say – metaphysically from Gresham’s alleged philanthropy:
Some shall prooue masters and speake in Greshams praise, In Greshams worke we did our fortunes raise. For I dare say both Countrey and Court, For wares shall be beholding to this worke. (1138-1141)
Gresham is certainly not the only merchant positively portrayed in the second part of IYK: the play abounds in images of, and references to, historical men, and some women, who in a certain way, the play suggests, were beneficial for the community (748-855, 1142-1162). They function as models for wealthy tradesmen such as Gresham or Hobson, although each will fulfil that role according to his or her capacity. But the positive influence of trade is everywhere in the play. It is not only that merchants help to sustain the crown financially (2028-2039), or that God is believed to have a dealing in the prosperity of substantial citizens (2081-2084): merchants seem to be so essential for the evolution and progress of the country that they openly claim a central role in the symbolic construction of England as a modern state. When the London merchant Hobson meets the Queen, he is outraged that she does not seem to know him or acknowledge his importance:
QUEEN. Friend, what are you? HOBSON. Knowest thou not mee Queene? Then thou knowest no body. (2020-2021)
In this picture of apparent harmonic integration money also plays a major part in the composition of personal development, to the extent that it is even described as a main component of spiritual welfare. In general, as plays produced right in the middle
7 Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579), son of Sir Richard Gresham (Lord Mayor of London), was a London financier, merchant and economic thinker who worked for Queen Elizabeth (and previously for King Edward VI) as Royal Factor. Gresham was instrumental in restoring the value of the previously debased pound sterling; he also acted as ambassador and agent of the Queen, and he trafficked, for the crown, with arms and foreign money. Gresham’s best-known initiative, and one of his most lucrative businesses, was the building of the London Royal Exchange (modelled on the burse in Antwerp). His most significant contribution to economic thought was Gresham’s Law, a principle whose central tenet is that in a legal tender currency situation, bad money drives good money out of circulation. This theory, previously formulated by Copernicus and even hinted at by Aristophanes, is still influential in economic theory (Rolnick and Weber 1986: 185-199; Selgin 1996). “What Good Newes from Barbary?” 129 of the transition from a feudal economy to something we have identified as nascent capitalism, Heywood’s two parts of The Fair Maid of the West may also be said to show a major concern with the role of money and wealth in the new economy. Part 1 contains no fewer than forty references to gold or money, and indeed there is a sustained concern with economy, trade, commerce, piracy and privateering, and with the commodification of love, sex and friendship. In this first part a successfully capitalistic Bess Bridges expresses an almost absolute happiness “[f]or money flows/And my gain’s great” (II.i.148-49). To be sure, Bess materializes in this play the capitalist dream of escaping from the ranks of the have-nots to engross the bourgeoise, and in an innocent and somehow comic way – if only perhaps unwillingly – she even declares to be “ecstasied” (I.iii.42) when, as a consequence of the tragic misfortune of her beloved Spenser, the latter suddenly changes her status and condition by providing her with the necessary wealth to purchase her own tavern. The play evidently depicts Bess’s social and economic progress from being a girl in a tavern to becoming a capitalist entrepreneur who runs her own business and employs others (from I.iii.52) but this idealistic and exemplary progress is problematized by her final twist in order to engage in, arguably, the most disturbing and contradictory activity at the time for an alleged capitalist merchant: piracy. The problematic relation of Bess with various kinds of commerce, be they legal or not, goes beyond the conflictive nature of piracy and privateering, though. Indeed, women had a role to play in England’s commercial aspirations through the metaphor of trade as a form of marriage or “intercourse of amitie”, in Samuel Purchas’ words (in Hall 1995: 123). Together with the anxiety over miscegenation, both international trade and ‘mixed’ marriages made a number of statements about the nature of something that was still precariously perceived to be ‘English identity’. If trade (like marriage) seems to exert a homogenizing influence, it also (like marriage again) “leaves unspoken the more threatening possibility: that English identity will be subsumed under foreign difference” (Hall 1995: 124). According to Jean Howard. referring to Part 1 of FMW, something like a discourse of national identity arose in Early Modern England to the extent that the English tried to be described as a fairly consistent and homogeneous semiosphere or, in her words, as a “fraternity of subjects within an imagined community defined in part by a bounded geographical essence and in part by cultural and racial differences (emphasis in the original) from other such imagined communities” (1994: 101). In similar terms, Ton Hoenselaars has explained how “one nation’s view of the character of another provides an insight into its own self-estimate as well” or, in other words, of “the constituent elements of a national ideology” (1992: 15). Although I am aware that this is what Anthony Cohen has criticized from an anthropological perspective for being conceptually insufficient (1993:198), it very aptly for the present purposes incorporates the spatial and the racial in a discussion on identity, on England as a geographical and semiospheric location, and on skin colour and the symbolic constructions of sameness and difference.8
8 This has important consequences for a discussion on identity and culture: as Anthony Cohen has explained, “in claiming [cultural identity] you do not merely associate yourself with a set of characteristics: you also distance yourself from others” (1993: 197). 130 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas
Although colour and cultural differences among sub-Saharan Africans and Muslims (either Moroccans or Ottomans) were actually perceived, it seems that the Early Modern English for some reasons persistently failed to discriminate appropriately among terms such as Aethiopian, Moor, Blackamoor or Negro. In fact there was a tendency to ignore the religion of Muslims in order to focus on their ethnic otherness, and so names with a religious meaning were abandoned in favour of those with an ethnic or national connotation: Saracens, Moors, Blackamoors, Turks or Tatars. When religion was alluded to, then Mohammed is presented not as a prophet but as a deity who is part of a heathen pantheon with devilish idols: Apollin and Termagant (Viktus 1999: 8-9). And Muslims were increasingly depicted as jealous, lascivious, treacherous, excessively refined and pagan (Tokson 1982: 3-13; Vaughan 1994: 68; Viktus 1999: 2- 12). Hence also the new use of the term Barbary in order to denigrate Muslims, who, to be sure, were well known to be a civilized and refined people.9 However, there is evidence that Early Modern England had already had various contacts with black Africans (sub-Saharan Africans, to use a modern term), and with Muslims (Moroccan or Ottomans). This seems to leave no doubt as to the existence of a cultural and political stereotyping that had an ideological function. Nabil Matar explains how Britons produced a portrait of Muslims that did not correspond to their actual experience with them but was the representation of a representation, based on their encounters with American Indians: English merchants, privateers, diplomats, sailors and outlaws had entered into close contact with North-African Muslims and with Ottomans, and hundreds of Early Modern Englishmen “took the turban” every year, besides the already mentioned relations between the monarchs of Morocco and England (1999: 13-15). This has to be connected with an increasing demand for publications on Muslims and sub-Saharan Africans, which contributed to the construction of a discourse of difference that established the allegedly innate evil of Muslims and Blacks alike (Vaughan and Vaughan 1997: 25-44). Gustav Ungerer, among others, has explained how English merchants “became heavily enmeshed in the African slave trade as early as the 1480s”, and how blacks were bought and sold in England well before the seventeenth century (2005: 255), which again seems to prove that Early Modern dramatists and most playgoers were able to distinguish between both Muslims and black –subsaharan- Africans, and them from Indians from the New World. As in the case of the transition to the new economy, the conspicuous presence of Islam and Muslims in Heywood’s drama seems to confirm the role of these plays in the process of construction of an Early Modern English identity, as this paper suggests. In the two parts of FMW there is a significant ambiguity as to what may be the actual portrait of Muslims that the play is interested in building and, although both plays provide all Muslims with the standard stock of clichés, racist features, ahistorical
9 Yet, the alternative perspective of noble Moors depicted in Early Modern drama should not pass unnoticed. These characters, contrary to what some critics appear to suggest (Vaughan 1994: 59), did not begin and end with Othello, as the case of King Abdelmalec in Peele’s Battle of Alcazar seems to prove. Abdelmalec, a historical figure, is presented by Peele as noble and virtuous, “a perfect expression of Renaissance ideals of kingly virtue” (Bak 1996: 208), in clear contrast with the villainous Muly Mahamet from the same play (Vaughan 1994: 58-60). “What Good Newes from Barbary?” 131 allusions and xenophobic behaviours typical of popular drama,10 there is also a fair number of favourable allusions to Islam and Muslim characters. In the first part of FMW, Spenser takes refuge in Fez (Morocco) after having murdered a rival. Thus, Morocco is the destination to which his beloved Bess Bridges, conveniently dressed as a man, heads her ship, appropriately (and ominously) called the ‘Negro’. Indeed, and as we saw above, many English merchants, but also pirates and criminals, decided to take Morocco or, less frequently, the Ottoman empire as their country of adoption, sometimes even converting to Islam (the so-called renegadoes).11 Heywood’s two parts of FMW use this historical well-known motif to explore what was perceived as the contradictory nature of Muslims, who are certainly presented under an ambiguous light. To begin with, Morocco is not depicted as a ‘non-culture’ location: this realm is presented as a nation pursuing its own commercial and political interests just like any other European power both in connection with its foreign relations – Christian merchants in Morocco right before King Mullisheg’s accession to the throne enjoyed, we are told, “traffic and freedom” (1 FMW IV.iii.16-17) – and also regarding some internal measures – the king’s actions are ruled by his desire to bring safety, wealth and peace to his kingdom (2 FMW IV.iii.1-18). And in relation with Muslim alleged lust, Mullisheg simply shares with English Christian characters an immediate infatuation with Bess; indeed, he cannot be said to treat her worse than most of these other Christian would-be lovers (1 FMW V.i.21-29). Then, although both parts of The Fair Maid of the West produce contradictory and mutually exclusive readings of most Muslim characters, in Part 2 there seems to prevail an image of Muslims as potentially noble characters. It begins with Joffer, one of the principal counsellors of King Mullisheg, who not only claims that “(a)ll moral virtues are not solely grounded/In th’hearts of Christians” (III.i.97-98), but acts accordingly, allowing Bess’s beloved, Spencer (to the risk of Joffer’s own life), to momentarily escape from Mullisheg’s court in order to let Bess know that he is alive. This generosity makes Spencer lament that “Moors will say/ We boast of faith, none does good works but they” (III.ii.104-05), and wonder whether honor is “fled from Christians unto Moors” (III.i.102). It should be noted that the fact that it is clearly a rhetorical question should not prevent us from perceiving how the reactions of other Christians regarding this same situation are far less noble than the Muslim bashaw Joffer’s (III.ii.119-30). Indeed, both he and Spencer seem, through their shared code of honour, to be closer to one another than to their respective fellow countrymen, to the extent that estament, or class behaviour, seems to supersede race. Also, Mullisheg’s reaction to Joffer’s nobility reinforces the evidence of virtuous behaviour among Muslims: he does not reject Joffer’s honourable action in itself, but simply on the grounds that the English Christian Spencer, “a stranger so remote/Both in Country and religion”, cannot “harbor
10 Muslims were not the only ones to be stereotyped. Spaniards (among others) were consistently vilified in, mostly, drama and pamphlets (Hoenselaars 1992: 15-67, 126-47; Demetriou 2003: 31-62). 11 This tendency, already significant in the sixteenth century, increased during the seventeenth: the Republic of Salé, on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, after seceding from the Kingdom of Morocco became a notorious refuge for Muslim and, especially, Christian pirates between 1627 and 1641 (Embajada de España en Marruecos 1992-1994: 93). 132 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas such/Noble virtues” as accompany the behaviour of a Muslim (III.iii.25-26; 38-39). This magnificent example of the relativism of national morality can be read as a critique of cultural and religious stereotypes, and cannot pass unnoticed since it is the last portrait we have of Moroccans in both plays. Also, although in a perhaps more oblique way, Muslims are introduced in the opening lines of 2 IYK as reliable trading partners (1-56), to the extent that the play opens with an exchange between an English factor and a “Barbary Marchant” on the issue of the sugar monopoly. But, in spite of all the above, the plays are far from providing a homogeneous and unproblematic description of Muslim characters: side by side with the previous evidence, they also seem to be characterized by their proverbial and alleged lust and their deceiving nature. Notably, King Mullisheg is depicted in Part 1 of FMW as mostly ruled by his passions (IV.iii.27-34), a dramatic description that is continued in Part 2 (I.i.209-13), where his wife, Queen Tota, plans to revenge for his lechery “at full” and, at the same time, be “sweetly satisfied” by being herself unfaithful to him and having intercourse with the English Spencer (I.i.114-93). In a clear contrast with the ‘other’ virginal Bess of the play (i.e. Queen Elizabeth as an everpresent intertext), Mullisheg also proves to be a ruler for whom his personal desires are more important than his kingly duties, and thus he repeatedly offers to load Bess and her followers with gold just on account of Bess’s beauty (Part 1: V.i.37-38, ii.36-37), a promise that he fulfils in Part 2 (III.iii.176-85); exchanges kisses for royal pardons and commercial rights (Part 1: V.ii.79), and plans to ravish Bess even after he had explicitly repented from his lustful nature (Part 2: I.i.223-39). There is a sustained concern with sexual excess (Mullisheg in Part 1, both he and his wife in Part 2) and Heywood also puts much emphasis on skin colour, as the most conspicuous and relevant difference between Muslims and English or Europeans and, at least in part, as an explanation for the deviant behaviour of Moors (Part 2: II.vi.65-66; II.vi.75-76; III.i.104; and Part 1: V.ii.64-65). When everything else looks the same, as Bess’s servant Clem implies, there is always the colour difference between Moroccan and English: “they [the English] never sit down to meat with such foul hands and faces [as the Moors]” (2 FMW, I.i.68-76). The discourse of race now supersedes that of gender, and the contrast established between English men and women and Muslims is not only visualized by means of skin colour but it is evidently intended to have a mostly moral dimension. From the Middle Ages, the alleged blackness of Muslims (either ‘tawny Moors’ or ‘blackamoors’) had had a clear ethical importance: blackness signified evil, or, in other words, blackness was the livery of malignity, a clear identifier that marked Africans as permanent others (Bak 1996: 208-12).12 Thus, if the English are depicted as reliable, honourable, courageous, chaste, masculine and noble (FMW Part 1:
12 There is a long history behind the denigration (de-nigrare) of blacks. Many of these discourses made their way well into the Early Modern period: the cultural background (Thomas Browne’s works based on Pliny or Herodotus); the religious discourses (the sons of the lascivious Ham, whose sins condemned his descendants to bear the mark of evil); or the ‘scientific’ explanations of skin colour (Samuel Petty’s The Scale of Creations or even Jean Bodin’s climate theory). Blackness was easily associated with Islam in the uncertain geography of the seventeenth century, although it does not mean that the English believed that all Africans (including North Africans) were uniformly black or tawny (Bak 1996: 197-200; MacDonald 1997: 7-16). “What Good Newes from Barbary?” 133
I.i.336-43; III.ii.75-76; III.ii.131-35; III.iii.38-39; IV.vi.145-47), Muslims – as we have seen – seem to be, for the most part, mutable, dishonourable, cowardly, lascivious, effeminate and treacherous (FMW Part 1: IV.iii.27-40; V.i.14-15; V.ii.34-37; 64-65). This main contrast produces an element of strangeness that is easily explained as a product of the perception of the Muslim semiosphere as non-culture: difficult to translate or decipher, strange and alien to the English. The plays show a concern with mutability from a nearly stoic perspective that has a special relevance as it links the two major preoccupations of these plays, namely race and trade, or a semiosphere characterized by a racial and cultural episteme, on the one hand, and a mercantile one on the other.13 It is in this sense that mutability appears as a dominant feature of Muslims in Part 2 of If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody: in an unhistorical but dramatically useful scene, Gresham’s major trade agreements are shown to be with Morocco, with whose king he has negotiated the monopoly of the sugar trade with England.14 But a factor recently arrived from Morocco informs that the King has just died in the historical Battle of Alcazarquivir, and the new Moroccan monarch has denounced the agreement and has decided to keep Gresham’s money:
GRESHAM. Our Factor, what good newes from Barbarie? What sayes the King, speake, didst thou sommon him? Or hast thou brought my threescore thousand pound? Or shall I haue the Sugars at that rare? […] FACTOR. The King that in the regall chaire succeedes The King late dead I summon'd, and demaunded Either your money tendred, or the Sugars After the rate propos'd, hee denied both Alleaging though he was successiue heire, He was not therefore either tide to pay The late Kings debts, nor yet to stand vnto Vnnecessarie bargaines. (1475-1488)
13 Neo-stoicism is the term commonly used to refer to the renewed corpus of Stoic thought appearing in Europe during the Early Modern period. It maintains the basic tenets of classical stoicism to which it adds a humanist approach. See Chew 1988. All four Heywood’s plays under study here abound in references to Stoic injunctions against mutability, showing emotions, despair, false appearances, corruption, or revenge; and in favour of stability, the acceptance of the reversals of Fortune, quiet life and Stoic ‘plain dealing’ (2FMW I.i.223-39, III.i.75-78; 1FMW III.iii.31-42, I.ii.30, II.ii.53-54; 1IYK 301-311, 1076-1085, 1330-1333, 1346-1360; 2IYK 633-642). 14 Monopolies (or the acquisiton by an individual or company of exclusive rights to commercialize – import or export – a product) became one of the defining features of the new economy, and one of the clearest causes of the impoverishment of large sections of the population in the seventeenth century. Supported by the crown to control the profits made by certain companies, and also promoted by great merchants to the disadvantage of smaller ones, monopolies are in the foundations of the greatest fortunes made during this century and one of the most important causes of vertical mobility in the Early Modern period (Halpern 1991: 85-89; Sacks 2002: 139-55). 134 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas
But in much the same way that piracy is problematized as it endangers capitalism at the same time as it provides the wealth needed for its development, trade with Muslims proves to be simultaneously necessary and undesirable, stressing both the wealth and power of Islam as much as its ultimate Otherness (its semiospheric untranslatability) when compared with the (pretended) reliability and honesty of English merchants. Barbara Fuchs has also posed this problem in illuminating terms, linking the conflictive construction of capitalism with the unstable identity represented by the renegade and its alliance with Barbary (2000: 51). As in the case of the treatment of Muslims and their relation with the English semiosphere, capitalism, or the new economy, receives a contradictory, ambiguous or conflictive treatment in Heywood’s plays, which somehow produce, as C.W. Crupi claims of the second part of IYK, “a serious disruption(s) of the capitalist myth- making” (Crupi 2004: 298). This new economy has been described as one replacing an old society based on gift-exchange by a new one structured around the buying and selling of commodities. Barbara Sebek has explored how this transition implied a reconfiguration and a disruption of traditional social relations: a community ordered by a gift-exchange dynamics, typical, although by no means exclusive, of medieval societies, reproduces an ethics of neighbourliness, the old reciprocity nexus, whereas a society based on relations of exchange of commodities, of the kind emerging in the Early Modern period, is mostly based on profit and economic gain (Sebek 2001).15 To begin with, Gresham’s figure, apparently celebrated in 2IYK, is not so unproblematic as has traditionally been claimed. Certainly, a number of obscure historical events interrogate this pretended hagiographical dramatization of Gresham on account of the enclosures he promoted, the polemic building of his sumptuous mansion, his deviant connections with the crown (putting crown money to his personal use), the irregular construction of the Royal Exchange (foreign and cheap workforce hired, land expropriated), or his apparently illegal purchase of the plots of land surrounding his own manor, among others (Crupi 2004: 301-04).16
15 However, we should not believe that this general transition that engendered nascent capitalism from the late medieval market was so abrupt as to simply replace one for the other in a linear way. In this sense Raymond Williams’ distinction of the three aspects of culture and social formations (the residual, the dominant and the emergent) is of central importance, since it rejects the mechanical simplification that usually accompanies much theoretical thought on culture and society. In Sebek’s words, these three levels should be seen as “mutually constitutive symbolic economies that often overlap or blur together, and that gain meaning in relation to one another” (2001), rather than as establishing simplistic mechanical oppositions. These faultlines are easily perceived in the resistance to change that these plays reproduce. A deeper analysis of this transition, and of the differences of the gift-exchange and the commodity-exchange approaches to communities, can be found in Max Weber. See Weber 1958; see also Habermas 1970. For an alternative perspective and a response to Sebek see Shershow 2001. 16 A hint of Gresham’s problems with the law and/or the Crown does appear in the play: Gresham’s suit with Ramsey introduces a suspicion on the legitimacy of many capitalist operations and, most disturbingly, on the nature of the rights of property (2IYK 496-7). Actually foreign workers (from the Low Countries) were hired by Gresham in the construction of the Royal Exchange, a decision that was bitterly contested by English bricklayers. Between 1517 and 1595 several violent demonstrations took place in London to protest for the presence of foreigners “What Good Newes from Barbary?” 135
The economic degradation, in 2IYK, of Tawnicote, the peddlar of Kent, is arguably another of the most problematic and contradictory consequences of the new economy. Capitalists in all Heywood plays analyzed here, but especially in the second part of IYK, have apparently been, as we have seen, idealized: Bess Bridges as the girl in a tavern transformed into a wealthy international merchant, then married into the nobility; Sir Thomas Gresham as successful Elizabethan international businessman, the idealized citizen, philantropist and capitalist merchant prince. Both are surrounded by a multitude of would-be capitalists who either attempt with difficulty to prosper (Clem, Goodfellow) or are clearly on their way to success (Hobson, Spencer) (Crupi 2004: 296- 300). But just like FMW, the second part of IYK – in its construction of an English Early Modern identity – clearly disrupts these pretendedly harmonious processes of economic and cultural transformation through the dramatization of the apparition of new kinds of individuals: the extravagant international wealthy merchant, but also poor and vagrants, masterless men whose mere presence reveal a major social, economic and epistemological crisis of an unprecedented dimension. Their apparently uncontrollable nature, which appeared threatening to Early Modern communities, produced a change in the perspective and attitudes towards the poor which has been termed the “desanctification of the poor” (Halpern 1991: 73). Tawnicote embodies this new disturbing reality. If within the previous economic semiosphere of feudalism poverty was exclusively understood as a problem pertaining to widows or to the sick, under the new economy it acquires a new meaning. Anyone can become poor, and a man may see himself forced to “dig liuing out of stones” for his family and yet be unable to “yeeld them sustenance” (1545, 1554). Two scenes exemplify in Part 2 of IYK the dynamics, the new language and the disturbing consequences of nascent capitalism. In the ‘Forest scene’, the London merchant Hobson abandons the certainties of the London capitalist semiosphere to enter both physically and symbolically a forest in which he will come face to face with the disastrous consequences of the new economy. It is significantly here, at the boundaries of his semiospheric location, where a different language can be heard and translated, that Hobson meets the dark side of the new economy:
Mother a me what a thick myst is here: I walked abrod to take the mornings ayre, And I am out of knowledge, bones a me (1557-1559)
Then, Hobson meets Tawnicote (an honest worker from the merchant’s own experience), a peddler who used to bring ‘country money’ to the metropolis (a historical source of wealth for English nascent capitalism) and who has fallen victim to the new economy: Tawnicote has come to that point where all he owns and can sell is his workforce: “This spade alas, tis all the wealth I haue” (1631). Confronted with the cruel situation of Tawnicote, all that Hobson is able to do, “out of knowledge” as he claims to be, is to voice the capitalist and puritan metaphysical and teleological belief working in England. The Parliament tried to appease the people by expelling in 1575 most Flemish workers and refugees (Marienstrass 1985: 102). 136 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas that “Heavens will for all, and should we not respect it/We were vnworthy life” (1650- 1651). Tawnicote, on his part, produces a much more subversive reading of his misery, by blaming not Heaven but the new wealthy: “our ages fault the mightier,/Teare liuing out of vs, we out of her [the Earth]” (1555-1556), who exploit the poor just as these exploit the Earth. In other words, Tawnicote identifies a systematic connection between the wealth accumulated by the likes of Gresham and Hobson and the poverty of the Tawnicotes that nascent capitalism has produced. The play does not blame an individual agency but economic activity per se, which eventually commodifies human beings and depredates the environment (Howard 2002: 180-82; Crupi 2004: 315-20). Equally, the ‘Courtesan scene’ reproduces a commodification of the female that we can also find in FMW: the erotic discourse of the prostitute (like that of the first Bess) eventually establishes a property link that ties her jewel, her chain, her ring and her own body, all of them commodities that John Gresham (Sir Thomas Gresham’s nephew) wants to purchase. Interestingly, all the tokens that the young man wants from the prostitute she refuses to give since – she claims – they cannot be purchased: they were gifts that other men gave her. Against John Gresham’s attempt at capitalist commodification which he intends to materialize in a commodity-exchange, the courtesan replies with a gift-exchange mentality. She, of course, is completely at ease in the commodity-exchange dynamics the young man suggests, but it is noticeable how she escapes this game through recourse to an earlier, residual, late medieval mentality. Eventually the courtesan, however, escapes this alienation and avoids this commodification that the young man openly declares: “thou hast a Commoditie that I must needs take vp” (1754), precisely because she is simultaneously producer and merchant, resisting thus the capitalist process of alienation of the producer from the means of production even at her own expense (1715-1785). But it is probably the figure of Sir Thomas Gresham that introduces a clearest interrogation on capitalism as the alleged unconflictive defining feature of Early Modern identity. In principle a homage to the historical figure of Gresham as a model capitalist, Heywood’s Gresham is hardly a prince of the new economy, and this not only through the obscure circumstances surrounding his career explained above. His reaction and eccentric exhibition after learning that his major source of wealth, the sugar monopoly, had been lost, involves wasting thousands of pounds in a carefully prepared performance before an audience of aristocrats. Besides, he has an extreme concern with his reputation, ostensibly shows his immense fortune and behaves with a clear lack of the puritan and neo-stoic modes of thrift and austerity then adopted by capitalists, features all these that clearly characterize him more as a representative of the old feudalist semiosphere than as an early modern product of the new economy (1385- 1544):
What Dukes, and Lordes, and these Ambassadours Haue euen before our face refusd to purchase As of too high a price to venture on, Gresham a London Marchant here will buy. (1514-1517) “What Good Newes from Barbary?” 137
Heywood’s capitalist hero, it seems, contains the residual elements of the episteme that he appears to be destined to replace, and, consequently, in him we find a number of economic traits we could define as recessive or residual, such as liberality, gift- exchange, tributary practices, generosity or reciprocity, which are shown as interacting, opposing, completing and eventually giving way to others such as profit-making, commodity-exchange, egotistical calculation, gain or commercial transactions (Heal 1990; Sebek 1998, 2001). The traditional – late medieval – ethos of the old economy was based, at least nominally, on generosity or liberality, and to this value Gresham eventually returns in his grand display of power and wealth: when explaining the humanist dimension of his great work, the Royal Exchange, “an Vniuersitie within it selfe” (1538), Gresham ends up explaining that:
W’are not like those that are not liberall Till they be dying, what wee meane to giue, Wee wil bestow, and see done whilst we liue (1542)
As we have seen, the construction of an English semiosphere in the Early Modern period implied the intersection of a number of discourses (or ‘languages’) that entered into some form of dialogue. A multitude of meanings, new and old, were created and transformed, and an epistemological and moral change took place. Like all semiospheres, the one thus created was heterogeneous and permeated by boundaries, and consequently was characterized, among other features, by the new and diverse economic relations that constituted nascent capitalism and by the construction of England’s auto-images and hetero-images as tactical identities on the bases of, among other things, skin colour and ‘race’. But this heterogeneity implied that there were various densities of meanings, which itself means that this transition and these definitions were not uniformly carried out, perceived or understood. Hence the conflictive construction of capitalism exemplified by Heywood’s plays, in which a contradictory dialogue with the new economy is established. The beneficial accumulation of wealth and progress by means of the ruthless imposition of the laws of the market is confronted with the destruction of the reciprocity nexus typical of feudalism, hence the figure of Tawnicote, while the humanistic and stoic contempt for worldly possessions is partly replaced by the new ambition produced by the rise of new markets, new economic relations and new ideals. The character of Sir Thomas Gresham embodies well these contradictions: when compelled to pay a tribute to the most prominent representative of the new capitalist episteme, Heywood can only produce a conflictive character, halfway between feudal society and new economic relations, simultaneously exemplifying and rejecting capitalism, embodying residual and emergent elements of the new economy. Likewise, the ambiguous representation of the Muslim Other – civilized enough to become a recognizable trading partner, powerful to the extent of becoming a rival and competitor in different areas, but at the same time a representative of a non-culture, and consequently an unreliable ally and eventually a potential prey to military expansion and colonial depredation – is simultaneously shaped in opposing, often 138 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas mutually cancelling, terms: lascivious but noble; pagan but monotheistic; different but politically necessary. To conclude, all these plays problematize the construction of an identity based on the new economy and on new racial definitions, and as a result England as a project proves to be conflictive, ambiguous and contradictory. The semiosphere that Heywood describes is anything but homogeneous, and this means that these plays, far from reproducing this transition without complications, actually interrogate the systems of belief that made it possible, and they do this through the faultlines that cut across the texts and show them as ambiguous pieces of popular culture. And as we have seen, these fractures take the form of gentlemen turned merchants, merchants who become pirates, and tradesmen who behave like aristocrats; Muslims who prove to be as noble as Christians, and Christians who are as lecherous as ‘Moors’; women who pass as males, and males who pursue, purchase, and always unsuccessfully try to commodify women. And, as symbols of that, condensing those meanings theatrically, an English Queen whose identity depends on her tradesmen, and a Christian maid among the ‘Moors’.
I am grateful to Michael White and to the research group HUM 0271, funded by the Andalusian government, for their help and support.
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Heal, Felicity 1990: Hospitality in Early Modern England. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Heywood, Thomas 1968: The Fair Maid of the West, Part 1 and Part 2. Ed. Robert K. Turner, Jr. London: Arnold. ––––– 1994: If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobodie, Part 1 and Part 2. Cambridge: Chadwyck- Healy. Hill, Christopher. 2002: ‘The English Revolution 1640’. ‹http://www.marxists.org/archive/hill- christopher/english-revolution/index.htm› [accessed 20 June 2006] Hoenselaars, Ton 1992: Images of Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP. Howard, Jean 1994: ‘An English Lass Among the Moors. Gender, Race, Sexuality and National Identity in Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West’. Patricia Parker and Margo Hendricks, eds. Women, ‘Race’ and Writing in the Early Modern Period’. New York: Routledge. 101-17. ––––– 2002: ‘Competing Ideologies of Commerce in Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody, Part 2’. Henry S. Turner, ed. The Culture of Capital: Property, Cities and Knowledge in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge.163-82. Howell, Martha C. 2002: ‘The Language of Property in Early Modern Europe’. Henry S. Turner, ed. The Culture of Capital: Property, Cities and Knowledge in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge. 17-25. Lotman, Juri 1996: La semiosfera I. Semiótica de la cultura y el texto. Ed. D. Navarro. Valencia: Cátedra/Universidad de Valencia. ––––– 1998: La semiosfera II. Semiótica de la cultura, del texto, de la conducta y del espacio. Ed. D. Navarro. Valencia: Cátedra/Universidad de Valencia. ––––– 2000: La semiosfera III. Semiótica de las artes y de la cultura. Ed. D. Navarro.Valencia: Cátedra/Universidad de Valencia. ––––– 2001: Universe of the Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London and New York: Tauris. MacDonald, Joyce G. 1997: Introduction. Race, Ethnicity and Power in the Renaissance. Ed. Joyce G. MacDonald. London: Associated UP. 7-16. Marienstrass, Richard 1985: New Perspectives on the Shakespearian World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP/Paris: Edition de la maison des sciences de l’homme. Marx, Karl 1977: Capital. Vol I. Trans B. Fowkes. New York: Vintage Books. Matar, Nabil 1998: Islam in Britain. 1558-1685. New York: Cambridge UP. ––––– 1999: Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery. New York: Columbia UP. McJannet, Linda 1996: ‘Mapping the Ottomans on the Renaissance Stage’. Journal of Theatre and Drama 2: 9-34. Rolnick, Arthur J. and Warren E. Weber 1986: ‘Gresham's Law or Gresham's Fallacy?’ Journal of Political Economy 94: 185-99. Sacks, David H. 2002: ‘The Metropolis and the Revolution: Commercial, Urban and Political Culture in Early Modern London’. Henry S. Turner, ed. The Culture of Capital: Property, Cities and Knowledge in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge. 139-62. Sebek, Barbara 1998: ‘“Strange Outlandish Wealth”: Transglobal Commerce in The Merchant’s Mappe of Commerce and The Fair Maid of the West, Parts 1 and 2’. John Gillies and Virginia Mason Vaughan, eds. Playing the Globe: Genre and Geography in English Renaissance Drama. London: Fairleigh Dickinson UP. 176-202. ––––– 2001: ‘Good Turns and the Art of Merchandizing: Conceptualizing Exchange in Early Modern England’. Early Modern Culture. ‹http://emc.eserver.org/1-2/sebek.html› [accessed 2 April 2007]. Selgin, George 1996: ‘Salvaging Gresham's Law: The Good, the Bad and the Illegal’. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. 28, 4: 637-49. Shershow, Scott C. 2001. ‘Response to Barbara Sebek’s “Good Turns and the Art of Merchandizing: Conceptualizing Exchange in Early Modern England”’. Early Modern Culture. ‹http://emc.eserver.org/1-2/shershow.html› [accessed 8 April, 2007] 140 Jesús López-Peláez Casellas
Sonesson, Göran 2005: ‘La semiosfera y el dominio de la alteridad’. Entretextos 6. http://www.ugr.es/~mcaceres/Entretextos/entre6/sonesson.htm [accessed 25 November 2006 ] Todorov, Tzvetan 1994: La conquista de América. El problema del otro. Madrid: Siglo veintiuno. Tokson, Elliot H. 1982: The Popular Image of the Black Man in English Drama, 1550-1688. Boston: Hall. Turner, Robert K. 1968. ‘Introduction. The Fair Maid of the West, Parts 1 and 2’. Ed. Robert K. Turner, Jr. London: Arnold. Vaughan, Virginia Mason 1994: Othello: A Contextual History. New York: Cambridge UP. Vaughan, Alden T. and Virginia Mason Vaughan. 1997: ‘Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans’. The William and Mary Quarterly. 3, 54: 19-44. Vitkus, Daniel J. 1999: Introduction. Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England. Ed. Daniel J. Vitkus. New York: Columbia UP. 1-15. Weber, Max 1958: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner.
Received 20 December 2006 Revised version received 2 May 2007
INTERVIEWS
ENTREVISTAS
29.1 (June 2007): 143–156 ISSN 0210-6124
An Interview With Geoffrey Leech1 Santiago de Compostela, June 9th 2006
Paloma Núñez Pertejo Universidad de Santiago de Compostela [email protected]
I would like to start this conversation by welcoming you to the University of Santiago de Compostela, Professor Leech.
Thank you very much.
It is a great honour for us that you have so kindly accepted our invitation and agreed to being interviewed. Is this your first visit to Spain?
No, I’ve visited Spain several times and, actually, visited quite a number of Spanish universities before; for example, I’ve been to universities in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Salamanca, etc., but this visit to Santiago de Compostela is something I’ve looked forward to very much indeed.
If you have no objections, I would like to divide this interview into two parts, the former focusing on your teaching experience, and the latter concentrating on your investigation and research. So, to begin, could you tell us a little bit about your teaching profile? Are you still doing any teaching despite having retired?
Well, a little bit, but I have this position called in British universities ‘Emeritus Professor’, which is really a kind of euphemism for being retired, but it does have the great advantage that you can keep a little room in the department and you can have your own computer, your own books, you can use the photocopier and the library and so on, so you feel as if you’re still a member of the academic community. This means I do my own research in the department, and from time to time I do a little bit of teaching, just to keep my hand in, and I still have one PhD student that I am supervising.
And whom would you consider as your TEACHER with capital letters?
1 This interview was generously supported by the Autonomous Government of Galicia (grant no. PGIDIT05PXIC20401PN), and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the European Regional Development Fund (grant no. HUM2004-00940). 144 Paloma Núñez Pertejo
Ah, yes. I’m not sure I can think of any particular person I would regard as my teacher in that sense, but I would point to two people who influenced me very much when I was first getting my foot in the academic door as it were. When I began as a junior lecturer, in the department at University College, London, there were two very influential people there at the time, for me, namely Michael Halliday, or M.A.K. Halliday, as he is known in his publications, and also Randolph Quirk. They are both great figures to have in one’s department and, you know, I just wonder, if they hadn’t been there, would I have developed in any way comparable to my present career? I don’t know at all. Certainly, Randolph Quirk is probably the one I would most name as my mentor, the man who influenced my thinking most, and also encouraged me in my career.
I am sure that students at Lancaster University feel proud to be students of yours. What are the main problems that you have faced in the teaching of Linguistics?
I think, a lack of appreciation of grammar is the greatest problem I’ve had. I think, particularly in English-speaking countries, including Great Britain above all, grammar has been a rather unpopular subject, and students prefer to forget all about it if they can. Even my colleagues in the department are inclined to undervalue it, so I suppose when I’ve been teaching, it’s a kind of uphill struggle, to teach an unpopular subject. That’s probably my greatest difficulty. Other aspects of linguistics can be very popular for students, but not grammar, I think.
And do you feel it’s the same all over the world, in other universities, or is it just British universities?
I have noticed it recently in other parts of the world, but I think on the whole, though, in countries where English is not the native language, then, grammar is seen to be an essential function. It’s rather like teaching about the human body without a skeleton, if you like, if you don’t teach the grammar... But if people have had English as their native language, then they naturally assume that grammar is not important, it’s something there, but we don’t need to worry about it, because we know it already.
That sounds very interesting. Over the years, what have you learnt from your students?
Like most people in academic life, I think I get most from the teaching of postgraduate students, not that I don’t enjoy undergraduate teaching, but postgraduate students have more to teach me, I think, and particularly, of course, the PhD students whom I’ve supervised. Being an Englishman, I’m not very good as a practical linguist in terms of knowing a lot of languages, so it’s very important for me when I am supervising to have students from other countries telling me about their own languages and how a particular theory or a particular description would apply to their own language. Just to take the example of politeness theory, you know, what kind of politeness theories are appropriate within different languages and cultures? Those can be very important contributions which I have benefited from.
An Interview with Geoffrey Leech 145
In what ways do you believe linguistics and language teaching are connected?
This is the 64,000 dollar question, isn’t it?, which we all should have an answer to. Yes, well, I suppose linguistics should provide a description of what it is we are learning when we are learning a language and, surely, that can’t be a matter of irrelevance. The better our descriptions, and the better our accounts of languages, the better we are able to direct our energies towards the learning of various languages. But, of course, they need to be interpreted, for the learner and also even for the teacher. These linguistic, rather abstract descriptions, often need to be simplified, or at least made more practical when they are applied to the teaching situation. And I suppose that’s what I’ve tried to contribute often in writing about English grammar. I’ve tried to write about grammar at a level where teachers can benefit and even learners can benefit from it.
Turning now to the second topic of this interview, which deals with research: if you had to describe or define yourself as a linguist, what would you say? What sort of description would you give us?
Well, first of all, I would say I am rather empirical in my orientation, I mean, the word empirical, particularly empiricist, can be regarded as a negative thing, a sort of ‘dirty’ word almost in some circles and, certainly, I wouldn’t want to be seen as an extreme empiricist. But I always want to study language in terms of explaining what can be observed, so that as soon as one loses the connection with observable facts about language and language usage, I feel one is becoming too abstract, so to speak. I think that’s probably been true of my whole career: I’ve always been rather oriented towards texts, towards data, that’s one aspect of it. Another aspect is that I’ve always had this duality of interest in form-function, so whether one looks at grammar or corpus linguistics, or even stylistics, I’ve tried to approach language in terms of these two different sides of the same coin, if you like, form and function. I don’t think one could study the function without the form, nor the form without the function, so that’s where I stand, if you like.
What linguistic and grammatical theories have had most influence on your conception of things? I suppose there are many, but perhaps you could tell us about some of them.
In my earlier days, I was influenced quite a lot by Michael Halliday, who was a colleague, a senior colleague of mine at one stage, and I actually worked with him quite closely; and also, to some extent, the generative school of Chomsky, because I spent some time at MIT in the 1960s, so those are two big influences in my earlier career. More recently, I suppose, I’ve been influenced in pragmatics by natural language philosophers like Searle and Grice, and again more recently, probably by the cognitive school, and the usage-based school – research which is being done by people in cognitive linguistics, in California, for example.
Would you say that there has been a continuity in your line of thought, from the beginning up to the present?
146 Paloma Núñez Pertejo
Well, yes, I do see a continuity, it’s the... really the one I’ve already mentioned, you know, this looking at language in terms of form and in terms of function or interpretation, so perhaps all areas where I’ve done research, in fact, have this kind of interest. We could take the field of stylistics, which is one of my earlier interests: it wasn’t sufficient to just study the form of a poem, or the form of a novel, let’s say, what kind of language that novelist chose, but to say why, what was the point of this choice, what kind of interpretation or appreciation came out of that particular set of linguistic choices. Or, if we consider corpus linguistics, there we get a great deal of formal information about how language is used in many different texts, in different situations, we can control the various variables and so on, but always we want to try to explain something. So, for example, when we observe in all corpuses of spoken language, of written language, the differences between the grammar of the language as it is used in speech and in writing, then again we want to try and explain: “well, what is the function of these differences?”, “why does grammar have these particular forms in written texts, but these other forms–related, but maybe different forms–in spoken texts?” I think the same thing applies also even to pragmatics, where again I started by studying the contrast between semantics–the semantics of a language, the meaning as it appears through the form, and the pragmatics–how this is contextualised in society. Once again, we’ve got this kind of duality.
In what ways do you think linguistics in general and linguists in particular make a contribution to modern society? I am asking this because there seems to be a current feeling that linguists are not ‘useful’ people in the sense that linguists are not ‘real’ scientists and do not contribute to progress and development. Maybe this is different in British society, but I am afraid this is the situation here.
Oh really? Of course, there are many different academic disciplines which have the same problem of justifying their existence. On the one hand, I think you can give very practical answers which will satisfy some people, perhaps parents who are sending their kids to university, and say: “Well, look, it’s very important for language teaching and language learning to understand language, and it’s also important for translation, which is a very important activity as we all know in the European Union–why not study language to help all these different areas?” I mean, think about language disabilities, can we understand the matter through linguistics? Think about developing software, which can be useful for various purposes, like speech-recognition software, which can be helpful for people with speech difficulties, and so on and so on, you know, there are many practical benefits, I think. On the other hand, I think we can look at it in a much more abstract and general way, and think about language, how important it is to the human condition. I think we can hardly imagine anything which is more important to other human attributes and activities than the ability to use language. Again, all our social life and social structures have to depend heavily on language and the way that we communicate through language, so, you know, I think any society which ignores language is really ignoring one of the most important aspects of its condition.
So, do you think then that linguists are scientists? I mean can we call ourselves scientists or are we different? An Interview with Geoffrey Leech 147
I’m not sure I know how to answer that. I think it’s, in any case, probably an English language question, you know. For people who speak English, a scientist is somebody who works in a laboratory, with a white coat on, and does all kinds of fancy experiments and that kind of thing. Not many linguists are actually like that. And I think we suppose the most typical scientist is the natural scientist, the scientist who investigates the natural world, whether biologists, or chemists, or physicists, or whatever they are. Linguists are not really like that; they are much more like, let’s say, social scientists, such as psychologists and sociologists, so yes, we are scientists of a kind, but I think we have particular difficulties, in a way. I’m not suggesting it’s easy to be a natural scientist, it’s an extremely rarefied kind of study that people have to engage in, mathematically and so on. Perhaps we can be spared some of that, but we have this kind of circularity that we are linguists using language. All scientists use language, it’s one of their most important pieces of equipment, I think, but linguists are in the peculiar position that we are actually trying to explain language through language. So it’s a kind of circularity we suffer from, and I think that leads us to build models which necessarily cannot be easily proved or demonstrated. There are a lot of problems of justifying our arguments, justifying our models, our theories, and so on, which probably would not arise for other scientists. And there’s also the fact that linguistics is necessarily interdisciplinary. I think if one goes back to the sixties, let’s say, to the Chomskian revolution, there was a hope then that one could somehow isolate language from everything that had to do with meaning and society and context, and study it in a logical and mathematical way, in a way that defined your territory that you had to explain. In practice, I think that is not a realistic way to approach language, because language naturally spills over the boundaries between disciplines–so that’s another way in which our difficulties are somewhat more problematic than perhaps are those to be found in the natural sciences.
Looking now into the future, what do you foresee in the field of linguistics?
Well, I suppose, you might expect me to use the word corpus here! Yes, I’ve been involved with corpus linguistics ever since, well, 1970, which is quite a long time. Even before the term corpus linguistics was invented, I was doing a kind of primitive corpus linguistics, so this ‘corpus revolution’, as sometimes people refer to it, has now begun to affect mainstream thinking in linguistics, which I think is a very important step. On the whole I would call it a step forward from previous research, and I think it will gradually become even more natural and obvious that we study language through the immense potential of data collection and data analysis that we have now through corpus linguistics. But perhaps in the future, we will not rely upon, let’s say, the classical idea of a corpus like the Brown Corpus or the British National Corpus, which are finite, carefully designed to represent the language at a particular time, because as time goes on, the availability of linguistic data is growing and growing and growing through the Internet, through the World Wide Web, through other sources. I don’t know if anybody can capture the language of text messaging and things of that sort, mobile phone messages, you know. There’s an awful lot of language data floating around in digital form, if we could only capture it. I think it’s an unprecedented situation really, it’s almost as if we 148 Paloma Núñez Pertejo live in a world where language is floating around surrounding us, almost like grass in a meadow. There’s so much of it, we can’t really handle it all, so this is a new area, an area where we have problems. On the other hand, we have the potential to develop new theories with greater observational power than we ever had before, and we can develop more probabilistic or mathematical understandings of language than had been possible before: this is my expectation. At a more theoretical level, I don’t know where things are going to go, but I guess there’s going to be a little bit more probabilistic thinking in the formulations that linguists make in the future. We’re going to have to become statisticians more than we’ve been so far, I’m afraid.
Yes, well let’s wait and see what happens. You’ve worked in different areas of linguistic research, grammar, literary stylistics, semantics, pragmatics and, of course, computational and corpus linguistics, among others. Could you tell us a little about how this diversity of interests arose?
It seems as if it must have been difficult to have so many interests, but somehow, it was natural in those days, you know, because in the sixties, when I began as a university lecturer doing research, there were very few linguistics departments in the UK. I think there were only one or two: linguistics wasn’t really taught as an undergraduate subject. There were only very few journals, and if you compare that to the situation now, there are hundreds of universities all over the world teaching linguistics, and there are, I don’t know, hundreds of journals, even quite a few journals dealing with particular areas like sociolinguistics or pragmatics or psycholinguistics. The field has really mushroomed tremendously, so it’s difficult to imagine oneself back in the days of the 1960s where, in a sense, the world was one’s oyster, intellectually speaking–one could develop new theories and do new things, “oh, let’s do a little bit of semantics, nobody’s been doing that recently”. So, that was really how things got underway with me. Let’s begin with stylistics, because when I got my very first job at University College, London, somebody said to me: “You have to teach this first-year course, which is on rhetoric”, and I thought, “Well, rhetoric, I think it’s more or less similar to stylistics, so I’ll try and make this rather traditional course on rhetoric more up-to-date and talk about linguistic style, using the methods of linguistics applied to literature.” Then, of course I was in a department with Randolph Quirk, and other people who were members of his team. I couldn’t really ignore grammar in that situation, so I think I got involved with grammar through the work with them, and exchanging ideas with them. Even corpus linguistics began in a way at that very time because although I was not involved directly, Randolph Quirk was developing the first modern corpus of the English language, the Survey of English Usage corpus, but that began in 1959 I think it was, a long time ago–before computers. I mean, Randolph Quirk didn’t think of putting these texts on computers, he just kept them in enormous metal filing cabinets– there was a lot of work involved with annotating those little pieces of paper in those days. So, that gave me one element of interest there. Semantics began because, as I said, I was sharing the same department as Michael Halliday at one time, and again it was an exciting period, when people were trying to develop new ways of studying language, using Michael Halliday’s theory, and I thought, “Well, nobody is doing very much on semantics, so I’ll ask Michael Halliday himself”. I An Interview with Geoffrey Leech 149 thought morphology might be one area, or maybe semantics might be another area. I asked him and said: “Well, which of these areas do you think it would be better for me to develop?”, and he said, “Well, semantics I think would be more rewarding,” so that’s how I got started on semantics. Pragmatics grew out of semantics because in the later seventies, let’s say around 1976, pragmatics evolved as a rather hot topic within the generative framework but also more generally. People had found semantics was a rather unsatisfactory field: it was difficult to demarcate semantics and say here we have linguistics treating meaning in terms of subcategories, structures, rather like grammatical structures. Then, on the other hand, meaning is a window onto the world, and onto social interaction through language–communication–and so there came this division between semantics–that is to say, meaning as defined in terms of the structure of language–and pragmatics, meaning defined in terms of the interaction between language and context. These became important topics just at that time and I got involved with them very much at a similar time, in the late sixties and seventies, so the late 1970s, I suppose, was the period when that developed most. What else? Corpus linguistics, well, that, as I said, in a way, began back in the late 1950s, in the department where I was, at University College London. It didn’t really get under way for me, personally, until I moved from the University of London to Lancaster, which was a very new university in those days, just five years old. It had no particular reputation at all, we had no research profile, and so just a few of us sat around a table– just four or five of us, we’d just got these new jobs, and it was a very young university, even the staff were incredibly young–and so we thought “How can we put Lancaster on the map so that people know we’re here?” The answer was, I suggested, that we should possibly try to match a corpus which had already appeared in the USA, developed by Nelson Francis and his colleagues in Brown University. They had created this wonderful computer-corpus of one million words. Could we do the same thing for British English and make a matching corpus? And so that’s what we decided to do. It wasn’t an easy job, but at least it got us started in this area of corpus linguistics, which, as I said, had not really been defined as a field, it was just in a pioneering stage at that time.
Yes, but you certainly put Lancaster on the map! I think you’ve already answered my next question, but I’ll ask you anyway. Can we speak of linguistic research of any kind without the help of a corpus? Are theoretical studies fully reliable, if they don’t have a corpus?
I’m not sure I have yet answered it properly. Corpus linguists can be rather extreme in their addiction to computer corpora, so I might naturally want to stereotype myself as a corpus linguist, but actually, there are other ways of finding observations about language, aren’t there? I mean, we all rely on our intuitions, up to a point, although there are some defects in relying totally on the intuition of a native speaker. There’s another paradigm of research where we go ‘into the field’, the so-called field-work paradigm, where people go out to the area where the language is spoken and collect data of the speech of that linguistic community, not necessarily in the form of a corpus– it might be in the form of questionnaires, and so on. And then there is the model– which perhaps we associate with psycholinguists–of elicitation experiments: we elicit forms from people in rather laboratory-type conditions. Now, all of these are really 150 Paloma Núñez Pertejo trying to do as I suggested linguistics should do, trying to account for the observational evidence that we can get about language. If we set up some sort of description or some sort of theory, we should ultimately be able to find some observational evidence to confirm it or to support it; if not, we change our theory and then we look for further support, which is the scientific paradigm as we have learnt it from natural sciences, really. So, yes, there must be some form of data. It happens that the corpus is a very handy, very rich source of data, nowadays, but of course it is not the only source of data, and some people would say it is an artificially-restricted form of data, because we don’t get much contextual information very often from corpus linguistics. So, there are other paradigms–there’s the paradigm which people refer to as ‘the ethnographic method’, which is to always collect linguistic data with rich contextual information. This is also a kind of observational evidence. So, yes, there are many ways of seeking evidence, not just a corpus. I think the corpus linguistic method is the method which has developed most significantly in the last couple of decades, let’s say.
You’ve also compiled and annotated different corpora. What are the most difficult tasks you had to face in compiling and annotating those corpora?
Yes, the most difficult tasks are the ones I remember from the early days at Lancaster, when really the situation was quite primitive. We were a little university, with not very good computing facilities, and those computing facilities were automatically assumed to be important for the sciences, not for the humanities. We had problems of persuading people that it was a worthwhile idea at all: “What’s the point of it?” people would say. We had problems of funding, persuading people to give us some money, because when you get into corpus linguistics, you soon discover you can’t do it as a single researcher, you have to get together and have a team working with you, so you need money to pay research staff. And also the biggest nuisance for me has been copyright: trying to get permission from copyright holders to allow their material to be used in a corpus. So those difficulties all occurred in their most acute form when we were building the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus, the one that is nowadays called the LOB Corpus, which was a matching corpus, intended to match the American Brown University Corpus for British English. That was a very difficult task and, eventually, I had to give it up, and some helpful people in Norway helped me out to finish it, particularly Stig Johansson at the University of Oslo. That’s how it came to be called Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen.
We are fully aware that you’ve developed an interest in linguistic change, and you’ve done quite a lot of research on recent and ongoing changes in the English language. Could you briefly refer to some of the most outstanding and remarkable changes in present-day English?
Yes, I’ve been studying grammar mainly because we have these four matching corpora, Brown and LOB I’ve already mentioned, and the later corpora which were developed by Christian Mair and his team at Freiburg University, the so-called FLOB and Frown corpora. Anyway, these four corpora provide a very nice framework within which to study what’s been happening to English grammar, although they can only answer the An Interview with Geoffrey Leech 151 questions with respect to written language, but we can also get some other evidence from spoken language. So what is happening? Well, on the whole, thirty years is not a very long time, so things are changing mainly in terms of frequency, but there are some quite remarkable changes if we consider frequency of use. I’ll mention simply the class of modal auxiliaries in English, which have been declining over that period of thirty years, declining in their use. And particularly some of the less frequent of those modal auxiliaries, may, must and shall, for example–some of these have actually decreased in their use by about 40%, so that’s quite a remarkable change. Then, on the other hand, we find the so-called semi-modals, like have to and need to, want to–or to give them their popular American pronunciation, hafta, wanna or gonna, etc.–these have been increasing, and perhaps this is not too surprising, because people suspected that this is a new wave of grammaticalization in English, almost a paradigm case of grammaticalization. I think other fields where grammaticalization plays a role include the increasing use of the progressive form of the verb, particularly the present progressive. On the other hand, the genitive, the apostrophe s (’s) genitive form is increasing and there has been a corresponding decline in the of-genitive. So, these are all examples of the types of changes that are taking place, and when we try to explain them, we get into using words ending in -isation, so various -isations which I’ve already mentioned: ‘grammaticalisation’, and also ‘colloquialisation’, which Christian Mair himself has written quite a lot about. Many of these changes can be tentatively related to the hypothesis that the written language has been influenced by the norms of speech, so written language is becoming more speech-like in certain respects–not in all respects, though. Another one of course we use is ‘Americanisation’. It is clear that in these changes American English tends to be in the forefront, and be moving more quickly in a particular direction than British English is, for example. Yes, there are other -isations– ‘democratisation’–one of the reasons why must is declining is possibly that it has too authoritative an air. It’s less face-threatening to say You need to submit your paper tomorrow rather than You must. And also democratisation applies to, yes, reducing differences between groups of people and, of course, this applies also to gender distinctions. We find that there is a decrease in the use of he as a so-called generic third person pronoun, in utterances like...–let me think of an example, A teacher must make up his own mind about this–that kind of his/he is declining. Instead of that, there is a tendency to use the singular they: A teacher must make up their own mind. Not that the singular they is a terribly new thing in English, I mean, it’s been in the language at least since Shakespeare, but it’s been increasingly in use. Although it’s considered ungrammatical by many people, it nevertheless does avoid this discrimination on the basis of gender. So these are the kinds of things which are happening. Some of them are almost expected, but some of them are happening without people being aware of them. I think people have been aware of things like the decline of the generic he, but as for the decline of the modals, as for the increase of the genitive, I don’t think anybody has been aware of these things. In fact, native speakers at least tend to think that grammar is more or less immutable, that it’s going to stay the same through the centuries–but it’s certainly not going to do that. Yes, don’t get me wrong, I mean, the modal auxiliaries are still amongst the most frequent words in English. I don’t want you to think that everybody has got to stop teaching can, will and would or words like that! 152 Paloma Núñez Pertejo
You participated in the production of a corpus-based grammar of English, which is called The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, focusing on American English and British English, and on the four registers of conversation, fiction writing, news writing and academic writing. Would you say it was the first grammar of this type? Would you consider it as a landmark in itself? I say this because I think this is a very different kind of grammar.
Yes, it has been accepted by quite a few people as an important break-through in corpus-based grammar. If you go back in time, you could say that people like Otto Jespersen in the early decades of the twentieth century were writing corpus-based grammar, because they based their grammar on examples from real language. Also, the so-called ‘Quirk’ grammars, like the Grammar of Contemporary English, 1972, were based in part upon the Survey of English Usage, so the idea of a corpus-based grammar or a corpus-informed grammar was not new. I think it was in 1990 that John Sinclair and his team in Birmingham published a book called The Collins COBUILD English Grammar, and a key feature of that was that corpus examples were used throughout. That was also a kind of landmark. So there are various ways in which you can interpret corpus-based grammar. I think that this Longman Grammar (1999) by Doug Biber et al was a new venture, because we were able to use corpus data not only for all the examples–and there’s several thousand examples in the grammar–but also to base all our descriptive statements upon analysis of the corpus data. That was probably the most important respect in which it could be considered a landmark, but it was a flawed experiment, I think, in some respects, although it does inform us a great deal about how English grammar varies between speech and writing, between different types of written genres of texts and so on. It tells us a great deal about that, which hasn’t been known before, or has only been guessed at before, so in that respect it’s increased our knowledge considerably. But if we had done the job thoroughly, it would have taken more time. I think it took us seven years to write that grammar. It would have probably taken us forty years if we really had done the job as thoroughly as it could be done, so there are some gaps and I even might say there are one or two errors in that book.
Could you tell us a little bit more about the compilation of that new corpus of British English comprising the period 1926-1931, is that right?
I think the dates are 1928 to 1934, I think so.
Yes, that’s right, thank you.
Well, the reason for these dates is this: we wanted to build another corpus from the twentieth century on the same model of the Brown Corpus, so that we could analyse, we could make comparisons between matching corpora, not only between 1961 and 1991, but going back further to between 1961 and 1931. But, it is a difficult job to tackle, to try and get the texts from that period, lots of visiting of libraries and scouring various archives and so on. It’s not an easy job, and to make our job slightly less problematic, we decided to stretch the period, so that it contains three years before 1931 and three
An Interview with Geoffrey Leech 153 years after 1931. I think all the newspapers are actually from 1931, that was a sort of key date, and then we allowed data a little bit from both sides of 1931, thinking that that would not seriously flaw the corpus from the point of view of this thirty-year comparison that we were interested in, so yes, that corpus is now reaching completion, and we are getting the first findings from it...
Yes, well that’s good to know.
And in line perhaps with much of what I’ve said already, certain of the changes we observed in the 1961-1991 corpus comparison are also found in the earlier periods, so, for example, the modal auxiliaries declined between 1931 and 1961, and again between 1961 and 1991. There is a continuation of the trend, but the trend accelerates in the later period–that’s also of some interest. So those are the sorts of results we are finding, and there’s also a decline in the passive, similar to the modals, some decline between 1931 and 1961, and then a much increased decline in the period from 1961 to 1991. So what this research enables us to do is to be much more confident in talking about short-term diachronic trends in the language: it’s a type of precise diachronic study that hasn’t really been possible before. Although it’s limited, obviously, in terms of the size of the corpora, and the fact that it’s only dealing with written language, it has provided some very fascinating information about diachronic change. It also tells us about the rate of change: not just what’s happening, but how fast it’s happening.
Going back in time and talking about your MA Thesis, The Language of Commercial Television Advertising, I think this was later published as a book entitled English in Advertising. A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain (1966). Would you do research of such an ‘applied’ kind nowadays? If the answer is ‘yes’, which topic would you choose and why? Could you imagine yourself doing something like this now, at this moment?
No... (laughter). Well, I’ll try to answer that with a bit more than perhaps a blank negative. In 19... what was it? 1962, right, I started that MA Thesis–it was a kind of corpus linguistics, actually, although I didn’t know it at that time, because I collected a corpus of over six hundred commercial television advertisements, which was a kind of new genre in those days. I think it was twenty-nine thousand words, I know it was not an enormous corpus, but it was quite difficult for me to analyse. I did analyse it, but I had no computers to do it, so I just used a set of home-made pigeonholes made out of cardboard for sorting the data and it was quite a difficult job to do. But I’ve not regretted it in retrospect, because it gave me my first job, my first piece of research, and I discovered how to do things. Yes, it was a corpus, and in a way, that research followed the same pattern that I’ve mentioned: it was a matter of studying the formal characteristics of advertising language, and then trying to answer the question: “Well, why is advertising language like this and not like it could be? Why does advertising language use certain forms but not others?...” So, yes, it was an interesting piece of work of a kind which, in a way, has been developed considerably since then: the study of different varieties of language, you know. Today one might even call it a kind of
154 Paloma Núñez Pertejo sociolinguistics, I suppose, but there have been many studies of advertising language since then, and one thing I was more or less determined on when I finished was that I would not go back to advertising language, I would not study it again.
Another book of yours which has become a sort of best-seller, Meaning and the English Verb, is already into its third edition (2004). Could you tell us what is new about this third edition, in comparison with the first (1971) and the second (1987) editions?
Yes, the first edition was published long ago, in 1971 actually, and then the second edition in 1987, and the third edition in 2004, so that book has been going a long time. In both cases the new editions had to alter the later chapters more than the earlier chapters. As you may remember or not, the first three chapters deal with things like tense and aspect, and then we go into the future in chapter four, and then chapters five, six and seven deal with modals and various other developments of past modals, hypothetical and indirect speech usage, and that sort of thing. Because the modals themselves have been so much studied and there has been so much new thinking, those are the areas where I found it necessary to change a great deal. Comparatively speaking, the earlier chapters have been much less changed, and in this last edition, I thought it necessary to split chapter five, which is the first main chapter on modal auxiliaries, into two halves–into two chapters–so now the book has eight chapters, not seven. That was one of the most noticeable changes to the third edition.
Finally, what do you think your main contribution to the world of linguistics has been? Of course, it’s common knowledge that you have contributed so much, but what would you point out as being your main contribution?
Thank you, it’s very kind of you to say that. I feel, you know, I can’t give any one answer. If I have contributed, it’s been in a lot of little bits, rather than in one particular, obvious way, let’s say. Yes, so, if people have followed corpus linguistics in detail, they might look on me as one of the pioneers, perhaps even one of the founders of corpus linguistics in the UK. I developed the field through that very small beginning at Lancaster in 1970 and, at the same time, John Sinclair was also working in the corpus area in a very different way, so I wouldn’t say I am somehow the pioneer exactly, but I’m one of them. I think it was especially in Great Britain that corpus linguistics flourished, because in the United States, the other most populous English-speaking country, there was a kind of intellectual difficulty about corpus linguistics, you know, it went contrary to the mainstream of the generative school. Somehow we were able to develop in a way that the Americans were not, and then corpus work was taken up by the publishers of dictionaries, who certainly found that was a good way to develop their lexicographical publications. I suppose that’s one area where I might be looked back on as contributing. I’ll just mention one other area, which I think personally gives more satisfaction to me than anything else, and that is the field of stylistics, although I haven’t really done much research in that field for many, well, quite a few years. This year the organisation of the Poetics and Linguistics Association called PALA, which is an international
An Interview with Geoffrey Leech 155 organisation covering the area of stylistics, offered a prize for the most influential publication in that area over the twenty-five years of PALA’s existence and, much to my surprise, they awarded this prize to Mick Short and myself. We were the two authors of a book called Style in Fiction. A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose, I think that was the subtitle. Anyway, it was published in 1981, and I wouldn’t have thought that it was one of the top-ranking books, but I was really delighted that we won this prize, and we are now doing a second edition of the book, so I’m getting seriously interested once again in that field. Yes, I suppose these kind of things give the most satisfaction.
I think you are being very modest.
Oh, yes, and I must mention we had a conference this year in Lancaster to celebrate that prize, we called this the Style in Fiction Symposium. And the proceedings of that symposium will be published in a special number of the journal Style, hopefully next year. I’m boasting now, you see!
Well, Professor Leech, thank you very much for such a rewarding and fruitful conversation and thank you for coming to Santiago. You know that you are very welcome here and always will be. Thank you so much.
Well, it’s my job to thank you because you’ve been wonderful hosts. Thank you very much indeed.
Works Cited
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan 1999: Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman. Francis, W.N. and H. Kucera 1964: A Standard Corpus of Present-Day Edited American English. Department of Linguistics. Brown UP. Hundt, Marianne, Andrea Sand, and Rainer Siemund 1998: The Freiburg–LOB Corpus of British English (‘FLOB’). Englisches Seminar. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Hundt, Marianne, Andrea Sand, and Paul Skandera 1999: The Freiburg–Brown Corpus of American English (‘Frown’). Englisches Seminar. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Johansson, Stig (in collaboration with Geoffrey Leech and Helen Goodluck) 1978: The Lancaster- Oslo/Bergen Corpus of British English. Department of English: Oslo UP. Leech, Geoffrey 1966: English in Advertising: A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain. London: Longman. Leech, Geoffrey, and Mick Short 1981: Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman. Leech, Geoffrey 2004: Meaning and the English Verb. 3rd ed. (1971, 1987). Harlow: Longman/Pearson. Leech, Geoffrey, and Nick Smith 2006: The Lancaster–1931 Corpus (BLOB ‘before LOB’). Lancaster UP. 156 Paloma Núñez Pertejo
Quirk, Randolph 1959: Survey of English Usage (SEU). Department of English Language and Literature. University College, London: U of London. Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1972. A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman. Sinclair, John 1990: Collins COBUILD English Grammar. London: Harper Collins.
Received 21 September 2006 Revised version received 12 December 2006
29.1 (June 2007): 157–163 ISSN 0210-6124
New Trends in Grammar Teaching: Issues and Applications An interview with Prof. Diane Larsen-Freeman
Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada Universidad de Zaragoza [email protected]
Now that the Spanish Ministry of Education has announced that the new European degrees will start in the academic year 2008-2009, one of the most impending goals of English language teachers in Spanish universities is that of adapting to the pedagogical guidelines established by the European Space in Higher Education. As a result, new methodological models are being brought to the fore with the aim of providing learners not simply with what the Tuning Project (Universidad de Deusto and Universidad de Groningen 2003) defines as instrumental or generic competences in a foreign language (grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic competences), but also with social skills (i.e. group work, decision making and problem solving activities) and cognitive abilities (i.e. information search, information analysis and synthesis, and critical thinking skills). The integration of such competences in the English language syllabus seeks to make students more competent communicators in their future professional careers (cf. Fallows and Stevens 2000). Both young and experienced teachers alike are thus devoting time and efforts to finding new teaching resources and to putting into practice new methodological approaches with greater potential to offer improved knowledge acquisition in the above mentioned competences, the linguistic, the social and the cognitive. Prof. Diane Larsen- Freeman, Director of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, is at present one of the most widely acknowledged applied linguists and teacher educators in the academic world. A Distinguished Senior Faculty Fellow at the School for International Training, Professor Larsen-Freeman was also named in 1999 one of 30 American pioneers in the field of ESL in the 20th century by ESL Magazine. As a leading figure in second language acquisition, she kindly accepted the invitation to be interviewed and to offer practical guidance in exploring language teaching methods and recent methodological innovations.
Traditional methodologies have often been the breeding ground of language acquisition problems and ineffective learning environments in which learners hardly participate and/or volunteer. What advantages do the new trends in theory and pedagogy offer to ESL teachers to avoid what you coined as the “inert knowledge problem” (Larsen-Freeman 2003a)?
158 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada
The term inert knowledge problem is not mine; it was coined by Alfred North Whitehead in 1929. He used it to refer to the fact that students learn things in the classroom that they cannot later put to their own purposes outside of the classroom. I appropriated the term because I thought that it applied very well to the teaching of grammar. Students are taught grammar as a set of rules, but even if they can apply the rules to exercises successfully during the lesson, they don’t seem to be able to activate their knowledge of the rules when they are communicating during another part of the lesson or in another context. Undoubtedly, one source of the inert knowledge problem is the language teaching methodology used. For instance, I studied Spanish using the grammar translation method. While I learned a lot of vocabulary and a lot of grammar rules, I cannot speak Spanish. Of course, the grammar translation method had a different strength. We read Cervantes and El Cid, and we learned a great deal about Spanish culture. My point is that methodologies have different strengths. The newer methodologies, such as a task- based approach, try to address the inert knowledge problem. They try to get people using the language from the beginning rather than learning about the language with the hope that later on the students can apply knowledge of the rules in an active way.
You treat grammar as a skill – you call it grammaring – and further state that teaching grammar as the ‘fifth skill’ can help students overcome the inert knowledge problem. Could you expand this a bit further?
We all teach our subjects as we understand them. If we conceive of grammar as a static set of rules, then we teach grammar in a static manner. Such teachers have students read the rules, apply them to exercises and memorize them. These steps alone do not help students overcome the inert knowledge problem. Therefore, I think that the way to address the problem is to change the way teachers think about grammar. I created the term grammaring to convey the idea that grammar is a dynamic system, which needs to be taught as a skill, the fifth skill (the other four being reading, writing, speaking and listening), rather than as a fixed body of rules. If you understand that what you are trying to do is to get students to use grammatical structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately, then you realize that you need to provide students with an opportunity to use grammar structures in meaningful and engaging activities.
In your book Teaching Language: from Grammar to Grammaring (2003a) you point out three major dimensions in every linguistic unit: form, meaning and use. How should these dimensions be taught to students?
Any linguistic unit can be characterized by a form, a meaning and a use. So, for example, you could say that the form of the English word house is a common count noun, it’s singular, it’s spelt with the silent e, it contains a diphthong, etc. It has a meaning as well, of course. A house is a place where someone lives. However, we cannot stop there because there are a lot of words in English that refer to a place where someone lives. For example, there is residence, dwelling, domicile, habitat, etc. So students have to learn to pick among them the appropriate word for the meaning that they want and for the context of use. An Interview with Diane Larsen-Freeman 159
For me, this means that for someone to be able to speak and use language accurately, meaningfully and appropriately, all three dimensions of form, meaning and use have to be learned. However, if you stop and think about it, you realize that they are not all learned the same way. For this reason, form, meaning and use need to be taught differently. Teachers need to focus students’ attention on one of these three, the one which presents the greatest learning challenge for students at that moment. The challenge changes, depending on the proficiency of the students and their native language. For example, for Spanish speakers, the challenge in learning the English passive is probably not its form or its meaning. Students have to learn both; however, it is when to use the passive (as opposed to the active voice) that remains the greatest learning challenge. This suggests that the traditional way of introducing the passive to learners by transforming active sentences into passive ones is misguided because it suggests to students that the two voices are interchangeable, which they are not.
So, instead of learning grammar and lexis separately, does the awareness of these three dimensions facilitate the students’ acquisition of lexico-grammatical units?
Yes I definitely think that grammar can be seen as a web of patterns, and I do not think it is helpful to think of grammar and vocabulary as being entirely separate. I prefer Halliday’s term, lexicogrammar. It is very easy to see this in phrasal verbs, which are a traditional grammar structure, but whose learning challenge is really lexical – learning the sometimes unique meaning of each verb and particle combination. I am not so happy with the form-function dichotomy, or the form-meaning one either because as you know, I prefer a tri-partite view of form, meaning and use or function.
Would you make a difference between teaching spoken grammar and teaching a written grammar of English?
Yes. This is an important awareness now that we have access to linguistic corpora where we can study the differences in a systematic way. Of course, there is overlap between the two grammars, but where they differ, students’ attention should be drawn to the characteristics of each.
In Larsen-Freeman (2003b) you foreground the use of native and non-native texts in the ESL classroom. You also contend that contextual analysis can be enhanced through the use of linguistic corpora as a means of accessing real language usage data (Larsen-Freeman 2004). What are the main advantages of looking at grammar in context and of accessing real instances of language use?
One of the main advantages of looking at grammar in context is that it can reveal information about the use of particular structures, and what patterns the grammar structures enter into, for instance, what preceeds them and what follows them in the discourse. An advantage of linguistic corpora is that we have access to many instances of attested language use. These are a helpful supplement to our linguistic intuitions about how the language works. However, I also think that there are limitations to corpora. For one thing they give us examples of what’s right, but they don’t tell us what 160 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada is wrong. In this sense, they don’t really give a full account of the potential of the system. Furthermore, I believe that psychological authenticity is more important than linguistic authenticity for pedagogical purposes. If students are engaged in psychologically authentic activities, they have an opportunity to practice using language meaningfully for their own purposes. This is the only way to overcome the inert knowledge problem.
One of my main concerns as regards these new pedagogical trends is the suitability of teaching grammar using a context-based approach. What are basically the “rules and reasons” (Larsen-Freeman 2000b) of teaching grammar in context?
Rules can be useful, but rules are form-based and are usually stated in inflexible ways. However, that is not how language works. Language exists for the expression and interpretation of meaning, and that includes grammatical meaning. Sometimes, we give students simplified ‘rules of thumb’. We tell students “You can’t use a stative verb with the present participle”. But this isn’t so. English speakers use present participles with stative verbs when they say things like “I’ve been wanting to see that movie ever since it arrived in town”. The reason that this sentence is acceptable is because the present participle is semantically compatible with the present perfect – both referring to a span of time. So my idea is to teach reasons so that students understand that language is the way it is. Also, I think reasons tend to be broader-based than rules, and if you understand the reason why speakers make the choices they do, you have some access to the way that people think in that language, the culture of speakers of that language. Earlier you mentioned working to enhancing students’ cognitive abilities. When you teach students reasons why things are the way they are in language, I think you are doing just this.
You propose three criteria for designing output practice activities – meaningful and engaging, focus on the learning challenge (be it form, meaning or use) and grading. From my own experience, planning, designing and implementing a new learning environment based on new methodological approaches is a time-consuming task. What advice could you give us in this respect?
Anytime you do something for the first time as a teacher it is time consuming. A few years ago I taught a new course, entitled ‘Educational Linguistics’. Even though I have over 30 years’ teaching experience, my new course took a tremendous amount of work. So we need to be realistic when we ask teachers to innovate. Nevertheless, the reason why I believe that it is important to ask teachers to focus on output practice is that I think it’s an area that has been overlooked since the days of drilling and pattern practice. A lot of SLA research, second language acquisition research, is focused on input processing; it ignores output processing. What we need are suggestions for how to make output practice interesting and engaging. How to get around the time-consuming nature? Well I don’t really have a very good answer for that, but I have two comforting thoughts to share – first, when you work in a way where learners are engaged in producing meaningful language, in a learning- centered way, then the teacher is much freer than when she was the center of attention. An Interview with Diane Larsen-Freeman 161
This leaves her able to observe learning in progress, one of the great rewards of teaching. Second, it’s a mistake to assume that a new method necessarily requires all new material. It is the way that you use the material that is important in a learning- centered approach. Earl Stevick, a famous language methodologist, wrote years and years ago an article called ‘Technemes and the Rhythm of Class Activity’. It’s a classic article in which Stevick explains how a teacher can take an activity, change it a little bit, and by so doing, re-ignite students’ interest, re-engage them. Using a good text or a good activity again and again need not be tedious, if it is skilfully managed as Stevick suggests.
Literature on autonomous learning defines it as that type of learning activity in which learners act independently of the teacher and become responsible for their learning progress by developing an awareness of their degree of motivation, learning strategies and group building abilities. What individual learner factors and what language learning procedures should ESL instructors observe and take into account to provide suitable feedback to students?
You’re just reminding me that another way to manage the load of developing new materials is to ask students to bring their own materials to class. That’s very much in keeping with making students more responsible and motivated. I don’t think the role of feedback giver is one that can completely be turned over to students, however. Giving students feedback so that they know when they are on and when they are off target is a really important function for a teacher to perform. Of course, for feedback to be useful, it must be given selectively. You don’t want to constantly interrupt someone. Feedback needs to be cognitively challenging and affectively supportive. It is my experience that when it is, students appreciate it and learn from it.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages establishes six reference levels for grading language proficiency: A Basic User, A1 Breakthrough, A2 Waystage, B Independent User, B1 Threshold, B2 Vantage, C Proficient User, C1 Effective Operational Proficiency and C2 Mastery. Would you say that these different levels require different methodological approaches?
I am familiar with the Common European Framework because we have calibrated our University of Michigan tests, the ECCE and the ECPE, on its scale. To answer your question about whether different levels require different methodological approaches, I think it’s helpful to be reminded that methodologies consist of both principles and techniques (Larsen-Freeman 2000a). The principles are the theory, the values, the beliefs, the ideas that underlie a particular methodology. The techniques are the practices that are realized in the classroom. It seems to me the principles do not change depending on the reference level. For example, if you believe, as I have been saying in this interview, that it is the students who need the practice producing the language, then that’s true for students whether they are at the A1 or C2 level. However the techniques and the materials that you use for 162 Mª Carmen Pérez-Llantada different levels would be different because the learning challenge is different for learners at different levels of proficiency.
My last question obviously tackles one of the most debatable issues in teacher-oriented fora, that of testing. In your view, what are the major criteria for testing in ESL courses based on communicative approaches to teaching? My dilemma, at times, is whether I should test accuracy, complexity of language and fluency or rather test the learner’s competence according to the four communicative dimensions of Canale and Swain (1980) – grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic competence?
First of all, it is important to be aware of the backwash effect or washback effect – both terms are used – of the test and be sure that what we are testing is what we want students to learn because that’s what the students are going to focus on. And, of course, it is not fair to test something that you haven’t taught. I must say I myself favor more direct testing in the classroom, which means that the things you ask the students to do in the exam situation are not different from what they would be asked to do, what they’d want to do, with that language in a non-exam situation. [one of the major challenges of the EEES is that of implementing ongoing assessment to students] Yes, I think that it makes sense to make a distinction between formative and summative assessment. When you are assessing students in an ongoing way, you are practicing formative assessment. If you have your students engaged in producing meaningful language, you will be off stage and able to observe their language behaviour. Formative assessment involves constantly scanning students’ behavior, trying to read it and seeing where students are stuck and helping them to get beyond the sticking point. This, to my way of thinking, is the essence of a good teaching. It’s using ongoing assessment to identify the obstacles to students’ learning. A related matter is to help students become better assessors of their own learning, something that prepares them to go beyond what they’ve been learning in the course, and by so doing, to become more autonomous. Teaching as managing learning is what we should all strive to achieve. This interview took place on July 7th, 2006 at the English Language Institute of the University of Michigan. I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Larsen-Freeman for giving us part of her time and for agreeing to be interviewed. I am sure that, like myself, the readers of Atlantis will greatly profit from her broad experience and highly- illuminating insights as a linguist, a teacher educator and a second language acquisition researcher.
Works Cited
Canale, Michael and Merrill Swain 1980: ‘Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language Teaching and Testing’. Applied Linguistics 1.1: 1-47. Larsen-Freeman, Diane. 2000a: Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford UP. ––––– 2000b: ‘Grammar: Rules and Reasons Working Together’. ESL/EFL Magazine. January/February: 10-12. An Interview with Diane Larsen-Freeman 163
––––– 2003a: Teaching Language: from Grammar to Grammaring. Toronto, Canada: Thomson Heinle. ––––– 2003b: ‘Using Native and Non-Native Texts to Promote Grammatical Awareness, Develop Skills, and Enhance Attitudes towards the Study and Teaching of Grammar’. Dilin Liu and Peter Master, eds. Grammar Teaching in Teacher Education. Alexandria, VA: TESOL. 101-109. ––––– 2004: ‘Enhancing Contextual Analysis through the Use of Linguistic Corpora’. Jan Frodesen and Christine Holten, eds. The Power of Context in Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle. 49-54. Fallows, Stephen and Christine Steven 2000: Integrating Key Skills in Higher Education; Employability, Transferable Skills and Learning for Life. London: Kagan Page. Universidad de Deusto & Universidad de Groningen 2003: Tuning Educational Structures in Europe. Informe final. Fase uno. Bilbao: U. de Deusto.
Received 7 November 2006 Revised version received 28 February 2007
REVIEWS
RESEÑAS
Ralph Hanna 2005: London Literature, 1300–1380. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, no. 57. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. xxi+359pp. ISBN 0-521-84835-0
Jordi Sánchez-Martí University of Alicante [email protected]
Literary history has traditionally endeavoured to offer an orderly view of literary production through the times by means of a master narrative whose organizing chapters tend to correlate with historical events deemed to have significant effects on literature. This kind of approach to literary writing in its historical dimension usually focuses on one single language, thus making for a homogeneous and antiseptic narrative in which the diachronic evolution of the given language and its literature are shown to follow parallel paths. These premises informed the practice of literary history during the best part of the last century and before, but the emergence of postmodern literary studies has made apparent that those totalizing accounts actually obscure more complex and problematic realities, and that literary manifestations are better understood within their immediate cultural environment. While it is relatively easy to show the inadequacy of former critical positions to explain the literary activity of past times, it is certainly difficult for literary historians to entirely satisfy the holistic demands of current criticism. A case in point is the on-going New Cambridge History of English Literature, which tackles the polyvocal nature of literature and in its volume devoted to the medieval period contains the cultural information necessary for a better understanding of the written production of an era, i.e. 1066–1547, and of a specific geographical area, i.e. the British Isles (cf. Wallace 1999). The object of study has now expanded and is no longer limited to texts composed in English but comprises the written production in Anglo-Norman, Latin and Welsh, too. Moreover, in the volume edited by Wallace texts are not discussed per se, but instead scholars consider external agents as well, such as scribes, owners, readers and institutional authorities, who have an effect on the processes of textual transmission and reception. The expansion of the object of study means that all attempts to present a coherent straight-line narrative are vain, and that works of literary history as the one edited by Wallace can present only an imperfect and general picture. Hanna himself categorically expresses this same opinion in a recent article: “In this period, English literature (better, ‘literature in England’, since it might be written in any of three languages) is comprised of a series of local text communities, each with its distinct parameters. As a result, there may be no such thing as a ‘literary history of late medieval England’” (2004: 174). As the very title of the book under examination indicates, London Literature, 1300– 1380 aims to discuss one of those coherent fragments that compose the disjointed literary history in its postmodern expression. In order for us to better appreciate his effort to recapture the past lived experience of literature in any given locality, Hanna opens his book with a prefatory section enticingly titled ‘In Thrall’, which evokes the author’s experience of growing up in his hometown, Thrall, Tex., where his childhood was marked by the sounds and smells of cotton ginning. The evanescent sensations he relates are probably the ones that best encapsulate the distinctiveness of the author’s childhood locale, and this is why he uses this biographical analogy to explain that his 168 Jordi Sánchez-Martí book “will be primarily concerned with what gets repressed, as literary history, in accounts ... of a longue duree” (xvi). In the book Hanna also returns to a specific past time and space, to a textual community defined with clear geographical and chronological boundaries, namely fourteenth-century London, a locality whose productive possibilities he intends to restore, albeit fragmentarily. For this exercise in literary immersion into the past Hanna has recourse to codicology lato sensu, that is to say, to a discipline concerned with manuscripts not simply as textual carriers but also as cultural artefacts (cf. Gruijs 1972, McKenzie 1986). As the author states, “my argument will return to the manuscripts, the local instantiations of textual culture, forgotten behind the printed editions of canonical authors like Chaucer” (xvii). With his recognized palaeographical expertise, Hanna succeeds in transforming codicological details into hard evidence, always so elusive in medieval literary studies. This is certainly one of the virtues of the present monograph, enabling Hanna to build a solid and dependable argument while making visible the limitations and imprecision of relying exclusively on critical editions of medieval texts. The introduction proper is given in ‘English Vernacular Culture in London before 1380: the Evidence’, a lengthy and meaty chapter that lays the groundwork for the ensuing discussion. Hanna observes that vernacular book-trade during this period has generally been described as provincial by modern manuscript scholars, who recognize as the main centres of literary activity the ancient diocese of Worcester, some Yorkshire locales, and to a lesser degree textual communities in Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Was then London a literary wasteland? It is true that, as Hanna points out, the metropolis suffered the disadvantage of finding outside its walls the spaces of high cultural activity, namely the universities and religious foundations. Nonetheless, we should suppose that some sort of literary activity, however limited, must have existed in London for it to become undoubtedly the country’s centre of manuscript production from the early fifteenth century onward. It is exactly this attenuated literary life that Hanna traces back and vindicates. In view that “London, in the earlier fourteenth century, is notable chiefly as an absence from the continuum constructed by scholars as ‘The History of English Literature’” (3),1 Hanna wants to draw scholarly attention to London Edwardian literature. With the choice of this descriptive label Hanna juxtaposes this literature to that of the Ricardian age postulated by John Burrow (1971) in a seminal monograph that has attracted a great deal of critical interest in the late-fourteenth century. While the reigns of the three Edwards elapsed from 1272 until 1377, Hanna focuses mainly on the period ca. 1310–80, thus showing that these chronological boundaries are not immovable. This attitude allows him to contentiously describe William Langland as “the city’s most important Edwardian author” (4), despite the fact that his production lasted until ca. 1395 and that he has been usually recognized as one of the great figures of the Ricardian period. In order to substantiate his claim for the existence of a London written culture during the Edwardian period, Hanna has had to define a textual corpus with direct metropolitan associations. With the help of the dialectological research conducted by McIntosh, et al. (1986), Hanna has selected manuscripts located in the London area that
1 Cf. Lindenbaum (1999), who discusses London literary culture only from 1375 onward. Reviews 169 were written in Type II London (Samuels 1963). 2 This linguistic criterion is of chronological significance, since around 1380 changes occur to the London dialect, now designated Type III London. By combining palaeographic criteria with dialectological ones, Hanna has identified the ten codices localized in the historical geography of Edwardian London, including the famous Auchinleck manuscript (see Pearsall and Cunningham 1979). These manuscripts contain what we can now consider to represent the London contemporary literary canon, whose fundamental text seems to have been The Mirror, a Middle English prose translation of Robert of Gretham’s Anglo-Norman poetic sermon-cycle known as Mirur. Present in four out of the ten London codices, this text’s centrality contrasts with the fact that it has not yet been fully edited, since the recent edition by Duncan and Connolly (2003) is only partial, thus confirming Hanna’s claim that the metropolitan literary culture of this period has been in general neglected by modern scholars. The readings of fourteenth-century Londoners would include, on the one hand, religious texts such as the aforementioned Mirror, Ancrene Riwle, and excerpts from The South English Legendary, among others, while on the other hand, the corpus of romance texts collected in the Auchinleck manuscript and in Bodleian Library MS Laud misc. 622, as for instance Beves of Hamtoun, Guy of Warwick, and Lybeaus Desconus. Moreover, using testamentary records and inventories of possessions, the author has expanded the selection of texts that must have been available to London readers (11–15). After making some remarks about the transmission of texts in fourteenth-century London, the introductory chapter closes by referring to “a largely unrecorded London cultural surround with some claim to literary attention” (32), including activities such as bill-posting, ceremonials associated with the ritual year like Mayings, Christmas mummings, the Corpus Christi processions, and other civic displays with literary resonances, like tournaments and the guilds’ public activities. Having presented with didactic clarity and descriptive precision the method used for establishing the textual corpus, Hanna proceeds to explain some historical and literary conditions that can improve our understanding of Edwardian London’s written culture. Chapter two, titled ‘The “Old” Law’, explores the developments of London book-production occurred in the last decades of the thirteenth century that had a direct effect on contemporary literary culture and prepared the ground for the greater sophistication achieved in fourteenth-century manuscript productions. The compilations of statutes known as Statuta Anglia assemble the main body of legal norms promulgated in the thirteenth century from Magna Carta in 1215 until the Statute of Westminster of 1285 (46). Hanna suggests that the origin of anglicana as the literary script par excellence of the fourteenth century is to be found in the London legal book culture of the previous century, together with the genealogy of the large size of literary books, their page format and mise-en-page, as in the case of the Auchinleck manuscript. The author takes this opportunity to provide new arguments to explain the process of compilation of this last fundamental codex. First he argues that “the [manuscript] booklets ... are probably not, as in fifteenth-century work, simultaneous in origin, a production economy, but largely the sequential efforts of a single individual” (76); with this production system in mind, Hanna considers the possibility that “at various stages of production, portions of the book may have been passed from
2 Note, however, that Hanna is also critical of these scholars’ methodology; cf. pp. 27–32. 170 Jordi Sánchez-Martí scribe 1 ... to the client for his or her use” (77). After alluding to other manuscripts that present analogous production behaviours such as Huntington Library HM 25782 or Corpus Christi College MS 70, the book discusses the miniatures illustrating the Auchinleck manuscript and links them with the team of artists that between ca. 1310– 1330 decorated twenty-five manuscripts of London origin now extant. Although Hanna comments about the Auchinleck limner that his “efforts have been generally ignored and unduly trashed” (79), this is no longer the case: in a recent monograph Maidie Hilmo (2004: 112–25) provides a complete discussion of the five miniatures still remaining. Under the heading ‘Reading Romance in London’, the book focuses on the romance texts that appear in Auchinleck and Laud misc. 622. As other scholars have done recently (e.g. McDonald 2004), Hanna voices the view that Middle English romances are texts deserving of fully sophisticated consideration. Then the author sets an example by offering fresh and elaborate readings of Guy of Warwick and Beves of Hamtoun, the two verse romances with the most long-lived textual history. Some of the goals of his discussion are to prove that “denigrating the narrative sophistication of Middle English romance is a view far from well-taken” (109) and that Beves “can be dismissed as ‘popular’ only through the crudest of readings” (133). While these objectives are amply achieved, Hanna could have been more enterprising and attempt a contextualized commentary of these texts, raising issues of greater historical import: for example, in what ways were romances relevant to London readers? 3 The following chapter considers Pepys MS 2498 in its codicological, textual, literary and social aspects. Despite the fact that this manuscript “represents the most extensive project of English vernacular book-production undertaken before the close of the fourteenth century” (153), it has received little critical interest, thus making Hanna’s discussion necessary. He claims that Pepys 2498 had an original centrality comparable to, though discrepant with, that of Auchinleck: while the latter stands out for its secular contents and aristocratic opulence, the former is sober in its presentation and concerned with religious topics. A distinguishing feature of the Pepys manuscript is that it “makes available to English readers some of the literary riches of past centuries, works composed in England but not in English” (157); in particular, it includes texts derived from the Latin biblical tradition that from the mid-twelfth century were rendered into Anglo-Norman and appear translated into English in Pepys. In view of the texts’ presentation and of the nature of the translation, in particular of the Middle English prose Apocalypse, the Mirror and Ancrene Riwle, Hanna associates this manuscript with an audience composed by “pious literates with devotional interests, actively committed to imposing high standards of devotion and conduct on their community” (202). The last two chapters are concerned with the final part of the Edwardian period. In ‘Anglo-Norman’s Imagined End’ Hanna focuses on Sir John Chandos’s Herald, author of La Vie du Prince Noir (ca. 1385), which exalts the military career of Edward, the Black Prince. Hanna’s decision to choose an author who “is not precisely an English figure at all” (222) and whose main work was produced outside the chronological limits of the study is, however, questionable, especially when there is a text and an author better
3 For instance, Robert Rouse has recently explored how Beves “manifests an anxiety concerning centralised power in the form of both the king and of London” (2005: 88). Reviews 171 suited to the book’s scope. I am referring to Mirrour de l’Omme, the Anglo-Norman poem finished between 1376 and 1378 in the London borough of Southwark by the English poet John Gower, a contemporary and friend of Chaucer, traditionally associated with the Ricardian period (see Echard 2004). By contrast, chapter six centres on William Langland – usually labelled a Ricardian poet (cf. 247) – in particular on the B Version of Piers Plowman, “the culmination of Edwardian literature in the City” (243). Since this is a controversial attribution, Hanna provides arguments to substantiate it and concludes convincingly by saying that while “summer 1377 might be only a terminus a quo, it is the point at which the B Version achieved imaginative stasis” (250). In other words, it is a contemporaneous poem that thematically looks back in time, past “þe pestilence tyme” (Pro. 84), and that should be considered in the context of that previous literary tradition. This chronological assumption together with the poem’s southerly origin means that the comparison of Langland’s text with other alliterative Ricardian poems – e.g. the Gawain-group, Morte Arthure, The Wars of Alexander – is misguided; instead, for a more productive comparative analysis one should look for other alliterative texts such as Winner and Waster, and that is exactly what Hanna does to present a London reading of Langland’s text. Written by a scholar who has distinguished himself mainly for his contributions to Middle English book history, London Literature, 1300–1380 is a ground-breaking monograph, not only for having delineated the main components of Edwardian London literature, but also and more importantly, for having developed a methodology that can easily be applied to the study of textual communities in other locales and periods. Palaeographical data, always gathered with painstaking work but usually overlooked by the literary critic, takes centre-stage and will make the book particularly attractive and comforting to manuscript scholars. These will appreciate seeing their expertise put at the service of literary history and criticism, and will revel in some virtuoso moments, as in the description of the hand that copied La Vie du Prince Noir in Oxford, Worcester College MS 1 (225–26), which could have well been supplemented with an illustrative plate. London Literature, 1300–1380 has gone through a long period of gestation (the author places its embryo in 1981), but I am convinced that its influence will last much longer. I would like to end this review with two final observations. While this thoroughly researched study has been successful in supporting its arguments with hard evidence, this academic rigour has required the deployment of a wealth of information that, however, has not always been well-managed. Probably due to editorial principles imposed by the printing house, Hanna has integrated in the body of the text digressive and lengthy discussions that detract from the force of the argument. In a monograph addressed mainly to literary scholars, the author could have used more extended chapter endnotes to treat less central issues (e.g. in chapter two the discussion of legal history and of The Great Cause could have thus been reduced in the body of the text). Additionally, Hanna’s referencing strategy seems to me inadequate and unreliable. He warns us at the beginning, “Readers will probably recognise a number of studies not here cited, although ostensibly relevant. Quite simply, I attempt to maintain bonhomie by not feeling compelled to cite, much less offer a critique of, works I have found generally unhelpful” (xviii). I find it hard to believe that, for example, the following works are not cited due to their general unhelpfulness: on p. 143 n. 5, Crane 1986; on p. 172 Jordi Sánchez-Martí
240 n. 11, Collins 2000. The documentation of references in academic works has a well- established tradition, and any scholar would be well advised to follow it.
Works Cited
Burrow, John A. 1971: Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the ‘Gawain’ Poet. New Haven: Yale UP. Collins, Hugh E. 2000: The Order of the Garter, 1348–1461: Chivalry and Politics in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Clarendon. Crane, Susan 1986: Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley: U of California P. Duncan, Thomas G. and Margaret Connolly, eds. 2003: The Middle English ‘Mirror’: Sermons from Advent to Sexagesima, from Glasgow University Library, Hunter 250, with a parallel text of the Anglo-Norman ‘Miroir’, edited from Nottingham University Library, MiLM4. Middle English Texts 34. Heidelberg: Winter. Echard, Siân 2004: A Companion to Gower. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Gruijs, Albert 1972: ‘Codicology or the Archaeology of the Book? A False Dilemma’. Quaerendo 2: 87–108. Hanna, Ralph 2004: ‘Middle English Books and Middle English Literary History’. Modern Philology 102: 157–78. Hilmo, Maidie 2004: Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate. Lindenbaum, Sheila 1999: ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’. Wallace, David, ed. 1999: 284– 309. McDonald, Nicola 2004: ‘A Polemical Introduction’. Nicola McDonald, ed. Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP. 1– 21. McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels and Michael Benskin, with the assistance of Margaret Laing and Keith Williamson 1986: A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen UP. 4 vol. McKenzie, D. F. 1986: Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, The Panizzi Lectures 1985. London: British Library. Pearsall, Derek and I. C. Cunningham, eds. 1979: The Auchinleck Manuscript: National Library of Scotland Advocates’ Manuscript 19.2.1. London: Scolar Press. Rouse, Robert Allen 2005: The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance. Studies in Medieval Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Samuels, M. L. 1963: ‘Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology’. English Studies 44: 81– 94. Wallace, David, ed. 1999: The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Received 22 January 2007 Revised version received 9 April 2007
Coral Ann Howells, ed. 2006: The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 200 pp. ISBN 0-521-54851-9.
Pilar Cuder Domínguez Universidad de Huelva [email protected]
Canadian literature written in English is now of age. Or so it would seem from the fact that this is the second of two volumes of the prestigious series Cambridge Companions to have been devoted to it in a fairly short time. First came The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature in 2004, edited by Professor Eva Maria Kröller of the University of British Columbia and long-time editor of the well-established academic journal Canadian Literature. The Companion to Canadian Literature has been followed very closely on its heels by The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood (2006). These are no doubt encouraging signs of the vibrancy of English-Canadian literature, while certainly attesting to the merits of Margaret Atwood’s wide-ranging oeuvre too. Of the three hundred volumes now spanning this prestigious series, only thirteen other women writers in English have so far been considered worthy of entering the collection, all of them in the last decade. From the field of British writing, they are Aphra Behn (2004), Jane Austen (1997), Mary Wollstonecraft (2002), Frances Burney (forthcoming 2007), Mary Shelley (2003), George Eliot (2001), Elizabeth Gaskell (also forthcoming 2007) and Virginia Woolf (2000). From the United States hail Emily Dickinson (2002), Harriet Beecher Stowe (2004), Edith Wharton (1995), Willa Cather (2005) and Sylvia Plath (2006). There are also occasional collective volumes, like those focusing on medieval women’s writing (2003), the Brontës (2002), Nineteenth-Century American women’s writing (2001), American women playwrights (1999) and modern British women playwrights (2002). All in all, less than ten per cent of the full series deals with women’s writing, and Nobel Prize winners Nadine Gordimer and Toni Morrison have yet to be given their due. As a result, one does not lack for reasons to celebrate the arrival of this new volume, not least because Margaret Atwood is the first woman writer to enjoy the honour while still alive. The Companion to Margaret Atwood has been edited by a Canadianist based in Europe, Prof. Coral Ann Howells of the University of Reading, who has brought together an impressive team of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic and from South Asia. Most of them are well-known Atwood scholars and the authors/editors of a book- length study, like Howells herself: David Staines, Lorraine York, Pilar Somacarrera, Shannon Hengen, Coomi S. Vevaina, Eleonora Rao, Marta Dvorak, Reingard M. Nischik and Sharon R. Wilson. Howells has also enlisted the contributions of two younger scholars, Madeleine Davies and Branko Gorjup. As stated in the ‘Introduction’, Howells’s volume (like all Companions) targets students as its main readership, but this introductory text has been meant to encourage them “to see more” (2). She declares that the essays “consider [Atwood’s] career from a variety of perspectives and with every different emphases, though it is her Canadianness and her international appeal as an imaginative writer which are the two leitmotifs” (1). Howells further admits that these are not new endeavours, for “most of these topics have been visited before. . . . However”, she continues, “revisiting these same topics from different critical and 174 Pilar Cuder Domínguez theoretical angles (e.g. recent emphases on postmodernism, postcolonialism and environmentalism) and in the light of Atwood’s own continuous production, may help to re-evaluate the major dynamics in her work” (2). As a matter of fact, Howells’s task was by no means easy. The list of publications on Margaret Atwood is daunting and features many groundbreaking monographs and collections of essays. Of those, this Companion certainly invites close comparison with Reinghard M. Nischik’s edited volume Margaret Atwood: Works and Impact (2000), put together to commemorate the author’s sixtieth birthday. In its day, Nischik’s book introduced a challenging new gaze on what has allegedly become the ‘Atwood industry’ by including essays on the marketing, transmission, translation and reception of the writer’s work over the years, alongside more intimate reminiscences and even cartoons by and about Atwood. Howells has had to work within the more restricting format of the Companion series as well as much shorter length, but even so the resulting volume is comprehensive and knowledgeable, although perhaps less innovative than Howells herself suggests in the above-quoted ‘Introduction’. After all, those “recent emphases on postmodernism, postcolonialism and environmentalism” have been a fixture of Atwood criticism in the last twenty-odd years. Diana Brydon’s masterful postcolonial analysis of Atwood in her article ‘The Thematic Ancestor’ was published in 1984; Atwood’s postmodernism occupied Linda Hutcheon in The Canadian Postmodern in 1988; and environmentalism was already present in Valerie Broege’s 1981 article on ‘Margaret Atwood’s Americans and Canadians’. Genre analysis, too, has been developed by critics such as Howells herself since at least the 1980s (Howells 1987), not to mention the even earlier psychoanalytical and archetypal approaches, as represented by Barbara Godard’s ‘My (M)Other, My Self’ (1983) and Carol P. Christ’s ‘Margaret Atwood: The Surfacing of Woman’s Spiritual Quest and Vision’ (1976). Although the strength of this volume may not be its innovative coverage of Atwood’s work, it is a solid and well-rounded collection. First, there are the predictable but nevertheless necessary opening overviews of the writer’s biography and creative context, here in the expert hands of Lorraine York and David Staines. In ‘Margaret Atwood in her Canadian Context’ (12-27), Staines skilfully describes the parochialism of Canada’s 1950s cultural scenario, when Atwood first decided that she wanted to be a writer. He divides Atwood’s career into three stages: “mapping her Canada” for her early formative years; “interpreting Canada abroad” from the early seventies until 1985, when Atwood has forged a national name for herself and her work diversifies; and “Canada in the world”, after 1985, when The Handmaid’s Tale turns her into an international figure. Staines’ s article makes very clear for beginners in Atwood’s studies to what extent she has been shaped by and has in turn shaped Canadian culture. In contrast, Lorraine York’s ‘Biography/autobiography’ (28-42) may come as a surprise because it is not undergraduate student-directed at all. It stands out as a rather complex and challenging examination of Atwood as an icon and media star, that builds on earlier discussions of this subject in Canada’s mainstream media (where Atwood is seen both as charmer and witch) as well as in books such as the above-mentioned collection Margaret Atwood: Works and Impact (2000) or Graham Huggan’s The Post-colonial Exotic (2001). York’s piece highlights current aspects of the Atwood phenomena such as her official website, which “shows Margaret Atwood and her agents directly intervening in the flurry of media texts about her that are in circulation” (33), touches lightly on Reviews 175 biographies of the author, and points out the persistent preoccupation with the impact of fame and the status of the contemporary artist that surfaces in Atwood’s fiction (Lady Oracle and Cat’s Eye most of all) as well as in her essays. The next few articles discuss certain recurrent topics in Atwood’s work, starting with Pilar Somacarrera’s ‘Power Politics: Power and Identity’ (43-57). Although better known for her work on Atwood’s poetry, here Somacarrera uses some poems and the Canadian literature textbook Survival as a springboard for her discussion of the novels Bodily Harm, The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake through the common thread of power politics, that is, ‘the interface between the public and the personal worlds [and] the blurry boundaries between them’ (43) and with the help of Michel Foucault’s power/knowledge lens. First, Somacarrera stresses the writer’s view of heterosexual relations as warfare in the poems, as well as in Surfacing and Survival, and then moves on to how Atwood lays bare “the crudest dimensions of power” (51) at the level of national and international politics in the postcolonial thriller Bodily Harm and the dystopias The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake. Madeleine Davies’s article ‘Margaret Atwood’s female bodies’ (58-71) is similar to Somacarrera’s in bringing French theoretical constructs, in this case écriture féminine, to bear on her reading of Atwood’s work. After briefly examining the main concepts in Hélène Cixous’s celebrated essay ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ to ease students into the subject, the essay’s itinerary follows the path opened by Coral Ann Howells in her 1996 book Margaret Atwood, now into its second edition, particularly in chapter three – ‘“Feminine, Female, Feminist”: from The Edible Woman to “The Female Body”’ – and chapter seven, where Howells reads The Handmaid’s Tale through the lens of Cixous’s Medusa text. Nevertheless, Davies updates Howells’s analysis with her comments on the Booker-Prize winning The Blind Assassin, thus introducing a new variation of the body politics motif so dear to Atwood, i.e. the aging female body, although one might also contend that this topic was already evidenced in Cat’s Eye. In the next essay, we turn with Shannon Hengen to another Atwood concern, environmentalism (‘Margaret Atwood and environmentalism’, 72-85). Hengen does not seem overly interested in the deployment of ecocritical concepts, and her starting points are Atwood’s own writings on the subject, particularly the collection Strange Things: the Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995) via Donna Haraway’s cyborg1. In her discussion, Hengen brings together some of Atwood’s poetry and three landmarks of her fiction, i.e. Surfacing (1972), Life Before Man (1979) and Oryx and Crake (2003), tracing in them the representation of the natural world and the relation of human beings to their environment. For Hengen, “Nature—physical or human— seen as a commodity always represents betrayal in Atwood’s work” (84). Of most interest is the connection she establishes between the motif of the dinosaurs’ extinction in Life Before Man and the survival of the human species and the engineering of a new
1 As a hybrid of machine and organism, Haraway's cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world. The starting point for Haraway's meditations on the future of gender in an increasingly technological society can be traced to her influential article ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’. Originally published in Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65-108, it has been reprinted in Donna Haraway's The Haraway Reader (NY and London: Routledge, 2004): 6-45. 176 Pilar Cuder Domínguez one in Oryx and Crake, which comes to prove the persistence of certain preoccupations in Atwood’s fictional world. In ‘Margaret Atwood and History’ (86-99), Coomi S. Vevaina introduces students to another powerful Atwood construct, the past. Vevaina engages the main characteristics of Atwood’s postmodern distrust of history and mentions some of the recurrent figures of Atwood’s archives (her Puritan ancestor Mary Webster, the pioneer Susanna Moodie, the murderer Grace Marks), describing what she calls psychohistories insofar as these are stories of fragmentation and subjectivity rather than attempts at an objective account of the past. Vevaina also pinpoints Atwood’s recurrent use of visual records of the past, pictures (paintings as well as photographs) that, like words, fail to convey reliable truths. ‘Home and nation in Margaret Atwood’s later fiction’ (100-13) pursues one topic that has intrigued Atwood critics for a long time. Here Eleonora Rao defines Atwood’s “postnationalist phase” since 1991 (101), as perceived in three novels: Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride and Oryx and Crake. Rao’s interesting thesis is that “discourses of home are an extension of discourses of nation and national belonging, and [that] these are based on exclusion and oppression” (101). For Rao, there is growing emphasis on issues of race and ethnicity in Cat’s Eye and The Robber Bride, particularly in the latter’s account of post-second world war immigration and its strong concern with rootlessness, which seems to culminate in Oryx and Crake, where “there is no single mention of Canada. Atwood’s most recent novel to date is suggestive of a thinking and feeling beyond the nation. Her quest for Canada’s and Canadian literature’s visibility started in the 1970s, and now fully realized, has provided room for a whole set of different themes and concerns” (112). Although Rao’s essay’s focus on the later fiction offers provocative insights, it tends to overemphasize new beginnings and misses the abundant connections within Atwood’s oeuvre that other essays in this collection rightly point out. The home ground/foreign territory dichotomy can hardly be said to start in Cat’s Eye, and it already features in Atwood’s Surfacing (1972). One might contend that for Atwood, nobody is ever truly at home. We are all outsiders, whatever our gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. The same can be said for Atwood’s concern with national and international politics, emerging in earlier novels such as Bodily Harm and The Handmaid’s Tale. Most of the themes in Oryx and Crake are prominent too elsewhere in the writer’s production. And surely Atwood does not need to mention Canada in order for Oryx and Crake to be pertinent to Canada and Canadians. In ‘Margaret Atwood’s humor’ (114-29), Marta Dvorak depicts Atwood’s main postmodern techniques and textual practices, using a Bakthinian approach but one that also owes much to Linda Hutcheon. Dvorak traces the prominence of the satiric impulse in the writer’s multi-generic work. The carnivalesque drive takes on different strategies and devices, among which Dvorak describes with precision the major presence of multivoicedness and orality, the strong dialogue that characterises much of Atwood’s output, and her intertextual and parodic games. This is an essay with wide- ranging examples, in which Atwood’s whole palette of comicity, from benevolent irony to ridicule and absurd via more aggressive parody and satire, is disclosed. The next two essays provide overviews of Atwood’s poetry and shorter fiction. Branko Gorjup’s ‘Margaret Atwood’s poetry and poetics’ (130-44) tackles the extraordinarily difficult task of summarily describing over thirty years of poetic output, so far published in eleven collections. The essay describes them in chronological order, briefly stopping in Reviews 177 some of Atwood’s most celebrated poems, like ‘This is a Photograph of Me’ or the ‘Circe/Mud Poems’. Holding the essay together is the by now long-established critical notion of dualities and metamorphosis in Atwood’s poetics. Reingard M. Nischik’s ‘Margaret Atwood’s short stories and shorter fictions’ (145-60) faces another difficult task that she resolves well, challenging the genre hierarchy that condemns short stories to relative neglect in Atwood’s canon. Nischik stresses their richness and variety of topics and narrative strategies, their open-endedness and their Canadianness. Furthermore, she singles out three collections of shorter pieces, a hybrid genre that defies rigid categorization and that to Nischik represents a postmodern rendering of the Baudelerian prose poem. The collection closes with two essays by major Atwood critics, Howells herself and Sharon R. Wilson. In ‘Margaret Atwood’s dystopian visions: The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake’ (161-75), Howells updates her previous work on Atwood’s use of the dystopian genre by arguing that Oryx and Crake can be read as a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, highlighting the need for storytelling as a survival strategy in dire circumstances. Howells’s comparison foregrounds their differences too, like their inspirational texts (Orwell’s 1984 for The Handmaid’s Tale, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for Oryx and Crake). Sharon R. Wilson’s article, ‘Blindness and Survival in Margaret Atwood’s major novels’ (177-90) concludes the collection by discussing the importance of the visual in the writer’s work, and thus also updating what has been one of Wilson’s sustained line of contributions to Atwood studies. Wilson competently discusses vision imagery in Surfacing, Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake, highlighting the characters’ shortcomings in seeing without seeing, or in not wanting to see uncomfortable truths that would lead them to take responsibility for their actions. All things considered, there is on the whole a bit too much emphasis on topics and genres in this collection, while one misses two strong articles from the critical approaches that have provided some of the best work on Atwood through the years: postcolonialism and psychoanalysis. Although this might not be the groundbreaking collection that Atwood scholars would hope for, it is doubtlessly an example of sound, well-informed and well-written scholarship that consolidates the achievements of several decades of Atwood criticism, as well as a commendable classroom tool. It was high time Canadian literature received due attention in a series that over the last twenty years has aspired to providing academic institutions with comprehensive tools for the discussion of key literary texts and authors. Margaret Atwood certainly qualifies as such, since she is by far the most internationally recognized of Canadian authors to date, and the addition of one more woman writer may help bring about still much needed revisions of the literary canon.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret 1995: Strange Things: the Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP. Broege, Valerie 1981: ‘Margaret Atwood’s Americans and Canadians’. Essays on Canadian Writing 22: 111-35. 178 Pilar Cuder Domínguez
Brydon, Diana 1984: ‘“The Thematic Ancestor”: Joseph Conrad, Patrick White and Margaret Atwood’. World Literature Written in English, 24.2: 386-97. Christ, Carol P. 1976: ‘Margaret Atwood: The Surfacing of Woman’s Spiritual Quest and Vision’. Signs 2.2: 316-330. Godard, Barbara 1983: ‘My (M)Other, My Self: Strategies for Subversion in Atwood and Hébert’. Essays on Canadian Writing 26: 13-44. Howells, Coral Ann 1987: Private and Fictional Worlds: Canadian Women Novelists of the 1970s and 80s. London: Methuen. ––––– 1996: Margaret Atwood. London: Macmillan. ––––– , ed. 2006: The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Huggan, Graham 2001: The Post-colonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London: Routledge. Hutcheon, Linda 1988: The Canadian Postmodern. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Kröller, Eva Marie 2004: The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Nischik, Reingard M. 2000: Margaret Atwood. Works and Impact. Rochester: Candem House.
Received 12 January 2007 Revised version received 20 March 2007
Angela Downing and Phillip Locke 2006: English Grammar: A University Course. 2nd ed. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 610pp + xxii. ISBN 9-78-0-415-28787-6 (pbk) and 9-78-0-415-28787-9 (hbk)
Mike Hannay Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam [email protected]
English grammar continues to be big business. On the one hand, the last ten years have seen the publication of a range of new reference grammars: while Huddleston and Pullum (2002) have sought to provide a more theoretically coherent account than Quirk et al. (1985), the impressive works by Biber et al. (1999) and most recently by Carter and McCarthy (2006) have presented a more discourse and usage-based grammatical account. On the other hand, the practical end of the grammar market has also continued to present a wide range of course books for advanced students (e.g. Foley and Hall 2003, Hewings 2005), in which the major features of the system of English are broken down into small easy-to-digest units, with lots of more or less traditional exercise material. In between the all-embracing reference grammar and the highly selective, skills-oriented, practical course, a rather unique position is taken by Downing and Locke’s English Grammar: A University Course (2006) (henceforth D&L), which has appeared in a long-awaited second edition. D&L is extensive in its coverage of the language, organized in 12 chapters and 60 modules. But despite its accessibility and lucid modular organization, this is still a mighty 600 pages of a grammar course, and perhaps that in itself is enough to suggest that “an intermediate standard of knowledge and practical handling of the language” (‘Introduction’, xvii to xviii) is an understatement of what may be required to tackle the book successfully. My own experience with teaching the first edition (Downing and Locke 1992) in the Netherlands was that it is best suited as a second or third year course, used as a follow-up to a first year introductory course. The book introduces four units of grammatical analysis – clause, group (the Hallidayan equivalent of phrase), word and morpheme – but deals essentially with the units of clause and group (2006: 11-12), with a rather marked role for the clause. Perhaps surprisingly, the treatment of clausal matters precedes the treatment of group matters, something that the reader may have to get used to given the traditional approach in grammar books where phrasal matters are considered first and clausal and sentential matters later. The consequence is that the book starts with a syntax perspective, moves to a semantic one, then on to a pragmatic one, and then for the last five chapters returns to syntax, although admittedly there is a strong focus in these chapters on the interrelation of form, function and semantics. Fortunately, this is explained early on (xviii). But the dominance of the clause also lies in the rich content of Chapters 4 through 7, which cover process types and semantic roles, clause types and speech acts, information packaging, and clause combining. These chapters contribute significantly towards defining the unique scope of this book, containing as they do 24 separate modules in 200 pages on the semantics and pragmatics of the English sentence. By contrast, Biber et al.’s (2002) excellent 500-page and 50-module Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English devotes just 5 modules to this area, covering 180 Mike Hannay clause types and information packaging but more or less neglecting process types and the semantic and rhetorical aspects of clause combining. In all, D&L not only pays considerable attention to the clause; it also interrelates syntax, semantics and pragmatics in a more holistic fashion rather than describing everything from the point of view of the syntax. This is clear from the titles of many of the units, more than a quarter of which involve –ing constructions such as ‘Organising our Experience of Events’, ‘Elaborating the Message’, and ‘Describing and Classifying the Referent’. In terms of approach, D&L is thus broadly communicative and functional. It is clearly indebted to Hallidayan functionalism but also draws from other functionalist research. But D&L is not a grammar, nor is it a functionally oriented grammar textbook along the lines of Bloor and Bloor (2004). Despite the length, it is indeed a course in grammar. The title states as much, but it is important to stress this. So what is it that sets a university grammar course off from a reference grammar or a purely skills- oriented course book, and how successful might D&L prove to be in this regard? In the rest of this review I would like to concentrate on two aspects of this. First I will look briefly at the extent to which D&L might succeed in being didactically responsible and, secondly I will consider the ways in which it might in terms of content and presentation play a valuable role in an integrated university language curriculum. As a course in grammar, D&L needs to be teachable and usable, and it needs to engage its readers. With its summaries, terminological framework, textual examples, exercises and keys, further reading, attractive and vastly improved layout, innovative chapter and module organization, and perhaps above all its engaging narrative style, I feel that this book does indeed offer an excellent basic framework for a really usable course book at the highest level of English language study. There have been changes in terminology in the second edition, perhaps a rather dangerous undertaking if not all students in a group are using the same edition, but in this case it appears to be a generally valuable operation from a didactic point of view. For instance, Module 8, which in the first edition was about Adjuncts, Disjuncts and Conjuncts, treats all three as different types of adjunct. Disjunct has in my own teaching experience always been difficult to get across to students, who struggle to get their heads round the dis- element. And Conjunct, though much easier to understand as a term, is easily confused with conjunction, a confusion which in fact was present in the first edition itself but has now happily been repaired. Another terminological adjustment occurs in Chapter 5, where the subtitle from the first edition, ‘Mood Structures of the Clause’ makes way for ‘Linking Speech Acts and Grammar’, which not only captures the new content of the chapter very well, but also pushes the Hallidayan notion of mood relatively into the background for the rest of the chapter. This also seems a good move, because mood is not a term that plays a major role in general linguistic descriptions of the form-function interplay in terms of grammar and discourse. Finally, for Chapter 7, ‘Expanding the Message’, the notion of the clause complex has been discarded and the complex sentence takes over as the superordinate expression for the discussion of clause combining. In both first and second editions there is a useful presentation of the different uses of the notion of sentence, and it remains a problematic concept; nevertheless, it seems wise to retain such an all-embracing and widely used notion with a clear definition of its application rather than opting for the Reviews 181 specifically Hallidayan notion of the clause complex. All in all, the reworking of basic concepts in the course has made the terminological framework more accessible, and may well prove worth the risk in practice. Equally crucial for teachability and usability are examples and exercises. What is good about the examples is that a wide variety of text types are represented, that many examples have been taken from corpora, and that many examples are neat segments of text which are also commented on, rather than the single clauses and sentences which are typically the only form of example found in reference grammars. With regard to exercises there is an adequate set of open items which allow students to carry out small- scale data analysis themselves, alongside a range of more traditional exercises which couple language production with practice in applying the concepts and conceptual distinctions introduced in the relevant chapters. It is also pleasing to note that specific answers in the exercise keys are complemented by comments which, where relevant, explain the answer or clarify why more than one analysis might be possible. All these features, together with the lucid and engaging prose which tells stories on top of describing structures, go to make for a course book that really provides the materials for an actual course. In this light, it is then perhaps only a minor shortcoming that a glossary of the most important concepts has not been included. While a lot of the terminology on offer in D&L may have been encountered in students’ earlier grammar courses, a lot of it will be new. The terminology introduced is clearly explained at every initial point in the book, but the lack of a glossary remains unfortunate, since every course book that forms the basis of examinations benefits from one. I now turn to matters of content. First, as explained in the Preface to the Second Edition, let me record that a number of significant changes have been made to the first edition with regard to the organization of content. The adjectival and adverbial groups are treated together in one chapter, with the prepositional phrase now forming the final chapter on its own. Another change is that negation has been removed from Chapter 5 on clause types, where it did not really belong, and has been moved forward to Chapter 1. As a result, Chapter 5 has been considerably reworked and now presents a more coherent approach to clause types and how they are used to perform different kinds of speech act. Overall, this is a second edition which constitutes a considerable reworking of much content, based on new insights from research over the last ten or so years. Bringing the content up to date was a necessary step for a long-awaited second edition, but what I am particularly interested in here is whether the content and its presentation are conducive to integration in a contemporary university English curriculum. Recent developments in European higher education have provided a massive impulse to curriculum planning, specifically through the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001) and the whole Bologna process, in particular the formulation of generalized qualifications for higher education in the form of the Dublin descriptors (Joint Quality Initiative 2004). On the one hand, these developments relate to communicative competence. The CEFR details the kinds of individual competences necessary to develop communicative competence. From the descriptions of written competences at the C1 and C2 levels which will be aspired to in BA, Master and other Postgraduate programmes across Europe, it may be concluded that a wide grammatical repertoire is absolutely essential. For instance, writers at C2 “can provide an appropriate and effective logical structure 182 Mike Hannay which helps the reader to find significant points”, for which information packaging techniques must be mastered (2001: 62). A consequence is that grammar has to be presented in a way which will allow students to profit from it in a skills-oriented environment, a notion which underlies the ‘syntax for writing’ courses in American universities (cf. Hinkel 2004). The qualifications specified in the Dublin descriptors also include communicative skills but in addition relate separately to domain-specific knowledge and to the application of that knowledge. A consequence of this last descriptor in particular is that BA programmes need to include courses which give students support for, and practice in, carrying out small-scale linguistic investigations of their own. If we factor in the increased interest within linguistics in language use and the wide availability of language corpora, then we may expect many contemporary language curricula to give much more opportunity for students to do small-scale linguistic research on authentic language data than was the case say 15 years ago. There is a clear role here for a strong grammar course which can provide students with the knowledge base they need to carry out their own linguistic analysis, and preferably a course which is organized to promote such work. Let us take three areas of the grammar and consider whether the material presented permits links to be forged to high-level skills development on the one hand and small- scale linguistic research on the other. I will briefly consider (a) premodification of the noun phrase (Module 48), (b) the passive (Module 30.3), and (c) clause combining (Chapter 7, Modules 31-36). A detailed presentation of premodification is called for because it is a popular area of analysis for students interested in investigating English in use, for instance the language of advertisements and other persuasive texts. One of the basic things students actually need to do here is identify what counts as an adjective in premodified NPs and what does not, and further to distinguish between evaluative and descriptive uses of premodifiers. They need to know that gathering and organizing data is often by no means as easy and mechanical as it sounds, not even as far as identifying types of premodifier is concerned. Biber et al. (2002: 272-79) in their student grammar offer an 8-page grammar module dedicated to premodification which takes structural types as its starting point and makes use of frequency information on the four registers treated by the grammar, something which D&L cannot offer. The module notes especially productive premodifiers such as car and school and gives a wide-ranging overview of the meaning relations holding between noun premodifiers and their heads. There is further information on plural premodifiers and a brief note about descriptive adjectives preceding classifier adjectives, as in shabby black clothes. By contrast, D&L’s account in Module 48 immediately distinguishes two premodifier functions, labelled classifier and epithet, and provides a compact discussion of the further distinction between descriptive and evaluative adjectives and participles functioning as epithets. The discussion directs the student’s attention to the problems involved in interpreting the adjective, stressing that there is no rigid set of descriptive adjectives and equally rigid set of evaluative ones. In addition, the point is made that adjectives can function both as epithets and classifiers. The picture that is painted is Reviews 183 complex, but it is the picture that students need if in a more investigative context they are going to have to analyse texts themselves. There is also a fair amount of detail when it comes to the ordering of premodifiers, and semantic criteria are identified to explain the orderings we find and tend not to find – a beautiful hand-painted blue earthenware vase, for instance, has the classifier closest to the head, preceded by the colour (=objective) adjective, preceded by the participle, preceded by the attitudinal (=subjective) adjective. Compared with Biber et al. (2002) it seems that more detail is provided and more insight is offered into the relation between form and meaning. One area of English grammar that receives treatment in every kind of grammatical account – whatever the perspective, whatever the scope – is the passive. In a functionally based grammar one may expect a treatment which takes into account the contexts in which both passive and active are used, and what effects are created by using the passive. This allows students to critically analyse the use of the passive in texts belonging to different text types. But from the point of view of language production and the development of a writing style, students also need to have a detailed account which can counter the advice offered in more traditional style guides, and perhaps by more traditional teachers, who may generally emphasize the value of the active over the passive. D&L takes an appropriate starting position by positioning the main treatment of the active-passive alternative in the context of Module 30, on the interplay of theme/rheme and given/new, and by stressing that the alternative “allows speakers and writers to exploit the two main positions in the clause, the beginning and the end” (2006: 253). There is then a treatment of the individual discourse motivations for the use of the passive. The picture created is one where syntactic choice, information structure and wider communicative aims are brought together. The student can begin to appreciate the different motivations behind the choice of active and passive, the short and long passive and the be- and get-passive. In comparison with, for instance, Carter and McCarthy’s (2006: 793-802) up-to- date and very comprehensive grammar, which like D&L also regards the grammar of choice as equal in value to the grammar of structure (2006: 7), D&L’s account is perhaps more fragmented because structural aspects do not form the starting point for the treatment. And it is unfortunate that D&L does not include in this chapter information about common verbs used with particular kinds of passive, or about verbs which are usually only found in the passive.† However, the discussion in D&L of the choice between active and passive is richer than the note-like account given by Carter and McCarthy. For a third and final example, I turn to Chapter 7 of D&L, which is an extensive treatment of clause combining. For developing discourse competence at the C1 and C2 mastery levels writers need a broad repertoire of linguistic devices which they can make use of for creating particular communicative effects in a wide range of different genres. For creating coherent text at advanced levels, a crucial distinction is needed between expressing what is important and what is in various ways less important; in addition
† Editors' note: This information is found in chapter 3, ‘The Development of the Message, complementation of the verb’, Modules 10, 11 and 12. 184 Mike Hannay one needs to be able to express meaning relationships between communicative acts and elements thereof in a precise and subtle fashion. This means that a grammar course must pay substantial attention to matters of the complex sentence, and preferably do this not only from the point of view of the treatment of individual grammatical constructions but also, and perhaps even more importantly, from the point of view of the kinds of meaning relationships. This is precisely what D&L does, and does well. It opens with the essential presentation of different views on the notion of sentence and goes on to detail the notion of dependency. With a clear debt to Hallidayan functionalism, the chapter then describes different kinds of clause combining, not on the basis of individual structures but starting from what the authors call semantic relationships, where the term semantic should be interpreted rather broadly, since it is used to include rhetorical notions like restatement and explanation. This has a double advantage. First it lays out a framework for students to do their own text analysis because they will be able to recognize a wide range of combining devices, involving both coordination and subordination, and be able to categorize them. Second, it gives the writing student a repertoire of constructions for expressing specific relations, and allows the student to compare the effects of two or more constructions that can be basically used to express the same relation. A major feature of this approach is that it is not only relative and finite adverbial clauses that are presented in this context; also non-finite and non-verbal constructions such as appositions are considered from one and the same perspective. If made full use of, this can offer the skills-acquiring student a much richer base for developing discourse competence than the standard clause combining approach used in traditional composition handbook exercises. In conclusion, this new edition of Downing and Locke’s grammar continues to differ in a rather fundamental way from comprehensive grammars, grammar textbooks and advanced grammar course books. It is most decidedly not a grammar skills course and it is not a textbook. It comes closest to a rather comprehensive grammar supplemented by a workbook. But it does everything in one go, and it is so much more than just a description of the structures of the language with commentary on the uses to which the structures are put. Crucially, it presents a number of chapters which are centred around what we do with language – talk about our experience of the world, perform communicative acts, organize our information for communicative effect and combine our messages into textual units – and tells us what structures are available for helping us do these things. In this sense it comes close to the ‘grammar in use’ component of Leech and Svartvik’s (2003) A communicative grammar of English. Thus where ‘grammar books’ basically describe structures or at the most go from form to function, D&L, where relevant, also goes from function to form. The book’s subtitle, A University Course, is key to understanding its position. It is a course book with a breadth, design and, above all, a language of explanation and commentary which make the content eminently teachable and usable. Admittedly, certain elements of grammar may have warranted more space than they were given (arguably the case with object postponement, which is limited to a discussion of objects of ditransitive verbs). Admittedly, systematic information on frequency in different text types and different modes is lacking. And admittedly, the opportunity to offer students Reviews 185 specific help in terms of developing their own language production has not been specifically taken up. But it is the combination of what D&L does do that gives it an extra value and affords it a place in an integrated language curriculum. The book is therefore to be warmly recommended for advanced students of English who realise the importance of grammatical knowledge, not only for developing their own language skills but also for providing a solid basis for carrying out their own linguistic data analysis, which since the first edition of the book has happily come to play a more prominent role in university language study.
References
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey N. Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan 1999: Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad and Geoffrey N. Leech 2002: Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson. Bloor, Thomas and Meriel Bloor 2004: The Functional Analysis of English. 2nd ed. London: Arnold. Carter, Ronald and Michael McCarthy 2006: Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: CUP. Council of Europe 2001: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Cambridge: CUP. Downing, Angela and Philip Locke 1992: A University Course in English Grammar. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. Foley, Mark and Diane Hall 2003: Longman Advanced Learners’ Grammar. Harlow: Pearson. Hewings, Martin 2005: Advanced Grammar in Use. Cambridge: CUP. Hinkel, Eli 2004: Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar. Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum 2002: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP. Joint Quality Initiative 2004: ‘Shared “Dublin” Descriptors for the Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral Awards. Report, Joint Quality Initiative’.
Received 12 May 2007 Revised version received 21 May 2007
Ives, Eric 2004: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. Malden, Oxford, and Carlton: Blackwell. xix, 458 pp. ISBN 0631234799 Joanna Denny 2004: Anne Boleyn. A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen. London: Portrait. 374 pp. ISBN 074995051X
Paula de Pando Mena Universidad de Sevilla [email protected]
Eric Ives’s Anne Boleyn, published in 1986, was a groundbreaking biography which sparked the interest in the second wife of Henry VIII. Publishing now his The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn Ives is facing an immense responsibility, since this new enterprise demands not only an up-to-date response to the blossoming critical field that has developed in the last twenty years, but also a revision of his own masterpiece. Fortunately, Ives’s work has the rare quality of becoming more relevant and enlightening with time: this reappraisal constitutes an authoritative, comprehensive account of the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, among a multiplicity of interpretations now available to the scholar interested in the field. Although a substantial part of the former material is maintained, Ives makes a sound revision of the state of the art from the critical boom around the 450th anniversary of the queen’s beheading up to the present day. Ives’s book principally responds to three monographs, very different in their conception, that have been recently published: Retha Warnicke’s The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (1989), Antonia Fraser’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1992) and David Starkey’s Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII (2003). Both Starkey’s and Fraser’s books participate in the revisionist line that analyzes Henrician England as a series of shifts symbolized – and, to a certain extent, provoked – by the changes of queen-consort. Ives acknowledges the validity of their research and incorporates it into his own study: he especially praises Starkey’s publication of The Inventory of King Henry VIII (1998), “henceforth an absolutely vital text” (xvii). However, Ives focuses on Henry’s second wife, and his aim is to correct certain misapprehensions and inaccuracies perpetuated by tradition and rumour. One of these misreadings of historical material is the claim that Anne was condemned as a result of the miscarriage of a male foetus, the hypothesis at the core of Warnicke’s work. Her claim that Anne Boleyn was executed because she was believed to be a witch clashes completely with Ives’s political reading of the story. Warnicke is an accomplished scholar and her points have a sociological and cultural interest. Her description of Henry’s court colours the traditional picture of sixteenth-century England and discusses relevant points about religious beliefs and superstitions, early modern medical science and the role of women in society, which were frequently overlooked. However, as Ives clearly points out, “Anne Boleyn was so much more important than the circumstances of her execution” (xiii). Warnicke’s sociocultural analysis of Anne’s downfall inexplicably ignores the political role of the queen-consort in the court. What is more, Warnicke accuses Ives of relying too much on the partisan reports of Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador and friend of Queen Catherine (2003: 239). In fact, Ives does not discard this or any other source of information, but he is 188 Paula de Pando Mena nevertheless extremely careful when dealing with biased testimonies. For Ives, Chapuys is both surprisingly reliable (his network of informers, established throughout his many years as ambassador, was sound and highly effective) and easily misled, either by his own desire to find proofs of Anne’s fall from favour and by the numerous enemies of the queen, who did not hesitate to spread false rumours about her. The task of the historian, according to Ives, is to discover reliable information in a myriad of partisan reports. One of the strengths of Ives’s monograph is the analysis of Anne’s social and propagandistic role at court. Depictions of the queen have traditionally associated her with beauty or ugliness depending on the faction. From her lifetime, Catholic commentators such as Chapuys and Nicholas Sander focused on her physical appearance, her clothes and style, as a proof of her ambition and cold calculation. Anne’s supporters tried to deny this accusation, praising her modesty and her lack of ambition. Now, Ives offers an innovative reading of her outward fashion as a vehicle of propaganda: “her preoccupation with glamour, which older historians have despised as feminine weakness, has now been recognised as a concern with ‘image’, ‘presentation’ and ‘message’ which was as integral to the exercise of power in the sixteenth century as it is in the modern world” (viii). Far from imposing erroneous chronological categories, he explains the mechanisms of court faction and personal rule as the key to understanding Anne’s political power. That is the best quality of Ives’s argumentation: he is acute and entertaining, and he offers us a picture of Anne which is in perfect accordance with her own time, yet understandable in ours. There is a strong connection between her rise and fall and Henry’s need for an heir. The king started to consider his illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond, as a possible candidate for the crown; Catherine was outraged at the idea that Henry wanted to annul the marriage in order to remove any obstacles to his plan (83). Henry’s harsh treatment of Mary, his daughter by Catherine, hid in fact a certainty that she was the rightful heir to the crown: in canon law, a child conceived ‘in good faith’ was legitimate even if the marriage was later considered null. Thus, Mary became “the focus for all dislike to Anne and everything she appeared to represent” (197). The birth of Elizabeth, evidencing Anne’s failure to conceive a male heir, would sign her fate. Nevertheless, there were also other reasons whose combined effect led to her execution. Anne’s prominent position in political and religious circles made her the target of Catholics, who resented her influence, and of certain noble families like the Seymours, who coveted her power. All these factors united to overthrow the queen and to replace her with a new, much more pliable consort. Ives is a remarkable scholar who has managed to lead the critical avant-garde for the last twenty years, and his minute analysis of the second wife of Henry VIII has inevitably conditioned all subsequent biographies of the queen. Indeed, the latest contribution to the field, Joanna Denny’s Anne Boleyn, A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen, acknowledges the long critical tradition that precedes her own book and presents it as an innovative approach to the story. Denny’s work combines facts and speculation, scholarly erudition and a novelist’s prose style in order to provide the reader with an unusual, highly provocative account of the queen’s life and death. The author is also a relative of Sir Anthony Denny, who was one of Henry VIII’s courtiers. Denny, prompted by these personal circumstances, Reviews 189 has made a fine effort. However, the flaws of her biography are manifold. The main problem with the book resides precisely in its hybrid nature between history and novel: the story lacks a specific audience or a coherent academic structure. The scholar is uncomfortable at the uneasy balance between facts and opinion; likewise, the profusion of names and data is overwhelming and unnecessary for the non-initiated reader, who is likely to get lost when trying to distinguish between characters such as William and Hugh Latymer among others. Denny’s argumentation is somewhat erratic, shifting from the topic of the king’s waist to Reformation in Europe in a few pages (8-10), intertwining history, theological debate and mere gossip. The author laments that the treatment of the figure of the queen has been traditionally flat and strongly biased, but her description of Henry’s court is equally full of literary clichés. Henry’s antics and tyrannic rule are explained as the work of “his sycophantic entourage, which flattered and fawned on him, competing for his favours” (12). Much of the argumentation is devoted to refuting Chapuys (and, consequently, those who credit him), whom she plainly dismisses because “his English was so poor that he could not understand what was being said around him” (2). Catherine is described as an arrogant, self-confident woman, disloyal to England, who did not hesitate to lie in order to save her face when she protested that her marriage to Arthur had not been consummated. Denny even contends that Catherine invented a false pregnancy in order to secure her position in the English court, a suggestion that is not present in other biographies. She is said to have depended too much on her Spanish confessor, who is compared to Rasputin himself (77). Moreover, the Catholic queen is described as “superstitious and fanatical in religious excess” (83), the proof being, according to the author, that she was “convinced of the effectiveness of the intervention of the Virgin Mary and an entire calendar of saints” (80). Finally, she is said to have been a traitor to her adopted country, asking her nephew Charles V to invade England. Mary, Catherine’s daughter, is portrayed as histrionic, childish and stubborn; she is said to be full of fears for her safety and well-being, which Denny rejects as unsubstantiated, although they proved real according to historical evidence (see Starkey 2004: 443-445, 515-522). Probably the most unconvincing feature of Denny’s book is her startling perpetuation of religious clichés. All Catholics are evil and plotting, and all Protestants are saintly and unjustly persecuted. Many of the political subtleties that are pointed out in Ives’s work are here reduced to the all-pervasive dichotomy between true religion and abhorrent heresy; thus, the political confrontation between Anne and Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s chief adviser, is disappointingly simplified as “Anne’s poor opinion of Wolsey as a symbol of the degenerate Catholic Church” (59). Catholic writers engaged for centuries in a defamatory campaign against Anne, but Denny forgets that a large section of Reformist thinkers were also against a union that they considered adulterous. Denny attacks Catholic beliefs as if they were in direct correlation with the historical figures she is dealing with, unaware that these ideas are not exclusive of the period and characters she is describing. At some points, the author even interrupts the narration of historical events in order to introduce theological digressions and personal opinions which are totally alien to her main line of argument. For instance, Anne’s promotion of the English translation of the Scriptures and her views on the dissolution of the monasteries serve as an excuse to start a debate on the validity of transubstantiation as a 190 Paula de Pando Mena sacrament (252). Denny’s work is the last link in a secular chain of Protestant propaganda based on religious prejudice, whose zeal impedes any attempt at impartiality and academic rigour. Evil Catholics include Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and Thomas More, whose portrait is particularly unflattering: he is said to have rejoiced at the torture and martyrdom of evangelicals such as Tewkesbury and Bainham (171). Spain, the Catholic superpower, is represented as an absolutist tyranny imposed by Ferdinand and Isabella, who made use of the Inquisition in order to repress and torture the Jewish people; curiously enough, the author is much more lenient when describing the burnings and exemplary executions ordered by King Henry. Conversely, Denny’s willingness to present Anne as a flawless, perfectly chaste woman becomes problematic when this ideal image is read against historical facts. According to the author, the queen’s only ambition after attaining the crown was to use her new position in order to advance the Protestant cause (132). Denny explicitly denies any personal goals or even sexual attraction as possible causes of Anne’s surrender; in order to support her views, she contends that “Cavendish confirms the fact that she remained a virgin until she married the King” (107). Apart from the questionable credibility of Cavendish as an impartial source (his Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey (1667) is an undisguised vindication of the Cardinal, who had been the writer’s master until his death, and all the characters are conveniently moulded to suit this encomium) the claim is utterly impossible, since Anne was already pregnant when she married. Her death is equally explained as a consequence of her religious beliefs: she had to be removed because she supported reform (261). The Seymours, a Catholic family, were the ideal candidates for replacing the queen with a less contentious consort. Thus, Anne’s fall was a conspiracy against Protestants orchestrated by Cromwell, who was afraid of the increasing Protestant influence in court, and was aligned with Chapuys (268). Denny presents Anne Boleyn as a forerunner, both as a Protestant and as a woman, whose challenge of contemporary conventions was too provocative for her time. However, she exaggerates the break that the queen represents, portraying all women before her as meek, and all Catholics as ignorant and superstitious. She links women’s subjugation to Catholic customs and beliefs, claiming that, before Anne, “any woman who showed the least trace of intelligence and independence broke with tradition and was seen as an outsider” (60). The author attempts to explain Anne’s tragic fate as the direct consequence of her defiance to the norm; however, she totally ignores women educated within the humanist circle, such as Catherine of Aragon and the daughters of Thomas More. Anne Boleyn was a fine intellectual, but to portray her as the first woman scholar in England is both inaccurate and far-fetched. The author is well-read and her documentary effort is commendable; however, sometimes she clearly misreads her sources: for instance, on page 105 Denny refers to Alison Plowden (2002) in order to describe Catherine as “bloody-minded”, but she misinterprets Plowden’s remark, since it was in fact illustrating the defamatory image that Catherine’s enemies tried to establish. These inconsistencies and inaccuracies blacken a portrait of the queen which could have been more satisfactorily delineated. Denny’s work will neither convince the scholar nor the reader of non-fiction, although it undoubtedly has attractive qualities for both markets. Her anti-Spanish and Reviews 191 anti-Catholic diatribe might be better received in the English-speaking world, although its undisguised religious bias is likely to alienate many contemporary readers, whatever their personal beliefs might be. The documentary effort of the author surely deserved better results, which hopefully will be achieved in future studies or monographs.
Works Cited
Cavendish, George 1667: The Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey. London. Fraser, Antonia 1993 (1992): The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Chatham: BCA. Plowden, Alison 2002: Tudor Women. Queens and Commoners. Stroud: Sutton. Starkey, David 1998: The Inventory of King Henry VIII. London: Harvey Miller. ––––– 2004 (2003): Six Wives. The Queens of Henry VIII. London: Vintage. Warnicke, Retha 2003: ‘Anne Boleyn in History, Drama and Film’. Carole Levin, Debra Barrett- Graves and Jo Eldridge Carney, eds. ‘High and Mighty Queens’ of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations. New York and Basingstoke: MacMillan. 239-55. ––––– 1991 (1989): The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Received 30 August 2006 Revised version received 2 March 2007
Alberto Lázaro 2005: El modernismo en la novela inglesa. Madrid: Síntesis. 239 pp. ISBN: 84-9756-283-6
Jefferey Simons Universidad de Huelva [email protected]
It might be argued that, for the specialist, it is as difficult to write a book directed to a general readership as one addressed to a set of scholarly peers. In its quest for accessibility, the first sort of study veers toward simplification and imprecision, while the latter steers clear of these by developing argument open to dispute. Alberto Lázaro’s El modernismo en la novela inglesa overcomes both sets of difficulties, for Lázaro’s study, addressed to the specialist and non-specialist alike, sidesteps the traps of survey coverage and in so doing shapes an original synthesis of the modern British novel. Writers of studies such as Lázaro’s often begin with a set of disclaimers aimed at defusing the twin attacks on omission and simplification. In Modernism: A Short Introduction (2004), for instance, Ayers early expresses his hope “that no one will mistake omission for exclusion” and confesses to being “excruciatingly aware of the periodic loss of subtlety” (xi-xii). Matz seeks in like fashion to forestall censure of The Modern Novel (2004), a study acknowledged to be “truly introductory” (emphasis in the original), by setting out “to map in bold and plain lines a territory readers might later explore more fully” (2). Baldick’s finely researched and capacious The Modern Movement (2004) similarly sees its “organization of material” as “designed to provide a broad view of the period’s literature, not a series of intensive critical analyses of individual authors and works” (14). Such introductory moves aim to narrow the field – to delimit a time, space and guiding Zeitgeist in which multiple, often contradictory representations of existence converge – and to identify the angles from which the field is viewed. Lázaro’s solution to the need for delimitation first surfaces in the syntax of his title, where the period-specifying El modernismo gives way to the post-modifying en la novela inglesa. Narrowing its focus gradually on the period and genre named, the study enacts its title’s large-scale approximation by adopting a fivefold structure. In reviewing Lázaro’s book below, I follow this fivefold structure and seek to highlight the study’s numerous strengths and few weaknesses. El modernismo en la novela inglesa surveys the path it will chart in its introduction, where a further delimitation arises in the definition of la novela inglesa, taken to be that produced either by writers born in the British Isles or by others, such as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Wyndham Lewis, Jean Rhys and Lawrence Durrell, in contact with the former group. This clarification gives way to a summary description of each chapter to follow, thus allowing the reader to see the path that awaits. One also finds here a stated aim, namely to fill a gap in scholarship with an introduction in Spanish to the modern British novel, and one infers as well a primary audience, university students of English and comparative literature. This first part closes with a set of caveats not unlike those quoted above, particularly as regards the writers and texts selected. Faced with the obstacles of broad coverage, uneven authorial production and a disputed canon, Lázaro 194 Jefferey Simons admirably combines aesthetic concerns with social ones and helps to redress the eclipsing of writers excluded because they were women. Examining the cultural contexts of the modernist period, the study’s second part, ‘Los nuevos caminos de la modernidad’, subdivides along the lines of socio-historical and intellectual change, on the one hand, and aesthetic definition, on the other. Lázaro here ably sidesteps the traps of periodization, which Jameson identifies thus: “any rewarding use of the notion of a historical or cultural period tends in spite of itself to give the impression of a facile totalization, a seamless web of phenomena each of which, in its own way, ‘expresses’ some unified inner truth” (1981: 27). Lázaro avoids facile simplification when delineating not only the modernist period’s shifts in economic and industrial organization, but also its class strife, accelerating urbanization, waning imperial order, particularly as regards the Irish struggle for independence, and advocacy of women’s rights. To these changes Lázaro adds shifts in the paradigms of philosophy, medicine and science, as well as the searing impact of the Great War (1914-1918), whose prolonged bloodshed and devastation belied any confident narrative of progress or of the nation as beneficent custodian of the common good. Throughout this discussion, Lázaro often points to the presence of socio-historical reality in modernist texts, thereby dismissing the misleading separation of the two. When facing the issue of aesthetic definition, Lázaro similarly avoids the tendency to place all fiction written in the period under the heading modernist. This decision accords with Stevenson’s sense of modernism and modernist, “appropriately applied . . . to the work of writers sharing the belief that a modernizing of forms and the reshaping or abandonment of tradition were necessary conditions of their art” (1998: 3). Further discussion here of the period leaves out for the moment conceptions of language, deeply influential throughout the twentieth century and traced to varying degrees by Bradbury and McFarlane (1991: 48- 49), Stevenson (1998: 170-99), Bell (1999: 16-18), Childs (2000: 61-65) and Baldick (2004: 57-71). There is also little explication of journalism, literacy and technological shifts in communication, which spawned “a palpable increase in intellectual traffic of all kinds, in ideological trade, in cultural exchange” (McFarlane 1991: 78), and enabled speedier internationalism. Despite these shortcomings, this second part clearly conveys the modernist call for a sharp break with the immediate past, surveys an array of artistic movements designed to open or deepen the break and sagely dismisses univocal claims for modernist aesthetics. The study’s third part, ‘El espíritu modernista en la novela inglesa’, identifies the call for a decisive break in the corpus of novels chosen for analysis. These novels evidence a modernist abandonment of realist conventions and of Victorian or Edwardian sensibility, the latter burlesqued – by analogy with the Hobbesian formula nasty, brutish and short – as haughty, priggish and mean, though these attributes survive on most spots on the globe. The procedures to take the former’s place, as Lázaro portrays them, entail a fresh rendering of reality, one less tied to the surfaces of the external world or to the visible features, acts and audible speech of characters, less given to the recitation of attributes typically circulating in social life, and more focused on the characters’ unfolding thought, particularly on its lightning leaps of perception, cognition, association and memory. This focus sought to reveal, as Trotter phrases it, “experience as it happens, not as it is subsequently conceptualized”, in “the mimesis of individual acts of apprehension” (1999: 71, 84). The club-like complicity of narrator and reader Reviews 195 often elicited by the Victorian novel, in addition, gives way to the modernist narrator’s frequently cool reluctance to take the reader’s hand. As regards a set of narrative practices, this third part includes in its modernist repertoire the loosening of plot and closure, the loss of presumed infallibility and omniscience, a foregrounding of character in the terms mentioned above, a conceiving of time in ways that stray off and circle round a linear chronometric axis, subtle shifts in voice and point of view and a thickening of prose with figure and trope. A trend in recent literary historiography, adumbrated by Stevenson (1998) and repeatedly argued by Baldick (2004), tends to question the fault-line separating nineteenth-century realist precedent and modernist innovation, a division on which Lázaro’s choice of corpus largely depends. Baldick, for instance, early avails himself of Cyril Connolly’s “basic model [in Enemies of Progress (1938)] of a broad Modern Movement that includes puritan realists as well as ‘modernist’ Mandarins and at the same time acknowledges conflicts and compromises between these two tendencies” (2004: 394). Adopting this model at his study’s close, Baldick concludes that much of “what we call modernism was indeed realism in a new manner, modulated by symbolist or expressionist devices, inflected by new psychological emphases. . . . Modernism did not abolish or supersede realism; it extended its possibilities” (2004: 401). Lázaro, though, has made it clear that his focus on writers of marked experimentation in no way negates the existence of abundant realist fiction in the period, nor does he take modernist novelists to be magicians pulling rabbits out of their hats. Rather, he skilfully balances the extension of realist precedent with the indisputable innovation in the period, an innovation arising, as Fletcher and Bradbury put it, “in a way that would have been incomprehensible a century or so previously” (1991: 396). Two further sections in this third part address the issues of theme and influence, and each section is misleadingly brief. The explication of theme focuses on the ways in which the thought of characters caught on the wing reflects not only idiolects, subjective biases and isolation – particularly those of the artist – but also inevitably socio-cultural contexts. Lázaro likewise identifies thematic patterns that question epistemological certainty, introduce subject matter previously taboo and spotlight a metafictive awareness of formal artifice. This first section is deceptive in that the previous chapter has inventoried a broad expanse of new subject matter spawned by the thought and events of the period. The section on influence underscores the international dimensions of modernism and pays particular attention to nineteenth- century French and Russian literature, contemporary Scandanavian drama and the development of cinema, and it too is richly anticipated by discussion in the previous chapter. Spanning five chapters and the bulk of the book, the fourth part of El modernismo en la novela inglesa interleaves the ordering principles of chronology and theme with discussion of seventeen novelists. For each writer, Lázaro adopts a procedure that leads a set of oeuvre-wide observations into the explication of a single text and marked contribution. Chapter 3, ‘Los inicios’, charts the emergence of modernist experimentation and feminist advocacy in the work of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Sara Grand and Mona Caird, the latter two justly complementing well-rehearsed concentration elsewhere on the former three. Lázaro discusses James’s pioneering contribution to narrative theory and gives specific attention to The Portrait 196 Jefferey Simons of a Lady (1881) in order to clarify its early experimentation with point of view. Conrad is cast as a revealer of rank corruption below the glossy surface of virtue, often through an allegorical inner journey superimposed upon an outer one to the unknown, and as a multiplier of the angles and circumstances of narration. Both roles – the former anticipating the period’s rejection of Victorian and Edwardian pieties – are evidenced in a study of Heart of Darkness (1902). A collaborator of Conrad’s and like James a significant theorist, Ford is seen, through attention to The Good Soldier (1915), to portray the inscrutability of experience, before which reportorial omniscience is a false witness to reality. Lázaro discusses Grand and Caird in the section ‘Las novelas de la “nueva mujer”’, which aligns the representation of women with feminist advocacy of equal rights in law and fact for half of humankind. Grand’s work as a novelist, essayist and activist is exemplified by The Heavenly Twins (1893), which depicts the pain caused by double-standards in the treatment of women, along with the necessity and difficulty of other options for existence, as does Caird’s The Daughters of Danaus (1894), which traces these in the life of an aspiring artist. Chapters 4 – ‘Las grandes figuras’, identified as D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf – and 5 – ‘La mujer como tema narrativo’, largely traced in the work of Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and Jean Rhys – compose a second cycle of study combining the analysis of modernist innovation with themes proper to female experience. Both chapters devote equal time to each writer, in a democracy of explication that is to Lázaro’s credit, and hold three purposes: to signal the specificity of each writer’s work, often in novels of education; to point out affinities and differences between writers; and to extend the lines of narrative evolution drawn in chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 6, ‘De la vanguardia a lo político y social’, examines the work of E. M. Forster, Wyndham Lewis and Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Chapter 7, ‘La etapa final’, focuses on Samuel Beckett, Malcolm Lowry and Lawrence Durrell. These chapters trace the ways novelists in the period foreground socio-political issues and respond to the influence of their modernist peers and predecessors. The study’s fifth and last part groups a selection of extracts, an index of names, a glossary of terms, a tripartite chronology and a brief bibliography. This part clearly acknowledges the book’s primary audience, university students of English and comparative literature. The selection of extracts – fragments of expository prose by James Frazer, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Dorothy Richardson, T. S. Eliot, Leon Edel and Ezra Pound – facilitates discussion of the content of previous chapters, while the glossary of terms and index of names – the latter placing salient character descriptions alongside brief author biographies – permit speedy identification. The tripartite chronology correlates contemporaneous history and cultural life with the novels discussed; the bibliography is too brief and incomplete, in that several critical texts mentioned in the study are not duly catalogued. The risks of composing a study such as Lázaro’s are manifold, chief among them the need to reduce a vast and complex span of literary and social history, encompassing countless texts, many of considerable length, along with a large body of existing scholarship, to the slender space of a medium-length single volume. The feat of doing so is akin to making a map of the stars, where acts of spatial transposition and reduction are “testimony to a phenomenal power of compression” (McKenzie 1999: Reviews 197
44). Herein lies the value of El modernismo en la novela inglesa to the specialist and non- specialist alike: its synthesis of the modern British novel, covering abundant ground in brief compass, avoiding the traps of survey coverage, maps new configurations with original insight, its prose graced by a clarity of expression for which the reader is grateful.
Works Cited
Ayers, David 2004: Modernism: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Baldick, Chris 2004: The Modern Movement. Vol. 10 of The Oxford English Literary History. Ed. Jonathan Bate. 13 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP. Bell, Michael 1999: ‘The Metaphysics of Modernism’. Michael Levenson, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 9-32. Bradbury, Malcolm and James McFarlane 1991 (1976): ‘The Name and Nature of Modernism’. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, eds. Modernism: A Guide to European Literature, 1890-1930. London: Penguin. 19-55. Childs, Peter 2000: Modernism. London: Routledge. Fletcher, John and Malcolm Bradbury 1991 (1976): ‘The Introverted Novel’. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, eds. Modernism: A Guide to European Literature, 1890-1930. London: Penguin. 394-415. Jameson, Fredric 1981: The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Matz, Jesse 2004: The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. McFarlane, James 1991 (1976): ‘The Mind of Modernism’. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, eds. Modernism: A Guide to European Literature, 1890-1930. London: Penguin. 71- 93. McKenzie, D. F. 1999 (1986): Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Stevenson, Randall 1998 (1992): Modernist Fiction: An Introduction. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Trotter, David 1999: ‘The Modernist Novel’. Michael Levenson, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 70-99.
Received 7 November 2006 Revised version received 16 April 2007
Joan C. Beal 2006: Language and Region. London/New York: Routledge. viii + 117 pp. ISBN 9-78-0-415-36600-7 (hbk) and 9-78-0-415-36601-4 (pbk)
Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre Universidad de Murcia [email protected]
Language and Region is the latest book by Joan C. Beal, from the University of Sheffield, whose seminal work on the history of English in the late Modern period (1999a, 2004) is already familiar to scholars in our country. Besides historical linguistics, Professor Beal has also published extensively on dialectology, especially on Scots (1997) and the dialects of northeastern England (1993, 1999b, 2000, 2005). In addition, she is Director of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, at Sheffield, “the only university- based unit in England devoted to the study of all aspects of folklore throughout the country”, including its linguistic components (http://www.shef.ac.uk/natcect/). Language and Region appears in Routledge’s intertext series, a collection of practical handbooks which basically aim at “developing readers’ understanding of how texts work”, particularly, undergraduate students’, and try to place texts “within the contexts in which they occur and […] [to] explore relationships between them” (ii). In accordance with the practical aims of the series, the book covers certain aspects within English dialectology that are significant today and offers a collection of well-designed exercises with a twofold aim. First, to enable students to become aware of the linguistic features, the range of functions and the contexts of usage of certain accents and dialects of English, particularly British English, and, second, to introduce them to the rudiments of research in this field. Indeed, an outstanding characteristic of this textbook is its contextual and innovating approach to English dialects. The treatment of the discipline differs from other textbooks. The traditional approach to teaching geographical varieties of English has been based on the collection and representation of speech features from different regions and localities, which students are encouraged to learn, visualize in maps and, occasionally, identify in a set of selected recorded texts. This is the procedure followed by classical introductory accounts, from G.L. Brook’s English Dialects (1963) or Martyn F. Wakelin’s English Dialects: An Introduction (1977), together with the three comprehensive volumes of Accents of English by John C. Wells (1982a, 1982b, 1982c), to more popular treatments such as Discovering English Dialects by Wakelin (1979), and Peter Trudgill’s best-selling English Accents and Dialects (1979), with Arthur Hughes (now in its fourth edition, Hughes and Trudgill 2005), International English. A Guide to Varieties of Standard English (1982) with Jean Hannah (whose fourth edition appeared in 2002), and The Dialects of England (1999, second edition), as well as the workbooks Dialects, by Peter Trudgill (1994), or Dennis Freeborn’s Coursebook in English Grammar. Standard English and the Dialects (1995). While some sections of the book comply with this well- established approach to dialectology, in other chapters Beal attempts to place the study of dialects in a new context, in such a way that some of the cultural, psychological, literary, social and even economic implications of the contemporary use of English dialects are dealt with. 200 Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre
This aim is particularly accomplished in chapters one, ‘Region, nation, locale’ (1-13), and two, ‘Regional language and its uses’ (15-28), where Professor Beal is sensitive to the new regional realities that globalisation has generated and explores their connections with dialect. In particular, by providing students with a local-identity questionnaire that they can distribute in their local communities, she manages to make them familiar, in practical terms, with the tug of war between globalisation, at one extreme, and the maintenance of regional identities, at the other: the possibility that, despite macdonaldization, some areas still retain their distinctiveness and people develop a sense of identity which often involves the way they speak. This means that a fluid sense of region and, accordingly, dialect is adopted, “covering whatever geographical areas are considered distinct from each other by the people living in them and whatever varieties of English are perceived as different from each other by the people who speak and hear them” (4). Within this fluid approach to region, some readers, however, may miss the author’s engagement with recent research on dialect areas in connection with the psychological perception of speech differences by speakers: the field of perceptual dialectology as explored in the last fifteen years by, among others, Dennis Preston (1989, 2002; see also Long 2003), This absence in the textbook contrasts with the presence of other issues common in sociolinguistics and the social psychology of language, such as dialect levelling or evaluation. Dynamic is also Beal’s approach to the present uses and functions of dialects in the English-speaking world, where they are no longer the relic speech of old, non-mobile male speakers from rural areas, but have also become common urban phenomena. As such, dialects have become entrenched within popular culture, so that they can nowadays be found “on the web, in souvenir shops and tourist offices and in regional newspapers”, and regional accents are used “in soap operas, such as Coronation Street or East Enders, where the locality of the setting is important, and in advertisements where the product is associated with a region” (15). Some linguistic consequences of this appropriation of dialect by popular culture are, on the one hand, the difficulties of separating ‘proper’ dialect from slang, colloquial and idiomatic English, as well as, on the other, the stereotyped characteristics of many samples of dialect which students of English often come across in these contexts. Both issues are illustrated in practical exercises involving realia, such as a funny spoof word-processor, Word for Northerners, or a T-shirt listing some features of Pittsburghese, incidentally the only example of non- British varieties of English in the book. Social psychology provides another dimension to Beal’s dynamic and contextual approach to the study of dialect. In chapter three, ‘Attitudes to regional languages’ (29- 40), students are introduced to the methods used by social psychologists such as Howard Giles (1977; Giles and Powesland 1975; Giles and St. Clair 1979) and sociolinguists, like William Labov (1972, 2001), to elicit listeners’ reactions to accents. Later, they are encouraged to elaborate their own questionnaires and to test the different responses to their own local varieties by placing their informants’ answers within the classical scales measuring intelligence, friendliness, honesty, attractiveness, suitability for certain jobs, etc. The author’s attentiveness to real and novel dimensions of dialect in the English speaking world is manifested again in her comments, for instance, on some commercial consequences of dialect evaluation, such as the tendency for call centres in the UK to be located in regions with recognisable local accents – such Reviews 201 as the north of England, or the Celtic fringe – or even to employ operators whose mild local accents are favourably appraised (32-33). The other end of the continuum is represented by the many examples of distant RP used by the villains in American movies, as exemplified in many of Disney’s films, which have followed this practice since at least the 1950s. Three chapters are devoted to the description of some shibboleths of British English accents and dialects: ‘Recognising accents’ (chapter four, 41-52), ‘Words and things’ (chapter five, 53-66) and ‘Regional grammar’ (chapter six, 67-80), respectively dedicated to phonology, lexis and morphology and syntax. In contrast to the recent and classical textbooks mentioned above, Beal’s account is highly simplified – obviously because these descriptions already exist in the market and they would not wholly agree with the culturally-oriented objectives of Routledge’s intertext series. Nevertheless, these sections clearly benefit from the practical stance that distinguishes the book at large: they are accompanied by activities and project works which not only help students recognise some of the key features of British English accents and dialects, but also train them in the elaboration of questionnaires that may allow them to elicit some features from their local varieties. Moreover, the cultural orientation of the book inclines the author to deal with topics that would not normally feature in other textbooks on dialectology, such as her attempts to disentangle the terminology and thereby distinguish between standard, sub-standard and non-standard in connection with value- judgement (68). An interesting chapter, in my opinion, is the one on the lexicon, especially because Beal relates it to other issues touched on in the book. The author is well aware that globalisation is accelerating the attrition of dialect vocabulary among the younger generations, but, at the same time, her own experience in dialect research permits her to handle this assertion with care. While it is true that dialect words are disappearing from the active repertoire of speakers, a majority belong to traditional, industrial or farming activities. In general, attrition seems to be restricted in some semantic fields connected with other aspects of everyday life, such as bakery, butchery or fishmongery, which are still the target of lexical creativity on the part of speakers, even though, as remarked above, it is not easy to draw boundaries between dialect vocabulary, slang and colloquialism. Additionally, many speakers retain a passive knowledge of some dialectal terms which may still be remembered by informants provided that they are interviewed adequately. In this sense, Beal offers examples of activity questionnaires and sense- relation networks that may help the trainee dialectologist elicit the adequate response. In the last chapter, ‘Writing in dialect’ (81-90), Professor Beal returns to some of the topics tackled in earlier sections by looking at the appropriation of dialect in literature, a common practice both throughout history and in the present. The author deals with all the implications of this issue and carefully distinguishes literary dialect – the conventional representation of dialect with different purposes in texts that are otherwise written in standard English – from literature written entirely in dialect. Both instances are illustrated with documents from the past, like Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855), and from the present, like Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993) or sections from The Hensbarrow Homilies (2002), the dialect poem by the Cornishman Alan M. Kent. The first two help the author discuss some of the conventions commonly used to portray dialect in literature, trying to balance the desire for accuracy with 202 Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre transparency and accessibility: eye dialect, semi-phonetic spellings, allegro-speech spellings -an’, ‘cos or gonna- regionalisms, colloquialisms, etc. A further commentary on Kent’s Homilies takes Beal’s discussion back to the opening sections on globalisation, within which dialect texts may be interpreted as political statements that bring to the foreground different points about language identity and nationhood, thus fulfilling one of the aims of Routledge’s intertext series: “placing texts within their contexts”, cultural and political. The book finally includes a key to some of the exercises and project works suggested, a list of phonetic symbols, an index of technicalities defined in simple terms and an updated reference list, with useful web resources. All in all, Language and Region is a novel and practical account of English accents and dialects. It is novel, in so far as it brings the study of dialect in line with the global realities of the present day, and because, in doing so, it exposes undergraduates to functions of dialect within popular culture, tourism and even marketing. The textbook is also practical throughout, aiming at making students aware of the features, functions and uses of their own local dialect and even helping them take the first steps in research on the field. There is, however, one small snag for foreign students of English: the orientation of the majority of practical exercises and projects to the students’ first-hand experience of dialect makes them difficult to be accomplished by their peers in Spain, who, being separated from the daily linguistic reality of Britain, can only remotely grasp all the implications of the use of British English dialects in the modern world.
References
Beal, Joan C. 1993: ‘The grammar of Tyneside and Northumbrian English’. James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, eds. Real English. The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. London: Longman. 187-242. ––––– 1997: ‘Syntax and morphology’. Charles Jones, ed. The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. 355-377. ––––– 1999a: English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century. Thomas Spence’s ‘Grand Repository of the English Language’. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ––––– 1999b: ‘Geordie nation: language and regional identity in the North-east of England’. Lore and Language 17: 33-48. ––––– 2000: ‘From Geordie Ridley to Viz.: Popular Literature in Tyneside English’. Language and Literature 9.4: 343-359. ––––– 2004: English in Modern Times. London: Arnold. ––––– 2005: ‘The phonology and syntax of English dialects in the North of England’. Bernd Kortman and Edgar W. Schneider, eds. A Handbook of Varieties of English: The British Isles. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Brook, G.L. 1963: English Dialects. London: André Deutsch. Freeborn, Dennis 1995: A Coursebook in English Grammar. Standard English and the Dialects. 2nd ed. London: MacMillan. Giles, Howard, ed. 1977: Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press. Giles, Howard and Peter F. Powesland, eds. 1975: Speech Style and Social Evaluation. London: Academic Press. Giles, Howard and R.N. St. Claire, eds. 1979: Language and Social Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell. Hughes, Arthur and Peter Trudgill 2005: English Accents and Dialects. An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles. 4th ed. London: Arnold. Labov, William 1972: Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Reviews 203
––––– 2001: Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Long, Daniel 2003: Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Vol. 2. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Preston, Dennis R. 1989: Perceptual Dialectology. Nonlinguists’ Views of Areal Linguistics. Dordrecht: Foris. ––––– 2002: Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Vol. 1. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Trudgill, Peter 1994: Dialects. London: Routledge. ––––– 1999: The Dialects of England. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah 2002: International English. A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English. 4th ed. London: Arnold. Wakelin, Martyn F. 1977: English Dialects. An Introduction. London: The Athlone Press. ––––– 1979: Discovering English Dialects. London: Shire. Wells, John C. 1982a: Accents of English. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ––––– 1982b: Accents of English. Vol. 2: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ––––– 1982c: Accents of English. Vol. 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Received 26 September 2006 Revised version received 22 January 2007
Katherine Romack and James Fitzmaurice 2006: Cavendish and Shakespeare, Interconnections. Aldershot: Ashgate. i-xii+217 pages. ISBN 0 7546 5453 2 pb
Ángeles Tomé Rosales Universidade de Vigo [email protected]
Katherine Romack and James Fitzmaurice have edited a very useful work for anyone interested in the works of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, in general and, more specifically, in her most prominent source: the plays by William Shakespeare. Cavendish and Shakespeare, Interconnections contains ten essays on the strong affinities between the plays of Shakespeare and the writings of Margaret Cavendish. According to the editors, in Cavendish’s plays it is possible to find characters and language reminiscent of Shakespeare’s. However, such a reminiscence should not be seen as plagiarism because Cavendish develops her plots from a female point of view and, by dealing with Shakespeare’s original plots from a woman’s point of view, she creates completely different works. Cavendish does not use this female mark in order to avoid an accusation of plagiarism, but rather she takes into account the most important concerns for women in seventeenth-century society in order to defend women’s rights at a time when the concept of femininity was strongly influenced by patriarchy. This particular fight was carried out not only through Cavendish’s writings but also through her personal experience. We must bear in mind here that Cavendish’s creativity led her to be considered a neurotic woman, who was even called Mad Madge, in seventeenth- century society. Moreover, this humiliating nickname was not only used by her contemporaries in their daily speech in order to refer to her but was also recorded in popular works by Dorothy Osborne and Samuel Pepys, among others and, as these works were read in the following centuries, Cavendish’s nickname was also preserved. In fact, it has reached our age in spite of the efforts of Restoration critics, who for the last two decades have been proving that Cavendish is as noteworthy as many others. As Romack and Fitzmaurice rightly remark, their work constitutes the first attempt to explain the way an early modern woman writer “both challenged and contributed to dominant early modern paradigms of literary value” (6), something no woman had dared to do before. This volume thus joins the efforts of modern critics who have endeavoured to retrieve Cavendish’s work in the last decade. Apart from many individual articles and chapters, we must highlight here full books and collections of essays such as Battigelli (1998), Cottegnies and Weitz eds. (2003), Clucas ed. (2003), Rees (2003) and the special issues of Women’s Writing (1997) and EMLS (2004). As far as Spanish contributions are concerned, I would like to mention Calderón-López (1997), Figueroa-Dorrego (2002), Figueroa-Dorrego (2003) and Martín-Lucas (2003). However, in spite of the great number of scholars who are now analysing Cavendish’s literary production, the relationship of Cavendish’s work to Shakespeare had not been extensively dealt with until the publication of Romack and Fitzmaurice’s Cavendish and Shakespeare, Interconnections, except for an essay by Romack (2000). 206 Ángeles Tomé Rosales
The main body is divided into ten chapters which, because of the similarity of their content, could be seen as five different sections and which deal with topics related to Shakespeare’s work as a prominent source for Cavendish as follows: a) the similarities between Cavendish’s and Shakespeare’s attitudes towards literature; b) the genre and dramatic strategies which Cavendish borrowed from Shakespeare; c) several issues concerning gender, issues which distinguish Cavendish’s plays from their most immediate source, i. e. Shakespeare’s drama; d) martial subjects, among which we can highlight the importance of soldier characters and their models in Cavendish’s drama; e) Cavendish’s most significant works: The Unnatural Tragedy (1662) and her defence of Cleopatra in The Worlds Olio (1655). The contributors are researchers who publish largely on Renaissance and Restoration literature. In their Introduction, the editors prove that Cavendish had borrowed characters and phraseology, above all, from Shakespeare, and provide an outline of the subsequent chapters which the volume contains. Following the introductory section, there are ten chapters which for the first time establish a relationship between Cavendish and Shakespeare. The first two essays explore the correspondence between Cavendish’s desire for fame and her willingness to position herself closer to the most popular playwrights. In the first chapter, entitled ‘“Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe”: Affiliation and Memorialization in Margaret Cavendish’s Playes and Plays, Never before Printed’ (7-28), Shannon Miller states that in the middle years of the seventeenth century playwrights and their reputations were constantly under the public eye. Cavendish was one of the Restoration drama critics who contributed to the assessment of playwrights and, among the most relevant, she always favoured Shakespeare. For Miller, thanks to this assessment, Cavendish finds it possible to align herself with the most outstanding English playwrights because she was continuously positioning herself in relation to Shakespeare and Jonson above all, but also to Fletcher and Beaumont. Precisely, her desire for fame led her to establish the folio as her preferred publication format, the most expensive and ostentatious one available. Miller points out that Cavendish, while enhancing Jonson’s scholarship and his knowledge of classical works as opposed to Shakespeare’s Englishness, finds her works much closer to Shakespeare. Also associated with the similarities between these authors’ attitudes is James Fitzmaurice’s analysis ‘Shakespeare, Cavendish, and Reading Aloud in Seventeenth-Century England’ (29-46). This contributor deals with the practice of reading literature aloud. After proving that collections of drolls intended for professionals were also used by amateurs, Fitzmaurice discusses Cavendish’s advice on the practice of reading her plays and chapters aloud. This leads him to wonder whether Cavendish wrote her plays keeping in mind that they would be read aloud and whether she wrote only for her family and friends or also for public performance. He tries to answer this by analysing the three prefaces to Playes (1662) where she exposed her aims. Finally, he concludes that, as forerunners, Cavendish and her husband read plays by Shakespeare aloud as early as the seventeenth century, although they did not memorise any part. So, as these two essays illustrate, through publication or performance Cavendish tried to align herself with William Shakespeare. Reviews 207
As I have previously indicated, the following two chapters deal with genre and dramatic strategies and can therefore be considered as forming one section. Erna Kelly’s ‘Drama’s Olio: A New Way to Serve Old Ingredients in The Religious and The Matrimonial Trouble’ (47-62) analyses the liminal space occupied by two of Cavendish’s plays which shocked her contemporaries and surprise the present-day reader. The Religious constitutes Cavendish’s first attempt to experience a new genre: tragicomedy; on the contrary, in The Matrimonial Trouble, she creates a genre of her own: come- tragedy. According to Kelly, both plays illustrate Cavendish’s originality and, as these tragicomedies fuse love with politics, they allow Cavendish to explore her favourite topic: marriage. Moreover, Kelly finds that there is a strong resemblance between these two plays and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604) and Othello (1602), respectively. This contributor points out that The Religious is also based on other Shakespearean plays and that The Matrimonial Trouble is closer to Restoration plays such as Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700). In ‘Dining at the Table of Sense: Shakespeare, Cavendish and The Convent of Pleasure’ (63-83), Brandie R. Siegfried argues that The Convent of Pleasure is full of dramatic strategies borrowed from Shakespeare, although the most relevant one is the cross-dressed lover, a strategy which challenges the superiority of masculine arts of pleasure and, at the same time, provides a chance for women’s liberation and pleasure. Thus, Cavendish’s use of the cross-dressed lover to challenge gender hierarchy also comes from Shakespeare. After explaining Cavendish’s preference for Shakespeare as her literary-theatrical mentor, Siegfried states that in Cavendish’s play the transvestite becomes what the Duchess considers the theatrical analogue to nature’s unity, focusing on this analogy by introducing Cavendish’s interest in moral and natural philosophy. Therefore, her favourite topic and the dramatic strategies she borrows from Shakespeare allow Cavendish, at least, to challenge the gender hierarchy of patriarchal society. The following section is formed by two chapters which are centred around several issues related to gender. In ‘Testifying in the Court of Public Opinion: Margaret Cavendish Reworks The Winter’s Tale’ (85-102), Alexandra G. Bennett highlights the prominence of female characters on trial in Cavendish’s Youth’s Glory and Death’s Banquet, The Public Wooing and The Sociable Companions, a feature which links them to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. However, Cavendish confers much more defiance and control of stage space on her female characters, although Shakespeare also created strong female characters in some of his plays, such as Mistress Ford and Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600), or Lady Macbeth, or King Lear’s daughters. Thus, by claiming women’s right to speak and to be placed not only at the centre of the action but also in control of it, Cavendish challenges the concept of femininity in seventeenth-century England. For Mihoko Suzuki, Cavendish’s writings enter the traditionally male discourse concerning politics and public affairs. Her ‘Gender, the Political Subject and Dramatic Authorship: Margaret Cavendish’s Loves Adventures and the Shakespearean Example’ (103-20) acquaints us with the relationship between Loves Adventures and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1604) and Othello (1602) among others and, at the same time, with the contrast Cavendish establishes through the introduction of women as political subjects in her own play. In the same way as Shakespeare had previously refashioned the literary arguments of classical antiquity, Cavendish appropriates Shakespeare’s plays and, according to her concept of femininity, updates 208 Ángeles Tomé Rosales them. Suzuki extensively illustrates the differences and similarities between Shakespeare’s and Cavendish’s plays but, above all, she highlights the gender policy Cavendish develops through her play, which proves Cavendish’s mockery of Shakespeare’s dramatic production. Both Pasupathi’s and Scott-Douglass’s compelling essays focus on martial subjects. In ‘Old Playwrights, Old Soldiers, New Martial Subjects: The Cavendishes and the Drama of Soldiery’ (121-46), Vimala C. Pasupathi deals with the importance Cavendish grants to soldier characters. It is hardly likely that Cavendish had been a soldier and, although her husband had taken part in actual military campaigns, she probably obtained her military plots from North’s version of Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579), as Shakespeare had done before. Moreover, according to Pasupathi, it is probable that Cavendish’s imagination played an important role in her works on military subjects. For instance, since her husband spent more than half of the duration of the civil wars outside England, her superb accounts of William Cavendish’s soldiery are probably based on her literary invention, which she considered superior to martial knowledge and subjectivity. Chapter 8 is Amy Scott-Douglass’s ‘Enlarging Margaret: Cavendish, Shakespeare and French Women Warriors and Writers’ (147-78). The author focuses on Cavendish’s modelling of “some of her dramatic characters, and some of her selves, after particular seventeenth-century French noblewomen warriors and writers” (149). According to Scott-Douglass, it is clear that Cavendish found inspiration in specific historical and literary figures, especially in those called Margaret, to construct her female characters. Therefore, throughout her essay, she analyses how Cavendish was influenced by these characters, taking Shakespeare’s Margaret of Anjou as a point of departure. The final two essays are about Cavendish’s appropriation and revision of Shakespearean models of sexuality and pleasure. Karen Barber’s ‘The Unnatural Tragedy and Familial Absolutisms’ (179-91) deals with Cavendish’s renewal of some Shakespearean works in The Unnatural Tragedy (1662), one of her most difficult works. The most relevant topic in this tragedy is incest, which can also be found in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604). According to Barber, The Unnatural Tragedy is concerned with “how politics, and the beliefs and practices justified or instantiated by the government of the time, impact the health of the family” (184). In fact, as Barber points out, Cavendish had never met most of her husband’s extended family. When she wrote this tragedy, she was living in exile on the continent because her husband, at that time Marquis of Newcastle, had been declared a traitor and his estates had been confiscated. The Unnatural Tragedy reflects the contemporary events which had placed her in this position, i. e., the failure of absolute rule. In Measure for Measure, she could have noticed the absence of a kingly father-figure and, following Shakespeare, her Unnatural Tragedy connects the absence of an absolute monarch with the violations of ‘nature’ in the family and, therefore, in the state. It could also be likely that in the same way as in Shakespeare’s King Lear (1608), she was aiming at criticising the lack of a natural, legal heir to the throne. Throughout the whole essay, the difference between Shakespeare’s and Cavendish’s concepts of women becomes evident. For Barber, Cavendish’s Soeur shifts the emphasis from a woman’s virginity, in itself a valuable virtue, to the role of chaste behaviour within the family. Reviews 209
The last chapter, ‘“I Wonder She Should be so Infamous for a Whore?”: Cleopatra Restored’ (193-211), comprises Cavendish’s defence of Cleopatra in The Worlds Olio (1655). Katherine Romack compares this female character in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606) to Dryden’s transformation of her in All for Love (1677) and comes to the conclusion that Cavendish anticipated Dryden by aligning Cleopatra with matrimonial virtue, although in contrast with Dryden’s, Cavendish’s Cleopatra is both interesting and sexually appealing. Romack extensively proves that Cavendish admired Cleopatra. For instance, she claims that in letter 162 of Sociable Letters, “Cavendish tacitly figures herself as Cleopatra, erotically playing to the triumvirate of political power, sexualised ‘wit’, and dramatic ‘humour’ represented by Augustus Caesar, Ovid, and Shakespeare” (209) and, in addition, Cavendish, like Cleopatra, played the role of a whore herself at the opening of The Humorous Lovers (1677) in the garb of a courtesan. According to Romack, this performance was a way of creating viable sexual identities for Restoration women. However, Romack also points out that Cavendish did not go as far as Behn in abandoning “conventional models of Protestant and aristocratic propriety to enter the sexual marketplace” (210). Even so, Cavendish was undoubtedly “one of the most popular and controversial figures of English public life at a time when high-class women’s activities were severely restricted to the domestic sphere” (Martín- Lucas 2003: 213). Despite the fact that she did not endanger her reputation in the same way as Behn, Cavendish challenged the concept of femininity typical of patriarchal society, thus becoming the first Englishwoman to write a substantial body of literature intentionally for publication. Regarding the disposition of the volume, it should be noted that although each contributor includes a number of references to Renaissance and Restoration drama in their essays, the edition as a whole lacks a general bibliography comprising the works referred to in the various essays. However, in spite of this criticism, I would like to highlight that, in my opinion, this volume constitutes one of the most relevant attempts to analyse Cavendish’s sources and, at the same time, the original traits which make her works completely different from Shakespeare’s plays, although they are based on Shakespearean plots. Moreover, Cavendish and Shakespeare, Interconnections is worth reading by anyone interested in Cavendish’s writing, due to the great variety of topics it deals with. In fact, this selection of critical essays can be considered as a means of decoding this author’s work. It also reveals Cavendish’s concerns, her interests and her goals, which have hitherto remained unknown. Once again, I find it necessary to emphasize that seventeenth-century female writers were considered inferior to their male counterparts and, therefore, unable to convey useful ideas. Thanks to the contributors to this appealing collection of essays it is possible to see Cavendish in a different light, a light that shows her no longer as an eccentric woman writer but as the first English woman who wrote a considerable corpus of plays, and one who often reworked and appropriated the plays of the most canonical English dramatist for her own purposes. We must forget the neurotic Mad Madge that patriarchy created in order to cancel out this active creative woman and welcome Margaret Cavendish as a versatile, prolific writer and a noteworthy playwright indeed. 210 Ángeles Tomé Rosales
Works Cited
Battigelli, Anna 1998: Margaret Canvedish and the Exiles of the Mind. Lexington: The U P of Kentucky. Calderón-López, María Isabel 1997: ““If it be naught”: Margaret Cavendish and the Performance of Transcendence”. SEDERI 8: 121-128. Cottegnies, Line and Nancy Weitz, eds. 2003: Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish. Madison: Fairleigh Dickenson UP. Clucas, Stephen, ed. 2003: A Princely Brave Woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Aldershot: Ashgate. EMLS 14 (2004):
Received 21 November 2006 Revised version received 25 April 2007
Henry Fielding 2005: Don Quijote en Inglaterra. Ed. y trad. Antonio Ballesteros González. Madrid: Publicaciones de la Asociación de Directores de Escena de España. 160 pp. ISBN 84-95576-48-1 Henry Fielding 2005: Don Quixote in England. Ed. and trans. Antonio Ballesteros González. Madrid: The Spanish Association of Stage Directors. 160 pp.
Pedro Javier Pardo Universidad de Salamanca [email protected]
Las celebraciones del quinto centenario de la publicación de la primera parte del Quijote que se extendieron a lo largo del pasado año nos han dejado una aluvión de obras que, de diferente manera y con desigual suerte, se han ocupado de sacar brillo a la ya de por sí relucientes reputación y gloria cervantinas. Entre las publicaciones que nos han prodigado los especialistas (algunos en Cervantes, otros arrimarse al sol que más calienta, como suele ocurrir en estos casos) se encuentran algunas de interés para el campo de los estudios ingleses, ya que se ocupan de la recepción de Cervantes en el mundo de habla inglesa. Entre ellas se cuentan dos interesantes recopilaciones de artículos originales sobre el tema, las editadas en España por Diego Martínez Torrón y Bernhard Dietz (2005) y en Alemania por Michael Hanke y Darío Fernández-Morera (2005), así como la serie de entradas (la mayoría de una extensión considerable) que sobre la misma cuestión han empezado ya a aparecer en la Gran Enciclopedia Cervantina coordinada por Carlos Alvar desde el Centro de Estudios Cervantinos de Alcalá de Henares. Esta magna obra, que intentará abarcar en diez volúmenes – de los cuales en el momento de escribir esta reseña ya han aparecido dos (Alvar 2005, 2006) – el saber acumulado en torno a la obra de Miguel de Cervantes, incluye voces individuales sobre autores británicos, irlandeses y estadounidenses vinculados de alguna forma con la obra cervantina, así como dos estudios generales que ofrecerán una visión panorámica de la recepción de Cervantes en el Reino Unido y los Estados Unidos desde sus inicios en los siglos XVII y XVIII hasta nuestros días. Finalmente, está a punto de aparecer otra colección de nuevos trabajos realizada desde Valladolid por José Manuel Barrio y María José Crespo (en prensa) en torno a la huella cervantina en la cultura anglosajona. La cosecha no es mala, y a ella podemos añadir todavía la traducción de algunos textos ingleses cervantinos. La colección Letras Universales de la editorial Cátedra, en la que había aparecido ya en el 2004 La mujer Quijote de Charlotte Lennox, traducida por Manuel Broncano y editada por Cristina Garrigós, publicó en 2005 El regreso de Don Quijote, de G. H. Chesterton, en la traducción de Pilar Vega, que es también la autora del amplio estudio introductorio que precede a la obra. Si la primera novela es la obra mayor de una autora que hasta hace poco ha sido considerada menor, pero trascendental en el desarrollo de la novela quijotesca en Europa y Estados Unidos (la obra fue traducida e imitada en otras lenguas), la segunda ocupa un lugar menor en el contexto de la obra de Chesterton y de la literatura inglesa en general, pero de nuevo se trata de un texto lleno de interés para documentar la pervivencia de las novelas protagonizadas por figuras explícitamente quijotescas todavía en el siglo XX. Y a estas dos novelas hay que añadir el texto objeto de esta reseña, la obra de teatro Don Quijote en Inglaterra de Henry Fielding, cuya pulcra edición y traducción debemos a Antonio Ballesteros González, de nuevo una obra menor pero que, escrita por el que fue 212 Pedro Javier Pardo calificado como el Cervantes inglés, es fundamental para entender la evolución tanto del propio Fielding como de la recepción de Cervantes en el Reino Unido. El hecho más decisivo en la carrera literaria de Henry Fielding fue posiblemente su paso del teatro a la novela, en gran parte debido a la promulgación del Licensing Act de 1737, que instauraba el control gubernamental y por tanto la censura política de cualquier obra que pretendiera representarse en suelo británico, y con ello cerraba las puertas de los teatros a Fielding y a otros dramaturgos que habían desarrollado en su producción dramática una intensa sátira contra el gobierno y específicamente contra el primer ministro de la época, el omnipotente Robert Walpole. Que este ‘giro novelesco’ en la vida de Fielding tuvo lugar de la mano de Cervantes es de sobra conocido, pues su primera novela digna de tal apelativo, Joseph Andrews (1742), llevaba como subtítulo Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes. Pero lo que es menos conocido es el hecho de que Fielding había ya imitado a Cervantes en una obra de teatro titulada Don Quixote in England y escrita muchos años antes, concretamente al inicio de su carrera como dramaturgo, entre 1728 y 1729, aunque la versión definitiva no se estrenaría hasta 1734. Y lo que es aún más interesante es el hecho de que, pese al carácter teatral de esta obra, podemos encontrar en ella el germen de la teoría de la novela que Fielding enunciará de forma explícita en Joseph Andrews y cuyos orígenes últimos se remontan a Cervantes. Efectivamente Fielding definirá su novela como un romance cómico, es decir, una yuxtaposición de ‘romance’ y realismo que se articula a través de la superposición de una trama romántica representada por Joseph y su amada Fanny con una cómica de raigambre quijotesca protagonizada por Adams. La descripción vale también para Don Quijote, sobre todo si pensamos en las historias de índole romántica sobre amores contrariados interpoladas en la primera parte que culminan cuando se cruzan con la de don Quijote en la venta de Juan Palomeque; y vale especialmente para Don Quijote en Inglaterra, donde se superpone en una venta la historia de los amores contrariados de Dorotea y Fairlove con la de un Don Quijote que se encuentra sorprendentemente de viaje por Inglaterra y cuya intervención, como en el modelo cervantino, será decisiva en el final feliz de tales amores. Fielding explicita así no sólo la fuente episódica de su obra de teatro sino también de la concepción novelesca que desarrollará años más tarde en Joseph Andrews, lo que convierte a este Don Quijote en Inglaterra en el eslabón perdido entre tal concepción y el original cervantino. En esta obra, además, se está gestando una nueva visión de la figura quijotesca que es la otra gran aportación de Fielding a la tradición cervantina. Fielding es en efecto el responsable principal, al menos en lo que a la creación se refiere, de una transformación fundamental en la recepción del personaje cervantino en Gran Bretaña y aun en Europa. Hasta Fielding, tanto los comentarios del texto cervantino – véase las Pleasant Notes on Don Quixote (1654) de Gayton – como los intentos por anglicanizar a su protagonista en nuevas creaciones – la Comical History of Don Quixote (1694, 1696) de D’Urfey – habían optado por lo que se conoce como la interpretación ‘dura’, consistente en presentar a Don Quijote como un bufón, adornado además por rasgos negativos como la hipocresía, la rufianería, la cobardía… En los contados ejemplos en los que el modelo cervantino se empleó para un propósito serio, como es el caso del Hudibras (1663, 1664 y 1678) de Butler, la figura quijotesca era el blanco de la sátira, es decir, encarnaba los males y vicios que se pretendía satirizar, y para ello Butler hacía uso de esta visión negativa del personaje. Fielding, y de manera Reviews 213 precursora su Don Quijote en Inglaterra, marca una ruptura con esta tendencia dominante. Ello es así, en primer lugar, porque presenta un Don Quijote no tanto anglicanizado como en suelo inglés, es decir, se trata, como el título indica, del mismísimo Don Quijote en Inglaterra y no de una figuración inglesa del mismo. Don Quijote ha resucitado para realizar una cuarta salida en la que se enfrentará a situaciones y personajes típicamente ingleses. Entre ellas ocupa un lugar de privilegio en la obra la corrupción política puesta de manifiesto por las elecciones que van a celebrarse, de la que el hidalgo se convertirá en piedra de toque, pasando así de blanco a instrumento satírico. He aquí la segunda novedad de este Quijote de Fielding: está loco y sigue confundiendo ventas con castillos y venteros con castellanos, pero junto al bufón brilla también el noble defensor y portavoz – en una serie de discursos dotados de total seriedad – de valores positivos e incuestionables. Por eso al final se declara que si él está loco también lo está el mundo y todos sus habitantes, aunque con un tipo de locura diferente, no tanto epistemológica como moral. La obra representa así un estadio intermedio, desarrollado luego en el Adams de Joseph Andrews, hacia la sublimación o santificación de don Quijote llevada a cabo por los Románticos, que es el paradigma de la interpretación ‘blanda’; pero tal estadio intermedio está mucho más cerca de Cervantes, pues en él se combinan, como en el original cervantino, lo ridículo y lo heroico. A esta nueva visión de la figura quijotesca y su cómico heroísmo apunta Antonio Ballesteros al analizar la obra en su amplio estudio introductorio – unas sesenta páginas – donde sostiene con acierto que “Don Quijote está concebido como un héroe”(43), aunque del tipo representado por el Bloom de Joyce o el Max Estrella de Valle-Inclán, y al hacerlo se opone con valentía y sobre todo con razón a algunos especialistas en Fielding que con evidente desacierto han tildado al Quijote de Fielding exclusivamente de bufón, sin duda haciendo abstracción de los antecedentes quijotescos ingleses, esos sí auténticos bufones. Ballesteros se sirve de esta perspectiva de la recepción cervantina desdeñada por los especialistas cuando de nuevo acierta al escribir que “este Don Quijote, al igual que el de Cervantes, contiene en su interior el embrión del incorregible romántico cuya evolución en esta línea se tornará hiperbólica en el decurso del siglo XIX”(50), aunque lo único que se le puede objetar el autor de esta afirmación es no haber sacado el suficiente partido de tal perspectiva para entender mejor o resaltar los hallazgos de Fielding, pues se ocupa de forma muy sumaria de los antecedentes quijotescos ingleses en la primera parte de su estudio, que es significativamente la más breve de las cuatro en que se divide. En la segunda parte Ballesteros traza una semblanza biográfica de Fielding en la que están los hechos fundamentales de su vida y las claves más importantes para entender su obra: su nacimiento en 1707 y antecedentes familiares, su formación clásica en Eton (y luego en Leiden, en los Países Bajos), algunos episodios novelescos de su juventud, su actividad como escritor dramático en Londres y sus relaciones con actores, escritores y artistas del momento, su vida familiar marcada por la tragedia de la muerte de sus hijos y finalmente de su mujer, su búsqueda de nuevos horizontes profesionales en el periodismo, la abogacía y la novela tras verse truncada su carrera de dramaturgo, su segundo y tardío matrimonio con una criada suya y la precaria salud de los últimos años que acabaría llevándole a la tumba en Lisboa en 1754. 214 Pedro Javier Pardo
En la tercera parte, posiblemente la más valiosa, Ballesteros realiza un bien informado y mejor argumentado recorrido por la carrera dramática de Fielding, deteniéndose en algunas de sus obras menos conocidas o en aspectos poco divulgados como su relación con los teatros de la época o su cambiante actitud hacia Robert Walpole, al que, tras su retirada en 1742 y con el paso del tiempo, Fielding acabaría valorando positivamente. Es de particular interés el panorama que traza Ballesteros de los cuatro teatros londinenses de la época (Drury Lane, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Little Haymarket, y Goodman’s Fields), en todos los cuales Fielding representó alguna obra – aunque en alguno como el Drury Lane fue ocasionalmente vetado por razones que Ballesteros explica. Y lo mismo puede decirse del recorrido que hace la introducción por la trayectoria de la sátira política contra Walpole a través de obras dramáticas de Fielding poco conocidas, desde Rape upon Rape, or the Justice Caught in his Own Trap (1730), pasando por The Welsh Opera, más tarde titulada The Grub Street Opera, que escribió en 1731 bajo el pseudónimo de Scriblerus Secundus buscando la complicidad del Scriblerus Club, del que formaban parte conocidos y prestigiosos tories como Pope, Swift o Gay, para culminar en Pasquin (1736), The Historical Register for the Year 1736 (1737) y Eurydice Hiss’d (1737), que desencadenaron la medida draconiana arriba mencionada para silenciar a Fielding (y a otros), aunque antes Walpole podría haber comprado el silencio de Fielding con sumas de dinero en ocasiones puntuales. Tal es el contexto político-literario en que se enmarca el Don Quijote en Inglaterra de Fielding y que tan acertadamente describe la introducción. La parte final de esta introducción aborda el análisis de la obra, intentando – de nuevo con acierto – equilibrar la poca atención y hasta el desdén con que gran parte de la crítica especializada ha tratado el texto, resaltando sus aspectos de mayor interés y sus méritos principales. Entre éstos se cuentan su carácter de comedia musical (de hecho la edición del texto incluye no sólo las letras de las canciones, como es habitual, sino también sus partituras musicales), el elogio de la locura en la tradición erasmista, su dimensión satírica (cuyo blanco no sólo son diferentes aspectos de la realidad inglesa, entre ellos la corrupción política o los matrimonios por conveniencia, sino también algunos de la española), o su tratamiento de la figura quijotesca. Sin embargo el equilibro de tal análisis se rompe en cierta medida cuando, en el comentario a la edición, el autor de la misma exagera un tanto la importancia de este Quijote de Fielding, justificando así su traducción al castellano en términos un tanto hiperbólicos. A diferencia de Ballesteros, creemos que la obra es poco significativa fuera de su papel en la recepción de Cervantes por parte de Fielding y de la literatura inglesa del XVIII en general, por lo que no nos extraña tanto como a él la ausencia de una edición moderna en inglés o de una traducción de la misma a otra lengua. Pero precisamente por esa significación en la tradición cervantina la traducción al español está más que justificada y es digna de aplauso, sobre todo cuando va acompañada de un excelente estudio introductorio y ha sido preparada con el rigor del que da muestras su autor, que ha rastreado en las diferentes ediciones existentes de la obra así como en la completa bibliografía que ofrece al final de la introducción para ofrecernos una traducción y edición modélicas. Todos los admiradores tanto de Cervantes como de Fielding debemos felicitarnos por ello, al tiempo que hacer votos para que la tarea emprendida por Ballesteros y el resto de editores y estudiosos mencionados más arriba se haga extensible a otros textos. Reviews 215
Hay traducciones modernas no sólo de Joseph Andrews sino también de la obra cumbre – no desprovista de rasgos cervantinos – de Fielding, Tom Jones. Esta última, además, va acompañada por una magnífica introducción de Fernando Galván. Pero no han tenido la misma fortuna otros textos fundamentales protagonizados por Quijotes, que siguen inéditos en español, como es el caso de los de Butler (Hudibras), Smollett (Sir Launcelot Greaves [1760-61]) o Thackeray (The Newcomes [1853-55]), que serían dignos sucesores de las traducciones de Chesterton y Lennox en Cátedra. A ellos habría que unir las obras de la rica tradición dramática quijotesca, empezando por The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1612) de Beaumont y acabando por The Comical History of Don Quixote de D’Urfey – de los que recientemente se ha ocupado el propio Ballesteros (2005) – aunque existe aún alguna otra obra de teatro menos conocida en el siglo XIX, y hasta en el XX, que encajaría bien en la colección publicada por la Asociación de Directores de Escena. Tal vez el momento idóneo, en lo que a subvenciones y eco mediático se refiere, ya haya pasado, pero quién sabe si el autor de esta edición o algún otro Quijote de esos que rara pero felizmente nos regala nuestro pequeño mundo académico, se decidirán a acometer tan ingrata – por poco apreciada – pero noble empresa.
Obras Citadas
Alvar, Carlos, ed. 2005 (vol. I) y 2006 (vol. II): Gran Enciclopedia Cervantina. Madrid: Cátedra, Centro de Estudios Cervantinos. Ballesteros, Antonio 2005: ‘Presencia del Quijote en la dramaturgia británica de los siglos XVII y XVIII’. ADE Teatro 107: 126-32. Barrio Marco, Jose Manuel y María José Crespo Aullé, eds. (en prensa): La huella de Cervantes y del Quijote en la cultura anglosajona. Valladolid: Centro Buendía, U de Valladolid. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 2005: El regreso de Don Quijote. Ed. y trad. Pilar Vega. Madrid: Cátedra. Martínez Torrón, Diego y Bernhard Dietz Guerrero, eds. 2005: Cervantes y el mundo anglosajón. Madrid: Sial. Hanke, Michael y Darío Fernández-Morera, eds 2005: Cervantes in the English-speaking World: New Essays. Kassell, Barcelona: Reichenberger. Fielding, Henry 1997: Tom Jones. Trad. María Calamar. Ed. Fernando Galván. Madrid: Cátedra. Lennox, Charlotte 2004. La mujer Quijote. Trad. Manuel Broncano. Ed. Cristina Garrigós. Madrid: Cátedra.
Received 17 August 2006 Revised version received 25 November 2006
David Mauk and John Oakland 2005: American Civilization. An Introduction, 4th edition. London and New York: Routledge. 375 + v-xii pp. ISBN 0-415-35831-0
Martin Gilbert 2006: The Routledge Atlas on American History, 5th edition. London and New York: Routledge. 156 pages. ISBN: 0-415-35903-1
Felicity Hand Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona [email protected]
When designing the syllabus for the upcoming year’s civilization subjects, the teacher is inevitably faced year after year with a yet unsolvable dilemma: which text(s) to propose as compulsory reading and/or textbook for the survey courses on history and culture of the English-speaking countries. Obviously, the market is saturated with literally dozens of useful books on British and American history but these texts fail to meet the requirements of students pursuing a degree in English in a non-English-speaking country. The majority of these invariably scholarly and well-designed textbooks tend to overload the student with statistics, dates and names that end up confusing the non- native reader. American students have received instruction in history at high school and are already familiar with the key events (such as the causes of the American Revolution), leading historical figures (such as Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln) and understand the symbolism conjured up at the mention of the Boston Tea Party, the frontier, the Old South and similar cultural references. History books such as Hugh Brogan’s The Penguin History of the United States of America (2001) or George B. Tindall and David E. Shi’s America: A Narrative History (2000), while providing an extremely comprehensive picture of the future United States from its so-called discovery by Europeans, cover far too much material for a course that students will have at most only an academic year to digest. Likewise, the somewhat misleadingly entitled The Brief American Pageant (2004) or A People and a Nation. A History of the United States, Brief 6th edition, (2003) fail to cater for the more modest needs of foreign language university students as they are both mammoth volumes containing an extraordinary amount of historical information. Naturally, there is a danger of leaning too far in the opposite direction. Textbooks especially intended for non-native speakers of English do provide concise outlines of American history by highlighting just the major events, but at the expense of sacrificing intellectual depth. This kind of book fails to stimulate the adult student as the more restricted content seems to go hand-in-hand with a superficial analysis of major historical changes. The first book under review, American Civilization. An Introduction, falls to a certain extent into this latter category since, despite covering a wide range of topics and providing very up-to-date information about the United States, it is rather too simplistic to engage the university student. Mauk and Oakland’s revised edition of their 1995 introduction to American civilization contains fourteen chapters covering a wide range of areas. The authors claim in their preface that “Methodologically, the book combines descriptive and
218 Felicity Hand analytical approaches within a historical context” and that it “is intended to allow students to organize their own responses to American society and to encourage discussion” (xvii). In chapter three of American Civilization. An Introduction, ‘The People. Settlement and Immigration’, the authors describe the four major waves of immigration, starting with the founders through to the post-1965 migrants from Latin America and the Far East. Curiously enough, this detailed survey of the ethnic mix of the United States is followed by chapter four, entitled ‘The People. Women and Minorities’, and opens with this intriguing statement, “Discrimination has given women and some minorities a special status in American society” (72). It seems somewhat strange that a textbook revised in 2005 should perpetuate the traditional discrimination between history, that is mainstream or male-centred history, and women’s history or Native American history or perhaps even more troubling African American history. If Mauk and Oakland intended their book to stimulate debate, the very organization of the material for the chapters themselves certainly raises several questions. In comparison, a book like Peter N. Carroll and David W. Noble’s The Free and the Unfree (1988) is an example of a revisionist history of the United States which, as its very title suggests, seeks to redress this balance. American Civilization is meant to be an introduction and as such it fulfills its purpose adequately. The book is easy to follow, the style is straightforward and precise and an enormous amount of information is compressed into its 375 pages. Such a feat of synthesis must necessarily sacrifice depth of analysis. Although the authors take great pains to avoid oversimplifications, their description of the West leaves a great many circumstances unaccounted for: “‘The West’ is a myth, a popular set of values and a region of the country. It represents possibility, freedom, self-reliance, the future.” (41). Just what myths are associated with the west and why these particular values are conjured up and for what historical reasons are left to the reader’s own imagination, whereas a study of American civilization surely should attempt to deconstruct such a well-known national trope. A much more exhaustive analysis of the west can be found in books like Patricia Nelson Limerick’s, The Legacy of Conquest. The Unknown Past of the American West (1987) or Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (2001), which, surprisingly, the authors omit in their further reading section. Their aim has clearly been to provide the reader with as much information as possible in the minimum amount of space, which they have indeed fulfilled. Both authors are senior lecturers in Norwegian universities and despite the fact they do not explicitly say so, their book is clearly intended for use in colleges of higher education and universities. Each chapter contains a list of specialized terms, proper names or abbreviations such as Manifest Destiny and McCarthyism (chapter 7, ‘Foreign Policy’) Medicare and TANF (chapter 10 ‘Social Services’), muck-raking and William Randolph Hearst (chapter 12 ‘The Media’) or Great Awakenings and creationism (chapter 13 ‘Religion’), which effectively force students to check they can identify or define them correctly. They also include a selection of essay topics, such as Why is law such an important part of American life? (chapter 8 ‘The legal system’). However, I would think that a topic of this nature can only be tackled superficially using the material provided by the text book, yet the authors fail to recommend sources where the interested
Reviews 219 student could delve more deeply into these issues. Much of the further reading provided in chapter 8 is unlikely to be consulted by students of humanities owing to the excessive specialization (e.g. The Politics of State Courts). More accessible, but at the same time thought-provoking, material related to this extremely relevant topic could be Law in America: A Brief History (2002) by Lawrence M. Friedman or even Gerda Lerner’s Why History Matters (1997) as both texts encourage the student to question facts. Chapter 1, ‘The American Context’, summarizes the main areas that the book will cover and suggests that “a significant historical dilemma for the USA has been how to balance the need for national unity with the existence of ethnic diversity and, thus, how to avoid the dangers of fragmentation” (8), following which a brief discussion of the salad bowl vs. melting pot models is presented. Chapter 2, ‘The Country’, presents the geographical variety of the United States, emphasizing the cultural diversity of its regions, and briefly discusses environmental concerns. Chapter 3, ‘The People. Settlement and Immigration’, begins with the somewhat hackneyed phrase that “[immigrants] strengthened the nation’s commitment to ‘the dream’ and to its ideal of being a refuge for the poor and oppressed, a nation of nations” (48). The chapter goes on to describe the first clashes with Native Americans, the various waves of immigrants and the introduction of restrictions in the late nineteenth century. Chapter 4, ‘The People. Women and Minorities’, focuses on the evolution of women’s political, social and economic rights, the gradual removal of Native American tribes, the struggle for African American civil rights and the growth of the Asian American and Latino groups. Chapter 5, ‘Political Institutions’, explains how the US Constitution was drafted, discusses the differences between the two main political parties, the function of Congress and the role of the President. Presidential elections are dealt with at some length but the idea behind the electoral college, frequently misunderstood outside the US, is rather sketchily outlined. The chapter ends with a brief description of the judicial branch. Chapter 6, ‘Political Institutions. State and Local Government’, sets out to explain the concept of federalism as understood in the United States, in which the individual states are recognized as “the building blocks of the American system” (140). The workings of local government, the different levels of government (federal, state and local) and the gradual shift in power from the states to the national government are given in some detail. Chapter 7, ‘Foreign Policy’, provides a historical survey of American attitudes towards the rest of the world. In accordance with the book’s emphasis on contemporary issues, half of the chapter is devoted to the post World War II period including 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. All of the chapters in the book end with suggestions for further reading and recommended websites. Unfortunately, the latter are far too general and the interested student will no doubt find a more appropriate website on his or her own. The inclusion of the website for the Washington Post and CNN, recommended at the end of several chapters, or for wikipedia hardly seems appropriate and even necessary. Chapter 8, ‘The Legal System’, sets out to cover the workings of the courts at both local, state and federal level, and crime and punishments including the death penalty and debates over gun control. Chapter 9, ‘The Economy’, discusses American economic liberalism, taxation and the budget, industry,
220 Felicity Hand agriculture, trade unions and banks. As in many of the chapters in the book, the authors quote the results of opinion polls, for instance, “86% agreed with the statement that ‘people have to realize that they can only count on their own skills and abilities if they’re going to win in this world’ ” (227). Chapter 10, ‘Social Services’, introduces the New Deal and describes contemporary welfare programs, including poverty and the homeless. Chapter 11, ‘Education’, analyzes the structure of education in the United States and the private vs public education debate. Chapter 12, ‘The Media’, discusses the evolution of newspapers, radio and television and provides a rather large amount of data and statistics. It touches on significant areas such as the role of the press in the Watergate scandal but provides no follow-up references for the interested student. Chapter 13, ‘Religion’, sets out to explain why religion still plays such an important role in the United States. They state that “Given the prevalence and diversity of denominations in American life, it is perhaps inevitable that religion and its moral concerns should influence public and political debates on issues such as abortion, the death penalty, same-sex marriage and armed conflicts” (316). They describe the history of various religious denominations and the current situation of the major religions in the country today. The final chapter, ‘The Arts, Sports and Leisure’, is one of the sketchiest in what is an extremely general portrait of American society. Chapter 14 covers an immensity of cultural productions ranging from painting, sculpture, pop art, jazz, blues, rock and roll, folk, the film industry and Hollywood, basketball, baseball, football, as well as including statistics on leisure activities. Although they do not provide one, the authors’ conclusion seems to be that such a wide diversity of possibilities proves that America has created “an American-oriented internationalized mass culture” (325). This closing chapter merely skims the surface as most of the themes are dispatched in, at most, two or three paragraphs. Despite the authors’ middle-of-the- road stance, their statistically-oriented, factual account of the United States, their scrupulous honesty in drawing attention to historical grievances, the neutral tone of the book somehow fails to ring true. At the end of the book the authors have included appendices with the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and the twenty-seven amendments. They might have considered adding some of the best known speeches by leading Americans, such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech as they have become as much a part of American culture as the legal documents cited. A chronology of significant dates in American history is provided and the text is made more reader friendly by the incorporation of tables, figures and pictures, but, surprisingly enough, of only six maps. The shortage of visual aids to help the student locate places and routes may be compensated for by the use of Martin Gilbert’s The Routledge Atlas on American History. This is clearly a reference book, as it contains no actual text, but instead, a collection of 156 maps, which are, according to the blurb, “accompanied by informative captions, facts and figures”. It goes on to say that “The complete history of the United States is unrolled through vivid representations of all the significant landmarks”. The title and the chosen illustration on the front cover (a smug George W. Bush pictured in the 2004 election campaign) lead one to presume that it is an atlas of United States history. Therefore it is an unexpected pleasure to see that the author has included
Reviews 221 relevant maps of South America and Europe to indicate the political, economic and cultural expansion of the US. He even includes two maps on outer space: ‘Exploring the Solar System 1962-1992’ (map 137) and ‘Defence Preparedness in Space 1992-1993’ (map 138). The maps are extremely clear, even an extremely complex map such as number 2 ‘The Indian Tribes of North America before 1492’, which shows the names of over a hundred Native American ethnic groups. Particularly useful for the student of early American history are maps such as number 10, ‘European Settlements 1526-1642’, and numbers 23 and 24, ‘The North Atlantic 1770’ and ‘The Triangular Trade’, which show the involvement of other European powers apart from Britain in slavery and imperialism. The maps are organized in four sections. Section one ‘Early Years’ comprises maps 1 to 24, i.e. from ‘The origin of settlement in America 50,000-1,000 BC’ to ‘The Triangular Trade’. Section two, ‘Independence’, contains twelve maps ranging from ‘The War of Independence 1775-1783’ to ‘The War Against Britain 1812- 1815’ (maps 25-36). Section three deals with ‘Modern Times’, a somewhat confusing term as the maps begin with ‘Indian Battles and Cessions 1784-1820’ (map 37) and end with the afore-mentioned map 138, ‘Defence Preparedness in Space 1992-1993’. The author might have considered subdividing this category in order to balance the sections. The final section of the atlas, ‘The Twenty-First Century’, contains eighteen maps from ‘Foreign Born Population of the United States 200’ (map 139) to ‘American War Dead in Iraq’ (map 156). As a reference book, The Routledge Atlas on American History is highly commendable but its use without an accompanying textbook seems unlikely. In turn, American Civilization. An Introduction provides current information about the United States by drawing attention to ongoing debates on controversial issues. The weakness of this book is that it fails to engage fully with these debates, as it tends to simplify and overgeneralize in order to cover all areas of American society at the expense of intellectual depth. The increasing publication of a wide range of surveys on US history rather than more specialized studies on a particular period or figure suggests that courses on American studies are still in demand among European university students. However, despite the fact that the two books under review could be useful as supplementary reading for an introductory course on American studies, I would hesitate to recommend them as textbooks, even in those universities where American studies are offered as a single course option. Likewise, in institutions which offer highly specialised modules on different areas within American studies, it seems unlikely that books of this nature would be included on a reading list.
Works Cited
Brogan, Hugh 2001: The Penguin History of the United States of America. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Brown, Dee 2001: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Owl Books. Carroll, Peter N and David W. Noble 1988: The Free and the Unfree. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Friedman, Lawrence M. 2002: Law in America: A Brief History. Random House. Kennedy, David M et al 2004: The Brief American Pageant. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Lerner, Gerda 1997: Why History Matters. Oxford: Oxford UP. 222 Felicity Hand
Limerick, Patricia Nelson 1987: The Legacy of Conquest. The Unknown Past of the American West. New York: Norton. Norton, Mary Beth et al 2003: A People and a Nation. A History of the United States. Brief 6th edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Tindall, George B. and David E. Shi 2000: America: A Narrative History. New York: Norton.
Received 16 January 2007 Revised version received 10 April 2007
Isabel García Izquierdo, ed. 2005: El género textual y la traducción: Reflexiones teóricas y aplicaciones pedagógicas. Bern: Peter Lang. 267 pp. ISBN: 3-03910-676-7
Brian Leonard Mott Universidad de Barcelona [email protected]
The work here reviewed is a collection of twelve articles written by the team involved in the project GENTT (Géneros textuales para la traducción), financed by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, which is being carried out at the Universitat Jaume I in Castellón. The authors, whose prime objective is to create a corpus of texts of various different genres (legal and administrative, medical and technical) in Spanish, Catalan, English and German, with a view to compiling an electronic encyclopedia, defend the importance of the concept of genre, not only in research in translation, but also in the teaching of the discipline and training of translators. Although the theory has aroused controversy and some scepticism (for example, D. Biber and E. Finnegan, in ‘Uncovering Dimensions of Linguistic Variation in English: a Research Report’ (1986), found that there were often greater differences within genres than across them), the research team have made genre the backbone of their work and maintain that it can play an eminently useful part in the elaboration of learning programmes and course design. To show that they do not stand alone in their positive evaluation of genre study, in their nine-page introduction the authors quote others of note, like Hurtado Albir and Hatim and Mason (10), who share similar views. Moreover, the editor herself, Isabel García Izquierdo, is not a newcomer to the field, having previously published such contributions as Análisis textual aplicado a la traducción (2000) and ‘El género: plataforma de confluencia de nociones fundamentales en didáctica de la traducción’ (2002), besides other joint efforts with members of her research team, and this theoretical approach has also received support from scholars such as Vigay K. Bhatia in ‘Applied Genre Analysis: a Multiperspective Model’ (2002) and John Swales in Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings (1990). The compilation is divided into two blocks: the first (‘Nuevos enfoques para viejos dilemas’: 4 articles), starting from the idea that there is a need to define and classify different genres prior to their application in teaching programmes, deals with the theoretical problems presented by the implementation of the concept of genre in education, while the second (‘Algunas aplicaciones pedagógicas’: 8 articles) explains how the theory can be put into practice in the classroom and its utility in programme design. In ‘El género como espacio de socialización del estudiante de traducción científico- técnica’, Vicent Montalt, reporting on his recent years of teaching experience, in which he coordinated group translation projects, emphasizes the need for translation students to familiarize themselves with the genre they are going to translate through consultation with other translators and the expert community. As he so rightly says, without this process of socialization and the concomitant acquisition of specialized knowledge, the translator will not produce a convincing final product. In the case of drama, for example, the play will not be suitable for performance on stage. However, the author does recognize the difficulty posed by the initiation of the student into this 224 Brian Leonard Mott environment, and questions to what extent the proposal is feasible in practice. After reminding us that there are certain genres that are harder to translate than others, Montalt enumerates a series of strategies for approaching specialists in the field to enlist their help. In ‘Organización del conocimiento para la traducción jurídica a través de sistemas expertos basados en el concepto de género textual’, Ana Borja – having pointed out that law today is not a static discipline, but one which is in a constant state of flux in its struggle for improvement – discusses programmes for document management designed to generate clearly written text; this helps to alleviate the problems of the legal translator, who not only requires highly specialized knowledge but also needs to be able to provide solutions to very specific, narrowly contextualized problems. Inevitably, to their disadvantage, legal translators will always know more about translation technique than actual legal practice. Translators engaged in this work will never be experts in the law but, nevertheless, can accumulate a body of universal facts sufficient to aid them in their task. This latter opinion, however, is not accepted by all. The author ends by outlining the skills the translator should ideally command for the work proposed and provides an extensive bibliography. Unfortunately, as in some other articles in this collection, there is a lack of concrete exemplification to link the theoretical considerations to real situations. The article ‘Reeducación y desculturación a través de géneros en traducción jurídica, económica y administrativa’ outlines the steps followed by the author, Esther Monzó, in introducing her students to the areas of translation referred to in the title. The methodology is practical (for example, the students translate certificates and letters), although one sometimes wonders whether such simple activities justify the rather florid style in which they are described: “... se llevan al aula situaciones que han aparecido ya en la socialización de los estudiantes ... De esta forma se intenta dar continuidad a las vivencias del estudiante etc... ” (76). The short article ‘La implementación del concepto de género textual en los corpus electrónicos para traductores’, by Mª Amparo Alcina Caudet, points out the usefulness of corpora for the translator in that they provide concrete evidence of linguistic patterning, thus overriding the traditional intuitive, inevitably subjective, observations and assumptions of linguists. Computers are now also useful in classifying text genres and therefore of great use to the translator, who can limit searches to specific text types. One particular strength of this article is that section 8 provides windows of text management programmes like Wordsmith and Workbench which demonstrate how information can be filtered through various on-screen options (106-110). The second part of the volume (‘Algunas aplicaciones pedagógicas’) opens with an article by Isabel García Izquierdo, ‘El género y la propia lengua: el español de especialidad’, in which she quite rightly insists on the importance of a high degree of proficiency in the first language (lengua propia) as fundamental to the development of competence in translation, and claims that this necessary linguistic skill can be acquired through the analysis of different text genres, which display prototypical structures and distinctive macrostructures. Section 3 of the article is a useful report on a practical exercise undertaken by students who were given a file of material containing examples from various different genres whose phraseology and terminology they were required to analyse and construct a glossary from, among other tasks. Reviews 225
‘La noción de género en la planificación de la docencia de la traducción de la primera lengua extranjera’, by Pilar Ezpeleta Piorno, is an explanation of the importance of genre study in the training of translation teachers. The article lists areas where novice translators might benefit from genre analysis; however, it fails to get beyond principios metodológicos and the lack of exemplification leaves one wondering what the theory expounded might actually translate into in practice. The following article, by Silvia Gamero Pérez, ‘El género y la traducción de la segunda lengua extranjera: alemán’, stands in stark contrast to the previous one through its much more practical bent. The author first explains how textual genre is exploited both in writing and reading (161):
Los hablantes de una lengua utilizan esquemas prediseñados que facilitan la elaboración de textos; de este modo, no tienen que crear un texto absolutamente nuevo cada vez que se enfrentan a una página en blanco. Por su parte, los lectores de los textos se apoyan durante su proceso de comprensión en los esquemas que tienen interiorizados; así, la comprensión es más rápida y más eficaz (161).
Then, having emphasized the fact that different textual types require different translation strategies (for example, footnotes and interpolated comments are not appropriate in children’s stories), the author provides a very useful and detailed example of a translation class based on a set of assembly instructions in German. She lists a whole series of questions that might be asked in order to check understanding, including those concerning the contribution made by photographs to the comprehensibility of the instructions and regarding the characteristics of the kind of text under observation. As a development of the basic exercise, students are required to find three parallel texts on the web in a stipulated amount of time. In the following contribution, ‘La traducción transgenérica en la clase de inversa’, which is also of a highly practical nature, Steve Jennings reports that, if initially students hold the widespread view that there is no reason why translation into a foreign language (inversa) should be any more difficult than translation into the native one (directa), they soon come to realize just what a demanding assignment it is. However, la inversa does have advantages, too, notably the fact that the translator can understand the source text with relative ease. Furthermore, mastery of the native language is an aid in identifying points of contrast in the foreign language, the important areas of contrast between two languages being syntax, lexis and rhetoric. The author recognizes the greater syntactic flexibility of Spanish as compared to English with its strict SVO sequencing. Whereas Spanish juggles more with word order to focus on different elements of the sentence, English resorts to strategies such as use of the passive or middle voice. The mobility of the nuclear stress in spoken English might also have been mentioned here as an important phenomenon to be taken into account in the translation of direct speech. Regarding lexical contrast, Jennings refers to the case of false friends, which may become less ‘false’ if adopted into the host language with one or more of their original meanings (Sp. correr un programa < Eng. run a programme; Sp. error fatal < Eng. fatal error) (179). With reference to the rhetorical differences between English and Spanish, the author mentions the tendency for Spanish texts to be longer than the corresponding English ones, the different placement of the key sentence of a 226 Brian Leonard Mott paragraph in the two languages, and the use of repetition as a cohesive device in English. The third part of this article illustrates how to get students to transform a Spanish source text into various English texts of different genres (recipe, novel of fantasy, Powerpoint presentation). To provide a basis from which to work, the teacher is supposed to offer first of all a parodical translation of the original text in a computer- type language, rather like Javascript. For the novel of fantasy genre, the students are encouraged to use Germanic words like behold, partake and summon. María Calzada Pérez’s contribution, ‘Vygotsky, Wordsmith y GENNT: corpus y herramientas electrónicas en la clase de traducción general’, expounds Vygotsky’s theory of the students’ path to independence from their maestros, which, according to Vygotsky, takes place in four stages, and then attempts to show how this learning hypothesis can be seen to unfold in the practical context of students studying a medical subcorpus of GENNT with WordSmith Tools. Having first mentioned Skinner as one of the best known exponents of educational psychology in the twentieth century, Calzada then proposes that there are other experts in the field, e.g. Vygotsky, whose work is also brilliant, and presents a summary of Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development (zona de desarrollo próximo or ZPD), citing Allan’s definition of it as “the distance between this potential to perform a task independently and the learner’s actual ability to do so” (189). The four stages through which the learner passes are: (i) heavy reliance on help from others (ii) greater self-confidence and more selective requests for help (iii) independence and abandonment of ZPD (iv) return to ZPD and renewed entreaties for assistance. Two criticisms that could be levelled at this article are: (i) the tables showing that the commonest words in texts, even in the medical genre, are grammatical items (199, 200) might have been reduced to just a few examples in order to make the point less verbosely; (ii) the more appropriate lists of lexical collocations with the English noun disorder (203-4) are rather spoilt by several typographical errors, a fault which, unfortunately, mars other parts of the article, too. Cristina García de Toro’s short article entitled ‘El género y la traducción de textos administrativos español-catalán’ proposes a classification of administrative text types with a view to its use by translators rendering Castilian texts into Catalan. Her proposal, she claims, is more ambitious than preceding attempts. The main parameters for categorization are (1) the author (e.g. an appeal or application from a citizen, a notification from an authority) and (2) the function of the text (e.g. mandatory, granting permission, etc.). The penultimate contribution is signed by three authors: Vicent Montalt, Pilar Ezpeleta and Cristina García de Toro. The article, ‘El género textual: un concepto transversal e integrador en el diseño de asignaturas de traducción y lenguaje científico- técnicos’, reports on the creation of an anthology of scientific and technical texts for use at the Universitat Jaume I. The project was part of a wider scheme to provide corpus materials aimed at improving the teaching and learning of translation skills in various languages. The authors underline the importance of a holistic view of education, in which curriculum planning is not conducted on a subject-by-subject basis, but integrates individual subjects so that materials can be shared and adapted to the needs of individual teachers and courses. Thus the students will learn more and better. To Reviews 227 achieve these aims, textual genre can play a significant role as an interface between different subjects, as far as the teaching and learning of translation is concerned. The second half of the article is taken up with questions of methodology and selection of materials. The last article in this collection is ‘Parámetros genológicos en la estructura y planificación de un curso de traducción especializada’ by Andreu Beltran Zaragoza. It provides a detailed exposition of all the formal requirements for translating a medical text (linguistic competence, a methodical approach and the application of logic, etc.) and quite sensibly suggests that the process of comprehension by the students has finished when they are able to paraphrase the original. As sixty hours is obviously insufficient for a student of translation to achieve mastery of the field of medicine, the author asked his students to concentrate their efforts on the study of texts concerned with one specialization, urology. Although the bulk of the article is intelligent and to- the-point, it seems unnecessary to state that:
Toda traducción supone el desarrollo por parte de un individuo de un proceso mental que le permite efectuar la transferencia desde el texto original hasta la producción de un texto de llegada. Este proceso mental consiste, en lo esencial, en comprender el sentido que transmite un texto para luego reformularlo con los medios de otra lengua (263).
The volume of articles on the whole suggests useful translation strategies to the reader and provides much food for thought for translation teachers. However, some of the articles do not go beyond theory to praxis. Theoretical description should not be unaccompanied by the necessary exemplification and proof of successful practical application to support it and testify to its validity. Indeed, greater exemplification would make for more interesting, convincing reading. Moreover, there is a considerable amount of overlap in the articles, at least as regards objectives, which produces a feeling of déjà vu as one moves on from one contribution to another in the anthology. This repetition could have been avoided by more careful editorial planning, assigning the specific areas to be covered more rationally to the various authors. Sometimes, one wonders just how successful the particular theories expounded can be without the essential foundation: high academic standards among the students (which cannot be universally guaranteed today and is giving increasing cause for concern among all teachers, especially those involved in the area of language). Nevertheless, if this initial and essential requirement is fulfilled, there is no doubt that much of the methodology outlined in this volume, which brings translation students into contact with authentic idiom generated by native speakers, cannot fail to improve the learners’ linguistic skills and awareness.
Works Cited
Bhatia, Vigay K. 2002: ‘Applied genre analysis: a multiperspective model’. Ibérica, Revista de la Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 4. Biber, Douglas and Edward Finnegan 1986: ‘Uncovering dimensions of linguistic variation in English: a research report’. ICAME News (Newsletter of the International Computer Archive of Modern English): Bergen: 49-52. 228 Brian Leonard Mott
García Izquierdo, Isabel 2000: Análisis textual aplicado a la traducción. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch. ––––– 2002: ‘El género: plataforma de confluencia de nociones fundamentales en didáctica de la traducción’. Discursos, Série Estudos de tradução 2, Universidade Aberta, Lisboa: 13-21. Swales, John 1990: Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Received 14 September 2006 Revised version received 11 March 2007
Mª Ángeles Orts Llopis 2006: Aproximación al discurso jurídico en inglés. Las pólizas de seguro marítimo de Lloyd’s. Madrid: Edisofer. 542 pp. ISBN 84-96261-25-5 An Approach to English Legal Discourse. Lloyd’s Institute Cargo Clauses
Ana Bocanegra Valle Universidad de Cádiz [email protected]
En el siglo XVII, época en la que ya era una práctica común el asegurar el cargamento que habrían de transportar los barcos, los mercaderes ingleses que comerciaban con India y América tenían un lugar común de reunión en la ciudad de Londres: el bar del ciudadano galés Edward Lloyd. Muy pronto, el local de Lloyd (Lloyd’s coffee house), sito en Tower Street, se convirtió en el centro del negocio marítimo del país – más concretamente del seguro marítimo – pues allí coincidían los interesados en asegurar sus buques y mercancías (comerciantes y armadores) con los interesados en compartir parte del riesgo a cambio de ciertas bonificaciones (los propios aseguradores). Hoy en día, Lloyd’s es el mayor mercado de seguros del mundo a todos los niveles y, sin duda, la aseguradora internacional más importante, encargada, entre otros muchos cometidos, de cubrir el riesgo que conlleva el transporte de mercancías por mar. Sus pólizas de seguro marítimo, refinadas y publicadas hacia el año 1912 por el Instituto de Aseguradores de Londres (lo que explica que también reciban el nombre de Institute Cargo Clauses), conforman la base jurídica contractual del seguro marítimo internacional y sobre ellas se toman decisiones de máximas consecuencias económicas en todo el mundo (Rodríguez Carrión 1992). Estos textos sumamente específicos, de enorme relevancia y protagonismo a nivel mundial, son los que conforman el cuerpo de documentos de trabajo exhaustivamente analizados en la obra de Orts. Hoy día existe una línea de investigación relacionada con el estudio del discurso jurídico contemporáneo que está adquiriendo un gran auge. Se trata del lenguaje de los tribunales, el lenguaje jurídico oral, más conocido como forensic linguistics, cuyo poder instrumental se manifiesta e impone dentro de las salas judiciales. Buena prueba de la relevancia de esta línea de estudio lo constituye el volumen editado por Turell (2005) y la celebración de reuniones científicas como el reciente 2nd European IAFL Conference on Forensic Linguistics/Language and the Law (14-16 de septiembre de 2006) auspiciado por el Instituto Universitario de Lingüística Aplicada (IULA) de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). Por lo que respecta al discurso jurídico escrito en inglés (o legalese), éste ha gozado en España de gran popularidad gracias a las obras de Alcaraz Varó (1994; Alcaraz y Hughes 1993; Alcaraz, Campos y Miguélez 2000). Desde la introducción de El inglés jurídico: textos y documentos, Alcaraz ya reivindicó en su día la relevancia de este lenguaje especializado y, más concretamente, su valor filológico; desde entonces, este primer título sigue constituyendo una referencia obligada para todos los interesados en la comprensión y en el estudio del discurso jurídico escrito en inglés. El lenguaje jurídico español, o español jurídico, también ha sido objeto de estudio gracias a obras como las de Gómez y Bruera (1995) o Alcaraz y Hughes (2002). No obstante, más allá del propio análisis lingüístico de los textos jurídicos como ejemplo de lenguaje especializado, la línea de investigación que tal vez se haya desarrollado más en los últimos años es la relativa al estudio del lenguaje jurídico desde el punto de vista de la 230 Ana Bocanegra Valle traducción profesional. En este sentido, dos obras de relativamente reciente aparición (Borja Albi 2000; Duro Moreno 2005) se adentran en el estudio contrastivo inglés- español de la traducción del lenguaje jurídico y se hacen eco de la necesidad cada vez más creciente de contar con trabajos dedicados a la traducción especializada en general y, más concretamente, a la traducción de textos normativos, o traducción jurídica, como parte de dos profesiones, la de jurista y la de traductor, que deben atender cada día más a las demandas de una sociedad global. La obra Aproximación al discurso jurídico en inglés. Las pólizas de seguro marítimo de Lloyd’s nos adentra en los entresijos del inglés jurídico escrito mediante el pormenorizado análisis formal, discursivo y pragmático de dichas pólizas, con el principal objetivo de ayudar a filólogos, traductores y juristas a entender la información contenida en toda la serie de cláusulas que las componen. Si bien las pólizas de seguro marítimo originales en inglés han sido anteriormente objeto de estudio con el trabajo de Shuy y Larkin (1978), quienes ya entonces pusieron de manifiesto las dificultades lingüísticas de su interpretación, la obra de Orts acomete por primera vez el análisis de las pólizas desde el punto de vista de su lectura, comprensión e interpretación por y para un hispanohablante experto. Esto supone, a mi modo de ver, una dificultad añadida que la autora consigue superar con éxito pues, por un lado, se ha visto obligada, en primer lugar, a interpretar los principios socioculturales y jurídico- mercantiles de los que emana, sobre los que se basa el derecho anglosajón y que se encuentran profundamente arraigados en la práctica profesional contemporánea – no en vano Alcaraz (1994) señalaba la existencia de una cultura jurídica inglesa – y, en segundo lugar, a contrastarlos e interpretarlos desde la perspectiva del derecho marítimo español para hacer de las cláusulas unos textos asequibles, en la medida que comprensibles, para filólogos, traductores y juristas hispanohablantes. A grandes rasgos, el volumen se divide en dos bloques o partes. La primera parte (capítulos I-III) comienza con los fundamentos teóricos del derecho inglés y el discurso jurídico, al tiempo que se hace hincapié en el extravagante papel que adquiere el poder judicial inglés dentro del sistema legislativo por su papel de traductor o intérprete de la ley, a diferencia de lo que ocurre en la práctica jurídica en el continente europeo. A continuación se introduce gradualmente al lector en el inglés jurídico, en su origen y evolución, y se examinan distintas perspectivas y corrientes lingüísticas de estudio que contribuyen a ubicarlo dentro del contexto de los lenguajes profesionales de la sociedad moderna. La segunda parte (partes IV-VI) se centra exclusivamente en las pólizas de seguro marítimo como documentos objeto de estudio, procediéndose a su análisis desde tres niveles: formal, discursivo o textual y pragmático o genérico, gracias a lo cual se obtienen una serie de resultados y conclusiones dignos de consideración. La obra finaliza con un apéndice en el que figuran los textos de estudio, muy útiles como referencia continua para la comprensión de los múltiples datos y ejemplos aportados, y un extenso, a la par que selectivo y actualizado, listado de referencias bibliográficas utilizadas y consultadas. Si bien la primera parte, por su contenido principalmente descriptivo de la dualidad conceptual lengua inglesa/ordenamiento jurídico anglosajón, puede llamar la atención de profesionales del derecho principalmente, sin duda alguna, de estos dos grandes bloques, el contenido más interesante para un filólogo y/o traductor se concentra en la segunda parte, mucho más extensa, densa y especializada, y en la que se recoge la Reviews 231 descripción pormenorizada de las pólizas (capítulo IV), la presentación y aplicación del método de análisis (capítulo V) y, finalmente, la aportación de resultados y conclusiones (capítulo VI). En una primera aproximación, se estudian los elementos formales de las cláusulas, más concretamente los rasgos graféticos, los rasgos léxicos y los rasgos sintácticos. Seguidamente los elementos textuales, principalmente los mecanismos de cohesión léxico-gramatical y las estrategias de presentación retórica (staging), conforman los puntos de análisis dentro del segundo nivel o nivel discursivo, pues la textualización y el staging son técnicas fundamentales utilizadas en la organización de la información y en la argumentación expositiva de las cláusulas. Mientras que la primera se entiende como “la propiedad de un texto que lo diferencia de una secuencia al azar de oraciones inconexas” (184), la segunda “sirve para que el emisor organice su estrategia de presentación retórica total y es de vital importancia para la orientación de la audiencia” (187). Finalmente, el tercer nivel de análisis se centra fundamentalmente en los elementos pragmáticos que conforman las cláusulas y su propósito comunicativo. En una primera instancia, las regularidades organizativas ponen de manifiesto las tácticas cognitivas empleadas en la construcción final del texto. Es decir, el estudio, por un lado, del esquema genérico (o macroestructuras cognitivas primaria y secundaria) y, por otro, del esquema organizativo interno (o salvedades legales preparatorias, operacionales y referenciales) conformarían, respectivamente, la estructura y el armazón del texto final. De este modo, como si de una gran obra de arquitectura se tratase, los elementos comunicativos serían los encargados de vestir o adornar cada estancia, cada cláusula, al tener en cuenta los elementos pragmático- discursivos y socioculturales que conectan al constructor y al usuario del discurso. En este sentido, en la obra se le dedica un buen número de páginas a la teoría de los actos de habla y a las implicaturas conversacionales, todo ello desde una perspectiva aplicada de análisis y siempre con referencia a las pólizas. Los resultados alcanzados tras el estudio del análisis formal ponen de manifiesto que son varias las circunstancias que contribuyen a añadir una mayor complejidad a la redacción, y, por ende, interpretación, de los documentos. Podrían destacarse, entre otras muchas, las siguientes: los términos específicos parecen involucrar al discurso en una constante búsqueda de la precisión semántica; se registra una ausencia evidente y constante de signos ortográficos; existe una utilización mayoritaria, que no absoluta, de un léxico arcaico de origen latino o francés que, al contrario de lo que resultaría habitual en otros documentos jurídicos, no se manifiesta en su forma original sino evolucionada; las oraciones son largas y densas, llegando incluso a registrarse oraciones con 238 palabras; la complejidad se incrementa con el uso de oraciones subordinadas (embedding) que en la mayoría de las ocasiones se convierte en desmesurado; la impersonalidad manifestada a través del uso de los verbos y construcciones nominales no es más que el mecanismo utilizado para simbolizar la imparcialidad de la ley y de su peso institucional; etc.1 Con respecto al segundo nivel de análisis (nivel discursivo), los
1 Algunos ejemplos de dicho léxico de origen latino-francés podrían ser baillee (del francés antiguo ‘bailler’); y de origen francés-normando jettison (de ‘gettaison’) y waive (de ‘waiver’). Para ilustrar la complejidad comentada sirva el siguiente ejemplo correspondiente a la Cláusula 9 de las Institute Cargo Clauses (A): “If owing to circumstances beyond the control of the Assured either the contract of carriage is terminated at a port or place other than the destination named 232 Ana Bocanegra Valle resultados hacen hincapié en el modo en el que la estructura informativa de los enunciados, los recursos temáticos, la topicalización, la tematización, la textualización y la cohesión léxico-gramatical confluyen para organizar y dar significado al texto; todo ello, en definitiva, con el fin de concederle carácter de género. En este punto es cuando se activa la puesta en escena que le concede al documento de trabajo lo que la propia autora denomina “autonomía institucional” (473) pues buena parte de los mecanismos retórico-discursivos habitualmente asociados al inglés jurídico son utilizados en las pólizas de manera peculiar y genuina. Por último, gracias al análisis de los rasgos cognitivos y comunicativos (nivel pragmático), se concretan la naturaleza performativa del discurso jurídico y la realidad extratextual como elementos articuladores del propósito comunicativo. Se llega a la conclusión de que “lo que da forma al género y convencionaliza su estructura interna es el resultado de la formación y experiencia dentro de la comunidad especializada que lo emite” (473). El análisis de la organización cognitiva externa (o macroestructura cognitiva) y la organización cognitiva interna (que se manifiesta a través de las salvedades o qualifications) permite concluir que gracias a las convenciones sociopragmáticas se define la autoridad textual y se perfilan las relaciones comunicativas de un colectivo profesional concreto. La obra de Orts constituye todo un desafío por la propia complejidad del lenguaje jurídico y los textos concretos objeto de estudio. Gradualmente evoluciona desde la generalidad a la particularidad, del plano teórico al práctico, consiguiendo sistematizar y aplicar las propuestas de distintos autores y teorías lingüísticas a los documentos estudiados. Su lectura progresiva permite constatar, en resumen, que el lenguaje de las pólizas de seguro marítimo de Lloyd’s puede considerarse un ejemplo de discurso jurídico puro; que éstas gozan de ciertos rasgos que las configuran como documentos singulares dentro del ordenamiento jurídico internacional; y, por último, que el riguroso estudio de sus características formales, discursivas y genéricas aporta las claves de su interpretación y de una mejor y mayor comprensión que servirá de utilidad a filólogos, traductores y juristas. Hace ya unos años, a propósito de las pólizas del seguro marítimo, y, más concretamente, de las Institute Cargo Clauses, César Alas (1984) señalaba que éstas habían nacido en su momento, y seguían vigentes y actualizadas, como respuesta a las necesidades del mercado. La obra de Orts parece haber seguido una trayectoria análoga a sus documentos objeto de estudio pues realmente nació de la necesidad, intuida por la propia autora como filóloga, y ratificada más adelante en sus labores de traductora, de contar con trabajos interdisciplinares como éste gracias a los cuales áreas en un principio dispares, como en este caso pudieran ser el derecho y la filología, se complementan positivamente para el beneficio de los profesionales de ambas therein or the transit is otherwise terminated before delivery of the goods as provided in Clause 8 above, then this insurance shall also terminate unless prompt notice is given to the Underwriters and continuation of cover is requested when the insurance shall remain in force, subject to an additional premium if required by the Underwriters, either until the goods are sold and delivered at such port or place, or unless otherwise specially agreed, until the expiry of 60 days after arrival of the goods hereby insured at such port or place, whichever shall first occur, or if the goods are forwarded within the said period of 60 days (or any agreed extension thereof) to the destination named herein or to any other destination, until terminated in accordance with the provisions of Clause 8 above”. Reviews 233 disciplinas. El hecho de que una editorial centrada en la publicación de libros jurídicos, como es Edisofer, haya dispuesto una colección monográfica sobre derecho, discurso y traducción no hace sino poner de manifiesto esas necesidades del mercado al tiempo que abre una vía de colaboración para todos aquellos especialistas en el discurso jurídico, ya sea oral o escrito, en lengua inglesa o cualquier otra lengua. Como la propia Orts denuncia en su obra, pese a la interdisciplinariedad que ha caracterizado durante las tres últimas décadas a la bibliografía más relevante, “parte de la teoría jurídica de tradición anglosajona sigue quejándose de la falta de cooperación por parte de los expertos lingüistas, de quienes se supone que esperan asistencia para hacer de su lenguaje un instrumento más efectivo y comprensible” (427). Sin duda alguna, este volumen monográfico supone un paso adelante en esa cooperación y asistencia demandadas; a partir de ahora, el discurso contenido en las pólizas de seguro marítimo de Lloyd’s entrañarán, al menos para los hispanohablantes, menos secretos lingüísticos, y su comprensión e interpretación resultarán mucho más asequibles para los profesionales implicados.
Obras Citadas
Alas García, César 1984: Diccionario jurídico-comercial del transporte marítimo. Oviedo: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Oviedo. Alcaraz Varó, Enrique 1994: El inglés jurídico: textos y documentos. Barcelona: Ariel. ––––– y Brian Hughes 1993: Diccionario de términos jurídicos, inglés-español, Spanish-English. Barcelona: Ariel. ––––– y Brian Hughes 2002: El español jurídico. Barcelona: Ariel. –––––, Miguel Ángel Campos y Cynthia Miguélez 2000: El inglés jurídico norteamericano. Barcelona: Ariel. Borja Albi, Anabel 2000: El texto jurídico inglés y su traducción al español. Barcelona: Ariel. Duro Moreno, Miguel 2005: Introducción al derecho inglés: la traducción jurídica inglés-español en su entorno. Madrid: Edisofer. Gómez, Astrid y Olga M. Bruera 1995: Análisis del lenguaje jurídico. Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano. Rodríguez Carrión, José Luis 1992: Estudios de seguro marítimo. Barcelona: Bosch. Shuy, Roger y Donald Larkin 1978: Linguistic Considerations in the Simplification/Clarification of Insurance Policy Language. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University and Center for Applied Linguistics. Turell, María Teresa, ed. 2005: Lingüística forense, lengua y derecho: conceptos, métodos y aplicaciones. Barcelona: IULA, Documenta Universitaria.
Received 20 October 2006 Revised version received 10 February 2007