LANGUAGE IN INDIA Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow Volume 14:10 October 2014 ISSN 1930-2940 Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D. Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D. Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D. B. A. Sharada, Ph.D. A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D. Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D. Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D. S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D. G. Baskaran, Ph.D. L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D. C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics) Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A. Contents Materials published in Language in India www.languageinindia.com are indexed in EBSCOHost database, MLA International Bibliography and the Directory of Periodicals, ProQuest (Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts) and Gale Research. The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. It is included in the Cabell’s Directory, a leading directory in the USA. Articles published in Language in India are peer-reviewed by one or more members of the Board of Editors or an outside scholar who is a specialist in the related field. Since the dissertations are already reviewed by the University-appointed examiners, dissertations accepted for publication in Language in India are not reviewed again. This is our 14th year of publication. All back issues of the journal are accessible through this link: http://languageinindia.com/backissues/2001.html An Analysis of Barth’s Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction as a Metafiction ... Dr. Abdulmomin Al-Rubaiee 1-17 Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:10 October 2014 List of Contents i Teaching and Learning Grammar for Teens Using Technological Tools ... E. Arokya Shylaja, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Research Scholar Dr. K. Ravindran, M.A., M. Ed., M.Phil., Ph.D. 18-27 Segmental Phonology of Chiru ... Mechek Sampar Awan, M.A. 28-44 Aspects of Stylistics ... Dr. S. R. Chaitra 45-50 Envisioning the Past and Venerating Ancestors in Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar ... N. R. Charrumathi, M.A., M.Phil. 51-72 Divergence Issues in English-Punjabi Machine Translation ... Deepti Bhalla, M.Tech. Nisheeth Joshi, Ph.D. Iti Mathur, M.Sc. 73-83 Cyberpunk: A True Representative Fiction of the Postmodern Period Gibson’s Neuromancer: A Case Study ... Gayadri Devi. G 84-96 Language as a Symbol in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple ... Hema Nalini Raghunath, Ph.D. Research Scholar Dr. R. Saravana Selvan 97-103 SEEING STARS: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity by Pramod K. Nayar ... Reviewed by Kooshna Gupta, M.A., Research Scholar 104-111 Images of Women in R. K. Narayan’s The Dark Room ... C. Malathi, M.A., M.Phil., NET, Ph.D. Candidate 112-155 Lack of Confidence – A Psychological Factor Affecting Spoken English of University Level Adult Learners in Bangladesh ... Marium Jamila, M.A. in Applied Linguistics & ELT 156-168 Standard Dialect Ideology in Bangladesh: A Field Study ... Sheikh Mehedi Hasan, Ph.D. in English Adilur Rahaman, M.A. in English 169-182 Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:10 October 2014 List of Contents ii A Study of Hand Gestures in Adult Speakers of Malayalam ... Arun P. T, MASLP Mili Mary Mathew, Ph.D. Scholar Prathamesh Bailoor, MASLP 183-195 An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Gray Expresses the Sympathy for the Common Man ... Muna Shrestha, Ph.D.Scholar 196-212 Effective Use of CALL Lab in Building Vocabulary for Engineering Graduates ... Nirmala Rita Nair, M.A., Ph.D. & Gitasri Mukherjee, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. 213-221 Using Broadcast Stories as Message Carriers: A Case Study with reference To Gyan Vani ... Dr. K. Parameswaran 222-229 Oral Stories Related to Mahabharata ... Dr. A. Parimalagantham 230-237 Discourse-Oriented Pedagogy... G. Prasad, M.A., M. Phil., Ph. D. Research Scholar 238-255 Analysis of Short Term Phonatory Stability in Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease ... Dr. Santosh Kumar, Ph.D. (Speech and Hearing) Mereen Rose Babu, MASLP Sapna Sudhakaran (BASLPS) 256-266 The Plight of Women before Marriage in Nayantara Sahgal’s This Time of Morning ... M. Selvanayaki, M.A., M.Ed., M.Phil., MLISC, Ph.D. Research Scholar 267-281 Agony of Women after Divorce in the Fiction of Nayantara Sahgal ... M. Selvanayaki, M.A., M.Ed., M.Phil., MLISC, Ph.D. Research Scholar 282-308 Is ‘English Studies’ in India Student-centric? A Comparative Study of Syllabi of M.A. English Courses in Indian Universities and the University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test in English ... Ravindra Tasildar, M.A., Ph.D. 309-341 Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:10 October 2014 List of Contents iii Perceptual Speech Characteristics of Cerebellar Dysarthria Associated with Lesions in Different Cerebellar Loci ... Vandana.V.P. Ph.D. Manjula.R. Ph.D. 342-349 Teaching English as an International Language: Implications for Teaching Materials in Pakistani Classrooms ... Zahra Ali, M.A. (Master of Applied Linguistics) 350-367 Grammaticalization in the Morphosyntactic Study of Meiteilon Grammaticalization of the Verb lak ‘come’ ... Wahengbam Saritarani, Ph.D. Scholar N. Pramodini, Ph.D. 368-388 Learning All About Other Communities... Steve Eliason 389-394 Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:10 October 2014 List of Contents iv ================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 14:10 October 2014 ================================================================== An Analysis of Barth’s Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction as a Metafiction Dr. Abdulmomin Al-Rubaiee Ibb University, Yemen ================================================================= John Barth Courtesy: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/people/fellows/barth.html Abstract The present article analyzes John Barth’s meta-fictional short story entitled “Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction”. The direct monologue of the story is the story of his life, which dialogues directly with his father – the writer – and the reader. Unlike conventional autobiographies which narrate the developmental (procedural) course of the narrator (self- consciousness), Barth’s story concentrates on and deconstructs such dichotomies as narrator/story and writer/reader. Contra responsive to other meta-fictions which mainly challenge the authorial voice, this “self-begetting” story targets the reader and destabilizes his/her writer- like performance. The paper draws on the theories of meta-fiction posited by Patricia Waugh as Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:10 October 2014 Dr. Abdulmomin Al-Rubaiee An Analysis of Barth’s Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction as a Metafiction 1 well as the narrative notions of Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck. Besides, Bakhtinian dialogism is deployed in order to show the inter-discursive quality of the story’s texture. Key words: John Barth, autobiography, meta-fiction, deconstruction, Bakhtinian dialogism Introduction John Barth is the American postmodern novelist and short story writer. Lost in the Funhouse (1963) is his collection of fourteen short stories which most blatantly deconstructs the conventions of short story. Barth’s experimentations with the genre of novel, short story, and language have led many critics to take him as a writer of meta-fiction. Comparatively, Barth’s novels have been the point of interest with most critics and only some have turned their attention to his short stories. Those who have written about his short stories have generally addressed his collection as a single entity, resituating it within Barth’s narrative enterprises. A critic like Charles A. S. Ernst (2004) takes Lost in the Funhouse as the manifestation of the writer’s biographical concourse. Ernst mainly works on the story titled “Night-Sea Journey” and shows how this story stands as the text-world and life-text of the author. Similarly, Evelyn Glaser- Wohrer (1977) argues this collection bears autobiographical traits. W. Todd Martin treats this collection as a novel, relying on Barth’s own note at the beginning of the 1981 edition where he Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:10 October 2014 Dr. Abdulmomin Al-Rubaiee An Analysis of Barth’s Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction as a Metafiction 2 states it is “neither a collection nor a selection, but a series . to have been meant to be received ‘all at once’ and here arranged”. (1981, p. vii) Alan Lindsay, likewise, numbers the collection among Barth’s novels. (1995, p. 3) Metafictionality Although the stories of Lost in the Funhouse share some basic postmodern and meta- fictional features, each cherishes its own meta-fictional status. The present analysis is concerned with “Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction” in order to achieve two objectives. First, the paper approaches the story as a meta-fiction; second, there is an attempt to pinpoint that unlike most meta-fictional stories, “Autobiography” targets the reader and his/her active role and thereby implicitly restores the author to the text. The main argument is that “Autobiography” deconstructs not only Barth’s but also the reader’s authorial voice, hence Bakhtinian dialogism. Theoretical Framework With the postmodern hail to the context and its constructing role, the West has been experiencing an increasing social and cultural self-awareness. The post-War-II period is the era of meta-history and meta-criticism. Hayden White, the American historiographer, attempts to bridge the gap between history and fiction through his notion of meta-history. Meta-history is historical narrative on history and historiography. In the same vein, meta-criticism is criticism on criticism itself. This self-reflexivity is the inherent trend of postmodernism, which has emerged as the notions of autonomy and representation that have been de-defined. Language has come to be thought of as having a functional role in constructing and maintaining man’s sense of the “real” and “reality”. Beginning with Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist theories, language itself was seen as the problem, as a representational and communicational means. The Lacanian idea that man’s unconscious is a linguistic construct, put more emphasis on the key role of language.