Inspire & Amaze June 2015 ´ Visit from Poland ´ creative StudentsWOrks EFUESTE Interviews McIntyre with professors Jeffries and INSPIRE & AMAZE 06/2015, Issue 1 Student’s Journal of the Institute of British and American Studies Advisory board: doc. PhDr. Milan Ferenčík, PhD., prof. PhDr. Jaroslav Kušnír, PhD., James Sutherland-Smith M.A., doc. Zuzana Straková, PhD., doc. PaedDr. Alena Kačmárová, PhD., doc. Mgr. Sandra Zákutná, PhD. Chief editors: Mgr. Maroš Buday, Mgr. Barbora Popovičová, Mgr. Jana Ščigulinská Graphic design: Mgr. Jana Ščigulinská Composition: Mgr. Maroš Buday Cover layout: Mgr. Jana Ščigulinská Cover photo: Patrik Štrama Back cover photo : Lenka Pellová Linguistic advisor for texts in English language: Mgr. Jonathan Gresty The correctness of submitted texts in Slovak language is the responsibility of the authors Publisher: Prešovská univerzita v Prešove 17. novembra 15 08001 Prešov Address of the editor’s office: Inštitút anglistiky a amerikanistiky Filozofická fakulta PU v Prešove 17. novembra 1 Slovenská republika Contact: [email protected] Articles published in the journal INSPIRE & AMAZE cannot be published, copied or otherwise circulated without the editors’ knowledge. This journal is unmarketable. This journal is issued twice a year. The editors of this journal accept submissions in English and Slovak language. The articles should not exceed the total of 5 journal pages. The submissions are evaluated and edited by one of the members of the journal’s advisory board. 2 Table of Contents Foreword ................................................................................................................. 4 Linguists on a Visit at IAA ................................................................................... 5 An Interview with prof. Dan McIntyre ........................................................... 6 An Interview by prof. Lesley Jeffries ............................................................... 8 A Refreshing Erasmus Visit from Poland ....................................................... 10 EFUESTE - Effective Use of the EPOSTL by Student Teachers of English ....... 13 English in Prešov’s Linguistic Cityscape ...................................................... 14 Students' Works ............................................................................................. 20 My Future. My Fears and My Hopes. ............................................................. 21 A Conversation Which Has Enriched My Life ............................................ 24 Chloé Jobert: On Presov ...................................................................................... 25 Steppenwolf Made Me Think... About Thinking ............................................ 26 Cigarette Ban ............................................................................................................ 28 Symbolism and Imaginery in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath ....................... 29 Poet´s Corner ........................................................................................................... 33 Poetry Lost in the Dark Tides of Sophisticated Society .............................. 34 As Wild as the Poppies ................................................................................................. 35 Becoming Her .................................................................................................................... 36 Detox ...................................................................................................................................... 37 Sitting on a Wooden Bench ......................................................................................... 38 3 As this academic year nears its end, the first official issue of our proud institute’s journal Inspire & Amaze sees the light of day. At the time when the notion of our Institute having its own journal was conceived, I have to ad- mit, I was a bit skeptical. It was mainly be- cause I myself, like many of you, was a student here, and until me and the other PhD students started mulling over this idea, I’m not ashamed to admit that I thought stu- dents to be inherently lazy to do something extra. That not much will come of it… However, I know when to concede defeat, and I’m very happy to have been proven wrong. You, our Institute’s students have come together and came through for us by writing essays and poems of your own voli- tion, and for that, I’m eternally grateful. I’m mostly thankful to all of you, dear students, as well as my esteemed colleagues, for giving me a purpose, one more thing to look forward to at the end of each semester. I sincerely hope that the tradition we started here will be preserved long after we will have finished our studies. You’ve all been great, and you have my warmest thank you. Maroš Buday, editor of Inspire & Amaze 4 Linguists on a Visit at the Institute of British and American Studies 23rd March 2015 was an important date for our Institute as prof. Lesley Jeffries and prof. Dan McIntyre (University of Huddersfield) accepted the offer to be a part of the Slovak academia for a while and after participating in the Conference in Nitra they were brave enough to set out for a journey to Prešov. Despite only a day-lasting visit, we can honestly say, and maybe the professors would agree, that we made the most of it. The only blue thing that Monday was the sky, and in connection with a full lecture hall, we couldn't have hoped for a better start. The morning lecture on “Stylistics - the State of the 'Art'” given by prof. Jeffries and prof. McIntyre combined the area of stylistics with real and every-day linguistic data which demonstrated the power of language we employ on a daily basis. After the lecture primarily aimed to be given to the students of the Institute of British and American Studies, the focus moved to our teachers and doctoral students. While prof. McIntyre led the seminar for PhD students, prof. Jeffries participated in the workshop “Discourse and Ideology: Seminar in Critical Stylistics” with the members of KEGA (030PU-4/2014) research project and was kind enough to comment on each member's piece of research as well as to provide priceless advice on its potential elaboration. Following the trio of lecture, seminar and workshop, the professors and Institute's staff met in a more informal setting where a vivid discussion of not only academic nature lasted until late. The visit of prof. Jeffries and prof. McIntyre was very much appreciated by our students as well as teachers and we sincerely hope it wasn't the last time our academic paths crossed. By Mgr. Diana Krajňáková 5 An Interview with prof. Dan McIntyre Profile: He is a professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Huddersfield. Before coming to Huddersfield, he taught English Language at Liverpool Hope University, applied linguistics at the Open University, and EFL at a private language school in northern Italy. He has a BA, MA, and PhD degrees in linguistics from Lancaster University. He’s a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and most of his current teaching is focused on stylistics, the history of English language and corpus linguistics. He is a member of the international Poetics and Linguistics Association. He edits the series Advances in Stylistics for Bloomsbury, and co-edits Perspectives on the English Language for Palgrave alongside prof. Lesley Jeffries. As an authority on linguistics, you certainly have a lot of experience with teaching as well as research activities. Which one do you prefer? Actually, I find it difficult to choose! And that’s because I think the two are inextricably linked. I think doing research makes you a better teacher for two reasons. First, it means you can introduce students to findings that no-one else yet knows about – and that’s exciting. But secondly, doing research means you constantly have to put yourself in the position of being a student; that is, you’re always learning something for the first time. And I think it’s useful for your development as a teacher to always remind yourself of what that feels like. By the same token, I think teaching makes you a better researcher. Having to explain your ideas clearly and concisely to a group of students who may well be very sceptical about what you’re saying(!) really makes you think hard about whether your ideas make sense. What topic does your current research activity involve? At the moment I have two main projects that I’m working on. The first is looking at the effects on characterisation of TV subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. We are using models of characterisation to assess the stylistic effects that are generated when subtitles differ from the original dialogue. This is with the aim of finding ways of improving subtitling for TV drama. The second project is investigating speech, writing and thought presentation in Early Modern English journalism; that is, news reports from around 1500 to 1750. We are interested in seeing whether reporting techniques were different in the Early Modern period from now, and if so, why. Related to this, I’m currently writing a book with my colleague Brian Walker which is an introduction to Corpus Stylistics. What is (was) your favourite research area in the field of applied linguistics? My background is in stylistics and that is still the field that I work in most. I think it’s an under -rated and under-researched area within applied linguistics and I would like to see more people working on understanding the impact of style in language.