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Articles 1 - 30 of 39
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
So What's Your Point? Relevancy In Conversation, Frank Bramlett
So What's Your Point? Relevancy In Conversation, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
Every rare once in a while, I find myself caught in a conversation where the person I'm talking to goes off on a tangent. And I don't mean a little aside. I mean a "What the hell are you talking about!?" tangent.
Luckily, for the other 99% of conversations, there are some general guidelines for engagement that help us avoid making mistakes like this one. H. Paul Grice, a language philosopher, is the scholar credited with first writing about these rules in a widespread way. Grice theorized that participants in conversation operate by an overarching approach that we now call …
A Different Kind Of Bilingüismo, Frank Bramlett
A Different Kind Of Bilingüismo, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
In last month's column, I wrote about the presence of Spanish in Omaha, attested by its occasional appearances in the broader English-speaking market. I also mentioned the phenomenon of people speaking two or more languages, called bilingualism. When a person has command of two languages, then that person is considered bilingual.
Considering that one language (like Swahili) might be called a code, and another language (Arabic) is another code, and a third language (like English) is another code, then conceivably a person who lives in Tanzania might carry on a conversation with another speaker from Tanzania in three different languages …
Excerpts From "Morning, Noon, And Night", Charles Hartman
Excerpts From "Morning, Noon, And Night", Charles Hartman
English Faculty Publications
Presents the poems "Syzygy," "Offering," and "Giving," excerpts from "Morning Noon and Night," by Charles O. Hartman.
Painting, Photography And Fidelity In The Tragic Muse, Adam Sonstegard
Painting, Photography And Fidelity In The Tragic Muse, Adam Sonstegard
English Faculty Publications
Photographs can approach the elegance of paintings, but reproductions can show the distortion of photographs - so The Tragic Muse (1890) suggests, complicating critical understandings of James and visual art. Dramatizing artists' fidelity, James resists assuming that families, races, and genders provide similar options. Fidelity in art can mean 'infidelity' in life, lead to 'adulterated' reproductions, and impugn understandings of inherited and performed identities - concerns which resurface in The American Scene (1907) when James contemplates immigrant populations and in A Small Boy and Others (1913) when a family daguerreotype becomes evidence of his own fidelity.
Onno Oerlemans, Romanticism And The Materiality Of Nature, James C. Mckusick
Onno Oerlemans, Romanticism And The Materiality Of Nature, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
A Review by James C. McKusick. In Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature, Onno Oerlemans embarks upon an ambitious project to re-situate Romantic poetry in the hard, physical reality of the material world. This study endeavors to place several of the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth and Shelley, within the larger intellectual and material contexts of their period, attending not only to the social and cultural currents that shape poetic discourse, but also to the concrete physical substrate of poetic production.
What Part English, What Part Spanish?, Frank Bramlett
What Part English, What Part Spanish?, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
Back in July, I was sitting in my office at school, working on a syllabus for a new sophomore- level class on language and society. I was exploring the U.S. Census Bureau website to get a sense of the most current information we have about language communities in the United States. I had the radio on, too, and while I was browsing census data about Nebraska, I heard an advertisement on one of the FM stations. The ad was primarily an English-language ad, but it also had a few Spanish words. It turned out to be a job advertisement for …
Pynchon's Age Of Reason: Mason & Dixon And America's Rise Of Rational Discourse, Jason Mcentee
Pynchon's Age Of Reason: Mason & Dixon And America's Rise Of Rational Discourse, Jason Mcentee
English Faculty Publications
By drawing upon astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon for the unlikely protagonists of Mason & Dixon (1997), Thomas Pynchon develops a revisionist history of these two Englishmen as they come to terms with America in the so-called Age of Reason, which was informed by a European philosophical movement with its roots in rational discourse aimed at cultural and political intellect that eventually served as the foundation for American independence and democracy. But as Thomas Paine suggests, time wields a stronger power than does reason, and what history calls the Age of Reason may remind one of an ideal …
What Are Functional Shifts?, Frank Bramlett
What Are Functional Shifts?, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
In last month's column, I wrote about variety in word formation processes, the phenomenon of having more than one word form lo represent the same concept, illustrated by word pairs like analysis/analyzation, summary/ summarization, and intensity/intenseness. There is, of course, the other side of the coin. We also use single word forms to represent an array of meanings.
Introduction: New Directions John Clare Studies, James C. Mckusick
Introduction: New Directions John Clare Studies, James C. Mckusick
English Faculty Publications
The John Clare Conference, organized by the John Clare Society of North America, March 21-22, 2003, was held at the Belmont Conference Center. The program explored new directions in Clare scholarship and celebrated the completion of the Oxford English Text edition of John Clare's poetry.
What Really Makes A Word, Frank Bramlett
What Really Makes A Word, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
On the 2003 season finale of the HBO drama "Six Feet Under," viewers are left wondering whether Keith and David will be able to stay together as a couple. They were sitting at the kitchen table and eating cake, getting into one of their ritualized tiffs where David feels Keith picks on him. The substance of their conversation, though, turned to the silly when David said 'adjacently." Keith said, "Adjacently is not a word." They soon realized how petty they sounded and sort of laughed it all off.
Often, people can get very worked up about whether something is …
Inscribing Ordinary Trauma In The Diary Of A Military Child, Jennifer Sinor
Inscribing Ordinary Trauma In The Diary Of A Military Child, Jennifer Sinor
English Faculty Publications
Using her own diary as a case study, the author examines how the life writing of a military child inscribes ordinary trauma, defining ordinary trauma as a response to extraordinary events masked as ordinary. For the military child, the possibility of war is made ordinary and rendered such in her writing.
Y'All Better Ask Somebody, Frank Bramlett
Y'All Better Ask Somebody, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
One of the ways that linguists think about language is through geographical distribution, commonly known as dialects. It's very easy to think about geography because of the wide range of locales in which English is spoken. Due to conquest and colonization, English is now a world language. There's British English, Australian English, and Nigerian English, among many others. In the continental U.S., most people readily identify a number of regional dialects: “Midwestern," "New England," "Southern." While some people might call them accents, linguists distinguish between dialect and accent. The term accent refers solely to the way words are …
Sentence Forms' And Corporate Responsibility, Frank Bramlett
Sentence Forms' And Corporate Responsibility, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
On Monday 10 March, National Public Radio aired a story by Jack Speer about corporate America’s financial situation. Speer said that since some companies have had cl difficult time with their profit margins, they reduced retiree benefits - in other worth, people who had worked for many years and had retired from the company lost some of their hard-earned benefits to ensure healthy stock performance.
Lately, we have heard several of these stories. A CEO/CFO takes home a record-setting multimillion dollar paycheck because he fired workers for profit, a practice epitomized by ENRON and WorldCom. What caught my attention, though, …
What Are Conversation Systems?, Frank Bramlett
What Are Conversation Systems?, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
The study of conversation as a serious field of inquiry began in the1970s when sociologists Harvey Sacks, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson first turned our attention to the way people talk to each other. Interestingly, they began looking at talk not for the sake of talk itself but instead as a way to understand social interactions. They collected samples of conversations and analyzed them to help answer questions that sociologists (not necessarily linguists) are interested in answering. For instance, how do people manage their daily lives through talk? How do people establish, maintain, improve and end relationships with each other …
Name Trouble - Part Two, Frank Bramlett
Name Trouble - Part Two, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
While Shakespeare was busy with names in Romeo and Juliet, Europeans began exploring and settling the New World and immediately ran into the problem of naming. For instance, what should they call those enormous mammals that look sort of like cows but are larger, stronger, and furrier? Buflalo? Bison? Tatanka? And what should they call all the people they kept running into? Tradition holds that Christopher Columbus started it. He was confused because of geography; he thought he had found India, so he called the native people he met by the Spanish word indios, the English …
Name Trouble - Part One, Frank Bramlett
Name Trouble - Part One, Frank Bramlett
English Faculty Publications
I hereby re-christen thee ..
The slate of Nebraska recently witnessed a controversy surrounding the names of several geophysical features, like rivers or creeks. According to a February 191 2001, Omaha World-Herald article by Todd von Kampen and Nichole Aksamit, the push was to change all the place names that contain the word "squaw" to more appropriate, less offensive names. The movement was strictly voluntary; no law required the changes. However, there was a good deal of resistance, even from some lawmakers. According to the article, Bellevue City Councilman John Stacey said, “I don’t have any problem with the name …
Africans, Indians, Arabs, And Scots: Jewish And Other Questions In The Age Of Empire, Michael Galchinsky
Africans, Indians, Arabs, And Scots: Jewish And Other Questions In The Age Of Empire, Michael Galchinsky
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
In The Beginning There Was Death: Spiritual Desolation And The Search For Self In Jamaica Kincaid's "Autobiography Of My Mother", Elizabeth J. West
In The Beginning There Was Death: Spiritual Desolation And The Search For Self In Jamaica Kincaid's "Autobiography Of My Mother", Elizabeth J. West
English Faculty Publications
This is a book review of Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother. (1996). New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
Transported Traditions: Transatlantic Foundations Of Southern Folk Culture, John Burrison
Transported Traditions: Transatlantic Foundations Of Southern Folk Culture, John Burrison
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Where Am I, Charles Hartman
Where Am I, Charles Hartman
English Faculty Publications
This essay discusses the geographic history of Aegina Island in Greece. Geographical description of Aegina Island, Greece; Comments from historian Stamatis on the island; Some of the mapping names of the island.
Holy Fools, Secular Saints, And Illiterate Saviors In American Literature And Popular Culture, Dana Heller
Holy Fools, Secular Saints, And Illiterate Saviors In American Literature And Popular Culture, Dana Heller
English Faculty Publications
In her article, "Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture," Dana Heller identifies and analyzes characteristics of the holy fool figure in American literature and culture. Heller defines the holy fool, or divine idiot, as a figure central to U.S. myths of nation. One encounters such figures in American literature as well as in American folklore, popular culture, and mass media. In American culture, the Divine Idiot is a hybrid form which grows out of the crossings of numerous literary and historical currents, both secular and non-secular. This unwieldy hybridity -- the fact that …
The Power Of The Passive Self In English Literature, 1640-1770 By Scott Gordon (Review), Rachel Carnell, Scott Gordon
The Power Of The Passive Self In English Literature, 1640-1770 By Scott Gordon (Review), Rachel Carnell, Scott Gordon
English Faculty Publications
Reviews the book 'The Power of the Passive Self in English Literature, 1640–1770,' by Scott Paul Gordon.
Donne, Doubt And The Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Brooke Conti
Donne, Doubt And The Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Brooke Conti
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Technology, Time, And The Return Of Abstract Painting, Graham Macphee
Technology, Time, And The Return Of Abstract Painting, Graham Macphee
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Saving "Cinderella": History And Story In Ashpet And Ever After, Elisabeth Rose Gruner
Saving "Cinderella": History And Story In Ashpet And Ever After, Elisabeth Rose Gruner
English Faculty Publications
An orphan is mistreated by a cruel surrogate family. The orphan is special, however, and with the intervention of kind and magical parental substitutes, rises to dizzying heights and achieves a happy ending. It’s a familiar tale, from “Cinderella” to Harry Potter —the difference is all in the details. In two fairy tale films of the 1980s and 1990s, those details remove the Cinderella story from the realm of fantasy. Ashpet and Ever After take pains to “realize” Cinderella—to remove almost all elements of magic and fantasy and to imagine, instead, what might make such a story real. Both incorporate …
The Mill On The Floss, Elisabeth Rose Gruner
The Mill On The Floss, Elisabeth Rose Gruner
English Faculty Publications
The Mill on the Floss was the second novel Marian Evans published under the pseudonym George Eliot. Born in 1819 to a prosperous estate manager, Marian Evans spent her youth much as her heroine did, in reading and outdoor activities. In 1850 Evans moved to London where she worked as a translator and editor, and fell in love with the writer and editor George Henry Lewes, a married man. Contemporary marriage law prevented Lewes from obtaining a divorce from his adulterous wife; the law held that, having condoned the adultery previously, he now had no grounds for divorce. Knowing this, …
Buying Time: Howards End And Commodified Nostalgia, Elizabeth Outka
Buying Time: Howards End And Commodified Nostalgia, Elizabeth Outka
English Faculty Publications
Midway through E. M. Forster’s Howards End, the newly married Margaret Schlegel Wilcox returns to the titular country house to find it the recipient of an unexpected makeover. Closed since the death of the first Mrs. Wilcox and for months used as a warehouse for the Schlegels’ possessions, the house has been unpacked and reconstituted by the housekeeper, Miss Avery, who creates a new interior built from moments of Margaret’s own history. As Margaret moves through the house in surprise, she takes a virtual tour of her past: her umbrella-stand greets her in the entrance way, the infamous sword …
Nonviolence, Anabaptism, And The Impossible In Communication, Susan L. Trollinger
Nonviolence, Anabaptism, And The Impossible In Communication, Susan L. Trollinger
English Faculty Publications
In a sense, the discipline of communication is all about peace. This is so because the discipline seeks to explain the relationship between communication and understanding as well as to promote better understanding through instruction in effective communication practices. Thus, all sub-disciplines of communication-from organizational communication to public address to health communication-address both theoretical and practical questions about how communication assists or frustrates human understanding. To the extent that an understanding serves as an antidote to human conflict, then, communication seeks to promote peace.
Marianne Moore And The Tao Of Painting, Zhaoming Qian
Marianne Moore And The Tao Of Painting, Zhaoming Qian
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
The Heritage Arts Imperative, Barre Toelken
The Heritage Arts Imperative, Barre Toelken
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.