English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Phrasal Verb In American English: Using Corpora To Track Down Historical Trends In Particle Distribution, Register Variation, And Noun Collocations, David Brown, Chris Palmer

David C. Brown

Culinary Jane Austen, Christopher D. Wilkes

Christopher D Wilkes

In the world of domestic intimacy that Jane Austen fashions for us, food, its production, preparation and consumption, appears almost nowhere, at least in the novels themselves. But there is a complex moral economy that surrounds food, and its analysis tells us much of the broader social and economic hierarchies that swirled around the Austen families, as they engaged in a struggle for social recognition and social maintenance. When we take the Austen films into account, this analysis gains sharpness, and makes what is often inferred very clear indeed. This paper examines the social meaning of these culinary habits, first …

How (Not) To Sell A Military Memoir In Britain, Esmeralda Kleinreesink, Neil Jenkings, Rachel Woodward

Esmeralda Kleinreesink

Our Technological Past And Future: From Predigital To Postdigital Apocalypses, Michael J. Paulus Jr.

Michael J. Paulus, Jr.

An exploration of technological hopes and fears in apocalyptic literature.

Owning A Virus: The Rhetoric Of Scientific Discovery Accounts, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

No Abstract Available

"I Knew There Was Something Wrong With That Paper": Scientific Rhetorical Styles And Scientific Misunderstandings, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

This selection unpacks scientific prose and claim substantiation for Nobel Prize winner, Stan Prusiner, in the transmissible spongiform encephlopathies field (i.e., mad cow disease). Applying linguistic strategies such as M. A. K. Halliday's "favorite clause type," the author examines argumentative strategies in dense scientific prose both in bold and cautious rhetorical styles and invented lexical changes in new scientific development.

Visual Rhetoric And The Promotion Of Scientific Ideas: The Strange Case Of The Prion, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

In the field that investigates infectious brain diseases such as mad cow disease, the verbal and visual packaging of scientific visuals associated with identifying the agent, prion, its processes, and structure served the community ritual of establishing belief in a highly unorthodox phenomenon. Visual promotion fed into cultural expectations of single agents and simple processes, even though the actual agency and disease process have proven highly complex and perhaps unknowable.

An Orthodox Heresy: Scientific Rhetoric And The Science Of Prions., Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

A significant theoretical shift in the research community examining a class of terminal, infectious neurological disorders that includes Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and Kuru was assisted by rhetorical production. The local rhetoric of one laboratory, that of Professor Stanley B. Prusiner, involved first situating an heretical hypothesis within the framework of the orthodox narrative and then audaciously promoting that heresy. Another aspect of rhetorical production in this case involved situating a new language associated with the heretical hypothesis. To promote their new lexicon, the Prusiner team evoked orthodox values of consistency, efficiency, and collective ratification. Eventually, what was once …

Rhetoric And The Aids Virus Hunt, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

By comparing the papers produced by the laboratory teams of Robert Gallo and Jean Luc Montagnier during the AIDS virus hunt, we have an opportunity to discern the fine line between a bold, explicit rhetoric that may convince as well as offend and a bald, reserved rhetoric that may actually conceal important implications. Going too far in either direction may create misunderstandings and ethical dilemmas as will be demonstrated in a textual analysis deepened by an exploration of historical context and interviews with key participants. Since a public health crisis calls upon communication that thwarts misunderstandings, scientists should understand the …

The Language Of Science, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

With more and more scientific language being applied -and misapplied- in our daily lives, this title from the Intertext series explores the use of scientific terms through hot topics from the MMR vaccine to AIDS and biological weapons.

Establishing The Phenomenon: The Rhetoric Of Early Research Reports On Aids, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

In the first three medical reports on AIDS which were published in 1981 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the writers' primary rhetorical agenda was to argue that a new medical discovery had been made. A secondary agenda was to offer etiological explanations for the new problem. To establish the new disease entity as deserving serious attention, the writers built a sense of mystery by confronting established medical knowledge about immunodeficiency and emphasizing the inability of modern medicine to diagnose and treat the problem. When they explained the phenomenon in etiological terms, rather than confronting the disciplinary matrix, the …

Libraries And The Apocalyptic Imagination, Michael J. Paulus Jr.

Michael J. Paulus, Jr.

Books and libraries figure prominently in apocalyptic and related forms of literature. The representations of libraries in these imagined, catastrophic futures reveal important roles libraries have had and continue to have in helping individuals, communities, and cultures find ways forward through time. This paper explores the long history of library eschatologies—including ancient apocalypses of the Dead Sea Scroll Library and the book of Revelation, modern apocalypses from Mary Shelley to Margaret Atwood, and the dystopian anti-libraries of Jorge Luis Borges’s Babel and Tlön—and highlights deep continuities connecting our historical memories, future expectations, and present experiences of libraries. In the apocalyptic …

A Closer Look At Using Stringer’S Action Research Model In Improving Students’ Learning, Mohammad Ali Nasrollahi

Mohammad Ali Nasrollahi(Ph.D)

Action research is a systematic approach to investigation that enables people to find effective solutions to problems they confront in their everyday lives. A significant feature is that action research lays claim to the professional development in education. Action research as any systematic inquiry conducted by teachers, administrators, and counselors with a vested interest in the teaching and learning process, for the purpose of gathering data about how their particular schools operate, how they teach, and how their students learn. Education is perhaps the most prolific source of action research resources. Action research can be done by teachers in their …

Cats As Detectives In Library Mysteries, Mary Freier

Mollie Freier

Cats have become ubiquitous as detectives or detective assistants in twenty-first century mysteries, although the trend began with the “The Cat Who” books, the first of which was published in the nineteen-sixties. Cats have a fine history in the detective genre, but current depictions of cats as detectives include the cats conversing with other animals and even the human detective in the novel. Some of these cats possess supernatural abilities, and even those who don't possess impressive intelligence. Cats are notorious, of course, for being curious, and the librarians who function as amateur sleuths are similar in this regard. Some …

Rare Books In Detective Fiction: Information As Object, Mary Freier

Mollie Freier

Library mysteries written since 1970 often depict intrigue surrounding the theft or threatened theft of rare books. Charles Goodrum, a director of the Library of Congress, once wrote that when he decided to write a mystery novel set in a library, he spent an evening coming up with ideas for such a novel. He said that he came up with dozens, but settled on a plot about rare book theft because he thought it would be more accessible to general readers. Many other mystery writers have made the same decision. Although these mysteries are often considered library mysteries and frequently …

Dark Avunculate: Shame, Animality, And Queer Development In Oscar Wilde’S “The Star-Child”, Rasmus R. Simonsen

Rasmus R Simonsen, PhD

This article will outline the inequalities of the relationship between the Star-Child and his temporary master, known only as the Magician, in order to argue that Wilde’s fairy tale should be read as the formalization of a queer interval that traumatizes the Victorian norm of maturation. This is not to suggest that “Wilde’s Victorian readers [would] seem to have found [any]thing untoward about the fairy tales” (Duffy 328); nothing, at least, that hinted at the “homoromantic dimensions” which were to become so devastatingly central to his libel trial of 1895 (338). John-Charles Duffy has nevertheless shown that a complex interweaving …

Between Subject And Tech Expertise: Collaborating With Faculty For Digital Humanities Projects [Presentation], Rose Fortier, Heather G. James, Wendy Fall

Rose Fortier

Libraries are well-positioned for partnership with digital humanities efforts in several ways. The management of digital items and the description of information resources for future researchers make libraries natural partners in digital humanities projects. Often Humanities scholars will reach out to the library for support or even guidance in these projects. At Marquette University, the Gothic Archive exemplifies the development of this collaboration. Though the Archive started as a humble collection of digitized and transcribed gothic chapbooks, it is being developed into an interwoven collection of digitized materials and contextual objects and promises to become a full-fledged digital humanities tool. …

Measuring Productivity Diachronically: Nominal Suffixes In English Letters, 1400–1600, Chris Palmer

Chris C. Palmer

Crossing Boundaries: Land And Sea In Jane Austen's 'Persuasion', Laura Vorachek

Laura Vorachek

Jane Austen suggests in Persuasion the pressures that the increased mobility of the middle class placed on the established aristocratic society in her time. Anne Elliot especially brings to light the inherited assumptions of her society. She can marry within her social rank (Mr. Elliot or Charles Musgrove) or marry below her (Wentworth at age 23), but either is a choice within the limits established by her society. One owns land or one does not. But when Wentworth returns a man of name and wealth, he is not a member of the landed gentry nor is he below Anne in …

Speculation And The Emotional Economy Of 'Mansfield Park', Laura Vorachek

Laura Vorachek

At the midpoint of Mansfield Park (1814), the Bertram family dines at the Parsonage, and card games make up the after dinner entertainment. The characters form two groups, with Sir Thomas, Mrs. Norris, and Mr. and Mrs. Grant playing Whist, while Lady Bertram, Fanny, William, Edmund, and Henry and Mary Crawford play Speculation, This scene is central not only because Speculation reveals certain characters' personalities, but also because another type of “speculation” occurs during the game as the players contemplate or conjecture about one another. Moreover, “speculation” in the sense of gambling functions as a metaphor for the vicissitudes of …

Glocal English: The Changing Face And Forms Of Nigerian English In A Global World, Farooq A. Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi

Glocal English compares the usage patterns and stylistic conventions of the world’s two dominant native varieties of English (British and American English) with Nigerian English, which ranks as the English world’s fastest-growing non-native variety courtesy of the unrelenting ubiquity of the Nigerian (English-language) movie industry in Africa and the Black Atlantic Diaspora. Using contemporary examples from the mass media and the author’s rich experiential data, the book isolates the peculiar structural, grammatical, and stylistic characteristics of Nigerian English and shows its similarities as well as its often humorous differences with British and American English. Although Nigerian English forms the backdrop …

Common Storytelling Elements In The Journeys Of Heroes And Villains, Scott T. Allison

Scott T. Allison

In this paper, we review similarities and differences between the classic storytelling arc of heroes and that of villains. We propose some basic differences between the hero's journey and the villain's journey but conclude that the main difference resides in a temporal staggering of the two characters' journeys.

The Phrasal Verb In American English: Using Corpora To Track Down Historical Trends In Particle Distribution, Register Variation, And Noun Collocations, David West Brown, Chris C. Palmer

Chris C. Palmer