Digital Commons Network^™

Program Review: English Department, Samuel J. Umland

Academic Program Reviews

No abstract provided.

War Of The Words: Aliens, Immigrants, Citizens, And The Language Of Exclusion, D. Carolina Nuñez

BYU Law Review

Words communicate more than their ordinary dictionary meaning. Words tell us about individuals' and communities' conscious and subconscious perceptions. The words we use are evidence of how we think, which, in turn, ultimately determines what we do. In this paper, I examine and compare the usage of the words "immigrant," "alien," and "citizen" to make observations on the nature of membership and belonging in the United States. While it is perhaps intuitive that these words carry very different connotations, here I use corpus linguistics to explore those connotations. I rely on the Corpus of Contemporary American English, a database of …

February 27, 2014: Mellon Summer Institute In English Paleography, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

February 24, 2014: Adapting Shakespeare Among Alabamans, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Wild Negotiations: Dolores Del Río's Filmic Identity In 1940s Cinema, Dora Ramirez-Dhoore

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Hollywood star, María Dolores Asúnsolo López-Negrete, best known as Dolores del Río, was admired for her beauty and cross-over appeal during her career (1930–1960s). Since her first role in Joanna (1925), the construction and marketing of del Río as a cinematic star has captured the spectator’s social imagination and presents images of Latinas that are beautiful, “exotic,” accessible, translatable, and consumable. Body and language play vital roles in constructing the image spectators have grown to expect from del Río. Her filmic identity negotiates the “wilderness of theory or difference” Elaine Showalter discusses in “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” and which …

Lds Vernacular: English-Samoan Glossary, E. Paia Su'a Palmer, Dr. Eric Eliason

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My lexicographic project involving the production of a Samoan-English glossary for LDS vernacular had a strategy flaw which was not evident until I was into the project. Accordingly, I have made necessary design modification. The first two of the four phases which I originally proposed consisted of distilling from available translated Church literature and scriptural texts a reasonably comprehensive English list with Samoan translations. I augmented the literature research with ethnographic observation and survey of the LDS Samoan speech community in Utah, specifically members of the Heritage, Sauniatu, Mapusaga, and Vaiola Wards in Salt Lake City. The aim for a …

Assessing Of The Need For An English Grammar Resource For Non-Native Speakers, Steven M. Sandberg, Dr. Penny Bird

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this study was to assess the need for an established service at Brigham Young University (BYU) to assist non-native speakers of English with revisions of their papers. The study relied on the assumption that effective, writing-process learning only occurs at the point of need—the draft stages—and not after a final grade has been given. The excellent grammar resources of other language departments and the non-credit English Language Center (ELC), and the frequently overcrowded grammar resources at the Reading/Writing Center (R/WC), prompted the idea of creating an English Grammar Lab at the R/WC.

February 12, 2014: Awards, Awards, And More Awards! March 21, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

The New Language Policy In South Africa: A Sociolinguistic Analysis And Implication For The Bantu Languages, Richard Cameron Blake

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In April, 1994, the first all-race presidential and parliamentary elections were held In South Africa after several years of multi-party constitutional negotiations. J’ielson Mandela, a political-prisoner-turned-president, was given the charge to uphold the new constitution, one In which all South Africans are regarded equally, regardless of race. Part of that constitution is a new language policy designed to reflect the wide diversity of languages In the country. Under the new language policy, 11 languages (nine of them spoken by different African tribal groups) are now recognized as official languages instead of only English and Afrikaans (a Dutch-based language spoken by …

February 6, 2014: Third Coast Writing Project Camp For Young Writers, June 16-27, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

February 5, 2014: Graduate Student Conference April 2014-Cfp, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Common Knowledge: The Epistemology Of American Realism, Mark Sussman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation, Common Knowledge: The Epistemology of American Realism, focuses on realist fiction (primarily the novel) at the end of the nineteenth century. Its motivating claim is that the central descriptive and thematic imperative of realism--to depict life "as it is" rather than in some idealized form--emerged in response to crises in the status of knowledge that resulted from an attempt by writers and readers to come to a common understanding of the relationship between private experience and an increasingly fragmented social world. While William Dean Howells's definition of realism as a form of writing that displays "fidelity to experience …

Clue, Code, Conjure: The Epistemology Of American Detective Fiction, 1841-1914, Jennifer Weiss

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation posits American detective fiction between 1841 and 1914 as a meaningful category and interrogates forms of knowledge used in this genre. The conventional wisdom on detective fiction creates a dichotomy of British and American production, with British detective fiction in a rational style dominating in importance into the 1920s, and American detective fiction dominating in importance with the "hard-boiled" style of the 1930s and '40s (as described by Raymond Chandler). This dissertation argues that American detective fiction is a meaningful category before and beyond the hard-boiled style.

Abductive reasoning, a form of logic based on observation, hypothesis, and …

Battles With Words: Literate And Linguistic Resistance In Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature And Everyday Life, Melissa A. Dennihy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Battles with Words analyzes the role of multi-ethnic U.S. literature as an alternative form of cultural production which critiques and challenges U.S. linguistic and literate hegemony and homogeneity. The texts comprising this field continually emphasize the ways in which words, through language and literacy, become tools of power and action used by the ethnically marginalized to negotiate everyday advantages for themselves and challenge the linguistic and cultural domination of Anglo America. Through their critiques of the culture of English-only monolingualism that has continued to dominate the national landscape of the U.S. throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these authors indicate …

January 30, 2014: Triezenberg Article Accepted, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Defining Gender Differences In Suriname Through Language, Shaun Hunley, Dr. David Bowie

Journal of Undergraduate Research

For the people of Suriname, the word “Sranan” is more than just a word, it is a symbol of national pride and independence. “Sranan” is the native word for Suriname, a small country on the northeastern coast of South America. Throughout its remarkable history, Suriname has transformed into a nation rich in culture and values. Its unique society bears the scars of Dutch colonialism while absorbing facets of African, Indian, and Indonesian cultures.

January 21, 2014: Gigante To Deliver Keynote Lecture, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Eng 3901-001: Language And Linguistics, Rosemary Buck

Spring 2014

No abstract provided.

Eng 2901-001: The Structure Of English, Rosemary Buck

Spring 2014

No abstract provided.

"Call Her Calamity Electrifies Man": Alp And The Movement Of Archive In Finnegan’S Wake, Ellen Scheible

English Faculty Publications

The existence of characters in Joyce’s dream world of Finnegans Wake rarely proves their singular presence in the text. As readers we are led to incorporate different characters into our interpretation of any one character; the temporal and historical circularity of the Wake is then personified in a whirlpool of characterization. Comprising both the motion and consistency of this whirlpool, Anna Livia is most certainly the nexus of activity for the otherwise sleepy Earwicker narrative. Yet, recognizing the textual motion of both the character and concept of ALP, (or even simply the potential for signifying motion within the text) as …

Inkle And Yarico [Supplemental Materials], Kate Barnhart

Gothic Archive Supplemental Materials for Chapbooks

No abstract provided.

Ethelred & Lidania [Supplemental Material], Heather Noble

Gothic Archive Supplemental Materials for Chapbooks

No abstract provided.

Undermining Heteronormativity In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Susan G. Weber

ETD Archive

Many feminist critics view Edna Pontellier, the protagonist in Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, as the prototype of the New Woman in search of independence from the patriarchal constraints that suffocate her, including sexual rules and restrictions. Most of these critics frame Edna in a traditional heterosexual world. Although The Awakening overtly focuses on male-female relationships, Edna's relationships with her women friends are more varied, nuanced, and comprehensive than those with men. I argue that Edna's desires are not purely heterosexual which is revealed through several secondary characters in the novel, and that Chopin employs safer heterosexual themes, plots and …

Tutoring Esl Students For Improvements In Language Skills, Hollie R. Craddock

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Much research has been conducted from the framework of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, and on the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). SCT has a wide application in many fields, including Second Language Acquisition (SLA).

This study collected and analyzed audio-recordings of voluntary, one-on-one tutoring sessions that took place over a six-week period in an Intensive English Program at an American University. The participants included both faculty and peer tutors and English Language Learners (ELLs) in the IE program. The recordings were analyzed to determine if any patterns emerged regarding the target language features on which the tutoring sessions …

Voice In Esl Academic Writing: An Interpersonal Analysis, Audrey Hamoy

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Social relationships determine every linguistic choice people make, regardless of the medium of language use. Hence, it is important to understand how these social relationships determine the linguistic features that are necessary for creating a proper voice when writing academically. This study uses the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics in an attempt to understand intermediate English as a Second Language (ESL) learners’ use of interpersonal features to create a voice in their academic writing and to see if it aligns with the voice typical of Western academic writing. In order to do this, the study uses twenty-four writing samples from …

Introduction: The Rise Of The American Biographical Novel, Michael Lackey

English Publications

No abstract provided.

Hosting Language: Immigration And Translation In The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Kathryn Vomero Santos

English Faculty Research

I will argue that Shakespeare uses the dialogic form of drama to stage such encounters between the languages of guest and host and to demonstrate that hosting the stranger in the English language causes the play’s English characters, along with its audiences and readers, to become “sensitive to the strangeness of [their] own language” and yet resistant to the idea that the immigrant can ever be fully “Englished” (Ricoeur 2006: 29).⁷

Like The Odyssey, Only Different: Olympian Omnipotence Versus Karmic Adjustment In Pynchon's Vineland, David P. Rando

English Faculty Research

In Vineland, Pynchon recalls the Odyssey in order to foreground crucial differences from its Western model of comprehending narrative outcomes as acts of Olympian or divine omnipotence. Instead, Vineland does something innovative with narrative power, establishing specific karmic character relationships that potentially ameliorate personal and national grievances and suffering and broadening our understanding of narrative power and outcomes beyond the heavy hand of judgment in order to register gentle karmic nudges.

Basnage De Beauval's "Reformation" Of The Dictionnaire Universel, David Eick

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Henri IV's Edict of Nantes (1598) granted official tolerance to French Protestants and ended the Wars of Religion that had raged throughout France during the second half of the sixteenth century. On October 22, 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Some two hundred thousand French Protestants sought exile in neighboring countries and in North America. The economic effects of the Protestant diaspora were disastrous for France; its cultural effects, unexpected and far-reaching. Much of the French publishing industry set up shop outside of France's national borders, in London, Geneva, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, where publishers circumvented French regulations and …

Narrativa Oscura: The Open Question Of Tennessee Williams's "One Arm", Jacqueline O'Connor

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the introduction to Tennessee Williams’s Collected Stories (1985), Gore Vidal suggests the stories “are the true memoir of Tennessee Williams. Whatever happened to him, real or imagined, is here. Except for an occasional excursion into fantasy, he sticks close to life as he experienced or imagined it” (xx). At the time of the volume’s publication, just two years after Williams’s death, critical attention to the short fiction had focused primarily on its significance as apprentice work and as source material for the plays that made him famous; when Dennis Vannatta published the first book-length study of the short fiction …