English Language and Literature Commons^™

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 …

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.

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

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

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

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 …

Creating Community: Macnas’S Galway Arts Festival Parade, 2000, Christie L. Fox

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Galway Arts Festival, 2003: Focusing On Home, Still Delighting, Christie L. Fox

English Faculty Publications

For twenty-six years the Galway Arts Festival has “morphed” the city of Galway into its natural logical conclusion: the city already boasts a young, artistic community, but for two weeks each summer, the festival brings the spotlight and the crowds to Galway for a celebration of the arts. Of late, however, the festival has suffered from decreased government expenditures on the arts—as have all the arts in Ireland. Recent festivals have been far more subdued than the extravagant Millennial Festival in 1999, during which the city teemed with outdoor events and more than one hundred thousand people gathered to watch …

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, …

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

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Masquerade And Identities: Essays On Gender, Sexuality, And Marginality By Efrat Tseëlon, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In the introduction to this collection of essays, the editor discusses ‘issues of masquerade as identity construction and as identity critique through a range of styles and narrative forms’ (p. 4). All of the scholarship here relies on a performative viewpoint to explore a range of symbolic and literal ‘masks’ in different social settings. In fact, the book’s blurb prepares us to delve into ‘the role of disguise in constructing, expressing, and representing marginalised identities, and in undermining easy distinctions between “true” identity and artifice.’

Cartoons And Pronoun Trouble, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In a relatively famous linguistic exchange, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd are trying lo determine who is going to be shot. First, the question of whether it's duck season or rabbit season has to be answered. Second, Elmer has to suffer through a barrage of claims and counter-claims in which Bugs and Daffy try to avoid being Elmer's target.

Although I couldn't find a copy of this video, I believe it is Chuck Jones's "Rabbit Seasoning" (1952), and the premise is very similar to 1951's "Rabbit Fire" which I was able to rent on video. At any rate, …

Eighteenth-Century British Circulating Libraries And Cultural Book History, Edward Jacobs

English Faculty Publications

Circulating library catalogs offer one of the most revealing views available of book publishing and reading in eighteenth-century Britain, since those catalogs and the libraries they document were put together by book traders whose livelihood depended upon giving an unprecedentedly wide range of British readers the books they wanted. Of course, the perspective on eighteenth-century British book culture provided by their catalogs is nowhere near as comprehensive as the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalog (ESTC) or the recently published first volume of The English Novel 1770– 1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles (TEN), which “seeks …

The Heritage Arts Imperative, Barre Toelken

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Marianne Moore And The Tao Of Painting, Zhaoming Qian

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

'There Shall Be No Discernible Traces Left': The Invisible Butler In Ishiguro's "The Remains Of The Day", Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper draws its title from an anecdote Stevens, the butler in The Remains of the Day (1989), recounts to illustrate the primary attribute for servants: the ability to perform duties without leaving any discernible traces. Mrs. D.C. Webster, an American married into British “old money,” expresses astonishment at the treatment of servants during an interview for the documentary, The Secret World of Fame and Fortune. Mrs. Webster “had a staff of twelve . . . They would do everything for you. If you took a sweater off, it would disappear. If they were too loud or if they were …

Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life By Bruce King (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In Another Life Derek Walcott wrote, "I had entered the house of literature as a houseboy"; Jamaican poet Mervyn Morris signified on this image in his The Pond when he declared, "And these are my rooms now." The journey that Walcott makes from "houseboy" to master/ruler/owner of the house of literature (the Nobel Laureate is frequently acclaimed the greatest poet writing in the English language) is painstakingly detailed in Bruce King's tome Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life.

Anxieties Of Impotence: Cuban Americas In New York City, Christina M. Tourino

English Faculty Publications

In her paper, "Anxieties of Impotence: Cuban Americas in New York City, " Christina Marie Tourino seeks a basis for comparison between Latin American literatures and Latino literatures of the United States. Such groups have rarely been compared in the past because they are considered part of the same literary "family." However, Tourino argues that owing to the flows of capital driven by global pressures, literatures between and among Latin Americans and Latinos hail from such culturally heterogeneous sites and are made over by so many relocations that they do call for comparative projects. Instead of comparing texts across national …

Effects Of Slavery On Non-Slaves, David E.E. Sloane

English Faculty Publications

Prof. Sloane comments on how characters in Huckleberry Finn reflect the attitudes of white people in slave territory during the time of slavery in the United States.

Review Of Mediated Discourse: The Nexus Of Practice. London: Routledge By Ron Scollon, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

What I like very much about this book is that it epitomizes the notion of qualitative research. It is a beautifully written exploration of the way mediated discourse gets accomplished, but it also clarifies ways of analyzing discourse with rich discussions of theory and analysis based on a number of illustrations taken from everyday events. Scollon explores an everyday practice that most people probably take for granted, and he proposes a way of examining this ‘practice’ in a new way. This practice is ‘handing’, and it serves as the centerpiece of this book. We ‘hand’ books to each other, we …

The White Bed Of Desire In A.S. Byatt's Possession, Jennifer Jeffers

English Faculty Publications

The British novelist A. S. Byatt frequently writes about art and color theory in her fiction. In Still Life (1985) Byatt intentionally saturates her text with musings on art and color; bordering on the didactic, she devotes long passages to Van Gogh's chromatics and individual characters' theories on art. With The Matisse Stories (1996) her discussion moves into the theory of complementary colors in the story “Art Work,” through the painter Robin Dennison. Painting for Robin is “a series of problems, really, inexhaustible problems, of light and color, you know” (70). In the 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel Possession: A Romance …

Medieval Lyric: Genres In Historical Context By William D. Paden, Ashby Kinch

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"Green Confusion": Evolution And Entanglement In H.G. Wells's The Island Of Doctor Moreau, John Glendening

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reading The Ordinary Diary, Jennifer Sinor

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Wordsworth's Habits Of Mind: Knowledge Through Experience (Review), Nancy Easterlin

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Afterword Concerning Pound's 1935 Revisit To The Fenollosa Papers For An Edition Of 'Mori's Lectures' On The History Of Chinese Poetry, Zhaoming Qian

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Institutional Invention: (How) Is It Possible?, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) In this chapter I want to explore several broad questions with respect to higher education: Is institutional invention possible? What are the conditions that enable it, and how can they be created and sustained? What are the obstacles to institutional invention? How can academic leadership foster institutional invention?

Review Of Progay/Antigay: The Rhetorical War Over Sexuality By Ralph R. Smith And Russell R. Windes, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

When I was asked to review Progay/Antigay, I actually felt both trepidation and excitement for two reasons. First, I have a personal interest in the subject matter because I am a gay man who considers himself moderately active in both politics and the gay community. Second, I live in Nebraska, a state whose voters recently banned legal recognition of same-sex relationships, whether they be called ‘marriage’ or ‘domestic partnership’ or ‘civil union.’ For these reasons, I felt that the text could potentially elucidate the bitter struggle that we in the Midwest had just been through.

Slang: Awful Spector Of Sloth?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Rarely is there a time when someone in America isn't worried about the state of our language. This worry generally arises in two forms: "our children don't know how to use proper English" and "there are too many immigrants who don't know how to speak English."

Often the concern about the lack of "pr per" English arises in response to that awful specter of alleged sloth - slang. Most linguists define slang as vocabulary items used in in formal settings. If a new car (wheels) is appreciated by someone's peers, then that ride or hot rod might be …