Complutense Journal of English Studies

The Resilience of Caste through Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019)

2024-04-12T10:54:28+00:00

India, the largest democracy in the world, has experienced important social advances since its independence in 1947, such as the abolition of untouchability, one of the oldest forms of social segregation and discrimination whose major victims have been the Dalits. The situation of Dalits has undergone a series of changes in the second half of the 20th century due to various phenomena, including the industrialisation of India, the influential social work of Dalit activists and thinkers such as B. R. Ambedkar, and the passing of legal provisions for Dalits’ social inclusion, political emancipation and protection of rights. All these factors, along with a relative democratisation of education, have prompted this historically oppressed group to build a voice.

Since then, Dalit literature has progressively become a platform through which past and present injustices committed against this community are exposed. Lately, the impact that democracy has had on the lives of Dalits has been a questioned topic and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019) is an interesting gateway to it. The author’s gender and geographical position and her particular experience with ‘Dalithood’ result in an unusual but necessary insight into Dalits’ state of affairs in contemporary India. Thus, using Dutt’s memoir as a lens, this paper aims to examine the conditions that led to the perpetuation of a learned helplessness among Dalits, the shortcomings of Sanskritisation as an escape strategy from casteist stigma and the implications of the reservation system set for India’s Depressed Castes.

A feature-inheritance approach to scalar-focus object preposing in English, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish

2024-09-16T08:20:53+00:00

This paper discusses the syntax of scalar-focus object preposing, which is found compatible with constituent-adverbs but not with adverbs with a sentential scope. Meanwhile, languages such as English and Mandarin Chinese are found to differ in the position to which the scalar-focus object can be preposed. To account for such cross-linguistic structural differences in a unified way, this paper proposes that such an object carries an interpretable [+Max]-feature and agrees with a functional head to value its uninterpretable discourse-feature, before moving to the specifier position of the latter. Based on the theory of Feature Inheritance, it has been further argued that in English, the functional head in question is C, because the discourse-feature is retained by it, while in Mandarin Chinese this head is T, because it inherits the discourse-feature from C. The potential issue of subject-object ordering in this approach has been delt with by considering the nature of movement and the licensing condition of multiple specifiers. Additionally, the universality of the current proposal has been demonstrated by extending the same approach to Spanish.

‘An Indigenous Fucking Blood Revival’: Pagan Aesthetics in The US Indigenous Black Metal Scene

2024-03-18T08:18:06+00:00

This article analyzes two different modulations of Indigenous Black Metal in the contemporary US context, specifically focusing on how Indigenous Black Metal appropriates (but also distances itself from) European conceptualizations of this Metal subgenre. In this process, it adapts its lyrics to decolonial discourses. The text argues that Pagan Black Metal, although a musical product inherently connected to European understandings of pre-Christian spirituality, has found an autochthonous way in the American scenario through a sense an Indigenous-minded aesthetic vision of European paganism. After introducing the way in which senses of local land, ancestry and paganism are intertwined in the configuration of Pagan Black Metal lyrics, the article addresses two paradigmatic examples of the American Indian approach, Nechochwen and Pan-Amerikan Native Front. These two bands replicate the aggressive sounds and ontological logics of their European counterparts, erasing, nonetheless certain thematic aspects to adapt themselves to Pan-Indigenous dialectics.

Automatic closed captions and subtitles in academic video presentations: possibilities and shortcomings

2024-10-01T13:06:50+00:00

In light of the increasing number of academic events being recorded or held online since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present work combines automation processes in audiovisual translation and academic texts–more specifically, video presentations. The research questions are whether the automatic generation of captions is functional to ensure accessibility in academic events and how much post-editing effort would such content require in case a machine translation of the subtitles is to be applied. The research method comprises several phases. First, in a corpus of video presentations of specialised content in English, captions were generated automatically using YouTube Studio to ascertain the general quality and the type of errors generated in the automatically generated closed captions according to Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) framework. These auto-generated captions were corrected and annotated by considering the following parameters: a) pre-editing time, b) type of error according to MQM framework, and c) severity of the error. Second, the auto-generated captions and corrected were machine translated into Spanish. Furthermore, errors detected in the machine translation of the subtitles (English-Spanish) were post-edited and errors were analysed following the MQM. Reception by a potential audience was also studied, as evaluated by academics from the same field of expertise. The main conclusion is that most errors in machine-translated subtitles stem from incorrect caption segmentation and lack of context awareness, making it essential to correct the closed captions before translation. This thesis is supported by the reception study in which the level of comprehension was higher when the transcription was pre-edited, as most of the problems arise from the closed captions rather than from the translation itself.

‘Boys, too, can be objects of desire’: Psychic and Erotic Domination in Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020)

2024-06-05T06:34:37+00:00

The present paper aims to analyze the psychic nature of the female protagonist in Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020), as well as her relationships with other characters. For this purpose, I will use psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin’s theory of intersubjectivity. Benjamin’s intersubjectivity “reorients the conception of the psychic world form a subject’s relations to its object toward a subject meeting another subject”. For my analysis, I will focus on concepts such as recognition, a process of identification with the other, and destruction, a process which allows the individual to go beyond identification with the other and, consequently, to perceive them as a separate self. In Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts, Irina is a photographer who specializes in takes explicit pictures of “interesting”-looking men. The offer of an exhibition at a gallery in London triggers a tailspin of self-destructive behavior partly centered around Irina’s relationship with her best friend, Flo. The analysis of Irina’s psyche and her bonds with Flo and other characters will lead us to conclude that the aforementioned theories provide us with an enriching ground for uncovering the intricacies and what lies at the core of Irina’s psychic nature.

Harpies in the House: Neo-Victorian Rewritings of Avian Femininities

2024-10-23T05:58:08+00:00

This article examines avian metaphors in Neo-Victorian literature in relation to contemporary reconsiderations of nineteenth-century womanhood and its connection to animal discourse. Ornithological imagery and the female condition were closely linked in the nineteenth-century cultural imaginary, as clearly manifested in the period’s literature and art. From the idealized image of the submissive wife caged within the Victorian household to the controversial use of feathers in feminine accessories, bird-like women perched on the margins between the domestic space and the outside world. Significantly, birdcage imagery has since been recovered by numerous feminist authors to denounce women’s lack of freedom under patriarchal oppression. However, such analogies have often been rooted in a rejection of animality, rather than in a sense of solidarity between women and animals against androcentric domination. As this article intends to prove, Neo-Victorian works such as A. S. Byatt’s The Conjugial Angel (1992) and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) offer subversive possibilities for the reinterpretation of avian imagery in ways that challenge the interlocking patriarchal and speciesist dynamics at the core of anthropocentric culture.

“I feel as lonely as a wreck at sea”: Reviewing Fernando Pessoa’s Youth Literary Identity, Charles Robert Anon

2024-10-21T07:45:04+00:00

When initiating the journey to explore Fernando Pessoa’s (1888-1935) literary world, one rapidly becomes conscious of the vast literary output developed by the author. With means of understanding his whole literary universe, it must be acknowledged that Pessoa was bilingual, and that English, and Portuguese language cohabited in his literary universe. One is struck by astonishment when discovering that there are in fact so many English-writing literary characters, so many texts, anthologies, fragments, and literary projects in English. This study revises Pessoa’s pre-heteronymic process and the creation of English literary characters who are introduced into a dialogical chain, which later becomes a more serious literary depersonalisation process in his adulthood. By revising Pessoa’s youth companion Charles Robert Anon, this study intends to outline the Portuguese authors literary process and the starting point and evolution of what later became his most exceptional concept: the heteronyms. Through his character and the texts he signed, Anon represents young Pessoa’s “intellectual anxieties and existential concerns of a young intellectual entering adulthood” (Zenith in Pessoa 2001: 7). This study sustains that the edition, publication, translation, and critical analysis of the totality of Anon’s literary production is an important element to shed light in the understanding of Pessoa’s drama-in-people and adult writings.

On the history of ephemeral conditional subordinators: Evidence from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English

2024-10-31T10:29:56+00:00

This article discusses the history of a selection of ephemeral adverbial subordinators (Kortmann 1997, 301), i.e., those that mainly originated in the Early Modern English period (16^th -17^th centuries) but whose subordinating function, however, either became obsolete rather quickly or was subject to further restrictions beyond this period. This phenomenon was particularly frequent in the CCC relations, these are: causality, conditionality and concessivity. The present article analyses a selected number ephemeral conditional subordinators and compares them with the prototypical conditional subordinator if. The methodology is corpus-based, and I examine the data in the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English. The examples discussed reveal that ephemeral conditional subordinators are scarce and serve as a clear illustration of the concept of ephemerality in the realm of adverbial subordinators.

Markers of discourse structure in digital crowdfunding science proposals

2024-09-12T07:38:15+00:00

In a scientific context of growing interdependence at a global level, digital genres for public communication of science in the Internet are gaining scholarly attention. Yet, although these genres have been mainly examined through their rhetorical organisation and their main discourse features, research on the latter is to date limited. To fill this gap, this study focuses on the functions of linguistic markers of discourse structure in texts exemplars of science crowdfunding online. Overall results show that constructing a semantically coherent discourse is fundamental to achieve the main communicative purposes of this genre, namely to inform about science while requesting the public’s donations for carrying out a project. Results also show that linguistic markers of discourse structure are widely used for establishing contrast among ideas and concepts, and by this means build the argument and persuade the reader that it is important to finance the project. They also help the construction of a coherent academic discourse in every rhetorical section (Overview, Lab Notes, Discussion), exhibiting variation across them according to their communicative functions.

Hopeful Resistance and Solidarity from Below in Imbolo Mbue's How Beautiful We Were

2024-09-11T09:08:05+00:00

By examining the discourse of hope and resistance in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were (2021), which portrays the emergence of a solidarity movement and protest in a fictional West African country, this article engages with the theory of political solidarity within the framework of contemporary African necropolitics. The acts of resistance carried out by the protagonists against their government, which exposes them to death at the hands of Western neocolonialism, show the capacity of the African oppressed majority to work together for an improvement in their living conditions in a spirit of hope, namely through building solidarity networks as a strategy of subversion and survival. In this sense, though different forms of solidarity surface throughout the narrative, my contention is that Robin Zheng’s (2023) notion of “solidarity from below” as a form of power available to the otherwise powerless is the one that prevails. More specifically, the tragic ending of the story allows to critically reflect on Zheng’s debate on the limitations of group emotional cohesion to achieve sociopolitical transformation. Along these lines, I identify this novel as a literary call for renewed forms of African political solidarity that must be necessarily forged and maintained by the oppressed masses not merely through hope but, essentially, through radical love.

From work one’s ass off to bite one’s face off: Understanding the degree of idiomaticity through syntactic and semantic inheritance in a network of (originally) resultative constructions

2024-09-12T10:24:33+00:00

This study is aimed at exploring the degree of idiomaticity of resultatives characterized by the structure [[V]_i[pd]_j[N]_koff] through a qualitative examination of [V], [N], and the property of telicity. Based on a random extraction of 1,000 concordances from the English Corpus enTenTen21, findings show that the network of constructions is made up of three Types (‘Intensification’, ‘Astoundment’, and ‘Detachment’) and ten Subtypes, with ‘body part’ being the most frequent [N]. Also, the (sub)schemas in the network originate from the inheritance of at least one of the following properties: verbal intensification, (a part of) someone as recipient of an action, and detachment of such a part.

Talaván, Noa, Jennifer-Lertola y Alberto Fernández Costales. 2024. Didactic Audiovisual Translation and Foreign Language Education. Routledge. 160 pp. ISBN: 9781032277585

2024-10-16T07:21:43+00:00