Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense
Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense (EIUC), founded in 1993, is a scholarly, peer-reviewed annual journal which publishes cutting-edge, high quality research papers encompassing all areas in the wide domain of English, from Language and Linguistics to Literatures and Cultures of the English-speaking countries. It promotes a lively exchange among scholars and writers in the humanities and related disciplines who hold diverse perspectives on current developments in this ever-changing global field. EIUC aims at providing both a rigorous and convivial academic forum for debate and it operates as a showcase for state-of-the-art work in English Studies. The journal welcomes articles, book reviews, book notices, biographical notes, as well as debates, reports and interviews in all areas of English Studies: Linguistics (both theoretical and applied), Literatures in English (and Comparative Literature), Critical theory and Cultural Studies. The review section draws special attention to works published in major academic presses.
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"May" and "must" as inferential evidential markers in a corpus of English scientific texts
This paper explores the use of may and must as inferential evidential markers in the Corpus of Specialized Papers in English, currently in progress at the Institute for Technological Development and Innovation in Communications at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In order to do so, we will follow Cornillie’s (2009) disjunctive approach to the concepts of evidentiality and epistemic modality to firstly identify evidential rather than epistemic readings of these modals. Their qualitative assessment as inferential evidential markers will be carried out through the analysis of the context in which they are immersed. We will show that appropriate contextual enrichment allows the recovery of the intended meaning, that is, mode of knowing, of both may and must.
Non-selected reflexive datives in Southern American and Appalachian English vs. Spanish
Southern American and Appalachian English allow the occurrence of non-selected reflexive datives (I need me some water) unlike Standard American and British English. This kind of non-selected arguments looks similar to ethical datives in some Romance languages like Spanish (Este nino no me come nada). However, non-selected reflexive datives have structural differences in Southern American and Appalachian English in comparison with Spanish. This paper sets out to look at these languages (Southern American and Appalachian English vs. Spanish), and describe the syntactic and semantic similarities and differences of non-selected reflexive datives across them. Finally, a theoretical analysis is sketched within the framework of Generative Grammar in order to explain some of such differences and similarities.
In its narrative style as well as in its cultural environment, magical realism provides the optimal literary field to respond to the cultural issues and conditions that traverse contemporary postcolonial society. For example, the codification in the magical-realist narrative of both colonial and postcolonial discourses, involved in a dialectical struggle, reflects many of the problematic relations existing between colonizer and colonized in postcolonial culture. This leads to the investigation of hybridity as an important trope in the ongoing process of literary and cultural decolonization. This article explores the function of hybridity in three novels by Ben Okri, showing how, through the destabilization of such spaces as the real and the imaginary, the new and the old, and the self and the other, a third space emerges where irreconcilable perspectives and contradictory properties coexist, although problematically. In this sense, the fictional space, time and characters displace polar oppositions and make it difficult to conceive of any version of reality as having a greater claim to absolute truth or unique referentiality. Consequently, and in theoretical and political terms, what magical realism tries to do here is replacing the dominant culture and its version of truth by a new mode of perception that opens up various levels of thought and accepts the possibility of many truths to be considered simultaneously and not hierarchically.
Working Through Collective Trauma: Metafiction, Intertextuality, and the Need for Externalization and Relativization of Trauma in "The Virgin Suicides"
In a period when Trauma Studies have been assuming more and more importance, Jeffrey Eugenides’s first novel, The Virgin Suicides (1993), happens to center precisely on the traumatic adolescent experiences of its protagonists. Its fragmented content mirrors the very structure of the dreamy narrative: after witnessing the Lisbon sisters’ mass suicide, the group of male narrators decides to tell a story truthful to their posttraumatic condition. This brings about the collective narrator’s failure to master the accuracy of the past events accompanied by their urge to recount the truth about the inexplicable suicides. In this paper, the novel is analyzed in terms of its connections with “another’s word”, to echo Bakhtin: on the one hand, the narrator negotiates with the community, with different kinds of written and oral accounts, even with their own childhood memories; on the other hand, the text communes intertextually with other texts. These connections help in the process of working through or coming to terms with trauma. It is argued that the path towards healthy mourning (as opposed to melancholia) must have recourse to the Other. In the novel, this is achieved via storytelling and subtle intertextual references to previous fictional works.
Both Nesbit and Borges draw on esoteric notions, both invent fiction where extraordinary phenomenon play a role in understanding reality and both exploit the literary possibilities of the esoteric tradition. These affinities denote a more than coincidental correlation and suggest possible influences of the English writer on Borges’ short stories.
Physics and Metaphysics: notes on the poetic spirit of Blake and Whitman
Throughout this article I would like to propose, in sort of a progressive way, a relationship between William Blake´s Poetry and Walt Whitman´s Poetry. I do not intend, of course, to relate the totality of the works of either poet; I´ll just focus on one issue that becomes an evolutive tie between both poetic universes: the metaphysical issue. The relationship finds its base at one same epistemological source, that one exposed by Hegel in his philosophy.
The use of wordplay in advertisements published in men’s magazines. A Comparative study in the UK and Spain
This paper focuses on the use of wordplay in advertisements published in the British and Spanish editions of three well-known men’s magazines, namely Esquire, GQ, and Men’s Health. The function of puns in advertising is explained from the perspective of Relevance Theory. In spite of requiring additional processing effort from the addressee, puns reveal themselves as an economical way of producing additional positive cognitive effects. They also contribute to the creation of a positive attitude towards the promoted product and are useful attention-getting devices. All in all, 208 advertisements were analysed, out of which 49 contained a pun. However, the tendency to use wordplay is higher in the British advertisements than in the Spanish ones, which can be explained by a long tradition of punning in the English-speaking countries and by a higher probability of finding homophones in the English language.
Cohesion in American political rhetoric: "the Gettysburgh Address", "I have a dream" and "Obama’s Inaugural Address"
The present study attempts to add to the existing body of literature on political rhetoric by analyzing in detail the cohesive devices used in three political texts - The Gettysburg Address, I have a dream and Obama’s Inaugural Address – and their potential persuasive function. We first carry out an analysis of cohesion in these three masterpieces of political writing, applying our own model based on the combination and adaptation of those found in Halliday & Hasan’s (1976) and Beaugrande & Dressler’s (1981), in order to cover a wider range of devices and, at the same time, ameliorate some flaws ascribed by critics to Halliday & Hasan’s (1976). The results reveal that, although they share similarities, the texts also showed differences in the cohesive devices employed. We then suggest a new dimension for the analysis of cohesion: what we have termed intertextual cohesion, a device to extend the scope of cohesion beyond the limits of the text. This tool has proved to be very effective to show the resonance of content and form among the three speeches analyzed.
Lesbian detective fiction offers a fundamental challenge to the accepted conventions of detection genre by firstly placing a female character in a traditional male role and secondly allowing her to transgress the conservative heterosexual norms of sexuality and identity. This paper aims to explore the formula of lesbian detection describing how writers such as Barbara Wilson, Mary Wings or Katherine V. Forrest through the creation of their lesbian detectives deal with the transformations applied to the detection genre when they manage to reconcile two apparently contradictory discourses: the detection genre, which assumes a masculine perspective of existence, and feminist thought which attempts to expand the rigid sexual stereotypes. Among the modifications operated in the genre, most of the texts avoid final resolution, reverse the traditional characterization of criminal and victim and are less concerned with the solving of a crime than with offering a subversive social critique revealing sexist practices. In this sense lesbian crime fiction deals with concerns and conflicts which are particularly relevant to women and forces the reader to confront their own feelings on questions concerning female power and social oppression, while challenging the existing structures of law and patriarchal authority.
New (Un)certainty in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation and Colm Tóibín’s "The Master"
This essay aims at exploring how the controversy between postmodernist uncertainty and new movements claiming for a new certainty determine the discourse of Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation (2002) and Colm Tóibín’s The Master (2004). After revising how this controversy has its roots deep in the history of art discourses, the article draws on postpostmodernist theories such as Raoul Edelman’s performatism, Gilles Lipovetsky’s hypermodernism and Alan Kirby’s digimodernism. Although they help us understand texts at the turn of the millennium, they also prove eventually unsatisfactory in some cases. The analysis demonstrates that Self’s and Tóibín’s novels apparently aim at a new sense of certainty to represent homoerotic desire and its manifestations, as a roman à clef and a biofictional text respectively. However, certainty soon proves to be unfeasible as both novels turn to the precariousness and irony characteristic of postmodernism.
‘The happy effect of my writing’: Richardson’s Plotting and Epistolary Theory
The article explores an alternative genealogy for Richardson’s novel of sensibility, and looks at the practice of reading in sentimental novels. Richardson cannot be properly understood if one does not take into account the political culture of his time, including misrepresentation and manipulation of the public. The centre of the article is a discussion of the volte-face scene in Pamela (published in 1740), managed masterfully by Samuel Richardson as plotter. In that scene, the two protagonist bodies are brought to accord and harmony by a reciprocal activity of reading: the interaction of those bodies, in the theatre of reading, leads to an effusion of sentiment and sensibility, which is the decisive factor in moralizing the masculine character, redeemed from rake to model husband, and become the mouthpiece of a new ethos for the 18th century British gentry.
Joycean Pastiches and other literary devises in "La caza salvaje" de Jon Juaristi
The first novel by essayist and poet Jon Juaristi, La caza salvaje, was awarded the Premio Azorín in 2007. Deeply intellectual and erudite, the narrative opened parodying the beginning of one of the most emblematic works in XXth-century literature, James Joyce’s Ulysses. Its aesthetic hybridity, together with its transgression of literary and ideological boundaries, allowed Juaristi to offer a renewed version of Basque nationalism. However, my contention in this article is that Joycean literary echoes, along with his ideological position as regards Irish nationalist leaders, provided Juaristi with more than mere coincidental resonances. Bearing these assumptions in mind, the present study stems from the analysis of Joyce’s aesthetics as a source of inspiration for La caza salvaje, in order to further deepen into the meaning that Joyce’s oeuvre acquires in light of Juaristi’s complete production.
"Distancias cortas: El relato breve en Gran Bretaña, Irlanda y EE UU (1995-2005)" by Blasina Cantizano, José Francisco Fernández, José Ramón Ibáñez, María Elena Jaime de PablJaime de Pablos and Mónica Ramírez
Diccionario de términos jurídicos / Enrique Alcaraz Varó, Brian Hughes
Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time / Mary Waldron
Further Requirements. Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews / Philip Larkin
Emilio Lorenzo Criado, 1918-2002. En recuerdo de un viejo maestro
The sympathetic circularity function in English: an intonation corpus-driven analysis
The study of language functions at a large scale poses a series of difficulties that have to be overcome by a combination of detailed analyses and generalizations. In this sense, discourse markers have fascinated many scholars because they combine a localized interpretation of a piece of discourse with a notable capacity of being used in many different contexts, and with a wide variety of functions. This article describes the ‘sympathetic circularity function’ in a section of the London-Lund Corpus, and its prosodic and contextual realization by discourse markers. The study discusses the relevance of this function from a theoretical perspective and shows that the use of the discourse markers that realize it is not random but, rather, follows a cognitive pattern of proto-typicality that models the cognitive status of the speakers in the corpus. The analysis will show that the identification of the functions of language, and of their realization by discourse markers, is an essential tool to describe language and the cognitive basis of language functions in the speech of a community of discourse users.
A new insight into examinee behaviour in a multiple-choice test: a quantitative approach
In the context of both the facility / difficulty index and the examinees’ ability in a multiple-choice item, this study is an attempt to gain a deeper view of these issues in a test targeted to a personnel selection process. Our analysis compares the data supplied by the Classical Test Theory (CTT) and the Item Response Theory (IRT), and follows examinee behaviour on the distractors in the hope that the information obtained through these theories will give us a better insight not only into the item and examinee ability but also into the role the distractors may play in this sort of test. On the basis of the information provided we claim that if the test was intended to measure a desired level for a personnel selection process, the test designer has not succeeded in providing even a single item where the correct option and appropriate distractors fulfill the expected criteria of a good item, at least for upper intermediate level candidates. Since the degree of difficulty is a matter not only of the item but also of the distractors, the test should be thoroughly revised and many distractors modified.
The influence of genre and register on epistemic modality in spoken English: a preliminary study
Muchos de los estudios que versan sobre la influencia del género y el registro sobre la modalidad tienden a abordar el uso de todas las clases de modalidad en un tipo de texto concreto. Este artículo, al contrario, abarca sólo una clase de modalidad (la epistémica), y da cuenta de su uso en varios géneros del inglés hablado. Esta tarea se ha realizado con la ayuda de seis textos auténticos de 5.000 palabras cada uno. El estudio cuantitativo de los elementos léxicos epistémicos que aparecen en estos textos muestra el alto grado de dependencia de la expresión de la modalidad epistémica con respecto a algunos rasgos de género y registro: el propósito global del texto y los propósitos individuales de los participantes; el grados de planificación; la necesidad de precisión; el tópico del texto, y las relaciones sociales que se dan entre los participantes.
The lexicogrammar of metaphor in the discourse of architects
El presente artículo describe algunas de las metáforas usadas por arquitectos en el género de la reseña arquitectónica haciendo especial hincapié en la forma en que estas (a) aparecen realizadas a nivel léxico-gramatical y (b) aparecen combinadas en los textos analizados (variación metafórica). Este enfoque lingüístico tiene un doble objetivo: por un lado, pretende establecer un puente entre la lingüística cognitiva y la lingüística funcional (distintas y, a la vez, compatibles) y, por otro, intenta reivindicar la importancia de la sintaxis en la investigación de la metáfora. El análisis aquí presentado se ha realizado sobre un corpus de 95 textos procedentes de seis publicaciones dedicadas al diseño arquitectónico, y sigue los postulados teóricos planteados por los trabajos de Lakoff y Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1987) y Lakoff y Turner (1989) así como trabajos dentro de la lingüística aplicada dedicados al estudio de los fenómenos metafóricos (Goatly 1987; Cameron 1999).
Universal Grammar, transfer and variability: a case study
Se examina en este artículo la interlengua inglesa de un sujeto hispano-parlante adulto de nivel avanzado. Se intenta demostrar que la variabilidad de su producción lingüística respecto a algunos aspectos gramaticales nucleares podría reflejar una competencia no nativa basada a la vez en su competencia gramatical nativa y en su capacidad de construcción de nuevas reglas lingüísticas. Una serie de propiedades paramétricas que supuestamente surgen ligadas en la lengua nativa se aprenden por separado y algunas de ellas precisan de corrección para su fijación.
Linking syntax and semantics in Old English verbs of “warning”
Las plantillas léxicas han sido diseñadas como representaciones léxicas que incluyen información semántica y sintáctica dentro de un mismo formato, permitiendo así recoger aquellas regularidades lingüísticas que se dan dentro de un subdominio. Este trabajo propone una plantilla léxica capaz de reflejar el vínculo existente entre la representación sintáctica y semántica de los verbos de habla que designan advertencia en inglés antiguo. Además, dadas las restricciones que impone el análisis emántico de una lengua histórica, la estructura interna de este subdominio será analizada aplicando el Principio de Iconicidad Léxica (Versión Beta)
Efecto de la instrucción con patrones lingüísticos en el aprendizaje léxico: el campo semántico “shine”
The purpose of this research was to test the effect of formal instruction on the learning of English as a foreign language in the semantic field Shine. A Pretest- Posttest design with two dependent varibles (similarity and a lexical test) was used to test the structural change produced in the subjects who took part in this experiment. The number of subjects in this research was 150: 120 students of English as a foreignlanguage and 30 English native speakers. The results were successful in only one dependent variable (the lexical test), which indicate that instruction should be given bearing in mind different factors such as expert patterns.
Of tides and men: history and agency in Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety
En A Place of Greater Safety Hilary Mantel ficcionaliza la revolución francesa y rompe, tanto con la novela histórica tradicional que situaba a personajes de la vida corriente en los márgenes de grandes acontecimientos históricos, como con la influyente construcción de Carlyle y Dickens que habían presentado la revolución como la venganza del pueblo francés contra una aristocracia opresora. Al hacer a tres de los líderes revolucionarios sus protagonistas, Mantel sitúa en primer plano la conexión entre vidas privadas y esfera pública, evita un punto de vista unitario, y plantea la cuestión de la agencia revolucionaria.
The undiscovered country from whose bourn some travelers do return. The final frontier in Poe and Dickinson
El ensayo empieza comentando el relato de Poe, “MS. Found in a Bottle” como una expresión americana del concepto romántico de que la muerte es la fuente de toda imaginación y, como consecuencia, de toda obra de arte. También sugiere que este relato anticipa fenómenos culturales posteriores como la psicología freudiana y las novelas absurdas de Kafka y Beckett. Continua considerando hasta qué punto las diversas cuestiones que Poe trataba, a saber, la idea de la frontera aplicada a las líneas divisorias entre la razón y la sinrazón, entre el lenguaje y el silencio y, finalmente, entre la vida y la muerte, se ven reflejadas en la poesía modernista de Stevens y Eliot. Termina ofreciendo una lectura de algunos poemas de Emily Dickinson, sobre la muerte (n.os 160, 280, 449, 712 y 822), como otra elaboración de este mismo tema, típico tanto del Romanticismo como de la poesía norteamericana.
Between the Self and the Others: Subjective and social consciousness in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here
Este artículo analiza y evalúa la manera en que dos autoras formulan y desarrollan un equilibrio entre la conciencia subjetiva y la social en dos novelas norteamericanas: Jazz, de Toni Morrison, y In Another Place, Not Here, de Dionea Brand. Me propongo explorar este equilibrio en referencia a las cuestiones de clase, género y raza que las novelas ponen de relieve. En primer lugar hago un análisis de los espacios individuales y colectivos con relación a la agencia y al determinismo social; a continuación presto atención a la figura del antepasado y a las técnicas textuales de las que estas escritoras se sirven para sostener su concepción de aquello que constituye un contrapeso entre elecciones estéticas y sueños personales y preocupaciones sociales o colectivas.
“Love is a subject so delightful”: concepto y casuística de amor en el mundo pastoril de la Urania de Mary Wroth
A pesar de la idea general de que el modo pastoril es superficial y escapista en el sentido negativo, es de hecho un tipo de escritura que han usado autores desde la antigüedad clásica hasta nuestros días con fines sociales, políticos y morales. Debido a su origen clásico, el modo pastoril estaba muy bien considerado durante el Renacimiento, periodo en el que fue cultivado por la mayoría de los mejores escritores. Aparte de ser utilizado con objetivos ideológicos, el pastoril era un modo utilizado frecuentemente para tratar el concepto y la casuística de amor. La primera inglesa que escribió ficción narrativa fue Mary Wroth, cuyo Urania (1921) es una novela caballeresco-pastoril escrita en gran medida bajo el modelo de la Arcadia de Philip sydney pero con más énfasis en la cuestión amorosa y en los personajes femeninos, más al modo de la Diana de Montemayor. Los conceptos y casos de amor presentados por Wroth y Montemayor son hasta cierto punto similares pero hay también diferencias significativas que este artículo pretende analizar.
La ‘evaluación’, término escogido por los editores de este volumen para englobar los conceptos de opinión y actitud del hablante, es un campo de estudio actualmente fructífero donde se solapan la semántica, la pragmática y el discurso. En este artículo- reseña se analizan los nueve capítulos que comprende el volumen, descubriendo una variedad de enfoques, tanto léxicos y gramaticales como discursivos, que abordan la expresión en inglés de la opiníon y de la actitud del escritor o hablante. Se incluyen estudios basados en corpus de palabras y expresiones que encierran una carga evaluativa, la evaluación en la narrativa y de la narrativa, actitudes encubiertas en la retórica persuasiva, un modelo sistémco-funcional de la evaluación, y un modelo discursivo de varios niveles aplicado a los textos persuasivos.