Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense

"May" and "must" as inferential evidential markers in a corpus of English scientific texts

2014-01-17T15:41:21+00:00

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

2014-01-17T15:41:21+00:00

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.

Hybridity in Ben Okri’s "Abiku" Trilogy

2014-01-17T15:41:21+00:00

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"

2014-01-17T15:41:21+00:00

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.

Edith Nesbit and Jorge Luis Borges

2014-01-17T15:41:21+00:00

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

2014-01-17T15:41:21+00:00

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.