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Nikola Dobric The Cognitive Approach to Translating Metaphors Revisited - The Case of pure, clear and clean vs. ist and jasan ................................ 99 Daniela Wawra “Connecting definite sounds with definite ideas”: Neo-Darwinian reflections on language evolution: Natural and sexual selection ............................................................... 117 Martina Häcker French-English Linguistic and Cultural Contact in Medieval England: The Evidence of Letters ....................................................................... 133 Morana Luka Logie Barrow and François Poirie, A Full-Bodied Society ...................... 161 Horst Zander Ewald Mengel, Michaela Borzaga, Karin Orantes (eds.), Trauma, Memory and Narrative in South Africa: Interviews ................... 164 Hugo Keiper Merle Tönnies (ed.), Das englische Drama der Gegenwart. Kategorien - Entwicklungen - Modellinterpretationen .......................169 Gabriele Rippl Martin Heusser, Andreas Fischer, Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), Mediality/ Intermediality ........................................................................ 174 Dieter Fuchs Timo Müller, The Self as Object in Modernist Fiction: James, Joyce, Hemingway ..................................................................... 177 Mechthild Gretsch Irmgard Lensing, Das altenglische Heiligenleben .................................... 179 Jörg Dünne Ulfried Reichardt, Globalisierung. Literaturen und Kulturen des Globalen . 182 Der gesamte Inhalt der AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Band 1, 1976 - Band 35, 2010 ist nach Autoren alphabetisch geordnet abrufbar unter http: / / www-gewi.uni-graz.at/ staff/ kettemann This journal is abstracted in: ESSE (Norwich), MLA Bibliography (New York, NY), C doc du CNRS (Paris), CCL (Frankfurt), NCELL (Göttingen), JSJ (Philadelphia, PA), ERIC Clearinghouse on Lang and Ling (Washington, DC), LLBA (San Diego), ABELL (London). Gefördert von der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung und der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Anfragen, Kommentare, Kritik, Mitteilungen und Manuskripte werden an den Herausgeber erbeten (Adresse siehe Umschlaginnenseite). Erscheint halbjährlich. Bezugspreis jährlich € 78,- (Vorzugspreis für private Leser € 56,-) zuzügl. Postgebühren. Einzelheft € 44,-. Die Bezugsdauer verlängert sich jeweils um ein Jahr, wenn bis zum 15. 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" ! # $ % Idiomatic expressions often pose great difficulties in the contrastive analysis of languages, which implies that translating them from one language into another demands in-depth knowledge of the conceptualization properties, cultural characteristics and formal aspects of both the target and the source language in order to cause the least possible amount of ‘noise’ in interpreting the given idiomatic expression in the target language. This paper revisits and expands on cognitive semantic methodology as applied to translating metaphors and illustrates this with the examples of the adjectives pure, clear and clean in English and ist and jasan in Serbian (or more accurately the metaphors they lexicalize). % & One of the most frequently recurring problems both translators and lexicographers encounter is the treatment of idiomatic expressions in language. Due to the combination of cultural and cognitive factors involved in their original conception, such expressions also pose a significant challenge to contrastive linguistics. The present paper tries to account for the apparent ease of translating some metaphors and the utter impossibility of translating others. For this purpose it revisits and expands on a methodology of metaphor correspondence, equivalence and translation based on a cognitive approach combined with corpus and dictionary data, which can be readily applied in practice, both in individual work as well as on a larger scale in the production of dictionaries. The cognitive approach to meaning employed in the paper focuses on semantic representations inherent in individual expressions and it is ' ( & ) & * ) ) ! " #$ " based on the universally applicable metalanguage of semantic concepts in combination with contemporary metaphor theory. 1 Conceptual primitives (Wierzbicka 1996: 34), image schemas (Johnson 1987), and basic notions (Grkovi -Mejdžor 2008: 53) can be seen as universal pre-language firstorder concepts (Danesi 1993: 121), which serve as basic building blocks of cognition. These are supposed to be transferred by the cognitive apparatus - influenced by discourse and culture (Burr 1995) - to metaphorical concepts (Johnson & Lakoff 1980: 7) and to be then expressed by the lexico-grammatical means of the specific language. 2 The cognitive approach applied here 3 is complemented by a sociosemantic approach to language (Teubert 2010), which observes the cultural and social influences involved in the encoding of meaning, with corpora serving as the empirical basis for the analysis (Dobri 2009). % + * , The paper presents a short analysis of the metaphorical potential of three synonymous adjectives in English, viz. pure, clear and clean, also providing a contrastive view by comparing them to their counterparts in Serbian, viz. ist and jasan. These adjectives were chosen due to their similarity both in non-metaphoric meaning and (as will be shown later) in their conceptualization properties. The current chapter will present an overview of all corresponding senses of the given adjectives. The analysis of metaphors and the concept(s) they lexicalize requires a thorough analysis of the senses exhibited by the lexemes at hand. The goal is to create a pool of corresponding senses which can be used for translating metaphors in the most appropriate way. For identifying the different senses of the three English adjectives I used the New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE), which was chosen due to its cognitive approach to sense discrimination, in combination with the 1 For a full history and overview of a cognitive approach to linguistics, and cognitive semantics in particular, see e.g. Dirven and Verspoor (1998), Evans and Green (2006), Ungerer and Schmid (1996). 2 It is important to bear in mind that conceptual/ semantic primitives are indeed Aristotelian and atomic in nature and can be argued to belong not to the cognitive framework but rather to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. NSM, though cognitive-conceptual in nature, can perhaps be better characterized as neostructuralist because it foremost constitutes a compositional approach to the description of meaning (Geeraerts 2010). In the paper primitive will, however, be used to refer to the cognitive atom of meaning shared by the given idiomatic expressions. 3 The combinatory approach of first-order semantic primitives (as I see them) and metaphorical concepts is based on the assumption of a hierarchical structure of concepts as it developed in phylogenesis and as it is replicated in ontogenesis (c.f. Danesi 1993 or Halford 1985). #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' frequency data from the Corpus of Contemporary American (COCA). 4 The frequency data is useful for distinguishing the prototypical from the marginal senses of the adjectives, which allows a better insight into their semantic properties. 5 As far as Serbian sources are concerned, due to the lack of a dictionary satisfying the needs of this paper regarding a cognitive approach, the senses presented are based on a manual analysis of 9,751 occurrences of the two adjectives in all inflectional forms in the Corpus of the Contemporary Serbian Language (CCSL). 6 The senses were established by using the corpus-based method of clustering citations (Kilgarriff 1997: 92) 7 in combination with my native speaker intuition. Figure 1 presents a contrastive overview of corresponding senses. The left-hand column of the figure shows all of the senses in English corresponding to the senses in Serbian given in the right-hand column. The first striking observation is that, apart from the two senses in Serbian ‘devoid of detail, simple’ and ‘(of plants) organic in production’, 8 all meanings identified in Serbian can be interpreted as congruent with most of the senses identified in English. 9 From a practical point of view, this is a favorable outcome since it facilitates the process of translating metaphors, especially when there is no cognitive match. 4 The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the largest (400 million words) freely-available representative and balanced corpus of (American) English. 5 The prototypicality of senses was attested according to their frequencies in the corpus (Durkin and Manning 1989). 6 The Corpus of the Contemporary Serbian Language is a corpus of 24 million words (of written text only) developed and maintained by the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Belgrade. 7 The meanings extracted from the analyzed corpus have also been cross-referenced with the Re nik srpskohrvatskog književnog jezika (1967), which even in the light of newer publications is still considered the most comprehensive dictionary of Serbian (Serbo-Croatian). 8 Bez suvišnih detalja, jednostavno, and (za biljke) organskog porekla. 9 Some of the identified meanings in English were not found in Serbian but this is not relevant for the present analysis, since only the corresponding ones are of interest for this paper. , "- . & ) " / " % 0 0 1 0 2 % / " % * " " 0 " ' % - #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' % ,! The research presented in this paper takes into account both universal cognitive notions and the cultural sociosemantic values contained within metaphors, which are especially significant when translating between culturally diverse languages. Different societies classify their environments in different ways, both culturally and (under the influence of discourse) cognitively, which makes translating metaphors a rather demanding task. The extent to which cultural experience and semantic and cognitive aspects are shared by two languages determines how simple and straightforward the translation will be. It is easy to see how ‘universal’ metaphors, stemming from pre-conceptual experience (Johnson 1987), such as metaphors relating to the human body for instance, are comparatively simpler to transfer between languages, since they represent similar ideas spanning different cultures and usually have ready-and-waiting equivalents in the target language. However, they represent a minority of cases, most metaphors being, to some extent, culturally conditioned. Based on the work of authors who have investigated the problem of the interlingual correspondence between metaphors (cf. Mandelblit 1995, Al-Hasnawi 2007), three schemes of cognitive mapping relevant to metaphor comparison and, in turn, to metaphor translation are proposed. These can be psycholinguistically defined as based on “the difference in reaction time due to a conceptual shift that the translator is required to make between the conceptual mapping systems of the source and target languages” (Mandelblit 1995: 493) and the language structures he or she has to use to come up with a suitable interpretation. The three schemes, which also result in three possible strategies of translation, are: 1. Same Mapping Structure (SMS); 2. Comparable Mapping Structure (CMS); and 3. Different Mapping Structure (DMS). The Same Mapping Structure group encompasses metaphors with the same conceptual makeup which are also lexicalized similarly. Comparable Mapping Structure refers to metaphors which do have the same conceptual content, but differ in their lexicalizations. The Different Mapping Structure group encompasses metaphors which do not match cognitively and need to be adapted. This means that the translator plays the role of a converter, himor herself relating the conceptual mapping into the target language in order to facilitate full understanding. In such a case the translator must try to find a conceptual domain which, though not lexicalized or conceptualized in the same way, may serve as an equivalent. In this process a thorough analysis of the socio-cultural backgrounds of both the source and target languages is essential. Likewise, in such cases the translator can still draw on the data yielded by a corpus-based analysis of se- mantic correspondence and the cognitive insights into metaphorization in both target and source language the former allows (as will be shown in the paper). If this strategy fails, the translator can only relate the metaphor using a simile, a paraphrase, a footnote explanation, or s/ he may even omit it altogether. To explore these schemes more thoroughly, a corpus analysis coupled with relevant dictionary references 10 was used to extract all of the possible cases of metaphors containing one of the given adjectives, both in English and Serbian. The results of this analysis are presented in Figure 2 and are described in detail below. The concepts lexicalized through the metaphors are identified along with the metaphors which can be seen as universal or at least as common to the two languages under investigation, and suggestions regarding their translation are proposed. -% ! & , The adjectives pure, clear and clean in English lexicalize the underlying primitive of light (which, etymologically speaking, is the meaning the three adjectives may have shared in Proto-Indo-European, cf. Pokorny 1959 11 ), usually conceptualized as a positive notion, whether physical or abstract. Such a conceptual first-order primitive can be seen in a number of metaphors, not only lexicalized by the five adjectives presented, but also by other expressions (i.e. a candle in the night, illuminate the path, abide in the light, and many more). 12 All attested metaphors represent expressions stemming from an intermediary metaphorical concept describable as ‘(the unobstructed passage or reflection of) light is good’, which is then realized in the conceptual metaphors MORALITY IS PURITY , ( POSITIVE ) QUALITY IS PURITY and CLARITY IS PURITY , under which all of the examples found in my data can be subsumed (with the exception of one idiosyncratic metaphor not belonging to any group marked by a metaphorical concept). Figure 2 shows how the underlying primitive of light spreads through more intermediary metaphorical concepts and is lexicalized by individual metaphorical expressions. 10 The following sources were used for identifying English metaphors: Sommer and Weis 1996, and Wilkinson 2002; in combination with the described English language corpus (COCA). These additional sources were used to avoid manually searching through a large number of corpus citations in English, which would in practice be the more objective and preferable way, especially by applying some of the existing strategies (cf. Deignan 2005). The frequency searches were thus performed based on the relevant examples of metaphors listed in these two dictionaries. As this option was not available for Serbian as there is no special dictionary of metaphors, the full number of 9,751 citations of both adjectives in all inflectional forms was manually searched for metaphors. 11 At least as far as a reconstructed language warrants such conclusions. 12 The identified metaphors are given individually in the following section of the paper as part of the analysis. #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' The ‘flow’ of the metaphorization, i.e. the progress from primitive firstorder concepts via less abstract conceptual schemes (for English metaphors in Figure 2 and for Serbian metaphors in Figure 3) to concrete lexicalizations, is represented by arrows. The attested prototypical sense of pure is ‘not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material’, in both a physical and an abstract sense (NODE). Looking at clear, its primary meaning in contemporary English describes a physical condition, ‘free of anything that marks or darkens something’, which is metaphorized together with the corresponding abstract sense ‘free of any obstructions or unwanted objects’. Clean, which in Latin originally had a meaning closer to the contemporary prototypical sense of pure (OED), lost this meaning when it was adopted into English. Furthermore, clean lost a lot of its abstract meanings and now ‘free from dirt, marks, or stains’ is its prototypical sense. The analysis reveals that clean appears in 12 metaphors (plus one idiosyncratic metaphor), while pure and clear, contrary to expectations, are only found in 6 and 5 metaphors, respectively. Even though it mostly occurs in concrete senses in contemporary language, clean still seems to be very common in metaphorical expressions, which can perhaps be attributed to its original meaning ‘shiny, radiant’ it is claimed to have had in Proto-Indo-European (cf. Pokorny 1959), which has apparently survived in metaphors. , "- - + )% 0 - Serbian lexicographic sources for this kind of analysis are scarce, to say the least, so deriving senses from the Serbian corpus (CCSL) 13 was the only possible solution. As with the English metaphors, we can observe the same underlying concept and the same metaphorical concepts being lexicalized (Figure 3), with the whole flow of metaphorization roughly being the same. The adjective ist appears in 13 metaphors in the analysis and its prototypical sense, as shown by the corpus analysis, is ‘free from dirt, marks, or stains’ in a physical sense, which is also extended to abstract senses. Jasan appears only 4 times with its abstract prototypical sense of ‘easy to perceive, understand or interpret’. , "- - + )% * 3 * - .% / 0& , In the following, I will demonstrate the roles played both by the universality or translingual relevance of the attested metaphors and their social conditioning by reviewing possible translation solutions. It has been shown that the same underlying concept of ‘light’ and in most cases also 13 The identified metaphors are given individually in the following section of the paper as part of the analysis. #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' the metaphorical concepts of ‘(the unobstructed passage or reflection of) light is good’ inhere in the English and the Serbian metaphors. This suggests that the two languages, sharing a common ancestry and thus including etymologically related lexical material, display cognitive and concomitant cultural similarities, which, as we will see, is of great help in the process of translation. The metaphors are categorized according to the three schemes introduced above. 1. Metaphors with the same conceptual structure and the same lexicalization pattern (Same Mapping Structure) 14 : These cases cause the fewest problems regarding their translation from English into Serbian and vice versa, since they have an easily identifiable and accessible correspondent in the target language. Correspondences of this kind appear in the two languages for three possible reasons: (a.) the metaphor at hand represents a part of universal human experience, rooted in our common biological and cognitive makeup, and is thus expressed by the same lexical means (panhuman metaphors); (b.) the metaphor is part of a common cultural heritage shared by the speakers of different languages (pancultural metaphors, connected to religion and other social institutions); and (c.) cultural and lexical borrowing (either from a third source such as Latin or through interlanguage contact, e.g. from English into Serbian). These are examples 15 : E: A clean hand needs no washing.; God looks to clean hands, not to full ones. S: Ne e on svakom da pruži ruke. Tek tako! Njegove ruke su iste. Ruke pravde! ‘He will not to anyone reach out the hands. Just like that! His hands are clean. The hands of justice.’ E: The search for perfection […] of idealists, the purest of heart. S: Samo ovek ista srca može da na ini ikonu pred kojom e se moliti - objašnjava naš sagovornik. ‘Only men with clean hearts can construct the icon they will pray for […] explains our interlocutor’ 14 How the etymology of the metaphors presented conditions metaphorical equivalence will not be discussed in this paper. 15 Metaphors marked by an asterisk were not identified in the corpora and references, but are the my translation suggestions, and as such fit the designated groups, since they can be translated word-for-word preserving both the conceptualization and the lexicalization pattern. E: Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise S: […] gde kaže da Bog ima dva hrama; jedan od njih predstavlja ceo svet, a njegov sveštenik je slovo Božije; a drugi je ista i razumna duša, iji je sveštenik ovek. ‘[…]who says that god has two sanctuaries (temples); one represents the whole world, and his priest is the letter of God; and the other is the clean and reasonable soul whose priest is mankind.’ E: A clear conscience is a coat of mail./ A clear conscience is a good pillow S: Pitala se mogu li mirno da spavaju oni koji tvrde da im je savest ista i da su vladali demokratski i po zakonu. ‘She asked herself whether those who claim to have a clean conscience and have acted democraticly and according to the law can sleep quietly’ *S: Znam da sam pred sobom nedužan, ist i nevin kao jagnje, ali ne i pred razjarenim mužem sirote žene. *E: I know I stand before myself free of guilt, pure and innocent as a lamb, but not before the angry husband of the poor wife. *S: Naš prota je pred Bogom ist. *E: Our pastor is clean before God. *S: Onda otvori o i i, odjednom iste glave i zdrav, odmoran i odlu an da nešto u ini. *E: Then he opened his eyes and with a clear head and healthy, well rested and determine to do something. 2. Metaphors with the same conceptual structure and different lexicalization pattern (Comparable Mapping Structure) Although English and Serbian metaphors in this group share the same conceptual structure, they display differences regarding lexicalization. Such metaphors count as equivalents, perfectly conveying all of the cognitive and cultural content, except for their lexical structure. For instance, if we look at the first two examples below, they both convey the sense of ‘having all previous (usually bad) events settled and erased and having a new opportunity to start over without prejudice’. Both slate and ra un ‘bill, invoice, a sheet listing costs’ represent the idea of a score of debt eventually settled in some way, with the same cultural connotations. But unlike in the previous group, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the lexical representations. E: To have a clear slate. S: Ali ono što želi Stepašin jesu isti ra uni, barem za ono što je do sada u injeno. ‘But what Stepašin wants are clear account/ calculus, at least for what has been done so far.’ #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' E: Though nature had given […] absolutely pure and without alloy. S: Važno je biti ist. ist - ponavljao je moj drug Avram Mitrinovi . ‘It is important to be pure/ clean. Pure/ Clean - repeated my friend Avram Mitrovic’ E: The explanation was really clear-cut. S: Da, sigurno ne krijem, vrlo u biti jasan i glasan protivnik njima. ‘Yes, surely I am not hiding it, I will be a very clear and loud opponent to them.’ […] diže glas, ali i kad je vrlo tih zna da bude kristalno jasan. ‘he raises the voice, but when he is very quiet he can be cristal clear’ Zašto? Odgovor je kratak i jasan. ‘why? The answer is short and clear.’ *E: A clean glove often hides a dirty hand. *S: Zlo je esto prikriveno lepim. ‘Evil is often hidden by something nice/ beautiful.’ *E: Keep your nose clean. *S: Ostati ist. ‘Keep clean.’ *S: Samo oni koji su iste svesti, uma i razuma mogu da prihvate Hristovu nauku. *E: Only those of unclouded [‘clear’] minds, intellects and reasons can embrace [‘receive’] the teachings of Christ. 3. Metaphors with different conceptual structures and different (or the same 16 ) lexicalization patterns (Different Mapping Structure) 17 Metaphors in this group serve as good examples of different cultures and societies conceptualizing experiences in different ways (Wierzbicka 1992). This category poses the greatest challenge for the translator, as it is up to him/ her to interpret the meaning of the metaphor, viewing it from an additional socio-cultural and discourse standpoint, and to reproduce it, using some of the mentioned techniques, in the target language. This is the point where it becomes difficult to follow the outlined datadriven approach of using corpora and lexicographic sources other than for excluding the two mapping structures mentioned above. The translator must now creatively replace the figurative meaning of the source language with a target language solution that does not cause ‘noise’. The following examples and the suggestions for their translations are categorized according to the type of translation procedure applied: 16 Theoretically, the lexicalization could be the same despite differences in the conceptual structure, but no such case was found in the data. 17 Legend: Es - English as a source language; Et - English as a target language; Ss - Serbian as a source language; St - Serbian as a target language. a. direct translation or paraphrasing ES: He's Mr. Clean. St: On je pravi istunac. ‘He is a real purist [? ? ].’ ES: Be/ do the clean potato. St: Uradi pravu stvar. ‘Do the right thing.’ ES: He was respected as being clean-fingered/ with clean fingers. St: Poštovan je jer je nepotkupljiv/ nekorumpiran. ‘He is respected because he is uncorrupted.’ ES: Julia always spoke with a clean tongue. St: Džulija je uvek govorila pristojnim jezikom. ES: This coffee is pure milk. St: Ova kafa je ist kvalitet. ‘This coffee is pure quality.’ ES: Simon has a clean bill of health. St: Sajmon je zdrav kao dren. ‘Simon is as healthy as a cornel.’ ES: The coast’s clear. St: Nema nikoga i sve je isto. ‘There is no one and everything is clear/ clean.’ SS: […] otkazali su svoje u eš e na simpozijumu kulturni atešei Austrije, Nema ke i Rusije što smo primili ista obraza. Et: […] the cultural attachés of Austria, Germany and Russia cancelled their participation in the conference and we took it as no fault of ours. ‘[…] which we took/ received with clean cheeks.’ SS: Zamislite […] ? ! - jasan je Lon ar. Et: Imagine […] ? ! - Loncar was resolute [‘clear’] SS: Pitao me polako: - Reci ti meni, jesi li ist? Et: He asked me slowly - Tell me, are you sane or not? [‘are you clean? ’] SS: […] izumitelj i nije baš pri istoj pameti. Et: […] the one who invented it was a bit crazy. ‘The inventor is not really close to a clear mind.’ ES: Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way. St: Gde jasni tok razuma nije prestao da postoji. #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' SS: Spominjao sam ikone, svetitelje, ali baba - je bila ube ena da tu nisu ista posla. Et: I was talking about icons, prophets, but the old woman - she was convinced that everything was not right there [‘that these were not clean jobs.’] b. translation into a simile ES: Nouns and verbs are almost pure metal; adjectives are cheaper ore. St: Imenice i glagoli su kao isti metal; pridevi su ve jeftinija ruda. c. footnote/ explanation ES: The Simpsons are pure merino. St: Rani Australijski doseljenici koji nisu deportovani nego su svojevoljno emigrirali. ‘Among the first Australian settlers who were not deported but voluntarilly immigrated.’ The shaded fields in Figure 4 represent corresponding metaphors found in the corpora. The unshaded fields contain metaphors which do not occur in the corpora of both languages but which could exist judging from the results of the cognitive and lexical analysis and have therefore been coupled with suggestions for translation. Bidirectional arrows with full lines represent metaphors of the irst scheme described (same mapping structure), sharing conceptual mapping and lexicalization. Bidirectional arrows with dotted lines represent metaphors of the second scheme (comparable mapping structure), sharing conceptual mapping but not lexicalization. Unidirectional arrows with dash-and-dot lines (pointing from the source to the target language) represent the third scheme (different mapping structure), i.e. metaphors which neither display the same conceptual mapping nor the same lexicalization. , "- 4- + )% ' ' 2- #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' Out of the 24 identified English source language metaphors and the 17 Serbian source language metaphors, 9 English and 10 Serbian ones can be classified as equivalent (either both in conceptualization and lexicalization or only in conceptualization) in the analyzed corpora (5 Es and 4 Ss metaphors belonging to SMS and 4 Es and 6 Ss metaphors to CMS). Out of the translated metaphors, 2 have been identified as belonging to the first group (1 Es and 1 Ss), 2 as belonging to the second group (again 1 Es and 1 Ss). The remaining 16 pairs belong to the third group. Another interesting aspect is that 5 of the 12 English and 3 of the 9 Serbian source language metaphors with no equivalents found in the other language were translated using one of the equivalent senses given in Figure 1. This underlines the importance of a good insight into the semantic aspects of the given lexicalization items. The other metaphors were translated using different linguistic means, as described above (7 Es metaphors and 6 Ss ones). % & The presented analysis outlines the conditions that need to be satisfied in order to suitably translate a given metaphor: the translator has to (a.) understand both the universal and the socio-cultural value of the metaphorical concepts involved; (b.) be aware of the cultural and specific discourse-related differences and similarities between societies; and (c.) have access to appropriate lexical tools (such as good corpora, dictionaries and encyclopedias). The translation of metaphors should firstly be approached from a cognitive perspective, trying to find appropriate conceptual equivalence (of any form) rather than viewing metaphors only as linguistic or stylistic phenomena. Additionally, sociosemantic insights into the lexicalization properties of the cognitive notions in question are required. In the absence of a cognitive equivalent, the translator must turn to other translation tools at his/ her disposal (such as simile, paraphrasing, etc.), which might result in more or less successful solutions. Even though the scope of this paper is limited and would need to be further expanded (emphasizing here a need for a dictionary of metaphors in Serbian and the need for the application of cognitive semantic methodology to dictionaries of metaphors generally), it nonetheless strongly highlights the benefits a lexicographical approach to metaphors can gain from taking this kind of cognitive perspective combined with a sociocultural view and corpus linguistic methods. Only if these conditions are fully met can we expect to successfully translate a given metaphor, causing no or minimal ‘noise’ both in communication and in cognition. # Al-Hasnawi, Ali (2007). “A Cognitive Approach to Translating Metaphors.” Translation Journal 11/ 3. http: / / translationjournal.net/ journal/ 41metaphor.htm (31 March 2011). Burr, Vivian (1995). An Introduction to Social Constructionism. London & New York: Routledge. Danesi, Marcel (1993). Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language. 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(1985). “A Hierarchy of Concepts in Cognitive Development.” Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto, April 25-28. Johnson, Mark/ George Lakoff (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, Mark (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kilgarriff, Adam (1997). “I don’t believe in word senses.” Computers and the Humanities 3. 91-113. Mandelblit, Nili (1995). “The Cognitive View of Metaphor and its Implications for Translation Theory,” Translation and Meaning 3. 483-495. Teubert, Wolfgang (2010). Meaning, Discourse and Society. CambridgE: CUP. Ungerer, Friedrich/ Hans-Jörg Schmid (1996). An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London: Longman. Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Semantics, Culture and Cognition. Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations. Oxford: OUP. Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). SemanticS: Primes and Universals. Oxford: OUP. + & Corpus of Contemporary American English (n.d.). http: / / www.americancorpus.org/ (11 February 2010). Korpus savremenog srpskog jezika (Corpus of the Contemporary Serbian Language) http: / / korpus.matf.bg.ac.yu/ prezentacija/ korpus.html (11 February 2010). New Oxford Dictionary of English (2001). Oxford: OUP. #% & " ' ()) *% # " + )% ' Oxford English Dictionary (1989, 2 nd edition). Oxford: OUP. Pokorny, Julius (1959). Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. French & European Publications. Re nik srpskohrvatskog književnog jezika (1967). Novi Sad, Zagreb: Matica srpska i Matica hrvatska. Sommer, Elyse/ Dorrie Weis (1996). Metaphor Dictionary. Detroit: Valuable Ink Press. Wilkinson, Peter (2002). Thesaurus of Traditional English Metaphors. London: Routledge. ) 5 / " % (5 * 1 ( ) 6( 67 ' 8 9 " Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de NEUERSCHEINUNG JETZT BESTELLEN! Deborah L. Madsen / Mario Klarer (eds.) The Visual Culture of Modernism Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 26 2011, 265 S. €[D] 49,00/ SFr 65,50 ISBN 978-3-8233-6673-7 The Visual Culture of Modernism offers a wide-ranging exploration of intertextual relations that bring together artists, artistic forms and artistic periods in response to the question: what is the relevance of early twentiethcentury American Modernism to our present historical moment? Scholars from Europe and America develop responses to this question based on the philosophical heritage of modernity and in the context of the range of Modernist cultural praxis. The essays collected here explore links between literary and cultural Modernism, the relationship between the concepts of modernity and Modernism, and the legacy of Modernism in the late twentieth century and the contemporary period. Cinema, cinematic paratexts, television, the visual arts of painting and photography, poetry, fiction, and drama are among the artistic forms discussed in terms of issues ranging from cinematic and stage reinterpretations of Modernist literary texts to the genre of televisual melodrama and the trope of racial passing. The essays argue that visuality remains an urgent concern, from the Modernist period to our present age of media revolution. 093911 Auslieferung Oktober 2011.indd 18 24.10.11 13: 59 1 & 2 34 5 67 2 & & 4 5 & 8& : 2 In this paper different theories about and approaches to language evolution and variation will be discussed with a special focus on Charles Darwin’s thoughts on the matter. Major questions that will be addressed are: Is language different in kind from animal communication systems? What is the nature of language? How did it evolve? What is at the heart of the language faculty? And last but not least: What have been the major driving forces in language evolution? % &* * **& , * Language has - according to Charles Darwin - “justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals” (Darwin 1871: 53). However, “[i]t is not the mere power of articulation that distinguishes man from other animals, for as every one knows, parrots can talk” (Darwin 1871: 54). Darwin also cites the example of dogs: […] since being domesticated, [the dog] has learnt to bark […] in at least four or five distinct tones. […] we have the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of anger; the yelping or howling bark of despair, as when shut up; that of joy, as when starting on a walk with his master; and the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wishing for a door or window to be opened. (Darwin 1871: 54) So man "is not the only animal that can […] express what is passing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another” (Archbishop Whately, quoted in Anthropological Review, 1864, p. 158, quoted in Darwin 1871: 54). ' ( & ) & * ) ) ! " #$ " : 2 What is, however, peculiar to humans is “[a]rticulate language”. Darwin defines it as the ability to connect “definite sounds with definite ideas” (Darwin 1871: 54). Most linguists today (e.g. Yule 2006) would agree that our human communication system is different from that of animals in that we have got a finite system of material discrete signs - be they phonetic or graphic ones - that can be combined to express a potentially infinite number of ideas or meanings (cf. Dobrovolsky 1996: 657 and 656-658 for an overview of crucial differences but also overlaps between animal communication systems and language). % & & Today there is still a heated debate going on in linguistics as to the nature of language: Is it innate or learned? Are all members of the human species equipped with a universal grammar - as Chomsky argues - or do we learn language during our socialization with the help of general cognitive abilities? Is language basically an instinct, as Pinker (1994) for example already claims in the title of his book The Language Instinct or do we need considerable input from our social and cultural environment to develop the ability to speak? Savage-Rumbaugh/ Rumbaugh (1993: 106) for example do not see syntax as being innate as is claimed in the theory of Universal Grammar. According to them it is rather a “skill which arises naturally from the need to process sequences of words rapidly” (Savage- Rumbaugh/ Rumbaugh 1993: 86). Darwin’s answer to the question whether language is innate or learned is clear: on the one hand, language is “certainly […] not a true instinct”, “as every language has to be learnt” (Darwin 1871: 55). On the other hand, “man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children” (Darwin 1871: 55). Darwin then uses the analogy of birds’ songs to further explain the nature of language: The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, for all the members of the same species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds that have the power of singing exert this power instinctively; but the actual song, and even the call-notes, are learnt from their parents or foster-parents. These sounds […] “are no more innate than language is in man” 33 . The first attempts to sing may be compared to the imperfect endeavour in a child to babble. The young males continue practising, or, as the bird-catchers say, recording, for ten or eleven months. Their first essays show hardly a rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older we can perceive what they are aiming at; and at last they are said ‘to sing their song round’. (Darwin 1871: 55) ; & * " 2 % < ___ 33 Hon. Daines Barrington in ‘Philosoph. Transactions’, 1773, p. 262. See also Dureau de la Malle, in ‘Ann. Des Sc. Nat.’ 3 rd series, Zoolog. tom. x. p. 119. [original footnote, Darwin 1871: 55] Just as birds’ songs are not totally innate and not expressed exclusively based on instinct, so it is for language. Both abilities require learning. What is innate with regard to language is that we instinctively utter indiscriminate sounds when we feel certain emotions like pain or joy for example. However, the discrete symbols of our communication system and their value - i.e. their meaning - and the rules of combination have to be learned. They are culturally transmitted. % 9 & Darwin also compares language variation to variation in birdsong: Nestlings which have learnt the song of a distinct species, as with the canary-birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and transmit their new song to their offspring. The slight natural differences of song in the same species inhabiting different districts may be appositely compared, as Barrington remarks, "to provincial dialects; " and the songs of allied, though distinct species may be compared with the languages of distinct races of man. (Darwin 1871: 55f.) Darwin’s observations are in line with current research: not only humans but also birds for example are good at vocal imitation. In the same way that humans have an innate “predisposition” to produce sounds, birds have. However, both species must then learn how to produce discrete sounds and combine them to form words and songs (cf. Dobrovolsky 1996: 638f., 641; Kenneally 2007: 145). In the often elaborate and complex songs, individual variation between the birds can be observed - just like in the language of humans. One important difference to note here, however, is that “it is generally only male birds that sing” (Dobrovolsky 1996: 639). The main purpose of the birdsong according to mainstream research is “to announce and delimit the territory of the male and to attract a mate” (Dobrovolsky 1996: 639). I will come back to this later. Birds also have dialects and researchers have even established isoglosses on the basis of “variations in the melody of song syllables or themes” (Dobrovolsky 1996: 639). -% & & How did language evolve? Darwin states: “[…] no philologist […] [would assume] that any language has been deliberately invented; each : 2 has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps” (Darwin 1871: 55). Here Darwin argues against a saltationist view on language evolution - the idea that there were no simpler precursors of language but that there was some “Big Bang” which led to a gigantic mutation that was language (cf. e.g. Bickerton 1990: 171, 180, 190, 256; Pinker 1994: 342). According to our present knowledge about evolutionary processes, however, it seems highly unlikely that the language faculty did appear suddenly by a spontaneous macromutation during the evolution of our species. But - as Burling remarks - “a surprising number of linguists have found it so difficult to imagine how a language could have evolved gradually, that they have resorted to a transforming mutation as the only possible explanation” (Burling 2005: 89f.). This, however, is not how evolution works. On the contrary, it is the hallmark and major asset of evolutionary theory that it can explain how very complex features can develop in organisms from very simple beginnings (cf. Dawkins 1986: XVI, 1). Thus, “to imagine that a language could be put together by a single mutation makes about as much sense as to suppose that a jumbo jet could be assembled by a hurricane” (Burling 2005: 90). It is more plausible to assume with Darwin that language developed gradually. In line with Darwin’s outline, recent research like Lee et al. (2009) “argue[s] for a view of language evolution in which a group of hominids has acquired the ability to make articulate sounds and to use them to form words, eventually producing a substantial lexicon” (Lee et al. 2009: 4). In addition, they suggest that language further evolved in the interaction between hominids “as they attempt to express meanings with consistent form over time” (Lee et al. 2009: 4). And Burling states that “words must have come first in the course of human evolution” as “syntax needs words, while even single lonely words that have no syntax can easily convey meanings” (Burling 2005: 19). Lee et al. develop their theory of language evolution on the basis of complexity theory. Here, “complex adaptive systems are seen to emerge […] 1 from the interaction of a large number of agents and/ or large number of items” (Lee et al. 2009: 4). Savage-Rumbaugh/ Rumbaugh (1993: 106) argue for a view of language as “the inevitable outcome of the social interactions of intelligent creatures.” “The tendency to share resources and to cooperate in their procurement set the stage for the use of sounds to coordinate interactions” (Savage-Rumbaugh/ Rumbaugh 1993: 86). With such a view on language evolution, “humankind may lose some 1 I left out spontaneously here as it could be misinterpreted as implying a saltationist view of evolution that propagates that complex adaptive systems came into existence by a macromutation. However, according to evolutionary theory, only simple beginnings of the later complex systems emerge spontaneously. ; & * " 2 % < sense of uniqueness, but gain in return a deeper understanding of itself” (Savage-Rumbaugh/ Rumbaugh 1993: 106). Darwin’s thoughts on the origins of language contain parts of different theories on the origins of language: (a.) onomatopoeic, (b.) gestural, and (c.) interjectional theories: in Darwin’s words: “I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification [a.], aided by signs and gestures [b.], of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals [a.], and man’s own instinctive cries [c.]” (Darwin 1871: 56). Recently, the hypothesis that gestural language preceded sound language has gained momentum. According to Rizzolatti’s mirror-systemhypothesis, which is based on the discovery of the so called mirror neurons, language developed out of the reciprocal use of gestures (cf. Rizzolatti/ Sinigaglia 2008: 159-171). Mirror neurons ‘mirror’ or reflect actions of one individual in the brain of another individual. These neurons would not only fire when you perform an action yourself but also when you just observe an action being performed by somebody else (cf. Jäger 2003: 42). Mirror neurons were first discovered in macaque monkeys and later also in humans (Jäger 2003: 42). The question is, however, why an auditory communication system evolved when a gestural one was already in the making. One answer could be that gestural and vocal communication co-evolved. Burling proposes that already existing adaptations for singing could have been used for early controlled vocalizations (Burling 2005: 124f.). I will come back to that theory later. A possible scenario for the development of vocal communication could in general have been as follows: with the help of cognition, individuals can extract regularities or recurrences and ‘invariants’ out of the flow of experiences (von Glasersfeld 2008: 34). So when an instinctive sound meets the human ear only sporadically and uncoordinatedly, this will not lead to cognitive reflection and consequently not to the emergence of linguistic units. But the more often a certain sound is experienced and when this sound is at the same time even linked to a certain gesture, the more likely it is that the individual registers the link, joins sound and gesture into one unit and links them to a mental concept like “Beware of the enemy! ”. In the course of time more links are added and they are coordinated with the already existing ones. This process continues as long as there are expression needs and in the course of time humans rely predominantly on vocal communication. Note here that the interpretation of instinctive sounds and gestures will have preceded their voluntary controlled production (cf. Burling 2005: 124f.). .% : & & ,; Not only humans have the ability to use sounds as media for mental concepts. The primatologist de Waal describes the following incident: : 2 […] as a student I worked in a laboratory in Utrecht where one scientist regularly caught monkeys out of a large group with a net. At first, the monkeys gave warning calls whenever they saw him approach with his dreadful net, but later they also did so when he only walked by. Still later, years after his research had ceased, I noticed that monkeys too young to have known the threat he once posed alarm-called for this man, and for no one else. They must have deduced from the reaction of their elders that he was not to be trusted. I recently heard that the group kept this alarm-call tradition up for decades, still always aimed at the same person! (de Waal 2001: 15) As far as we know today, the linkage of sounds and mental concepts that can also be observed in the animal kingdom is simpler in form than our complex language system. Language organizes, segments, structures, categorizes and coordinates our experiences and it influences our experiences. Language facilitates orientation and survival in the respective environments we live in and the coordination and cooperation with other people. In this way language is an extension and medium of our cognition: language mediates the experiences of the individual and it allows them to be experienced by others. So language must have originated and evolved in the interaction with others. Constructionist theories describe language as a special kind of mutually adapted action (cf. von Glasersfeld 2008: 36) and as being the means with which we socially construct or define reality or meaning (cf. Hejl 2008: 126f.). In the words of Maturana (1982: 73): Die basale Funktion der Sprache als eines Systems des Orientierungsverhaltens besteht nicht in der Übermittlung von Information oder in der Beschreibung einer unabhängigen Außenwelt, über die wir sprechen können, sondern in der Erzeugung eines konsensuellen Verhaltensbereiches zwischen sprachlich interagierenden Systemen im Zuge der Entwicklung eines kooperativen Interaktionsbereichs. 2 Language allows us to validate our own constructions of reality through verbal communication with others. When our constructions are confirmed, this increases the viability of a construction (cf. von Glasersfeld 2008: 37). The outcome of the validation process can also be that the constructions are more or less divergent or completely incompatible. This will be the case when individuals have had different experiences and when these experiences have resulted in different cognitive constructions. It is also possible that the individuals had the same or similar experiences but stored them differently. New experiences are always connected to already existing ones and so the cognitive construction, the mental con- 2 The basal function of language as a behavioural system of orientation is not the transmission of information or the description of an autonomous outside world which we can talk about, but the creation of a consensual domain of behaviour between linguistically interacting systems in the course of the development of a cooperative interactive domain. ; & * " 2 % < cept, can vary individually depending on earlier experiences and their representation. In the course of our ontogenesis and enculturation, however, which is mediated to a great extent by language, certain constructions are more or less set. In addition, the constructions we can make are not totally random: they all root in a species general, phylogenetic basic equipment or configuration and they are influenced by the concrete biological, cognitive and socio-cultural conditions that individuals face in the course of their socialization in their social and natural environment (cf. Schmidt 1994: 595). Thus, our perception and processing capacities are restricted or framed by our species’ specific biological makeup. Consequently, our possibilities for constructions are limited as well. This facilitates communication - the exchange and validation of constructions with other members of our species. In accordance with this, the various languages share basic characteristics despite all cultural specifics. We can learn other languages and communicate across cultures. At the same time we must be sensitive to the fact that there are always alternatives to our own constructions, for example in the form of culture-specific views of the world and derived ways of thinking and acting. This is in line with and supports theories on the origins of language - like Robin Dunbar’s, Geoffrey Miller’s or Robert Burling’s - which all propose that language has evolved in the interaction with others as a means to manage our social relationships more efficiently (cf. Burling 2005: 17). % & 8& & & What has been the main driving force in the evolution of language? Let us see if Darwin can help here again. He has become famous for his theory of natural selection, which he outlines in On the Origin of Species (1859). In this book, however, he also already introduces a second distinct mechanism, which he describes as a second basic driving force of evolution, viz. sexual selection: [...] this leads me to say a few words on what I call Sexual Selection. This depends, not on a struggle for existence, but on a struggle between the males for possession of the females; the result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous than natural selection. Generally, the most vigorous males, those which are best fitted for their places in nature, will leave most progeny. (Darwin 1859: 88) Darwin develops this theory of sexual selection further in The Descent of Man (1871). : 2 When we look at current theories of language evolution, the great majority attributes language evolution to natural selection forces. It is predominantly assumed that some survival advantage has been the initial trigger for language evolution. Pinker (1994: 352-354) for example claims that the evolution of language started with alarm calls that alerted other members of the species. Other hypotheses refer to other survival advantages: being able to communicate experiences for successful food procurement or for the manufacture of tools, or to organize men for war or defence (cf. Deacon 1997: 377; Lieberman 1998: 146; Miller 2000: 342). Those are, however, not mutually exclusive theories on language evolution. It is rather a list of fields in which language can provide a survival advantage (cf. Deacon 1997: 350). And, in fact, almost every human activity profits from language (cf. Lieberman 1998: 146). So on the one hand language promotes survival and constitutes a survival advantage in almost all areas. On the other hand, language has features that do not contribute to this: Would a much simpler language system not be more effective in terms of survival? All natural languages are very complex and it takes quite a long time and considerable effort to learn a language: we have to learn an extensive set of words and many different grammatical rules. We have to train our articulatory organs to perform elaborate moves to produce certain sounds and sound combinations. So in this respect we may wonder whether language is not counterproductive in terms of survival (cf. Miller 2000: 354)? Why would such a complex communication code develop if a much simpler one was more effective (cf. Miller 2000: 370)? In Darwin’s scenario of language evolution, we find traces of both natural and sexual selection pressure, which he describes as the driving force in language evolution. First, let us have a look at the natural selection pressures that he describes: As bearing on the subject of imitation, the strong tendency in our nearest allies, the monkeys […] and in the barbarous races of mankind, to imitate whatever they hear deserves notice. […] in a state of nature [monkeys] […] utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows, […] it does not appear altogether incredible, that some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger. And this would have been a first step in the formation of a language. (Darwin 1871: 56f.) In fact, such behaviour has been studied also more recently in much detail, for example by Cheney/ Seyfarth 1990 (in de Waal 2001: 15f.): Vervet monkeys have different alarm calls for different predators (such as leopard, eagle, and snake), [and they] 3 need to learn to connect the one with the other. The investigators tested the knowledge of their monkeys by playing alarm calls from a concealed speaker. [...] different predators 3 Inserted instead of but. ; & * " 2 % < require different responses […]. For example, the right response to a snake alarm is to stand upright in the grass and look around. This would be suicidal in reaction to a leopard call, which requires monkeys to climb a tree. Cheney and Seyfarth found that […] wrong responses disappeared with age, whereas correct responses increased. This suggests that young monkeys learn how to react to each specific alarm. […] These findings contradict the widespread belief that survival tactics must be hard-wired and instinctive. […] What we have […] is an absolutely critical set of responses transmitted through the observation of others. Instead of relying on genetic information, this is a social, cultural process. (de Waal 2001: 15f.) In addition, sexual selection plays a central role in Darwin’s hypothesis on language evolution: When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably used his voice largely, as does one of the gibbon-apes at the present day, in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing; we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, serving to express various emotions, as love, jealousy, triumph, and serving as a challenge to their rivals. The imitation by articulate sounds of musical cries might have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions. (Darwin 1871: 56) The idea that music could have preceded language has long been ridiculed as the ‘tra-la-la theory’ of language evolution. However, it has gained more serious attention in recent years. Burling for example proposes that “voluntary control over the vocal tract came first as an adaptation to […] some sort of wordless singing or chanting” (Burling 2005: 124). This could have developed in mother-infant interactions where the mother tried to comfort the infant (cf. e.g. Trehub 2003; Kenneally 2007: 174; Falk 2004: 495, 498-501; Falk 2009). And today we can still observe that “[r]egardless of what language they speak, the voice all mothers use with babies is something between speech and song” (Kenneally 2007: 134). This, however, still does not explain why articulate language developed: sing-song would have been enough to comfort a child, it does not require distinctive sounds. According to Darwin, singing and from this language could have mainly developed through sexual selection pressure in the courtship of the sexes. In fact, it took more than a century until Darwin’s ideas on the role of sexual selection in language evolution were rediscovered. In his book The Mating Mind, published in 2000, Geoffrey Miller outlines the central role of sexual selection in human evolution. He claims that it is basically female mate choice that shapes the human mind during evolution and that also drives language evolution. Arts like poetry, storytelling and oratory would then not be by-products of evolution - as has often : 2 been claimed by adherents of the natural selection theory - but the outcome of sexual selection pressure. Generally, sexually selected traits have mainly four special features: 1. They “are usually highly developed in sexually mature adults but not in youth”. 2. There are differences in the trait between individuals. 3. They usually reveal the fitness of an individual as they are difficult to produce if the individual is ill, hungry, injured or carries harmful mutations. 4. Males usually display them “more conspicuously and noisily” than females (cf. Miller 2000: 13f.). I think that all of these special features apply to language, which makes it highly plausible that it evolved by sexual selection. What arguments support the four claims? (I will only concentrate on selected issues here, for a more extended discussion see Wawra 2004: 122-131 and 2006: 345-350). 1. Language is usually highly developed in sexually mature adults but not in youth. I think this is a plausible assumption for language with regard to the acquisition of lexical items and their meanings and the pragmatics of language use. Also the fact that the critical period for the acquisition of a language ends around puberty seems to support the claim (cf. e.g. Pinker 1994: 290f.). Accordingly, Stewart/ Vaillette (2001: 260) for example distinguish between two different phases of language acquisition: One lasts from birth to about age two, during which time a child needs exposure to language in order to develop the brain structures necessary for language acquisition and acquiring native speaker competence. The second “critical period” is said to last from about the age of ten years to sixteen years […]. In the second phase of language acquisition the ability to learn a further language easily and completely gets lost successively (cf. Stewart/ Vaillette 2001: 261). Stewart/ Vaillette (2001: 261) draw the conclusion that humans can learn language only until a certain age, namely 16. This age usually marks the end of puberty and the onset of sexual maturity. Archibald (1996: 524) comments on the question whether there is a window of opportunity to acquire nativelike L2 phonology: We can predict with fair certainty that people who start learning their L2 before the age of seven will have nativelike L2 speech and that people who start learning after fourteen or fifteen will probably have nonnativelike speech. But the results of people who start learning between the ages of seven and fourteen are much more varied. Some end up with accents, and some do not. The age of fourteen or fifteen cited here as being critical for nativelike pronunciation in an L2 supports the assumption that puberty is the criti- ; & * " 2 % < cal period for nativelike language acquisition in the field of phonetics. My hypothesis why research is contradictory as regards pronunciation proficiency between the age of seven and fourteen is as follows: this is usually when children start to learn an L2 at school. If they have a teacher with a non-nativelike pronunciation they would usually end up with such a pronunciation themselves. If they have a teacher with a nativelike pronunciation the chance that they would acquire it as well is pretty good. Besides some of the children in the studies Archibald refers to may have been immersed in the language when growing up in a foreign country and thus would also most likely have acquired nativelike competence. This could explain why the research results are varied. Still the claim that the critical period for language acquisition lasts until puberty could be supported. So I think that there is convincing support that the first special feature of sexually selected traits applies to language. Note that there also seems to be a critical period for the acquisition of birds’ songs (cf. Dobrovolsky 1996: 641). 2. There are language differences between individuals. This is particularly true for human language. We have idiosyncrasies in our pronunciation and style. We describe speakers as more “articulate”, “slow-spoken”, “glib”, “polished” than others and we say that somebody uses more or less “elaborated vocabulary” (Burling 2005: 187) than other speakers. And “[p]eople in every society seem to recognize some among their fellows as having outstanding linguistic skills - as arguers, orators [...], bards, [...] rhyme makers [...] or writers” (Burling 2005: 187). 3. Language reveals the fitness of an individual as it is difficult to produce language if the individual is ill, hungry, injured or carries harmful mutations. Fitness is the ability of an organism to survive in a certain environment and to reproduce successfully (cf. Miller 2000: 107). Both skills are enhanced by better intellectual abilities. Language provides a window to these - it is a fitness indicator. So it fulfils this criterion as well. In addition it is true that language is more difficult to produce when we are ill, hungry, injured or if we carry harmful mutations. When we suffer from Broca aphasia, for example, language production is severely impaired. 4. Language is usually displayed “more conspicuously and noisily” by men than by women. Sexual selection theory basically assumes that the males are the ones who court the females. The females are the ones who select a mate. As a rule, sexual selection makes males better in producing displays and females in judging them (cf. Miller 2000: 375). This is exactly how it evolved with regard to birdsongs as described earlier (usually, only the males sing). So this should also apply to men, women and language. Language tests, however, mostly yield the opposite result. The apparent contradiction resolves when we take a closer look at the language tests. Most tests check language comprehension, not language production (cf. Miller 2000: 375). Besides, the more complex the psychology that is necessary for the production of a certain display and for judging it, the more the : 2 psychologies are alike. This means that it is to be expected that sexual selection has led to much smaller differences between the sexes in such cases than it has in the case of simpler traits like the peacock tail for example (cf. Miller 2000: 92f.). And this is true for language: men and women do not differ tremendously in their language use (although some popular book titles like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (Gray 1992) want to make us believe this.) Sociolinguistic studies, and more specifically linguistic gender studies, support the hypothesis that sexual selection must have been a powerful force in language evolution. In what follows, I am taking a macroperspective and will talk not about individual cases but statistics - majorities in human populations and tendencies. However, when I am talking about linguistic gender studies and their results in the following I can only base my insights on studies in Anglo-American and German cultures. We would need many more studies in other cultures to see if the claims apply universally or not. Linguistic gender studies, at least in Anglo-American and German cultures, consistently show that it is predominantly men who talk more in formal, public contexts than women. Here the possibility for self-display is excellent for a man. He can improve his status and thus his chances for reproduction (for a detailed account of the importance of status for men’s - but not women’s - reproductive success see Buss 1994: 25 and Wawra 2004: 143f.). Besides, men tend to interrupt more frequently than women and they tend to be more competitive in conversations. Also, more men than women are public speakers (cf. e.g. Wawra 2004: 57). A partly different picture emerges when we look at private contexts. Often women complain that their partners do not talk enough to them. At first sight this seems to contradict sexual selection theory, which predicts men to speak more. Consequently you would expect that men complain about their wives not talking enough. Is it therefore possible that the initial verbal courtship displays of men decrease when they have been successful? According to evolutionary theory: yes! Each living creature evolves in a way that it distributes its energies efficiently. If it is therefore enough to say a few words a day to your partner to make sure you have exclusive sexual access, why talk more? The motivational system of men evolved in such a way that it only produces costly courtship displays when there is a chance to improve reproductive success (cf. Miller 2000: 382). If a partner threatens to be unfaithful or to deny sexual access, evolution favours motivations to resume verbal courtship till the danger is over (cf. Miller 2000: 383). Thus two conclusions can be drawn: ; & * " 2 % < 1. Women like being courted verbally. 2. Men only invest a lot of verbal courtship, when it is necessary to initiate a sexual relationship or revive it (cf. Miller 2000: 383). <% = 8& & & The findings of the geneticists Hameister et al. also support the hypothesis that human cognitive abilities in general and language in particular have been shaped by sexual selection. They (Hameister et al. 2001: 697) found out that [...] mental impairment is […] 3.1 times more-frequently associated with X-chromosomal genes than with autosomes […]. Therefore, the higher incidence of X-linked genes associated with mental disability (referred to here as MRX genes) is beyond doubt. So according to Hameister et al.’s study, the majority of the genes that influence cognitive ability are situated on the X-chromosome. And genes that relate to sex and reproduction are also particularly frequent on the X-chromosome. This is described as “the large X-chromosome effect” (cf. Hameister et al. 2001: 698). Whenever a large X-chromosome effect influences the development of some feature like fertility or cognitive ability, the feature will be selected. Sexual selection leads to the development of secondary sexual characteristics that would increase female preference for partners displaying the characteristic. The secondary sexual characteristic and the female preference for it will co-evolve. Hameister et al. (2001: 698f.) assume that in the evolution of human cognitive abilities, sexual selection reinforced natural selection: [...] one of the most important factors contributing to the uniqueness of human evolution is that at some point human females decided to select males according to their advanced cognitive abilities. The same cognitive abilities are selected for in the struggle for survival. In humans, the development of the mating characteristic is augmented by natural selection. This is an ongoing process with exponential acceleration, which will propel the development of general cognitive abilities in humans into areas we cannot imagine now. In accordance with this model, language can be seen as a secondary sexual characteristic - like the fascinating tail of the peacock - that plays a central role in mate choice. Hameister et al. refer explicitly to Miller’s (2000) theory in The Mating Mind. They (2001: 699) claim that their findings are in complete accordance with Miller‘s hypothesis in The Mating Mind […]. The human mind has been shaped during evolution by female mate : 2 choice. The high frequency of genes responsible for cognitive functions on the X chromosome constitutes a formal proof of Miller’s hypothesis. >% & Hameister et al.’s study also supports Darwin’s idea that language evolution is based on natural and sexual selection. The ability to speak is useful for survival and reproduction. Consequently, natural and sexual selection do not work against each other, as in the evolution of the peacock tail. In language evolution, natural and sexual selection reinforce each other. This can explain why in such a short time span, from an evolutionary perspective, the human species could develop such complex communication systems as we know them today. # Archibald, John (1996, 3 rd edition). “Second Language Acquisition.” In: William O’Grady/ Michael Dobrovolsky/ Francis Katamba (eds.). Contemporary Linguistics. Harlow: Longman. 503-539. Bickerton, Derek (1990). Language and Species. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burling, Robbins (2005). The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved. Oxford: OUP. Buss, David (1994). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. New York: Basic Books. Cheney, Dorothy/ Robert Seyfarth (1990). How Monkeys See the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Darwin, Charles (1859 [1969]). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races In the Struggle for Life. Reprint. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation. Darwin, Charles (1871 [1969]). The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Vol. I & II. London. Reprint. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation. Dawkins, Richard (1986). The Blind Watchmaker. Harlow: Longman. Deacon, Terrence (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. London & New York: Norton. Dobrovolsky, Michael (1996, 3 rd edition). “Animal Communication.” In: William O’Grady/ Michael Dobrovolsky/ Francis Katamba (eds.). Contemporary Linguistics. Harlow: Longman. 625-663. Dunbar, Robin (1996). Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. London: Faber & Faber. Falk, Dean (2004). “Prelinguistic Evolution in Early Hominins: Whence Motherese? ” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27. 491-541. Falk, Dean (2009). Finding our Tongues: Mothers, Infants and the Origins of Language. New York: Basic Books. Glaserfeld, Ernst von (2008, 10th edition). “Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit und des Begriffs der Objektivität.” In: Heinz Gumin/ Heinrich Meier (eds.). Einführung in den Konstruktivismus. München: Piper. 9-39. ; & * " 2 % < Gray, John (1992). Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: A practical guide for improving your communication and getting what you want in your relationships. New York: HarperCollins. Hameister, Horst/ Ulrich Zechner/ Monika Wilda/ Hildegard Kehrer-Sawatzki/ Walther Vogel/ Rainald Fundele (2001). “A high density of X-linked genes for general cognitive ability: A run-away process shaping human evolution? ” Trends in Genetics 17/ 12. 697-701. Hejl, Peter (2008, 10th edition). “Konstruktion der sozialen Konstruktion: Grundlinien einer konstruktivistischen Sozialtheorie.” In: Heinz Gumin/ Heinrich Meier (eds.). Einführung in den Konstruktivismus. München. 109-146 Jäger, Ludwig (2003). “Ohne Sprache undenkbar.” Gehirn und Geist 2. 36-42. Kenneally, Christine (2007). The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language. New York: Penguin. Lee, Namhee/ Lisa Mikesell/ Anna Dina L. Joaquin/ Andrea W. Mates/ John H. Schumann (2009). The Interactional Instinct: The Evolution and Acquisition of Language. Oxford: OUP. Lieberman, Philip (1998). Eve spoke: Human language and human evolution. New York & London: Norton. Maturana, Humberto R. (1982). Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkörperung von Wirklichkeit. Braunschweig: Vieweg. Miller, Geoffrey (2000). The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Doubleday. Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct. New York: Harper Collins. Rizzolatti, Giacomo/ Corrado Sinigaglia (2008). Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience. Oxford: OUP. Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue/ Duane M. Rumbaugh (1993). “The Emergence of Language.” In: Kathleen R. Gibson/ Tim Ingold (eds.). Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Communication. Cambridge: CUP. 86-108. Schmidt, Siegfried (1994). “Konstruktivismus in der Medienforschung. Konzepte, Kritiken, Konsequenzen.” In: Klaus Merten/ Siegfried Schmidt/ Siegfried Weischenberg (eds.). Die Wirklichkeit der Medien. Eine Einführung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. 592-623. Stewart, Thomas/ Nathan Vaillette (2001, 8 th edition). Language Files. Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP. Trehub, Sandra (2003). “The Developmental Origins of Musicality.” Nature Neuroscience 6. 669-673. Waal, Frans B.M. de (2001). The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist. NY: Basic Books. Wawra, Daniela (2004). Männer und Frauen im Job Interview: Eine evolutionspsychologische Studie zu ihrem Sprachgebrauch im Englischen. Münster: LIT. Wawra, Daniela (2006). “Language and Peacock Tails: The Evolution of Language by Sexual Selection.” In: Anna Duszak/ Urzula Okulska (eds.). Bridges and Barriers in Meta-linguistic Discourse. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 341-354. Yule, George (2006, 3 rd edition). The Study of Language. Cambridge: CUP. : 2 7 ' 8 = Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de NEUERSCHEINUNG JETZT BESTELLEN! Guillemette Bolens / Lukas Erne (ed.) Medieval and Early Modern Authorship Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 25 2011, 325 Seiten €[D] 49,00/ SFr 65,50 ISBN 978-3-8233-6667-6 Reports of his death having been greatly exaggerated, the author has made a spectacular return in English studies. This is the first book devoted to medieval and early modern authorship, exploring continuities, discontinuities, and innovations in the two periods which literary histories and institutional practices too often keep apart. Canonical authors receive sustained attention (notably Chaucer, Gower, Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, and Marvell), and so do key issues in the current scholarly debate, such as authorial self-fashioning, the fictionalisation of authorship, the posthumous construction of authorship, and the nexus of authorship and authority. Other important topics whose relations to authorship are explored include adaptation, paratext, portraiture, historiography, hagiography, theology, and the sublime. “This rich, challenging and exceptionally well conceived collection addresses the construction of authorship in medieval and early modern England, and revises received opinion in important ways. All the essays are worth attention; several should be considered essential reading.” Stephen Orgel, J. E. Reynolds Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University ? 6/ 9 & & & " / / 9 + 8* The proportion of the English vocabulary derived from French is surprisingly high, a fact which has inspired scholarly investigation and speculation for more than a century. This paper takes a fresh look at the role French played in fourteenthand fifteenth-century England. It takes collections of medieval letters as its database and studies the role of French, from a language of letter writing to a source for borrowing words and phrases, as well as the methods of and motivation for learning French in this period. It concludes that French words and phrases made their way into the English language not by French speakers shifting to English, but by English speakers borrowing them in the course of extensive language and cultural contact with French. It shows that the process of nativisation was extremely fast and assumes that this was the result of two characteristics of medieval society: (1.) an oral culture where texts were read aloud and letters were dictated, and (2.) the structure of medieval households, where speakers with and without a knowledge of French lived closely together. % & English is a language rich in words borrowed from Latin and French, which make up more than 50% of the vocabulary of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (Finkenstaedt and Wolff 1973: 119). 1 Even if dictionaries in- 1 Both languages contribute c. 28% to the 80,096 words of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. According to Scheler (1977: 2), the percentages for vocabulary of Latin origin is somewhat lower in the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (c. 22%) and considerably lower in the General Service List, a list of the 4,000 most frequent English ' ( & ) & * ) ) ! " #$ " + 8* clude some rare words, this attests to a very high proportion of French words. Scholars have tried to account for this with three main arguments: (1.) the numerical strength of French speakers, (2.) the political dominance of French speakers, and (3.) the cultural dominance of the French language. Estimates of the numerical strength of the French in post- Conquest Britain have varied considerably, and high estimates tend at least partially to be based on linguistic influence, which makes this a circular argument. Moreover, if the numerical strength of the population were a decisive factor, the number of Scandinavian loanwords in English should be much higher than that of French ones. The striking discrepancy between words borrowed from French and words borrowed from medieval Scandinavian languages (also referred to as Old Norse) is a topic discussed in most histories of the English language in chapters on medieval language contact. There is not only a difference in the frequency of borrowing, but also in the type of words that were borrowed. The following extract from Barber (1993: 146) is a typical account of this difference: The French words were on the whole not such homely ones as the Scandinavian words: the Vikings had mixed in with the English on more or less equal terms, but the Normans formed a separate caste that imposed much of their culture on their subordinates. Many of the French loanwords reflect this cultural and political dominance: they are often words to do with war, ecclesiastical matters, the law, hunting, heraldry, the arts, and fashion. Relating French loanwords to different domains has a long tradition. The most elaborate allocation to different domains is presented in Serjeantsen (1935: 12-156). A more differentiated description of the language contact situation is given by Smith (1999: 120-121), whose discussion of French and Scandinavian loanwords includes a chronological dimension: Most [Scandinavian words] express very common concepts, cf. PDE BAG , BULL , EGG , ROOT , UGLY , WING , and it is noticeable that Scandinavian has supplied English with such basic features as the third person plural pronoun, THEY / THEM / THEIR . […] By far the largest number of words borrowed into English during the ME period are taken from varieties of French. Up to the thirteenth century these borrowings were rather few and reflected the role of French as the language of the ruling class (c. PDE JUSTICE , OBEDIENCE , MASTERY , PRISON , SERVICE , all of which are first found in English during the early ME period). […] However after that date, French words from Central French dialects enter the language at a great rate, reflecting the cultural status of Central France; it seems to have become customary for the higher social words (c. 10%), while those for vocabulary of French origin are higher with c. 36% and 38% respectively (see also Lutz 2008: 348). , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " classes in England to signal their class-membership by studding their English with French-derived vocabulary. Smith takes into account the research carried out by Prins (1952), who investigated phrasal borrowing from French, including both phrases consisting of lexical material of French origin and phrases which are English calques on French ones. His textual database differs from that used as sources for quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth OED). Nevertheless there is a surprising correspondence between the chronology of phrasal borrowing in Prins’s data and Jespersen’s chronology of words borrowed from French, which is based on the OED (or the New English Dictionary, as it was called at the time). The following diagram taken from Prins (1952: 33) shows the highest peaks for both first occurrences of words (top dotted line) and phrases (bottom dotted line) in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. , "- . ** * , *% 2 )% / "6 % 5 = ? @ . The date of the highest peak of first occurrences of French words and phrases (including calques on French phrases) is not compatible with the typical pattern of language shift in immigrants, which usually takes place + 8* in the second and third generations, with the second generation being bilingual and the third generation having the language of the country of immigration as their mother tongue. This means that if the French vocabulary were introduced by the families of those who came with William the Conqueror, the peak should have appeared at least two centuries earlier. This is not to say that French speakers shifting to English did not introduce any French words or phrases to English at all, but only that they did not introduce the bulk of words and phrases of French origin. If native speakers of English introduced French words and phrases into English, this raises a number of questions: (1.) How were the words introduced? (2.) Who introduced them? (3.) Why were they introduced? and (4.) To what extent were they adopted by different strata of medieval society, i.e. did they become general usage or was their use socially restricted? Present-day studies of language contact focus on oral contact. This is not surprising, as the type of contact that was most prominent in the twentieth century was that between immigrant workers and the people of their host countries. The contact that took place between these people was predominantly one of everyday oral communication at the workplace, or with shop assistants, landlords and neighbours. If written language contact is mentioned in books on language contact, it is usually in connection with dead languages used in religious contexts, such as Latin, classical Arabic or Sanskrit (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 78-79). 2 There is general agreement in histories of the English language that Latin words were introduced into English via the written language, since spoken interaction in Latin was limited even within the clergy. Latin makes up a quarter of the vocabulary of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, according to Finkenstaedt and Wolff (1973: 119). This means that there is evidence of large-scale borrowing as a result of written contact in medieval England. It seems therefore possible that written language contact may also account for loanwords borrowed from languages other than Latin. % 7 The data used for the present study consists of three Middle English family correspondences, those of the Stonors, covering the years 1290-1483, edited by Kingsford and provided with a new introduction by Carpenter in 1996 (henceforth SL), those of the Pastons, covering the years 1425-1495, edited by Davis in 1971 and 1976 (henceforth PL), and those of the Celys, covering the years 1472-1488, edited by Hanham in 1975 (henceforth CL). 2 Thomason (2001: 2-3) accepts the existence of written bilingualism, but does not include it in her discussion in later chapters of the book. , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " The members of the three families did not belong to the highest levels of society; the Stonors and Pastons were landed gentry, with estates in Stonor near Henley on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border and in Norfolk respectively, while the Celys were a family of London wool merchants. It is important to note that there is no indication that any of the three families had any French background. Their names all indicate native origin. In the case of the Celys the family name is derived from Old English sælig (‘blessed’) (see Hanham’s “Introduction” to the Cely Letters, 1975: 6), while the etymology of the family name Stonor is given as a spelling variant of the profession of stoner, i.e. ‘stone cutter’ or ‘stone mason’ or derived from “stanora ‘stony or rocky bank’ [O.E. stán + óra]” (Harrison 1969, entry “Stonor”). The family name Paston is not listed in Harrison, but it is clearly related to the corresponding placename in northern Norfolk, which is where the Pastons had their estate. The online database of the Institute of Name Studies at the University of Nottingham has the following entry for the place name: “Uncertain. Possibly ‘*Paecci’s farm/ settlement’ or perhaps ‘puddle farm/ settlement’ ? OE paesc(e) ? OE pers. n. OE tun” (http: / / www. nottingham.ac.uk/ ~aezins/ / kepn/ detailpop.php? placeno=9679). Both the Paston and the Cely correspondences contain a high number of family letters and letters to and from employees. The Paston Letters are also a rich source for women’s correspondence, with several female authors, of whom Margaret Paston was the most productive with over one hundred letters. All three correspondences involve more than one generation of writers. They are therefore particularly well suited for detecting changes in language use as well as social practices and cultural change. % ? " &* : It is a well-known fact that letters by members of the nobility were written in French long after the Conquest. Ellis (1824: xx) states in his Original Letters, Illustrative of English History that letter writing in English only began in the reign of Henry V (1413-1422): “Letters previous to that time [the reign of Henry V], were usually written in French and Latin; and were the productions chiefly of the great and learned”. The content of Ellis’s edition suggests that by “the great and learned” he means the nobility and bishops. The Stonor correspondence provides clear evidence that the practice of writing letters in French also extended to the gentry. The early letters are exclusively in French and Latin. Latin was used for communications by and with members of the clergy, while all other letters up to the year 1380 are in French. Between 1380 and 1424 there is a gap in the correspondence. This 44-year gap may be the result of the early death of Ralph Stonor (1370-1394), as Thomas Stonor, the letter writer of 1424, was the grandson of the Edmond Stonor writing in 1380. From 1424 all letters are in English and Latin. This means that while the + 8* practice of corresponding in Latin with members of the clergy continued, for all other letters the medium of letter writing changed from French to English between 1380 and 1424. The Paston correspondence begins in 1425, i.e. at the time when the shift to English is documented in the Stonor correspondence. The first letter writer of the Paston correspondence is William Paston I, who was born in 1378. William Paston’s writings contain an endorsement in French “A mez treshonnurés meistres William Worstede, John Longham, et Meistre Piers Shelton soit donné” (PL: no. 4, dated 1426) and notes in French on a recycled draft letter that had been turned by 180 degrees so that the original writing was upside down (PL: no. 6, dated 1430). As William Paston I used French for notes, writing in French must have come naturally to him. This is surprising, as it is not in line with the date given in histories of the English language for the shift from French to English as the medium for teaching Latin. This is usually dated between the middle of the fourteenth century and 1385, a date which is based on a comment by John Trevisa which he inserted in his translation of Higden’s Polychronicon. Here he states that all grammar schools shifted to teaching Latin via English after the Black Death: þys manere [i.e. teaching in French] was moche y-used tofore the furste moreyn and ys setþthe somdel ychaunged. For Iohan Cornwal, a mayster of gramere, chayngede þe lore in gramerscole and construccion of Freynsch into Englysch; and Richard Pencrych lurnede þat manere techyng of hym, and oþer men of Pencrych, so þat now, þe er of oure Lord a þousond þre hondred foure score and fyue, of the secunde kyng Richard after þe Conquest nyne, in al þe gramerscoles of Engelond childern leueþ Frensch, and construeþ and lurneþ an Englysch. 3 (quoted from Barber 1993: 143) The plague of 1348-1350 killed perhaps a third of the English population and hit Oxford badly. As a consequence of the loss of lives during the plague years there may well have been a shortage of men that were able to teach Latin via the medium of French. But Trevisa’s statement is contradicted by William Paston’s easy use of French, which indicates that Paston’s education had been in French. As he was born in 1378, the shift to English was not as complete in 1385 as Trevisa would make us believe. At least in parts of the country French must have continued to be the language of the schoolroom until 1400 or after. This also means that the 3 This custom was much in use before the first plague [that is, the Black Death of 1349], and since then has somewhat changed. For John of Cornwall, a licensed teacher of grammar, changed the teaching in grammar school and the construing from French into English; and Richard Pencrich learnt that method of teaching from him, and other men from Pencrich, so that now, in the year of Our Lord 1385, in the ninth year of King Richard II, in all the grammar schools of England children are abandoning French, and are construing and learning in English. [Translation Barber’s] , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " shift from French to English as the language of letter writing in the gentry did not predate that in the nobility, which Ellis (1824: xx) dates to 1413- 1422. The Cely Letters are considerably later, and it is therefore not surprising that none of the members of that family wrote in French. The only French letters in the collection are by a woman by the name of Clare (CL: no. 54), who appears to have been George Cely’s mistress in Bruges, and by a Dutch merchant (CL: no. 62). -% 0& ? ? & , The Paston Letters document the fact that French continued to be taught to members of the gentry in the fifteenth century, as the collection contains notes of a French lesson in William Paston II’s hand (PL: no. 82). The notes are dated by Davis to 1452, when William Paston II, the grandson of William Paston I, was a student at Cambridge. 4 The notes clearly show that French was taught as a second language and that the teacher did not assume that his students had any prior knowledge of French pronunciation. Memoorandum þat ho hath affeccion to lerne þis langage must first considre viij thinggis qweche byn full nessessarij to knowe to come to þe tru profescion of þis language - Frist, because it is not sownid as it [is] wretyn e must considre þat this lettre s sondit neuer but qwan it stondit before j of þis v letteris qweche ben callid wowellys, þat is to say, a, e, i, o, v, and neuer þis letter sownit but in cas. 5 The notes show that the teacher pointed out that French s is mute before consonants. This mute s was later dropped in French spelling, and in present-day French the vowel that originally was followed by s is marked by an accent circonflexe, as in être. The rule given in William Paston II’s notes simplifies matters somewhat, as s was not mute in initial consonant clusters nor in all other preconsonantal positions, but it is unclear whether the rule was overgeneralised for didactic reasons or whether the teacher’s knowledge of French pronunciation was shaky. 6 The text also shows that no prior knowledge of French grammar is assumed. The following extract from the notes (PL: no 82) introduces French grammatical gender, gender concord, and the paradigm of personal pronouns. 4 For a detailed description of this manuscript see Davis and Ivy (1962). 5 ‘It must be remembered that who wants to learn this language must first consider 8 things which are quite necessary to know in order to come to the true perfection in this language - First, because it is not pronounced as it is written, you must consider that this letter s is never pronounced except when it stands before one of the 5 letters which are called vowels, that is to say a, e, i, o, u, and never is the letter pronounced except in this case.’ [My translation, MH] 6 A contemporary teaching manual, the Femina shows, according to its editor Rothwell (2005: iii-v), inconsistent pronunciation guidelines, which indicates that the scribe who inserted them was uncertain of the pronunciation of French words. + 8* Item, as in Latyn distjnccion is be-twix þe femynyn gender and þe masculyne gender, so is jn this langgage; were-fore rith nessessary it is to knowe þe pronons and þe declinacionis of þe verbis jn þe maner hereafter folowyng Je or moy tu il nous vous ilz I thow he we e thei mg Ces choses sount nostres The thinggis byn owres Et lez autres choses sount vostres And þe oder thinggis byn owr mg Ce cheval est moun et la cell est tenne fg þis horse is myn and þe sadil is thyn fg Ce jument est mon et la veel tien mg This mare is myn and þe calfe thyn 7 The extract shows that the French gender distinction is unfamiliar to William Paston II, as he writes “mg”, which stands for masculine gender, before an example sentence which contains a feminine plural subject (choses), and in the case of ce jument and la veel the gender label is “fg” and “mg” respectively, that is, the reverse of the French gender. This mistake reflects the difficulty of understanding the concept of grammatical gender for someone whose native tongue has only natural gender. Jument is probably labelled “fg” because a mare is a female animal, and the gender allocation of veel might be a consequence of the allocation of feminine gender to jument, if the learner grasped the contrastive nature of the examples. The beginning of the extract (PL: 82) states that French gender is like Latin gender. This suggests that Latin was taught either before French or at the same time, which is quite different from the situation a century earlier, when French was the medium for teaching Latin. This is also supported by the use of a Latin comment, which follows a somewhat garbled explanation of French vowel elision: 7 ‘Also, as in Latin there is a distinction between feminine and masculine gender, so is it in this language; therefore it is quite [literally “right”] necessary to know the pronouns and declinations of the verbs in the manner which follows I you-sg he we you-pl they m[asculine] g[ender] The things are ours. And the other things are yours. m[asculine] g[ender] This horse is mine and the saddle is thine [yours-sg] f[eminine] g[ender]’ f[eminine] g[ender] This mare is mine and the calf is thine [yours-sg]’ [My translation, MH] , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " Item, were two ar iij vowellis come to-geder þe vowell jn þe myddis is set a-side and is neþ[er] wretyn neithere sownyd, example as jayme; þat is as muche as je ayme, quantum breuyus tantum melyus. 8 The extract states that it is the middle vowel that is elided, whereas it is actually the word-final vowel that is elided in hiatus position, as in je ayme > j’ayme, the example given, where the vowel of je is omitted in spelling and pronunciation. This explanation is followed by the Latin comment quantum breuyus tantum melyus, which could only be understood by the students if they had a basic knowledge of Latin. The remainder of the notes show the teaching of the present, past, future, and subjunctive forms of verbs. The grammar notes thus show a contrastive approach to the teaching of French focusing on the differences between French and English pronunciation and grammar. The correspondence does not tell us why William Paston II learned French at a time when French had ceased to be an official language. In 1362 Parliament was opened in English rather than French, and in the same year the Statute of Pleading was decreed, which required that English should be used in the law courts. With Henry IV, in 1399 a king ascended the throne whose first language was English (Baugh and Cable 2000: 144- 146). Suggett (1946) documents a sharp decrease in the use of French in legal documents from around 1398, with the last French deed endorsed on Close Rolls in 1434 and only two French petitions in the 1440s, the latter of which dates from 1447. This raises the question why French was still learned at a time when the need for learning French for professional reasons such as a legal career had disappeared. The ownership of books documented in the Paston letters sheds some light on this question. Sir John Fastolf, a neighbour and distant relative of John Paston I, possessed 19 French books, according to an inventory of 1448 (Beadle 2008), Richard Call, a bailiff of the Pastons, owned one French book, according to an inventory of stolen goods (PL: no. 195), and John Paston II’s “Inventory off Englysshe Bokis” (PL: no. 316) contains a number of French texts in miscellaneous volumes. Two books stand out in this inventory by being introduced by memorandum (‘note’) rather than item (‘also’) and being referred to as “my olde boke off ...” and “my grete boke off ...”, whereas the others are listed as “a boke off ...”. The latter of the two books was copied for John Paston II by his scribe, William Ebesham (cf. PL: nos. 751 and 755), who may also have copied the former. John Paston II’s “Great book” contains, according to his inventory, the making of knights, jousts, tournaments, fighting in lists, paces and challenges, statutes of war and the De Regimine Principum. John Paston 8 ‘Also, where two or three vowels come together, the vowel in the middle is left out and is neither written nor pronounced, (for) example as (in) j’aime; that is as much as je aime, quantum brevius, tantum melius [‘the shorter the better’].’ [My translation, MH] + 8* II’s inventory of books and in particular the texts in his “Great book” show a major interest in chivalry. The concept of chivalry, as is evident from the etymology of the word (OED entry “chivalry, n” gives the etymology as “Old French chevalerie (11 th cent)”), developed in France, as did the literary genre which celebrated this form of life by depicting chivalrous deeds, the romance. It is defined as follows in the OED (entry “romance” A. n. I. 1): A medieval narrative (originally in verse, later also in prose) relating the legendary or extraordinary adventures of some hero of chivalry. Also in extended use, with reference to narratives about important religious figures. Originally denoting a composition in the vernacular (French, etc.), as contrasted with works in Latin. For members of the gentry an incentive for learning French may well have been to gain access to French literature and culture. The steep increase of French vocabulary coincides with the rise of manuscripts of romances. French romances were not only copied in England, but also translated into English, and romances were written in England both in French, or Anglo-Norman, and in English (see Cooper 1999, Cooper 2004: 22-40, Meale 1992). No French books are mentioned in the Cely Letters. The education of the Celys did not include the learning of French. This is evident from notes by George Cely which are found on the back of a letter written to him by John Dalton, a fellow merchant (CL: 49). They consist of four lines of French text followed by French words and phrases with their English translations. The first four lines appear to be the text of a drinking song: Je boy Avous mademoy selle / je vous plage movnsenyuevr/ / Poirsse ke vous I estes se belle / Je boy, etc. Je sens lamor rensson estyn selle ke me persse par me le kowre / Je boy a […] Je voue plege movnsenywr / 9 The list of words and phrases are separated by single or double slashes at irregular intervals. The line breaks in the extract follow that of Hanham’s diplomatic edition. de davns wyth in / de horsse wyth hov[te] Bosonye besy / / shavnte / / syng / / / vn shavnssovne / an song lere / Rede vn shen an doge ffrett covld Je le vous hay de kavnt je Raye / I have sayd yow whan 9 ‘I drink to you mademoiselle / I pledge [i.e. “toast”] you, monsieur Because you are so beautiful/ I drink, etc. I feel love in its spark that pierces me through the heart / I drink to [...] I pledge [i.e. “toast”] you, monsieur’ [My translation, MH] , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " I go / / Je swy hovntesse / shamed Je swy hovntesse / / I am shamyd / / 10 The spelling of the French words is phonetic, as can be seen from the omission of mute t in de (modern French dit) and mute s in swy (modern French suis). The word division reflects the English stress system, where stress is predominantly on the first syllable, and therefore stressed syllables are preceded by spaces, as for example de horse (modern French dehors, je raye (modern French j’irais). This suggests that George Cely had no knowledge of French and wrote the words down as he heard them (see also Hanham 2005: 712-713). The feminine ending in je swy hovntesse has been seen as an indication that his teacher was female and possibly the Clare who wrote a love letter to him (CL: no 54). The random choice of words of this document suggests that this was not part of a systematic attempt at learning the language, but rather that the notes were occasioned by the situational context. George Cely’s primary motive for this lesson may have been to learn the words of the song. His interest in song and dance is documented in a booklet in which he recorded expenses, which included three pages for musical and dancing lessons (Hanham 1957). This indicates that his lack of any knowledge of French was predominantly a question of interests and priorities rather than opportunity, in other words George Cely preferred to learn dancing to learning French. As he appears to have been a person who enjoyed socialising, this probably means that learning French was of little importance in the merchant community in Flanders. A further indication that the merchant correspondents in the Cely Letters did not know any French are curious phrases beginning with so it or so hit on the endorsement of letters, as illustrated by the following two examples (my emphasis, MH; italics are used for expanded abbreviations): To my inteirly beluffyd brother Jorg Cely, merchant at the Staple of Calles, so it don. (John Dalton, 22 September 1481; CL: no. 125) To George Cely merchaunte off the Stappell off Callys, soo hit dd. (William Cely, October 1481; CL: no. 128,) 10 ‘dedans within / dehors without [‘outside’], bosonye “busy”/ [bosony is derived from besogne “work, business” sub verbo in Brachet (1873)]. chanter sing / une chanson a song / lire read / un chien a dog/ frais cold / je le vous ai dit quant j’irais / I told you when I would go / je suis honteuse I am ashamed/ je suis honteuse I am ashamed’ [My translation, MH] + 8* The highlighted phrases clearly correspond to the English ‘be delivered’, which is used by Richard Cely II: A my whelbelouyd brother George Cely mercha<n>t off the Estapell off Calleys or at the martte, be thys dd 11 . (Richard Cely II, 24 October 1481; CL: no. 127) The origin of the curious so it don(e) can be seen in the endorsement of a French letter written by a Dutch merchant to George Cely: Soyt don n e a Maistre Jorge Silait, demeurrant aupres de Monseigneur Maistre Portier (Waterin Tabary, before 12 October 1479; CL: no. 62) Anyone whose education had included formal French teaching would have learned the paradigm of the verb être ‘be’ and would have known the form of the present subjunctive soit, as did William Paston I, who spelled the phrase correctly in his French endorsement. (PL: no. 4). The English merchants using the French phrase divided it up into two English words, even though the combination of these words did not make any sense in the context. They must have read endorsements such as that used by Waterin Tabary without knowing what the individual words meant. As the words appeared in combination with the addressee’s name, they were able to deduce that it was how you told the bearer of a letter to deliver it. Being able to speak French would have been useful for merchants, as it might have allowed them to communicate with French traders. A French-English phrasebook entitled Dialogues in French and English aimed at merchants was published by Caxton in 1488. Its French-English table of contents contains inter alia “des diuerses villes et festes Of diuerse tounes and fayres”, “Les marchandises des laines The marchandyse of wulle” and “Les noms des cuyres & des peaulx The names of hydes and of skynnes” (quotations from Bradley’s 1900 edition). The dialogues were translated from a fourteenth-century book of dialogues in French and Flemish, which would suggest that French may have been used on the wool markets in Flanders. But if this was the case, the English wool merchants’ exposure to spoken French had no impact on their English. There is no difference in the vocabulary of George Cely, who was based in Calais for several years, from that of his brother Richard Cely II, who was based in London. Non-English technical terms relating to the wool trade are Flemish rather than French in the Cely Letters. This does not mean that the Celys did not use words of French origin, but these words appear to have been in general usage. As the Celys managed to run their business successfully for decades, we must conclude that they conducted their business negotiations in Flanders in English. English and Dutch must 11 Dd. is a common abbreviation for delivered. , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " therefore have been close enough for English sellers to understand Dutch buyers and vice versa. For negotiations with French buyers English merchants would probably have used intermediaries. That such multilingual people were available at Calais is documented in a letter by John Paston III to Lord Hastings, dating from 1476 (PL: no. 370): “He is well spokyn jn Inglyshe, metly well in Frenshe, and very parfit in Flemyshe. He can wryght and reed. Hys name is Rychard Stratton. Hys moder is Mastress Grame of Caleys.” .% / 5 ? @ (& , The problem of differentiating between the use of a word of foreign origin as a foreign word, which implies code switching, and using it as a nativised loanword is notoriously difficult. The documentation of French words in medieval literary works or legal documents does not show whether the respective word was perceived as native. It is therefore of special interest to see to what extent French words were used by people who had no knowledge of French and who were not exposed to French. For this reason the letters of women are of special interest, as female members of the gentry received an education that was geared towards skills other than literacy, embroidery being one of them. Their use of words of French origin can therefore be taken as an indication for nativisation and thus reflect the spread of French vocabulary in contemporary society. Texts authored by the following four women were selected for a closer analysis: Agnes Paston (AP): married 1420, died 1479; Margaret Paston (MP): married about 1440, died 1484; Margery Brews, later Paston (MB): married 1477, died 1495; Margery Cely (MC): married 1484, date of death unknown. The texts, which are given in full below, are a memorandum of errands from 1458 by Agnes Paston, the wife of William Paston I, and a letter each by three women to their spouses or, in the case of Margery Brews, a future spouse: Margaret Paston to John Paston I, son of William Paston I, dated c.1441, Margery Brews to John Paston III, dated 1477, and Margery Cely to George Cely, dated 1484. Words or parts of words of certain or probable French origin are put in bold in the texts. Italics are used for expanded abbreviations, while inserted interlinear text is put in curly brackets and emendations of lacunae by the editor in square brackets. The line breaks of the editions are retained. Agnes Paston: Memorandum of errands (28 January 1458), PL: no. 28 1 To prey Grenefeld to sent me feythfully word by wrytyn who Clement 2 Paston hath do his dever e in lernyng. 3 And if he hathe nought do well, nor wyll nought amend, prey hym that + 8* 4 he wyll trewly belassch hym tyl he wyll amend; 5 And so ded the last mayst er , and þe best that euer he had, att Caumbrege. 6 And sey Grenefeld that if he wyll take up-on hym to brynge hym in-to 7 good rewyll and lernyng, that I may verily know he doth hys dever e , I 8 wyll geue hym x marc. for hys labor e ; for I had leuer he were fayr beryed 9 than lost fore defaute. 12 Margaret Paston: Letter to John Paston I (c. 1441), PL: no. 124 1 Ryth reuerent and worsepful husbon, I recomawnde me to ow wyth alle 2 myn sympyl herte, and prey {yow to wete} þat there come up xj hundyr 3 Flemyns at Waxham, qwere-of were takyn and kylte and d{r}onchyn viij 4 hundyrte. And þa[t] had nowte a be e xul a be atte home þis Qwesontyde, 5 and I suppose þat e xul be atte home er owte longke. 6 I thanke ow hertely for my lettyr, for I hadde non of ow syn I spake 7 wyth yow last for þe matyr of Jon Mariot. Þe qwest pasyd nowte of þat 8 day, for my lorde of Norfolke was in towne for Wedyrbys matyr; qwere- 9 fore he wolde nowt latyd pase. As for-furþe os I k[n]owe Fynche ne 10 Kylbys makeþe no purwyauns for hys gode. 11 No more I wryte to ow atte þis tyme, but þe Holy Trenyté hawe ow in kepyng. 12 Wretyn at Norweche on Trenyté Sunne-day. 13 ow[r] MARKARYTE PASTON 13 12 ‘To prey Grenefeld to send me a faithful report in writing how Clement Paston has done his duty in learning. And if he has not done well nor will amend, pray him that he will really belt him until he will amend; and so did his last master, and the best that he ever had, at Cambridge. And tell Grenefeld that if he will take (it) upon him to bring him into good rule and learning (so) that I truly know that he does his duty, I will give him 10 marks for his labour, because I would prefer if he were buried well rather than lost because of faults [in his character].’ [My translation, MH] 13 Right reverend and worshipful husband, I recommend myself to you with all my simple heart and pray {you to know} that there came up eleven hundred Flemings at Waxham, of whom eight hundred were taken and killed and drowned. And if that had not been [the case], you would have been at home this Whitsontide, and I suppose that you will be home some time [literally ‘ought’] not before too long. I thank you heartily for my letter, for I had none from you since I last spoke with you about the matter of John Mariot. The quest was not passed on that day, for my lord of Norfolk was in town about Wedyrby’s matter; wherefore he would not let it pass. As far as I know, (neither) Fynche nor Kylbys makes purveyance for his good[s]. I don’t write to you any more at this time, but the Holy Trinity guard you. Written at Norwich at Trinity Sunday. Your Margaret Paston. [Translation mine, MH] , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " Margery Brews: Letter to John Paston III (February 1477), PL: no. 415 1 Ryght reu er ent and wurschypfull and my ryght welebeloued Voluntyne, I 2 reco m mande me vn-to yowe full hertely, desyring to here of yowr welefare, 3 whech I beseche Almyghty God long for to p re s er ve vn-to hys plesur e and 4 owr hertys desyr e . And yf it please owe to here of my welefare, I am not 5 in good heele of body ner of herte, nor schall be tyll I here from yowe; 6 For þer wottys no creatur e what peyn þat I endur e , 7 And for to be deede I dare it not dyscur e . 8 And my lady my moder hath labored þe mat er to my fadure full delygently, 9 but sche can no more get þen e knowe of, for þe whech God knowyth I am full sory. 10 But yf that e loffe me, as I tryste verely that e do, e will not leffe me 11 þerfor; for if þat e hade not halfe þe lyvelode þat e hafe, for to do þe 12 grettyst labur e þat any woman on lyve myght, I wold not forsake owe. 13 And yf e co m mande me to kepe me true where-euer I go 14 Iwyse I will do all my myght owe to love and neuer no mo. 15 And yf my freendys say þat I do amys, þei schal not me let so for to do, 16 Myn herte me byddys euer more to love owe 17 Truly ouer all erthely thing. / / 18 And yf þei be neuer so wroth, I tryst it schall be bettur in tyme commyng. 19 No more to yowe at this tyme, but the Holy Trinité hafe owe in kepyng. 20 And I besech owe þat this bill be not seyn of non erthely creatur e safe 21 only our-selfe, &c. And thys lett ur was jndyte at Topcroft wyth full heuy 22 herte, &c. 21 Be our own M.B. 14 14 ‘Right reverend and worshipful and my beloved valentine [sweetheart], I recommend myself to you very heartily, desiring to hear of your welfare, which I beseech Almighty God to preserve long to his pleasure and your heart’s desire. And if it should please you to hear of my welfare, I am not in good health of either body or heart, nor shall (I) be till I hear from you; For no creature knows what pain I endure, And for my life I do not dare to discover it (to anyone). And my lady my mother has advocated the matter to my father very diligently, but she can achieve [literally ‘get’] no more than you know of, for which God knows I am very sad. But if you love me, as I really trust you do, you will not leave me because of this; for if you had not half the livelihood that you have, (and) if I had to do the hardest work [literally ‘greatest labour’] that any woman might (have to do) in her life, I would not forsake you. And if you command me to keep myself true wherever I go Certainly I will do all (in) my might to love you and never any more. + 8* Margery Cely: Letter to George Cely in Calais ( c. Sept. 1484), CL: no 222 1 Ryght [re]u er ent and worchupfull Ser, [I r]ecommend me vnto 2 [you wyth] reu er ence, as a s[p]ows how to dow to [h]yr spow[s], 3 as [h]hartely as [I can], euermore dessyr<y>ng to her of your wellfar, 4 þe wyche Jhesu p re saru[e to his] ple[sure and] your hart desser. 5 And [if] it lyke you Ser to send me a lett er o[f you]r w[ellfar], that 6 I dessyr alder[mo]st to her. And yf it lyke you ser to h[er] [o]f my 7 [h]elt[he, at the] makyng of thys symple letter I was in good 8 helthe of bode, blessyd be J[hesu as] I troste þat ye be, or I wold 9 be ryght sorye. 10 And I pray y[ou] s[e]r that ye well [be of] good cher, for all your 11 goodys ar in safte at home, blessyd be God; and [as sone] as ye may 12 make a nend of your besenes I pray you to sped you ho[me], for 13 I thyng it a long se<s>en [MS senen] sen e depart from me, and I wott well I 14 sch[all] nere be mery to I see you agayn. And I pray you to send me 15 word in h[aste what] tyme þat ye well be at home yf ye may. Ser, 16 lattyng you w[ette I] sent you a hart of gold to a tokyn be 17 Nycklas Kerkebe, and ye [schold receyue 15 ] in thys lett er a feterloke 18 of gold wyth a rebe þerin, and I pray you ser to [t]ake [it] in worthe 19 at thys tyme, for I knew not wo schold care þe leter. No mor vnto you at thys 20 tyme, b[ut] Jhesu haue you in hys keppyng. 21 Be your wyf, Margere Celye. 22 Address: To my ryght worchupfull ho{w}ss band Gorge Cely, 23 m er chand of þe Stapell at Calys þys be del[y]u er ed. 16 And if my friends say that I do (something) wrong, they shall not stop me from doing so. My heart bids me to love you forever [literally ‘ever more’] Truly above all earthly things. No matter how angry they are, I trust I shall be better in future times. No more to you at this time, but the Holy Trinity guard you. And I beseech you that this bill be not seen by any earthly creature except only yourself, etc. And this letter was composed/ dictated at Topcroft with a very heavy heart, etc. By your own M.B.’ [My translation, MH] 15 Davis’s emendation of the lacuna is “schall receive”, but this is not really compatible with “take it in worthe at thys tyme”. My reading of the text is that Margery intended to enclose the fetterlock, but did not do so, as she did not consider it safe. 16 ‘Right reverend and worshipful Sir, I recommend myself to you with reverence, as a spouse ought to do to her spouse, as heartily as I can, evermore desiring to hear of your welfare, which Jesus preserve to his pleasure and your heart’s desire. And , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " An overview of the words printed in bold is provided in Table 1, which also gives the respective dates of first occurrence, according to the Oxford English Dictionary for comparison. Cases where French origin is probable, but not absolutely certain are marked by a preceding question mark. # . , *% 2 % A @ % 6 * B 2 5 Word/ OED date AP MP MB MC Word/ OED date AP MP MB MC amend 1330 x (2) pass 1473 x (2) ? belash --x please 1382 x carry 1340-70 x pleasure c. 1425 x x cheer 1300 x pray 1325 x x (3) command 1300 x preserve 1432 x x creaturec. 1300 x (2) purveyance c. 1325 x default 1389 x quest 1393 x deliver 1297 x receive 1300 x depart 1340 x recommend c. 1386 x x x desire n 1300 x x reverence 1290 x if it should please you, Sir, to send me a letter about your welfare, I would most desire to hear (about) that. And if it should please you to hear about my health, at the making of this simple letter I was in good health of body, blessed be Jesus, as I trust that you are, or (else) I would be very sad. And I pray you, Sir, that you will be of good cheer [i.e. happy], for all your goods are in safety at home, blessed be God, and as soon as you can finish your business, I pray you to speed yourself home, for I think it [is] a long time since you departed from me, and I know well I shall never be merry till I see you again. And I pray you to send me word in haste when you will be at home, if you can. Sir, I let you know that I sent you a heart of gold as a token by Nicklas Kerkebe, and you shall receive [Davis’s emendation; I would suggest schold receyue in the sense of ‘should have received’ MH] in this letter a fetterlock of gold with a ruby therein, and I pray you, Sir, to take it in worth [its value], at this time, for I did not know who should carry the letter to you. No more to you at this time, but Jesus guard you. By your wife, Margery Cely. To my right worshipful husband George Cely, merchant of the Staple at Calais be this delivered.’ [My translation, MH] + 8* Word/ OED date AP MP MB MC Word/ OED date AP MP MB MC desire vb 1340-70 x x reverent 1380 x x x devoir 1300 x (2) ruby c. 1310 x diligently 1340 x rule 1305 x discover 1300 x safety 1375 x endure c. 1325 x save 1300 x faithfully 1400 x season 1465 x indite c. 1374 x simple 1220 x x ? haste n. 1300 x sir 1320 x (5) labour n 1300 x x Spouse c. 1200 x (2) labour vba 1449 x staple 1423 x ? letter a 1220 x x (2) suppose 1340 x master 1387 x trinity a 1225 x (2) x matter c. 1230 x (2) x valentyne a 1450 x merchant c. 1225 x verily 1300 x x pain 1375 x The proportion of French loanwords in the three letters ranges between 7% and 9%, ignoring multiple usage of sir by which Margery Cely addresses her husband, while it is c. 12.5 % in Agnes Paston’s memorandum of errands. As two of the texts are definitely not autographs, the possibility needs to be considered that the vocabulary used is that of the scribe rather than that of the female author. There are several reasons that argue against this. (1.) Changing the wording when writing to dictation is difficult and would therefore only be done for a good reason. Such a change is, for example, documented in terms of address in drafts of petitions to the nobility where the author needed to obtain the addressee’s favour (John Paston I; PL: nos 42-44). In terms of their general importance, the texts clearly do not fall into the same category. (2.) Agnes Pas- , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " ton’s memorandum shows the structure of oral composition, which has not been interfered with. (3.) Margaret Paston’s vocabulary and syntax is consistent across letters written by twenty-nine different scribes (Davis 1971: xxvii). (4.) The verse in Margery Brews’ letter is so poor, with lines of diverging length, that the text is clearly her own attempt at poetry rather than being produced for her by her father’s clerk. This is also confirmed by her choice of “thys lettur was indyte”, which means ‘composed’ and ‘dictated’. In this case, as also in that of Agnes Paston’s memorandum, it is certain that the text is not autograph. The hand of Margery’s Valentine letter has been identified by Davis as that of Thomas Kela, her father’s clerk. In the case of Margaret Paston’s letter and Margery Cely’s letter it has been claimed that they are autograph (Tarvers 1992 and Tarvers 1996). This claim is based on the fact that the hand of Margaret’s letter was described as “crude and unpractised” by Davis, while the hand of Margery Cely’s letter is also found in additions to household accounts (CL: no. 201). While this claim cannot be confirmed or refuted with certainty, it seems safe to assume that the vocabulary is indeed that of the women and not that of their amanuenses. Further supporting evidence for nativisation are the spellings used. These show consonant elision in the case of dyscure (from Old French descovrir, descouvrir ‘discover’, OED entry “discover, v.”), and vowel reduction in the case of devere (from Old French deveir ‘devoir’, OED entry “devoir, n.”). The texts also include the word belash, which is listed under “be-, prefix” in OED Online, and for which the only documented source is Agnes Paston’s memorandum, where it occurs in “prey hym that he wyll trewly belassch hym tyl he wyll amend”. The OED etymology entry for this word is “? <lash, v1”, which means that it might be derived from the verb, for which the etymology entry reads as follows: Of difficult etymology. The quots. seem to show that in branch I. the vb. is the source, not the derivative, of lash n. 1 An onomatopoeic origin is possible, and is favoured by the early appearance of the parallel and nearly synonymous lush v. 1 ; compare dash, dush, flash, flush, mash, mush, smash, smush, etc. Some uses resemble those of French lâcher (Old French lascher) to loose, let go (lâcher un coup to ‘let fly’). The senses in branch II. are < lash n. 1 , and in mod. use have coloured the other senses. Agnes Paston’s belassch, which refers to corporal punishment, is clearly related to Old French lascher un coup and to OED entry “lash n. 1”, which is defined as “a sudden or violent blow; a dashing or sweeping stroke (obs.)”. The addition of the native English prefix beto a French root shows a high degree of nativisation. Thus both the nativised forms that occur in the four texts by women, and the fact that so many words borrowed from French are used by illiterate women or women of limited literacy, if one accepts Tarvers’s claim, show that the words were in common use. + 8* % A / 9 ? *& ? " Letter writing is governed by conventions. In medieval times these conventions were more pronounced than in modern times. The three letters by Margaret Paston, Margery Brews and Margery Cely contain conventional formulae which recur in all of them. These can be described under the headings of ‘recommendation formula’, ‘welfare formula’ and ‘closing formula’. Tables 2, 3, and 4 illustrate that the formulae are not only used by all three women, but also that they are closely related to French models. The recurrent phrasal units are printed in bold in the tables. Italics indicate expanded abbreviations. # . / " % , *% * 55 5 Recommendation formula (English) Recommendation formula (French) MP: Ryth reuerent and worsepful husbon, I recomawnde me to ow wyt h alle my n sympyl herte MB: Ryght reuerent and wurschypfull and my ryght welebeloued Voluntyne, I reco m mande me vn-to yowe full hertely MC: Ryght reuerent and worchupfull Ser, I recommend me vnto you wyth reu er ence, as a spows how to [ought to] dow to hyr spows, as hartely as I can Model letter from son to mother: Ma chiere et treshoneuree mere, je me recomande a vous en tant comme je puis Nicholas Cowley to Edmund de Stonor (c. 1365): A mon treshonore et tresreverent syr, je moy recomanke a vous de tout mon cuer Waterin Tabary, Calais (c. 1479): Mon treschier et bien ame Maistre Jorge Silait [sic], je me reco mmande a v ot re bon n e grasse Clare to George Cely, Calais (1479): Trèschier et especial, je me reco m mande à vous, Jorge Sely The English formula “I recommend me (un)to you with all my heart” is modeled on the French je me recommande a vous de tout mon cœur, which was in use in England, as the letter by Nicholas Cowley to Edmund Stonor shows. Margery Cely’s more deferent “I recommend me unto you with reverence, as a spouse ought to do to her spouse” is an extended English translation of the French je me recomande a vous en tant comme je puis. There is some variation both in the English and the French phrases, which may reflect different relationships between writer and addressee as well as personal choice. , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " # . / " % , *% 2 5 Welfare formula (English) Welfare formula (French) MB: desyring to her e of yowr welefare, whech I beseche Almyghty God long for to p re s er ve vn-to hys plesur e and owr hertys desyre. MC: euermore dessyr<y>ng to her of your wellfar, þe wyche Jh es u p re sarue to his plesure and your hart desser Model letter from husband to wife: desirant tout dis d’oier bons nouvelles de vous et de vostre estat et santee que Dieux vueille maintenir et accroistre a sa louange. Nicholas Cowley to Edmund de Stonor, (c. 1365): tresentierment endesirant doier bones novelles de vous, come je sui grauntement tenuz Clare to George Cely, Calais (1479): Sachies que je suy en très bonpoint et je prye à Dieu que ainsy soiet il de vous. The welfare formulae used by Margery Brews and Margery Cely are almost identical. They are abbreviated English versions of the one that is used in the French model letter from husband to wife. Both have the additional “and to your heart’s desire”, which does not occur in the French model, perhaps because it was considered inappropriate to combine “God’s pleasure” and the “addressee’s desire” in one and the same phrase. Margaret Paston’s letter does not contain a welfare formula, while the French female letter writer Clare in her letter uses a formula that combines a statement about her own welfare with good wishes for the addressee’s. # 4. / " % , *% * " 5 Closing formula (English) Closing formula (French ) MP: No mor e I wryte to ow atte þis tyme, but þe Holy Trenyté hawe ow i n kepyng MB: No more to yowe at this tyme, but the Holy Trinité hafe owe in kepyng MC: No mor vnto you at thys tyme, b[ut] Jh es u haue you in hys keppyng Model letter from sister to sister: Aultre respons ne vous fay mander quant a present. A Dieu qui vous eit en sa garde. Nicholas Cowley to Edmund de Stonor (c. 1365): Autre chose quant a present, monsyr, ne sai escrire, mais je pri a la Trinite qe vous doigne bone vie et sauntee de corps a long durre. + 8* John de Beverle to Edmund de Stonor (1378): Le senet espirit vous eiez en sa tressentisme gard. Waterin Tabary, Calais (c. 1479): No n plus pour le present, synon que Dieu vous ayt en sa sainte garde. Clare to George Cely, Calais (1479): Ault re chose ne vo us say que j’escrie po ur le pressent, sinon que Dieu soiet garde de Jorge Sely et de Clare. The closing formulae used by the three English women are almost identical. They consist of two parts, one stating that there is no more to say at the time of writing, and another which asks the Trinity or, in the case of Margery Cely’s letter, Jesus to guard the addressee. In all three letters the French phrase en sa garde is translated by “in (his) keeping”. The elaborate French vous fay mander (‘have you sent’) of the model letter is not translated into English. Instead two of the women use the elliptical verbless construction “no more (un)to you at this time”, which corresponds to Waterin Tabary’s non plus pour le present, while Margaret Paston’s version, which includes “write to you” appears to be a reduced English equivalent of the formula used by Nicholas Cowley, which contains sai escrire ‘know to write’. Clare’s say may likewise be a reduced form of Cowley’s formula. The three women’s use of letter formulae raises the question of how they acquired them. This question relates to two more general ones: (1.) How were English letter formulae acquired and transmitted in the Middle Ages? and (2.) Why are English letter formulae so similar to French ones? To answer these questions, it is necessary to take a brief look at medieval epistolary culture. Medieval letter writing is very different from the classical tradition of Latin letter writing that is documented in Cicero’s letters. English medieval letters are also very different from Old English letters (cf. the writs in Harmer 1952). The only phrase that seems to go back to the Old English tradition is I greet thee/ you well, which is used by the older generation in the correspondences (John Paston I, Agnes Paston, Richard Cely I). According to Constable (1976: 2-24), the reason for the change in style is a shift from the personal letter of antiquity to political and ecclesiastical letters, which gave them a public and authoritative character (cf. Lanham 1992). Murphy (2005: 199) states that already in the Merovingian period prototype letters existed that served as templates for various occasions, , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " and Lanham (1992) claims that letters had been used as teaching material for teaching Latin from the eighth century. The first known treatise on the ars dictaminis, the Breviarium de dictamine was written by Alberic of Monte Cassino (born ca. 1030 and died 1094/ 1099), while the first treatise compiled in England dates from c. 1207 (Robertson 1942: 9). The treatises detailed the general structure of letters consisting of salutatio ‘salutation’, exordium ‘introduction’, narratio ‘report’, petitio ‘request’ and conclusio ‘conclusion’, but they also gave more specific advice on stylistic matters, e.g. the appropriate address terms for different members of the clergy, the nobility and gentry, and relatives, and often contained model letters. More practical manuals which restricted themselves to model letters are documented in the fourteenth century, such as those by Thomas Sampson, who taught letter writing in Oxford in the middle of the fourteenth century (Richardson 1942: 329-450). His manuals, from which some of the French examples in tables 2-4 are taken, contain French and Latin model letters for different occasions. The following extract from a manuscript dating from 1383 illustrates the elaborate recommendation, health and closing formulae proposed by Sampson. The example is a model letter from a son to his father (Richardson 1942: no. 59): Treshonure sire et piere. Je me recomanc a vostre tresreverente paternite en tant come je suy digne en totes reverences et honurs, desirant soveraignement vostre benisone et qe vous soiez en saintee, qe pry a Dieu, par sa mercy, q’il la vous voille longement granter. Et touchant mon estat, treshonure piere, savoir vous pleise q’a l’escrire du cest lettre feu en saintee de corps, la mercy Dieu, […] Autre chose, treshonure piere, ne vous sai escrire a present, mais qe me voillez recomandre a ma treshonure dame et miere et saluer de par moy mez freres, soers et touz autres amys. Et luy soverain piere Dieu mesmes vous octroie plusours jours et benurez. Escript. 17 There is no contemporary English letter writing manual. The first manual in English is William Fullwood’s The Enimie of Idlenesse, published in 1586, 18 which is a translation of a French manual entitled Le stile et 17 ‘Right reverend Sir and father. I recommend myself as much as I am worthy to your right reverend fatherhood in all reverence and homage, desiring most your blessing and that you are in good health, which I pray God by his mercy will grant you for a long time. Regarding my well-being, most reverend father, if it pleases you to know that at the writing of this letter I am in good health of body, thanked be God […] Other matters, right reverend father, I do not know to write [i.e. there is nothing else to write] at the moment, but that you would recommend me to my right reverend lady my mother and give greetings from me to my brothers and sisters and all other friends. And God himself may give my sovereign father a long life and happiness. Written.’ [My translation, MH] 18 This is a century later than the first documented vernacular letter writing manuals in German (Rockinger 1863: v). + 8* manière de composer, dicter, et escrire toute sorte d’epistres, ou lettres missiues, tant par réponse que autrement, auec epitome de la poinctuation françoise, published in 1566, which in turn is indebted to Erasmus of Rotterdam’s influential Libellus de conscribendis epistolis, a Latin manual which was written for his pupil Robert Fisher and first printed in Cambridge in 1521 (Robertson 1942: 10, 13-14). While Fullwood’s manual remained comparatively unknown, Angel Day’s The English Secretary (1586), likewise based on a French model, went through a second edition in 1592 and became the source for later manuals. Earlier English manuals have either not survived or did not exist. If none have survived, this indicates that they must have been rare. If they did not exist, the most likely scenario is that English letter writing was taught with the help of French manuals and ad hoc translations by teachers who also taught, or were familiar with, French letter writing. As the first English manual was published almost two centuries after the medium of letter writing shifted from French to English, it seems highly probable that French manuals were used for teaching English letter writing. Formal teaching was only accessible to men. Yet, women had evidently acquired the formulae. How was this possible? With the exception of Margery Cely, of whose background we know very little except that she was the widow of the London merchant Edmund Rygon (Hanham 1985: 310-311), the women in question came from families who had clerks that were employed as scribes. Unlike in the late modern period, in the medieval period there was no spatial and temporal division between work and private life. Business letters as well as private letters were predominantly dictated to scribes in people’s homes. This means that the women grew up in an environment where letters were regularly dictated. I would argue that the women learned the phrases by regularly hearing them, just as children learn the idiomatic phrases of everyday language from the oral input they receive. 19 As medieval letter writing was highly formulaic, the same formulae were repeated in almost every letter with little variation. The formulaic nature of medieval letter writing therefore provided ample opportunity for hearing the formulae and facilitated the process of oral acquisition. <% & The evidence of the three family correspondences of the Stonors, the Pastons and the Celys sheds new light on the date of the shift from French to English in the schoolroom, suggesting that teaching via French may have 19 The same also holds for the acquisition of professional terminology. Spedding (2008) argues that Margaret Paston acquired her vast legal vocabulary of some 200 terms through exposure. , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " extended to 1400 in parts of the country and letter writing in French to the beginning of the fifteenth century among members of the gentry. The correspondences document for the second half of the fifteenth century a major difference regarding the acquisition of French between the gentry and the merchants including those who traded extensively on the Continent. The Cely Letters show that wool merchants such as the Daltons and Celys had no or next to no knowledge of French. In contrast, the evidence of book ownership in the Paston Letters suggests a reading competence in French for members of the gentry as well as for some of their employees. It also shows that the interest in French is closely related to the gentry’s interest in chivalry. This indicates that it was the cultural interest that motivated the continued acquisition of French after French had ceased to be used in courts of law and the royal court. The potential advantage in business interactions on the Continent, which is emphasised in Caxton’s dialogues and is mentioned by Kibbee (1991: 78) as a reason for learning French, was not enough to lead to the acquisition of French among the Celys and their fellow merchants. It is perhaps not just a coincidence of transmission that the earliest French manual aimed at merchants (Caxton’s Dialogues in French and English) dates from the late fifteenth century, while Walter de Bibbesworth’s Tretiz, which was written for Dionyse de Mountechensie, a member of the nobility, dates from the thirteenth. The evidence of the Cely Letters suggests that the interest in the French language and culture that existed among members of the gentry did not extend to the merchant classes. The correspondences also provide information on the nativisation of French words and phrases. A high degree of nativisation of French words in the fifteenth century is documented by the high proportion of words of French origin in texts authored by women who had no knowledge of French. The use of letter formulae calqued on French ones, which is identical in males and females, shows that these likewise had become general usage. The data challenges the view that language transfer takes predominantly place in spoken interaction, and it shows the importance of the link between cultural transfer and language transfer. In the later Middle Ages French chivalric culture served as a model for the English gentry. French literature provided access to French culture and was the vehicle for linguistic import. In a similar way French letter conventions were taken over, when French letter formulae were transliterated by those who were used to writing in French. The large-scale borrowing from French did not originate in bilingual speakers, but in bilingual writers, i.e. the translators and adaptors of French texts and letter formulae. The quick spread of borrowed words and phrases through English society was facilitated by an oral culture, in which reading aloud was the norm and letters were dictated at home. + 8* # B * , + & Anglo-Saxon Writs (1952). Ed. F.E. Harmer. Manchester: Manchester University Press. The Cely Letters: 1472-1488 (1975). Ed. Alison Hanham. Oxford: OUP. Dialogues in French and English by William Caxton (Adapted from a Fourteenth- Century Book of Dialagues in French and Flemish) (1900). Ed. Henry Bradley. EETS e. s 79. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner for the Early English Text Society, [1488]. Kingford’s Stonor Letters and Papers (1290-1483) (1996). Ed. Christine Carpenter. Cambridge: CUP. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (1971-1976). Ed. Norman Davis. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Walter of Bibbesworth: Le Tretiz (1990). Ed. William Rothwell. London: Anglo Norman Text Society. Walter de Bibbesworth: Le Tretiz, from MS. G (Cambridge University Library Gg.1.1) and MS. T (Trinity College, Cambridge 02.21), together with two Anglo-French poems in praise of women (British Library, MS. Additional 46919) (2009). Ed. William Rothwell. 2009. http: / / www.anglo-norman.net/ texts/ buibb-gt.pdf [15 February 2011]. + , + & Barber, Charles (1993). The English Language: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: CUP. Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable (2000). A History of the English Language. London: Routledge. Beadle, Richard (2008). ”Sir John Fastolf’s French books.” In: Denis Reveney and Graham D. Caie (eds.) Medieval Texts in Context. London: Routledge. 96-112. Brachet, Auguste (1873). An Etymological Dictionary of the French Language. Transl. G.W. Kitchin. Oxford: Clarendon. Constable, Giles (1976). Letters and Letter Collections. Turnhout: Brepols. Cooper, Helen (1999). “Romance after 1400.” In: David Wallace (ed.). The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: CUP. 690-719. Cooper, Helen (2004). The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare. Oxford: OUP. Davis, Norman and G.S. Ivy (1962). “MS. Walter Rye 38 and Its French Grammar.” Medium Ævum 31. 110-124. Day, Angel [1599] (1967). The English Secretary or Methods of Writing Epistles and Letters with a Declaration of such Tropes, Figures, and Schemes, as either usually or for ornament sake are therein required. Facsimile reproduction. Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints. Ellis, Henry (1824). Original Letters, Illustrative of English History: including numerous royal letters from autographs in the British Museum, and one or two other collections. London [printed for Harding, Triphook and Lephard.]. Finkenstaedt, Thomas and Dieter Wolff (1973). Ordered Profusion: Studies in Dictionaries and the English Lexicon. Heidelberg: Winter. , *%6/ " % > " * & & * + ' / " Fullwood, William (1568). The Enemie of Idlenesse. London: Bynneman for Leonard Maylard. Hanham, Alison (1957). “The Musical Studies of a Fifteenth-Century Wool Merchant.” Review of English Studies 8. 270-274. Hanham, Alison (1985). The Celys and Their World: An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge: CUP. Hanham, Alison (2005). “Who made William Caxton’s Phrase-Book? ” Review of English Studies 56. 712-729. Harrison, Henry (1969). Surnames of the United Kingdom: A Concise Etymological Dictionary. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company. Iglesias-Rabade, Luis (1995). “Multi-Lingual Education in England 1200-1500.” Studia Neophilologica 67. 185-195. Institute for Name Studies, University of Nottingham (n.d.). The Key to English Placenames http: / / www.nottingham.ac.uk/ ~aezins/ / kepn/ [15 February 2011]. Kibbee, Douglas A. (1991). For to Speke Frenche Trewely: The French Language in England, 1000-1600: Its Status, Description and Instruction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lanham, Carol Dana (1975). Salutatio Formulas in Latin Letters to 1200: Syntax, Style, and Theory. München: Arbeo-Gesellschaft. Lanham, Carol Dana (1992). “Freshman Composition in the Early Middle Ages: Epistolography and Rhetoric before the ars dictaminis.” Viator 23. 115-134. Lutz, Angelika (2008). “The Importance of French Influence for the Development of Modern English and German Word Formation.” In: Klaus Stierstorfer (ed.). Anglistentag 2007 Münster: Proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 345-357. Meale, Carol M. (1992). “Caxton, de Worde, and the Publication of Romance in Late Medieval England.” The Library 14. 283-298. Murphy, James J. (2005). Latin Rhetoric and Education in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Aldershot: Ashgate. Oxford English Dictionary (n.d.). 3 rd edition. Online. http: / / www.oed.com/ [Accessed 25.01.2011]. Pearsall, Derek (1976). “The English Romance in the Fifteenth Century.” Essays and Studies. 56-83. Prins, A.A. (1952). French Influence in English Phrasing. Leiden: Leiden University Press. Richardson, H.G. (1941). “Business Training in Medieval Oxford.” American Historical Review 46. 259-280. Richardson, H.G. (1942). “Letters of the Oxford Dictatores.” In: H.E. Salters, W.A. Pantin and H.G. Richardson (eds.). Formularies Which Bear on the History of Oxford c. 1204-1420. Oxford: OUP. 329-450. Robertson, Jean (1942). The Art of Letter Writing: An Essay on the Handbooks Published in England During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Rockinger, Ludwig (1961 [originally 1863]). Briefsteller und Formelbücher des elften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 1. Reprint. New York: Fränklin. Rothwell, William (1968) “The Teaching of French in Medieval England.” Modern Language Review 63. 37-46. Rothwell, William (2005). Femina. http: / / www.anglo-norman.net/ texts/ femina.pdf . [15 February 2011]. Scheler, Manfred (1977). Der englische Wortschatz. Berlin: Schmidt. + 8* Serjeantson, Mary S. (1935). A History of Foreign Words in English. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Smith, Jeremy (1999). Essentials of Early English. London: Routledge. Spedding, Alison (2008). “‘I Shalle Send Word in Writing’: Lexical Choices and Legal Acumen in the Letters of Margaret Paston.” Medium Ævum 77. 241-259. Suggett, Helen (1946). “The Use of French in the Later Middle Ages: The Alexander Prize Essay.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 4 th ser. 28. 61-83. Tarvers, Josephine Koster (1992).“Thys ys my mystrys boke’: English Women as Readers and Writers in Late Medieval England.” In: Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods (eds.). The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Press. 305-327. Tarvers, Josephine Koster (1996). “In a Woman’s Hand? Medieval Women’s Holograph Letters.” Postscript 13. 89-100. Thomason, Sarah Grey (2001). Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Thomason, Sarah Grey and Terence Kaufman (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley, Los Angeles & Oxford: University of California Press. # > " 2 , C = - 0 ? & 6 + ,% 26 * ) #B . & 5 " 1*% = % "0 - + > D This interdisciplinary collection of seven essays relating to body studies offers a wide overview of the heterogeneous research areas and methods used in a field that has witnessed great expansion and diversification in the last two decades. The idea for the book was developed at the 2008 seminar sessions of the European Society for the Study of Englishes conference, chaired by Logie Barrow and the late honorary co-editor, François Poirier, which had the same title as the resulting publication. The essays also constitute a contribution to the fields of British Studies and, due to Fellner's contribution on changing body paradigms in Puritan New England, also to American Studies. The papers draw on different discourses and their authors are labelled in the introduction in diverse ways: linguist-lettrists, lettrists and historians. Although the papers are specialised, they are accessible and they evoke the reader's interest regardless of her/ his previous familiarity with the field in question. However, the fact that the book represents a collage of research areas may also be seen as one of its few drawbacks, as it can be difficult to specify the interrelatedness of the topics covered in each essay. Barrow sets the stage for the papers by providing succinct and informative summaries which emphasize those aspects most closely relating to the field of body studies: body-soul and gender dualism, the shift towards the binary sex model in the 18 th century, the birth of activism and human rights acts as a response to sexual violation, changes in gender domains, hierarchical views on human and animal bodies in colonial Britain, and the debate, beginning in the 19 th century, about mandatory vaccination policies, which raised the question of the rights and the ability to judge of British subjects, who were ironically enfranchised during the same historical period. The contributions cover historical developments from pre-Norman England onwards. The papers also reveal the relation of the described body perceptions to the present state of ' ( & ) & * ) ) ! " #$ " affairs, if only by exposing our own culture-bound views by comparing them to views belonging to another belief system. The collection is largely arranged chronologically, opening with a paper entitled “Body and Society in Pre-Norman England”. The author, Maria Eliferova, uses Old English texts for her analysis of body perception in pre- Norman England. In her linguistic analysis of Old English Bible translations, Eliferova turns to different uses of words relating to the dual concepts of the body and soul, concepts which are of great relevance in the history of Western thought. Eliferova evokes an image of a society which is unaware of stark body-soul distinctions, thus contrasting with world views of the later dominant Christian culture. The author claims to be dealing with more essential questions of the body and thus distances herself from issues which some theories consider to be of primary importance, such as gender and sexuality. Nevertheless, she cannot avoid including lengthy discussions about sexuality and social practices. Eliferova's analysis of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon body perception based on a corpus of Old English texts additionally points to the lack of a direct relation between the naked body, sexuality and shame, and the perception of the body as a public and not only a private concern. In “A Compleat Body of Divinity: Visions of Sexuality and the Body in Puritan New England”, Astrid M. Fellner also uses textual sources as basis for the analysis of a culturally specific understanding of the body, albeit by focusing on a single source, a New England Puritan diary, The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr. In this relatively brief, yet informative paper, Fellner provides an analysis of the evolving body perception of the diary's author and relates the text to the theories of an important shift in the understanding of the body which took place at the end of the 18 th century. This shift concerns the objectification of the biologically given body, and it resulted in a change towards a qualitative model of gender, or rather, sex differences, replacing the earlier Galenic quantitative model. The remaining five papers in the book all deal with Britain in the 19 th , and occasionally at the turn of the 20 th century. Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz provides an introduction to the Victorian period with an intriguing title of “Child Abuse and White Slavery in 19 th -century Britain”. This engaging essay, which is of interest to historians, gender scholars and sociologists alike, embeds child abuse and the so-called vile traffic in broadly viewed social issues, and, more narrowly, in well-intended social activism, which was unfortunately restricted by the middle-class value system. Richard Sibley follows Fellner with the second paper dealing with the question of gender in his analysis of the emerging phenomenon of sportswomen in the second half of the 19 th century: “Feminism versus Femininity: the Significance of Women's Sporting Dress in Britain (1860-1914)”. Echoing the discourse of the shifts in body perception mentioned in Fellner's work, Sibley describes what we today might perceive as rebellious females engaging in the masculine domain of sports. At the end of the paper, Sibley’s discussion takes an interesting turn in that he dismisses actual instances of subversive behaviour by Victorian sportswomen through his analysis of what may be seen as a self-defining element, the choice of sporting dress. The contribution by Gilbert Pham-Thanh, “Body, Size or Dress Matters: Representation of the Dandical Male Body in Some Fashionable 19 th -Century Novels”, explores the world of fashionable Victorian novels, which bear rather postmodern characteristics as they are both challenging and supporting the ruling 19 th -century phallocentric class-based society. The author analyses the dandy character constructed in the literary corpus used in this paper, and discusses the issue of preference of social over sexual intercourse of the upper-class Narcissus, who distances himself from social and gender roles. In relation to the body question, the paper follows Sibley in analysing fashion, this time in the male sphere, as a self-defining and also metonymic literary device which allows the authors of the analysed novels to implicitly describe the body, a topic which could not be addressed directly at that time. Sune Borkfelt's “The Non-Human Colonial Subject: the Importance of Animal Bodies to British Imperialism” describes the hierarchical view of human and animal bodies in the British Empire and raises the more general question of anthropocentrism, which did not disappear with the Empire. This paper is the only one in the collection to deal with non-human bodies. Borkfelt illustrates that the ideology of the civilizing European, who has the right to tame and modify nature and to educate the savage, was spread through travel reports, hunting narratives, books, and even, in more modern times, film. In the second section, the author presents European, or more precisely, British cultural practices used to challenge the level of civilization of the conquered peoples, viz. animal domestication and meat eating, which were subsequently spread within the colonies along with the ruling imperial ideologies. The final paper of the collection, written by Logie Barrow, “English Vaccinal Unworthiness of Democracy”, requires of the reader a somewhat better understanding of social changes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. For those more familiar with the field in question, the essay provides a relevant and well argued source. The debate about compulsory vaccination, still alive and well in the 21st century, paradoxically emerged at the same time as enfranchisement, causing legal changes as well as a series of debates ranging from political controversies challenging the rights of the free-born Englishmen, to medical controversies surrounding the as yet imperfect vaccination practices and class discrimination. This diverse collection will appeal to a variety of readers. It is recommendable to those who want to get an overview of possible approaches, methods and actual empirical work in body studies, while those with more specialized interests will engage in reading separate papers of the collection. Students and others generally interested in English studies will surely enjoy the stimulating and accessible texts, even without direct involvement in the research areas in question. + > D E $ ( " 9 6, 67 ' 8 ((( / 2 + " 0 + *% " 0 9 F - 0 &* $ " * ,$ 5 + & 4 2 % + 0 G - (5 5A 2 H . ) 0 - I "Every South African has to some extent or other been traumatized. We are a wounded people". Unter anderem mit dieser Feststellung (die mehrfach in dem vorliegenden Band zitiert wird; S. 20, 54, 145) eröffnete Erzbischof Desmond Tutu, der eine zentrale Rolle beim Kampf gegen die Apartheid in Südafrika spielte und der für seinen Einsatz 1984 den Friedensnobelpreis erhielt, die Sitzungen der Truth and Reconciliation Commission, deren Vorsitzender er war. Die Kommission, die ihre Arbeit im Jahre 1996 aufnahm und vor der allein mehr als 7000 Täter (perpetrators) aussagten, sollte, wie ihre Bezeichnung verheißt, die 'Wahrheit' über den rassistischen Staat ans Licht bringen und zugleich eine Versöhnung zwischen den tief gespaltenen Bevölkerungsgruppen des Landes herbeiführen. Der anzuzeigende Band kreist ständig um die Arbeit dieser Kommission und vor allem um die Konzeption von Trauma, die Tutu in seiner Ansprache verwendet. Dabei ist Trauma ein Aspekt von Gedächtnis oder Erinnerung, und wie der Titel des Buches indiziert, wird dieser Gesichtspunkt verknüpft mit dem Narrativen, da es immer wieder darum geht, wie man ein traumatisches in ein narratives Gedächtnis überführen könne (S. vii, 52, passim). Das Buch ist ein Nebenprodukt eines größeren Projekts, das mit eben dem Titel "Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel" an der Universität Wien durchgeführt wird. Im April 2010 gab es dort auch eine Konferenz zu dem Thema. Getragen wird der Band von der neueren Trauma-Forschung, wie sie sich etwa in der von Cathy Caruth edierten Studie Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995) und Roger Luckhursts The Trauma Question (2008) manifestiert. Kein Bezug genommen wird in der "Introduction" des vorliegenden Buches (S. viixiii) hingegen auf die Schrift Das kulturelle Gedächtnis (1992) des Ägyptologen Jan Assmann, der ein enormes Interesse an dem Thema in der deutschen und österreichischen Anglistik entfachte und es zum Fokus diverser Anglistentage und Konferenzen avancieren ließ. Auch der markante Aufschwung, den der Forschungsbereich Narratologie in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten genommen hat und der die Basis für die zentrale Bedeutung des Narrativen in der Publikation bildet, wird nicht erörtert. Insgesamt besteht der Band aus vierzehn Interviews, die die Herausgebenden mit Südafrikanern zum Thema traumatisiertes Südafrika geführt haben. Eingeteilt ist das Ganze in die Sektionen "Interviews with South African Authors", "Psychologists" und "Academics". Die Auswahl der befragten Personen wird nicht näher begründet (bei den "Authors" etwa haben wir einen Mann und vier Frauen von unterschiedlicher Hautfarbe), und gewiss erweist sich diese Einteilung auch als fragwürdig: Der Autor André Brink ist zugleich ein Akademiker, und das gilt ebenso für Don Foster und Ashraf Kagee, die in der Sektion "Interviews with South African Psychologists" erscheinen, beide aber Professoren an südafrikanischen Universitäten sind. Die Publikation ist mithin an der Schnittstelle verschiedener Disziplinen angesiedelt und fest im südafrikanischen Kontext verankert. Fiktionale Literatur spielt in diesen Interviews, obgleich sie ständig wieder thematisiert wird, eine eher untergeordnete Rolle: Der Fokus liegt vielmehr auf den Bedingungen, die die Apartheid und die Zeit danach geschaffen haben, und darauf, wie sich diese Situation auf die Menschen in dem Land auswirkt. Dabei geht es im Zusammenhang mit der Apartheid regelmäßig um eine Traumatisierung durch Folter, im Post-Apartheid-Südafrika vor allem um eine Traumatisierung durch die notorischen Verbrechen, insbesondere Vergewaltigungen. Mehrfach werden in den Gesprächen Parallelen zum Holocaust (S. 8, 19, passim) und zur deutschen Vergangenheitsbewältigung (S. 22, 147) gezogen. Solche Parallelen sind naheliegend; doch obgleich das Konzentrationslager im südafrikanischen Burenkrieg entstanden ist (allerdings errichtet von den Briten mit dem Ziel, weiße Buren zu besiegen), haftet diesem Vergleich ein seltsamer Beigeschmack an. So schlimm die Situation im Apartheid- Südafrika war: Tötungsfabriken wie im Dritten Reich hat man dort nicht gebaut. Mithin tendiert eine solche Analogie eher zu einer Verharmlosung der Verhältnisse in der deutschen Vergangenheit. Trotz des Verweises auf solche Parallelen zeigt sich bei dem Thema Trauma - verständlicherweise - eine starke Fokussierung auf Südafrika; und man fragt sich, warum gerade Südafrika ein solch traumatisiertes Land sein solle. Gelten ähnliche Gegebenheiten nicht ebenso etwa für die Länder des ehemaligen Ostblocks, die sich in der gleichen Phase wie Südafrika von Regimen befreit haben, die von Unterdrückung, totalitärer Kontrolle, von großen Zahlen politischer Gefangener und ebenso von Folter in den Gefängnissen geprägt waren? Dementsprechend konzidiert Foster denn auch: "I say that three quarters of the world in the current climate - if not more of the world - live permanently in traumatic circumstances" (S. 124). Was die gegenwärtige Situation in Südafrika betrifft, sind die Diagnosen der Interviewten recht einheitlich. So stellt die Romanautorin Susan Mann fest: "Unfortunately, we are a violent nation" (S. 50), und ein Mord in dem Land, so Mann, schaffe es noch nicht einmal, als Geschichte in einer Zeitung berichtet zu werden. Damit aber würden Verbrechen und Gewalt in Südafrika normalisiert (S. 54). Foster erklärt dazu: "[W]e have the highest rape rate, we have the highest child rape rate, we have - dreadful - the highest murder rate, the highest assault rate, we have a very, very violent society in South Africa" (S. 108). Dabei tun sich die Befragten recht schwer, Erklärungen für diese Phänomene zu finden. Kagee versucht es mit einem Bündel von Gründen, bei denen etwa Armut, Perspektivenlosigkeit und auch Drogen eine Rolle spielen; festlegen mag er sich aber nicht (S. 133f.). Foster hingegen leitet die pandemische Gewalt in Südafrika unter anderem auf die Apartheidssituation zurück: Jene schwarzen Männer, die sich im Kampf gegen die Apartheid bewaffnet hätten, seien eben Waffenträger geblieben (S. 109). Die früher verbreitete These, dass die Gewalt- und Mordorgien (die es bereits zur Apartheidszeit gab) eine eindeutige Folge eben jener Apartheid seien, wird heute offenbar nicht mehr formuliert. Wenn man Schwarzen - so die Argumentation damals - permanent einrede, sie und ihr Leben gelten nichts, dann achten sie auch nicht das Leben anderer. Da es aber inzwischen eine gewalttätige Generation gibt, die die Apartheid nie erlebt hat, scheint dieses Argument nicht mehr zu greifen (obgleich diese Generation gleichfalls nachhaltig von dem Erbe des Rassismus geprägt ist). Die Arbeit der Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Bezug auf die Bewältigung der Apartheid wird recht unterschiedlich beurteilt. Einig ist man sich darüber, es sei gut gewesen, keine 'deutsche Lösung' wie mit den Nürnberger Prozessen zu suchen: Eine solche Strategie hätte das Land womöglich zerrissen (so der frühere Parlamentsabgeordnete und spätere Vizevorsitzende der Truth and Reconciliation Commission Alex Boraine; S. 147). Während Boraine die Arbeit der Kommission insgesamt positiv beurteilt, obgleich er manche Vorbehalte äußert, kritisiert der Historiker Neville Alexander, der in der Apartheidszeit selbst zehn Jahre im Gefängnis saß, noch nachhaltiger, dass nur vergleichsweise unwichtige Apartheidsverantwortliche vor der Kommission erschienen (S. 161). Recht weit auseinander gehen dann die Meinungen darüber, inwiefern das Narrative, das Erzählen oder letztlich auch die schriftliche Fixierung traumatischer Erlebnisse einen therapeutischen Effekt haben. Der Literaturwissenschaftler Tlhalo Raditlhalo betrachtet die Aussagen der Täter und Opfer vor der Kommission (wie die meisten Befragten zieht er jedoch den Begriff survivor dem Terminus victim vor; S. 214) als ein narratives, allerdings mündliches Ganzes, das deutlich von der je einzelnen Niederschrift traumatischer Erlebnisse zu unterscheiden sei (S. 213). Die Mehrzahl der Interviewten (z. B. Sindiwe Magona, S. 36; Maxine Case, S. 69; Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, S. 176) glaubt an eine therapeutische Wirkung, die entstehe, wenn man traumatische Erlebnisse zu Papier bringe - etwa weil man dadurch eine Kontrolle über die Ereignisse gewinne (ebd.). Andere hingegen stellen einen solchen Effekt in Frage (Foster, S. 122f.; Kagee, S. 130, 135). Mehrfach wird überdies angesprochen, dass eine schriftliche Präsentation von Traumata zu einer Re- Traumatisierung bei den Schreibenden - und auch bei den Lesenden - führen könne (S. 99, 178). Darüber hinaus heben Foster (S. 116ff.) und Chris van der Merwe (S. 176ff.) hervor, dass sich im Zuge einer Traumatisierung eine eigene Körpersprache entwickle; daher der Titel des Foster-Interviews: "But Even Bodies Never Speak Pure Languages" (S. 103). Die Auswirkungen der unbewältigten Vergangenheit sowie eben des Bewältigungsversuches durch die Kommission auf die südafrikanische Gegenwartsliteratur werden gleichfalls recht unterschiedlich bewertet. Früher war südafrikanische Literatur bekanntlich dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass sie sich primär auf ein Monothema konzentrierte, nämlich auf die Darstellung der Lebensbedingungen, die die Apartheid geschaffen hatte; und bei dem Umbruch Anfang der neunziger Jahre glaubten dann viele Kritiker, die Autoren und Autorinnen müssten zunächst ratlos sein, worüber sie jetzt schreiben sollten. Entwickelt hat sich anschließend aber eine weitaus größere Vielfalt der Literatur, die vom magic realism über zahlreiche Werke, die sich im 'rea- listischen' Modus mit der traumatisierten Vergangenheit beschäftigen, bis zum postmodernen Roman reicht, wie z. B. David's Story (2001) der interviewten Zoë Wicomb (S. 19-29). Der einzige Autor, der bereits während der Apartheidszeit postmoderne Texte geschrieben hat, nämlich J.M. Coetzee, kommt mit seiner Form von Vergangenheitsbewältigung wie in Disgrace (1999) in den Interviews recht schlecht weg (S. 124, 191). Zudem fällt auf, dass sich gerade diejenigen, die fiktionale Literatur produzieren, in ihren Werken sowie in den Gesprächen oft mit dem Unaussprechlichen bzw. dem Schweigen befassen. Bezeichnend dafür sind bereits die Titel der Interviews: "Articulating the Inarticulate" (Brink, S. 3), "Speaking Through Silences" (Mann, S. 49) und "The Things We Still Don't Say" (Case, S. 61). Wenn es um die Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit von Individuen geht, sind die wichtigsten literarischen Genres natürlich Memoiren und Autobiographien, und entsprechend oft werden diese Gattungen in den Gesprächen thematisiert (S. 31, 68, passim). Mehrfach wird hervorgehoben, dass sich viele neuere südafrikanische Romane eher wie Memoiren lesen (S. 61, 70, 217), und es wird versucht, die Arbeit der Kommission mit der Blüte der Gattung Autobiographie in der südafrikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur zu verbinden (S. 33f., 69, 213). In dem Interview mit Raditlhalo (S. 211-225) gibt es immerhin mehrfache Verweise auf die große Bedeutung, die die Autobiographie, Memoiren (und auch die Gefängnisliteratur) früher in der Apartheidszeit hatten. Bei dem Gespräch mit Magona (S. 31-48) hingegen gewinnt man den Eindruck, als sei weder der Autorin, die selbst zwei Autobiographien verfasst hat und die an einer Biographie über einen schwarzen Erzbischof arbeitet, noch der Interviewerin Orantes bewusst, welch einen großen Stellenwert die Gattung Autobiographie im Apartheid-Südafrika hatte. Vor allem in den späten fünfziger und frühen sechziger Jahren gab es eine Welle von Autobiographien schwarzer Autoren, die mit zu den ersten narrativen Langtexten jener Bevölkerungsgruppe in Südafrika gehörten, die aber zumeist im Exil geschrieben wurden. Sie alle folgten der Konzeption, dass es der Fiktion im Apartheid-Südafrika nicht bedürfe: Das Leben eines Schwarzen unter den Bedingungen jenes Regimes 'authentisch' darzustellen, sei wirkungsvoll genug, da die 'Realität' grausamer oder auch absurder sei, als es jede Fiktion sein könne. Dabei wurden jene Autobiographien in der Kritik durchweg als kollektive Autobiographien aufgefasst: Die Schilderung des eigenen Lebens galt als Repräsentation eines schwarzen Lebens in dem Unrechtsstaat schlechthin. Im Gegensatz zu solchen Vorstellungen meint Magona, Auto- und Biographien gäben der Geschichte ein individuelles, menschliches Gesicht jenseits von historischen Abstraktionen (S. 32). Probleme in dem Band bereitet gelegentlich die Terminologie. Gewiss ist es kaum möglich, im südafrikanischen Kontext den Begriff coloured zu vermeiden (S. 26, 118, passim; und in dem Beitrag von Boraine wird die Sonderstellung dieser Bevölkerungsgruppe in Südafrika explizit thematisiert; S. 146). Als irritierend allerdings erweist sich die Verwendung des Begriffs non-white (S. 95, 101). Schon vor Jahrzehnten haben sich Schwarze zu Recht dagegen gewehrt, durch ein Kriterium definiert zu werden, das sie eben nicht erfüllen. Und obgleich sich im Tourismusbereich der Terminus inzwischen teilweise etabliert hat, so zögert man doch, wenn Borzaga davon spricht, sie habe eine township tour unternommen (S. 80, 108): Hier klingt der Besuch südafrikanischer Armenviertel arg nach einem Zoobesuch. Wenig glücklich oder reflektiert ist die Terminologie auch in dem Interview mit Helen Moffett. Diese weiße Publizistin und Schreibtrainerin, der es vor allem um die Vergewaltigungen bzw. rape narratives in Südafrika geht, meint, die Gewalt von Weißen gegenüber Schwarzen sei nun ersetzt worden durch die Gewalt von Männern gegenüber Frauen. Dabei bezeichnet sie sich und andere als feminists (S. 235, 245) - obwohl sie wissen müsste, dass viele schwarze Frauen in Südafrika den Begriff feminism als westliche Konzeption ablehnen und ihn durch den Terminus womanism ersetzt haben. Die Anmerkungen und Literaturangaben, mit denen die Interviews versehen sind, erweisen sich als durchweg hilfreich; gelegentlich aber hätte man sich weitere Angaben gewünscht, etwa einen Kommentar zu Dori Laub (S. 191) oder eine Anmerkung sowie bibliographische Hinweise zu Malika Ndlovu (S. 194), da diese Lyrikerin trotz internationaler Auftritte nicht unbedingt allgemein bekannt ist. Spätestens bei der Erläuterung, dass Inkatha "Inkatha Freedom Party" bedeutet (S. 197), fragt man sich, für welchen Rezipientenkreis der Band eigentlich konzipiert ist. Diejenigen, die mit südafrikanischen Verhältnissen vertraut sind, wissen das; denjenigen, die sich in dem Bereich nicht auskennen, nutzt dieser knappe Hinweis wenig. Obgleich der Band aus Interviews besteht, so erzählen viele dieser Gespräche doch letztlich eine Geschichte, was sich insbesondere an der Unterhaltung mit Brink zeigt (S. 3-18). Folglich nimmt das Buch insgesamt selbst den Charakter eines narrativen Werkes an, das die jüngere Geschichte eines Landes entfaltet, die sich wiederum aus einzelnen Geschichten zusammensetzt. Dabei lassen sich die Darlegungen subsumieren unter dem Motto, das van der Merwe mit Bezug auf Charlie Brown formuliert: "What I'm hoping for is a better past" (S. 180). Trotz dieser Feststellungen kommt man letztlich nicht umhin zu fragen, warum ein solcher Band produziert wird. Er ist aufwendig gestaltet, kostet € 54 und präsentiert doch nur Interviews, deren Erkenntniswert für die Lesenden beschränkt bleibt. Denn geboten werden hier genau genommen bloße Meinungen, nicht hingegen fundierte wissenschaftliche Analysen. Zweifellos gibt es aufschlussreiche Einblicke in die gesellschaftlichen und literarischen Verhältnisse Südafrikas (allerdings nicht unbedingt in die 'südafrikanische Seele', wie es im Vorwort postuliert wird; S. vii), aber es ist wohl kaum ein Buch, das man sich ins Bücherregal stellt. Es muss offenbleiben, ob die Herausgebenden eine Bemerkung von Magona auch auf sich bezogen haben oder hätten beziehen sollen: "I can't do non-fiction books: the endless interviewing of people, and then what is it? " (S. 45). I E $ / " *% =% " 7 ' 8 +$ *% ((( + #J - 0 7 7 * = 2 % C ' / 2 ) & ' " ! % : ! #6 $*% 5 2 *% *% 1 50 ! - - # . : *% *% ! " # 0 - " 9 ) Der vorliegende Band der WVT-Reihe setzt sich zum Ziel, einen möglichst umfassenden und zugleich repräsentativen Überblick über die Entwicklung(en) des englischen Dramas seit etwa den 1990er-Jahren zu geben, zugleich aber deren Wurzeln und Bedingungen im englischen Drama seit den 1950ern zu verorten und Hintergründe bzw. Kontexte der beachtlichen Dynamik namhaft zu machen, die sich in den letzten 15 bis 20 Jahren auf diesem Sektor beobachten lässt. Dass es hier - auch aus methodischen Erwägungen - dezidiert um das englische Drama (New English Drama) geht, nicht das britische oder ähnliche erweiterte Korpora, macht die Herausgeberin in ihrem einleitenden Beitrag deutlich und liefert - nicht zuletzt mit Blick auf andere rezente Überblicksdarstellungen und deren spezielle Probleme - auch nachvollziehbare Erklärungen für diese Entscheidung (vgl. 3). Insgesamt gliedert sich der Band in 15 thematische Beiträge, welche die beachtliche Bandbreite der Erscheinungen systematisch zu bündeln und reflektieren trachten, wobei angesichts der erst in den Anfängen bzw. im Aufbruch befindlichen, mitunter noch ein wenig tastenden Forschung zum Thema versucht wird, neben weitgehend akzeptierten 'Subgattungen' wie dem Absurden Drama oder dem Geschichtsdrama auch neue Kategorien zu etablieren, so vor allem das 'postmoderne biographische Drama' oder auch - angeregt vom deutschsprachigen Diskurs (vor allem Hans-Thies Lehmann) - das 'postdramatische Theater'. Jeder der Beiträge, die überwiegend der Feder führender deutschsprachiger KennerInnen des zeitgenössischen Dramas bzw. der jeweils behandelten 'Untergattung' (vgl. 9) entstammen - wobei Beiträgerinnen deutlich überwiegen -, folgt im Aufbau "demselben Grundmuster": einem "Überblick über die jeweilige Strömung und ihre Entwicklung", die diesbezüglich "zentrale DramatikerInnen und Werke" nennt, folgt die modellhafte Analyse eines "typische[n] Stück[s]", dessen repräsentative und spezifische Elemente "im Detail herausgearbeitet" werden sollen (vgl. 10). Meist sind dies denn auch recht bekannte Werke, mitunter (und aus unterschiedlichsten Gründen) jedoch auch nicht ganz so "berühmte Dramen" (ibid.). Dem folgen jeweils höchst hilfreiche bibliographische Angaben, die zum Teil - im Abschnitt "Ausgewählte Fachliteratur" - annotiert sind und im Verein mit den Beiträgen selbst eine rasche Orientierung im jeweiligen Bereich ermöglichen. Aus nicht immer erkennbaren Gründen fehlt diese Annotation jedoch bedauerlicherweise in fast der Hälfte der Beiträge. Wie nicht anders zu erwarten, sind die einzelnen Artikel in sachlicher Hinsicht ausnahmslos außerordentlich kompetent und mit eindrucksvoller Fakten- und Hintergrundkenntnis verfasst. Sie liefern ein gesamtheitlich zuverlässiges, methodisch weitgehend reflektiertes und zugleich auch differen- ziertes Bild rezenter Entwicklungen und Schlüsseltexte des englischen Dramas und Theaters, welches im Sinne des angestrebten Handbuchcharakters für Studierende wie Lehrende bzw. ForscherInnen verlässlich über die wichtigsten Aspekte, Namen, Werke, Kontexte und Forschungsprobleme eines recht dynamischen, für Nicht-Spezialisten zum Teil schwer überschaubaren Sektors neuester literarischer wie kultureller Entwicklungen informiert und diese vielfältigen Erscheinungen auch in einem weiteren, gesamteuropäischen bzw. globalen Kontext zu verorten sucht, wobei für den jeweiligen Bereich gegebenenfalls auch entsprechende kulturell-historische Wechselwirkungen, etwa im Zusammenhang des Falls der Mauer bzw. des Eisernen Vorhangs und der Nachwirkungen, einbezogen werden. Der Band füllt somit als quasi monographische, weitgehend konsistent konzipierte Gesamtdarstellung - die erste ihrer Art - eine schmerzliche Lücke der Forschungslandschaft auf diesem Gebiet. Das Einführungskapitel der Herausgeberin ("Das zeitgenössische englische Drama: Kategorien und Schreibweisen") bietet dabei einen guten allgemeinen Überblick über rezente Forschung(sansätze) und ihre (offenen) Fragen und Probleme, an welchen die spezielleren Kapitel meist schlüssig anknüpfen. Hier werden auch grundlegende Probleme der Kategorisierung thematisiert, insbesondere die zahlreichen Überschneidungen und Überlappungen hinsichtlich der in den einzelnen Bereichen involvierten, maßgeblichen DramatikerInnen und Werke, welche aufgrund der unvermeidlichen Diversität der Produktion bzw. individueller Entwicklungen der jeweiligen AutorInnen dem angestrebten ordnenden Zugriff gewissermaßen entgegenlaufen, geradeso wie die nicht immer eindeutige Zuordenbarkeit bestimmter Texte. Umso bedauerlicher ist es, dass der Band (auch wenn dies zunächst und primär vielleicht auf die Anlage der Reihe selbst zurückzuführen sein mag, die andererseits aber flexibel genug scheint) keinen Index oder wenigstens entsprechende tabellarische Übersichten und Zuordnungen enthält, welche es den LeserInnen ermöglicht hätten, die Hervorbringungen einzelner AutorInnen und deren Zuordnung(en) zu unterschiedlichen Subgattungen bzw. Strömungen auf einen Blick zu erfassen. Die Einleitung kann dies klarerweise nicht leisten, während in den einzelnen Beiträgen die Aufzählung von Namen bzw. Stücktitel und deren Entstehungsjahre notgedrungen im Text untergehen. Querverweise auf andere Beiträge werden indes nur vereinzelt und offenbar nach Gutdünken der jeweiligen VerfasserIn gegeben. Wenigstens im Inhaltsverzeichnis hätte man dieses Defizit durch konsequente Nennung der jeweils hauptsächlich behandelten VertreterInnen (bzw. auch der Stücktitel) ansatzweise ausgleichen können. Wie die Dinge stehen, sucht man hier indes - als besonders augenfälliges Beispiel - Harold Pinter vergeblich, obgleich dieser mit Ashes to Ashes im Mittelpunkt des Kapitels "Absurdes Drama" (von Mine Krause) steht und in ähnlich gelagerten Fällen Autorennamen in der Kapitelüberschrift angeführt werden. Alternativ hätte man freilich - unter Umständen in leicht modifizierter Form - die durchaus aussagekräftigen Untertitel der einzelnen Beitragsabschnitte auch ins Inhaltsverzeichnis übernehmen können. Überhaupt offenbaren sich bei genauerem Hinsehen gewisse Schwächen des Bandes, wiewohl er immer noch auf insgesamt hohem Niveau scheitert (sofern man von Scheitern überhaupt sprechen will). Dem Rezensenten jedenfalls haben ungeteiltes Lesevergnügen und vorbehaltlosen Gewinn nur die Beiträge von Margarete Rubik ("Documentary Drama: David Hare") und Mark Berninger ("Geschichtsdrama: Shelagh Stephenson") beschert, sowie - mit kleineren, eher nebensächlichen Einschränkungen - die Artikel von Anja Müller-Wood ("In-Yer- Face Theatre: Sarah Kane") und Oliver Lindner ("Black British Drama: Kwame Kwei-Armah"). Hier scheint in der Tat eingelöst, was man sich von einem nach eigenem Bekunden (und Werbetext) handbuchartigen Band erwartet - von kompetenter, flüssig und kompakt geschriebener, auch spannend präsentierter Überblicks- und Hintergrundinformation über klare Reflexion der jeweiligen 'Gattung', Kategorie oder Schreibweise bis hin zu wirklich nachvollziehbaren, einen konkret-plastischen, vor allem aber textbezogen-spezifischen Eindruck des jeweils besprochenen Stücks vermittelnden Modellinterpretationen. Bedauerlicherweise sind es bei den meisten anderen Beiträgen speziell die Modellanalysen, die den Verfasser mit mehr oder minder großer Skepsis, mitunter auch direkten Vorbehalten erfüllen. Dies betrifft nicht die Auswahl der Stücke, die in der Regel gut nachvollziehbar ist, selbst wenn sich der besprochene Text am Ende als gar nicht so repräsentativ für eine bestimmte Strömung oder Untergattung erweisen sollte, da er z.B. deren spezifische Merkmale oder typische Ausprägungen transzendiert bzw. zu deren Transformation beiträgt oder beigetragen hat (so etwa im Falle des In-Yer-Face Theatre und Sarah Kanes Blasted, oder auch von Martin Crimps Attempts on Her Life [E. Voigts-Virchow, "Postdramatisches Theater: Martin Crimp"]). Vielmehr ist es meist die spezifische Art der Behandlung dieser Stücke, speziell aber die dafür gewählte Vorgangs- und Darstellungsweise, mitunter bis hin zur handwerklichen Qualität, die für den Rezensenten wiederholt Fragen aufwirft: im Hinblick auf eine auch im didaktischen Sinne vorbildhafte Dramenanalyse, aber auch im Rahmen des Anspruchs, hier ein rasch, knapp und übersichtlich informierendes Handbuch, nicht zuletzt auch zum Zwecke der Examensvorbereitung (siehe 'Klappentext'), zu präsentieren. Insbesondere bei der Beschreibung und Diskussion der Stücke als Bühnentext, ihrer Machart, des Bühnenvorgangs bzw. der Bühnenwirkung ist - aus Sicht des Rezensenten - tendenziell ein allzu hohes Abstraktionsniveau zu beklagen, in dem Sinne, dass weitgehend oder gar durchgängig irritierend textfern vorgegangen und argumentiert wird. Die Folge ist, dass aus Mangel an Textzitaten bzw. Beispielen, inhaltlich-handlungsbezogenen Einlassungen und generell konkreter Arbeit am Text das jeweils besprochene Stück in seiner Spezifik und eigentümlichen Qualität als Bühnen- und Theatertext meist kaum Konturen gewinnt bzw. diese sogleich wieder im Abstrakten, diffus Verallgemeinerten aufgelöst werden. Natürlich wird, wo es unvermeidbar scheint, auf inszenatorische Aspekte und Ähnliches eingegangen; doch hat man bei nicht wenigen der Beiträge über weite Strecken den Eindruck, dass so im Grunde auch über Romane geschrieben werden könnte, wohingegen man meist kein rechtes Bild davon gewinnt, was genau denn auf der Bühne wie präsentiert wird bzw. 'herüberkommt'. LeserInnen, die mit einem dergestalt vorgestellten Text nicht vertraut sind oder ihn im Detail nicht erinnern können, wird es vielfach kaum gelingen, genauere Vorstellungen von dessen inhaltlicher Dimension, konkreter Plotstruktur und Handlungs- oder Geschehensentfaltung, ge- schweige denn vom Bühnenvorgang und sprachlichen bzw. dramatischtheatralen Funktionieren des Stücks auf der Bühne zu entwickeln. Auch den Rezensenten, der keineswegs vorgaukeln will, mit all den besprochenen Stücken wohlvertraut zu sein, und der offen gestanden auch einige davon bis heute nicht gelesen hat, hat es bei der Lektüre der betreffenden Beiträge immer wieder 'gejuckt', sich die entsprechenden Informationen aus Wikipedia oder anderen Hilfsmitteln zu beschaffen, aus dem - seines Erachtens berechtigten - Bedürfnis heraus: Wann erfahre ich jetzt endlich, worum es hier 'wirklich' und greifbar geht? Wann kommt der Autor/ die Autorin endlich zur Sache, statt sich in immer neuen, nicht selten redundanten Wendungen neuerlich verallgemeinernden Abstraktionen hinzugeben? Zugegeben, derartige Informationsdefizite mögen unter Umständen und in gewisser Weise zum Lesen des betreffenden Stücks anregen, widersprechen im Grunde aber doch dem Charakter und impliziten Anspruch eines Handbuchs und damit wohl auch den Erwartungen und Bedürfnissen vieler LeserInnen. Im Falle von P.P. Schnierers Beitrag ("Dystopisches Drama: Caryl Churchill") mag die allmähliche, sehr zögerliche Enthüllung der tatsächlichen Situation, Vorgänge und Hintergründe immerhin noch didaktisch gerechtfertigt sein, vermittelt sie doch einen Eindruck von der Strategie des Stücks selbst, schlussendlich aber auch ein einigermaßen komplettes Bild davon, und macht überdies Lust auf den Text (Far Away). In den meisten anderen Fällen jedoch scheint es dem Rezensenten - speziell auch mit Blick auf eigene Arbeiten der Studierenden - wenig vorbildhaft, ja im Grunde ein Armutszeugnis, wenn handbuchartige 'Modellinterpretationen' es nicht zuwegebringen, wenigstens in einigen Sätzen sowie durch entsprechende Textzitate die entscheidenden Kontexte und Details zu skizzieren, um einen wirklich greifbaren, nachvollziehbaren Eindruck der diskutierten Texte zu vermitteln, womit aber letztlich das Feld mehr oder minder zweifelhaften anderen Hilfsmitteln überlassen wird: Denn wer wird unter Zeit- und Prüfungsdruck das betreffende Stück schon lesen, wenn er/ sie sich die relevanten Informationen auch anderweitig verschaffen kann, zumal die vorgeführten Analysen ohnehin überwiegend den Eindruck hinterlassen, es käme vor allem auf abstrakte, möglichst textferne Einlassungen an. Meines Erachtens jedenfalls wurde hier in so manchem Beitrag, und mehr oder minder eklatant, die Möglichkeit vergeben, eine wirklich überzeugende, mustergültige Analyse und Stückvorstellung vorzulegen, die eine angemessene, handwerklich saubere Verbindung von textbezogener und abstrahierender Auseinandersetzung zustandebringt. Besonders frustrierend, zugleich aber durchaus repräsentativ für diese generelle Tendenz, erschien mir in dieser Hinsicht der recht umfangreiche Beitrag Beate Neumeiers ("Women's Drama: Timberlake Wertenbaker"), der gleichwohl nahezu durchgängig, selbst in den an sich sehr detaillierten Stückbeschreibungen (The Break of Day), höchst unanschaulich und textfern bleibt, indem er eine spezielle Vorliebe für unkonkrete, fast schon leerformelhafte Abstraktionen zur Schau stellt, die in diesem Fall übrigens auch im eher jargonhaft gehaltenen Überblicksabschnitt und den Beschreibungen der darin knapp vorgestellten Stücke zu Tage tritt. Aber auch in den meisten anderen Fällen - mit Ausnahme der weiter oben genannten Beiträge und Christiane Schlotes Ausführungen zum "British Asian Drama: Ayub Khan-Din [East Is East]" - erscheint mir diese Tendenz zur ab- strakten Unanschaulichkeit, mehr oder minder ausgeprägt und gravierend, als hauptsächliches Manko des Bandes. Dabei wäre es meist ein Leichtes gewesen, durch ein paar Sätze und Zitate einen wesentlich übersichtlicheren, konkreteren Rahmen für die Vorstellung und Diskussion der Stücke zu schaffen. Selbst im sonst gelungenen, anregenden Beitrag Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeiers ("Postmodernes biographisches Drama: Michael Frayn") bleibt bis zum Schluss offen, worum es in Copenhagen nun konkret geht und womit, dramatisch-theatralisch gesehen, die ZuschauerInnen sich hier konfrontiert sehen. In solchen Fällen wäre es, ungeachtet der insgesamt gelungenen Gesamtkonzeption des Bandes, doch an der Herausgeberin gewesen, korrigierend, zumindest aber nachfragend einzugreifen bzw. nachzuhaken. Generell kann man sich des Eindrucks nicht erwehren, dass Lektorat und Detailkontrolle sorgfältiger und zum Teil interventionistischer ausfallen hätten können, ja müssen. So findet sich streckenweise eine nicht eben geringe Zahl unterschiedlichster Fehler, insbesondere aber von Kasusfehlern im Zusammenhang mit attributiven Adjektiven, speziell Dativ-/ Akkusativ-Verwechslungen (u.a. 13, 18, 21, …, 48, 254, usw., phasenweise auf jeder Seite, mitunter auch mehrfach), deren Vermeidung anscheinend der Sorgfalt der einzelnen BeiträgerInnen überlassen blieb, und auch manche sprachliche bzw. stilistische Merkwürdigkeit - z.B.: "in Sicherheit wägen" (21); "dass diese fehlerfreier präsentiert werden als […]" (51); Anglizismen wie "Kanes Anspielungen auf […] sind oft angemerkt worden" (23), oder "graphisch" im englischen Sinne von 'drastisch' (14); oder auch sperrig-ungelenke Begriffsbildungen wie "politisches Drama zur Außen- und Weltpolitik" (vgl. 47ff). So manches argumentative Non-Sequitur (z.B. 35, Absatz 2) hätte ebenfalls der kritischen Nachfrage oder Überprüfung bedurft, und auch der Begriff spin in spin-doctor, um nur ein weiteres Beispiel zu geben, leitet sich natürlich nicht wirklich von einem Akronym für "significant progress in the news" ab, wie an einer Stelle als Faktum suggeriert wird (38), hoffentlich nur infolge einer missverständlichen Formulierung. Nicht ganz nachvollziehbar ist (auch wenn dies dem englischen Gebrauch entsprechen mag), warum der seit Pfister fest etablierte und nützliche, neutrale Überbegriff Figur (vs. Charakter) in einigen der Beiträge zugunsten von Charakter aufgegeben wird bzw. beide Begriffe offenbar synonym verwendet werden (vgl. 8, 17 u.ö., vor allem aber die Beiträge von Müller-Wood und Berninger). Mitunter ist es auch die Fülle von Informationen, speziell in den Überblicksabschnitten, die den Text stellenweise überfrachtet und/ oder syntaktisch unübersichtlich macht (z.B. 232, 2. Absatz). Hier sei daran erinnert, dass Fußnoten, die angesichts neuer Zitierstile immer mehr außer Gebrauch zu kommen scheinen, oft eine einfache und ökonomische Möglichkeit darstellen, derlei Zusatzinformationen bzw. Aufzählungen übersichtlich an die LeserInnen zu bringen. An die Adresse des Verlags, und bei allem Respekt vor Sparsamkeit: Der Band mag nett aussehen; der extrem kleine Schriftgrad (9 Pkt im Haupttext, 8 Pkt in den Zitaten) in Verbindung mit der erheblichen Zeilenbreite sind dennoch eine Zumutung für die Augen zumindest älterer LeserInnen. ((( All dies - und viele weitere, vergleichbare Details 1 - sind für sich genommen natürlich keine besonders gravierenden, den Nutzen des Bandes wesentlich schmälernden Mängel. Und auch die oben monierten, weit gewichtigeren Schwächen einzelner Modellinterpretationen schränken den Gesamtwert des Bandes allenfalls graduell ein, der - und dies sei abschließend nochmals betont - in den meisten anderen Belangen erhebliche Meriten besitzt und summa summarum empfohlen wird. Gleichwohl bleibt am Ende ein etwas zwiespältiger Eindruck, hätte sich doch mit ein wenig mehr Sorgfalt und nur geringem Mehraufwand, vor allem aber mit einem insgesamt etwas sensibleren Eingehen auf die tatsächlichen Bedürfnisse der angesprochenen Leser- und Zielgruppen, ein Band vorlegen lassen, der ein noch überzeugenderes, vor allem jedoch plastischeres Bild des Themas hätte entwerfen können. So indes kann man sich, durchaus bedauernd, des Eindrucks nicht erwehren, dass hier doch - ein wenig leichtfertig und nonchalant, zum Teil vielleicht auch zu sehr aus der Elfenbeinturmschau der SpezialistInnen - so manche Chance vertan wurde, einen weit über die engeren Fachgrenzen hinaus relevanten, breite Aufmerksamkeit erregenden Teilbereich der Anglistik eingängiger, in gewisser Weise auch 'massentauglicher' zu präsentieren. " 9 ) E $ ( " 9 6, 67 ' 8 + 0 ( , *% ( - K * - - " ,D * ,% 12 = ) / " % > " " > 0 - #$ " . 0 G- )) The collection Mediality/ Intermediality contains a selection of papers from the 2007 symposium of SAUTE, the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English, held at the University of Zurich. The introduction and eight contributions cover a wide range of topics in the fields of mediality and intermediality studies. Since the 1980s ‘medium’, ‘mediality’ and ‘intermediality’ have 1 Zu nennen wären etwa so manche Tippfehler, selbst im Inhaltsverzeichnis, Inkonsistenzen nach der Neuen Rechtschreibung, z.B. potentiell/ potenziell, usw. Trefflich streiten ließe sich natürlich auch über so manches interpretatorische Detail bzw. dessen Darstellung (z.B. 147, zur "mental elephantiasis" in Ashes to Ashes), speziell jedoch über einige Einlassungen in den - zeitlich mitunter weit zurückgreifenden - historischen Herleitungen, insbesondere in den Beiträgen von Reitz ("State-of-thenation-Satire: Alistair Beaton"; 31) und vor allem auch Schnierer (zur Utopie bzw. Dystopie - 81f.). Zumindest dem Rezensenten merkwürdig scheint, obwohl grammatisch vielleicht korrekt, die Fügung "Dramatiker und -innen" (14). become the new core terms of literary debates - terms which demonstrate the heightened awareness of the material side of the production of meaning and of the relationship between literary text and painting, sculpture, film, architecture, and various forms of music. In the introduction to the volume, Martin Heusser starts off by reminding his readers of Horace’s famous dictum “ut pictura poesis”, which has fuelled the discussion from classical antiquity to the present day. His concise historical overview touches upon the Renaissance paragone, Lessing’s 1766 essay Laokoon, nineteenthand early twentieth-century developments in photography and film as well as the communication theories of the two prominent Canadian figures in media studies, Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis. Werner Wolf, a pioneer and major theoretician of inter/ mediality studies, has contributed the opening essay, which investigates the relevance of the two title concepts to academic studies of English literature and addresses a number of fundamental theoretical and methodological issues. Wolf argues that literature itself is a medium that has influenced other media, and in its turn has also been influenced and transmitted by a plurality of other media. Hence the study of inter/ mediality is actually the study of an essential aspect of literature as such, and Wolf explores ways of integrating inter/ mediality into literary studies and literary theory, especially narratology. Lukas Erne in his contribution on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet on Stage and Page” compares the differences between the first (1597) and second quarto (1599) with regard to the flat/ round characterization of the nurse. Against the backdrop of the intersections theatricality and literariness, of orality and literacy, he comes to the conclusion that the essential differences between the first and the second quartos are medial in nature and that Shakespeare wrote with the medial differences in mind. Barbara Straumann’s essay “Medial Effects: The Singer and Her Voice in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark” discusses how the oral mediality of human voice can be represented in a literary text through the mediation of other figures and focalizers and how in Cather’s novel it mediates between the individual and the collective, the USA, whose universal song the individual American female voice sings. In his article “Photography and the Death of the Author in Julio Cortázar’s ‘Blow-Up’” Michael Röösli reads the 1959 short story in the theoretical framework provided by the ‘death of the author’ and convincingly argues that the story’s publication a decade before Barthes’ and Foucault’s essays suggests that a cultural mechanism was at work in the 1960s, which exploited the contradiction inherent in the reception of the photographic medium as representational of the outside world or of the artistic vision of the photographer. Matt Kimmich’s article on the graphic novel adaptation by Mazzucchelli and Karasik’s of Paul Auster’s highly self-referential novel City of Glass examines the visual techniques used to translate Auster’s postmodernist textual universe, which is characterized by a number of crises: the crisis of identity, the crisis of the sign, and the crisis of the reader/ writer. Florence Widmer-Schnyder offers a close reading of Dorothy Wordsworth’s non-fictional travel narrative Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland (1803/ 1874). By tracing the politicaldidactic subtexts and intertextual and intermedial references of this female- authored narrative and by evaluating its proto-feminist strategies, Widmer- Schnyder manages to demonstrate how Dorothy Wordsworth renegotiated the dominant aesthetic discourse of her time. Ladina Bezzola Lambert’s article on “The Art of Anamorphosis in New Historicist Criticism” discusses the new historicist rhetoric - particularly the interplay of anecdotes and familiar canonical literary texts - and detects a close structural relation to the anamorphic depiction of the skull in Holbein’s painting “The Ambassadors.” Finally, Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman undertake an analysis of the intermediality of the Round Table by comparing Edwin Austin Abbey’s 1901 series of murals “The Quest of the Holy Grail” and images of the Round Table from other media, including a late fourteenth-century copy of the illustrated manuscript of Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Arthurian romance Wigalois and John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur. Their discussion convincingly demonstrates that representations of the Round Table are a means of charting the ascendancy of the visual over the discursive in political representation during the twentieth century. Ideologies of hierarchy, power, and submission to authority can be registered in the depictions of the Round Table, which by the middle of the European twentieth century reached their apotheosis in the Nazi state. Against the backdrop of Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s concept of ‘remediation’ and its formal double logic of ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’, Finke and Shichtman “read backwards and forward between the different media describing struggles to appropriate the image of the Round Table for particular political ends” (141). However, not all authors link their articles to the topical debates in inter/ mediality studies, as Finke and Shichtman do. Likewise, the majority of scholars omit any definition of the basic concept of ‘medium’. This would have been desirable for the very reason that the term is a semantically shifting one. Some contributors, Kimmich and Widmer- Schnyder, for instance, use the term medium, classifying literary genres such as comics and graphic novels, travel narratives and poetry as media (cf. p. 88 and p. 123) - a definition which will certainly be questioned by other literary scholars. Considering the large number of Swiss scholars working in the field of inter/ mediality studies, the collection could have included many more contributions - as a matter of fact, a whole series of volumes on the topic ‘mediality/ intermediality’ could have been published. However, the articles collected for presentation and publication in this carefully edited volume are doubtlessly of great interest to the general reader and specialist alike. )) ) 5 / " % > " " > 7 ' B ((( # 5 +$ 0 + E(F " ? 4 G * $ G , $ * 2 ,% # 3 L #% - : $ ". 9J " % L 5 0 - , *% Timo Müller’s The Self as Object focuses on the modernist period as an era in which human everyday life and its cultural representation changed drastically: an age of socio-cultural revolution, ideological struggle and unresolved crises which culminated in the unspeakable horrors of the two world wars. It is owing to this background that modernity not only shattered the essentialist world picture inherent in Christianity, Newtonian science, humanist and idealist philosophy, etc.; it also revolutionized the equally essentialist notion of the human subject as an unchanging and unified individual known as the Cartesian self. In The Self as Object in Modernist Fiction, Müller reconstructs how these cultural shifts to epistemological doubt and uncertainty are reflected in modernist fiction, which features characters that are “bereft of the mediation of a benevolent narrator figure” (14): rather than fashioning these characters as Cartesian subjects fully explained and authorized by the principle of authorial omniscience and epistemological control, modernist fiction presents them as objects, objects whose ‘subjectivity’ is no longer explained by “transcendent reference points but solely by their relations to other individuals” (9). Functioning as the only key to the figural selves freed from authorial control, these relations to others have to be studied by the reader. In other words, modernist fiction becomes a testing ground for the recipient to train her or his cultural competence to cope with a world in which human interaction and its perception of character have changed significantly: In retracting their own, authorial voice from the text in favor of detailed, unmediated renderings of their characters’ thoughts and behavior, the modernists created a widely noted paradox: their texts are more subjective than before, in the sense that the characters’ views are no longer embedded in an overarching explanatory pattern; but at the same time this very constellation makes the reading process as a whole more objective as readers are discouraged or even prevented from comfortably settling into one overall perspective. Instead, they need to analyse closely whose perspective they are following, how reliable it is, and how it fits with other perspectives. (15) This aspect, however, is only the starting point of Müller’s fascinating study. Rather than only functioning as a laboratory for the readers’ cultural competence, modernist fiction also provides a figural testing ground for its authors in terms of self-objectification, or life-writing. By projecting some of the writer’s characteristics into an authorial persona whose social interaction is reflected and tested within the figural constellation of the novel, the literary text becomes a means of self-analysis: the self is tested and positioned in relation to other selves. As such a relational focus on social interaction acknowledges the fact that every human or figural agent involved in cultural exchange per- forms social roles or postures, the strategy of self-objectification does not only function as a means to observe one’s fictional persona from the intellectual detachment of a self-distanced point of view as an object; it first of all offers the writer the opportunity to reflect ways and strategies of how to position oneself among one’s professional peer group, which Bourdieu’s sociological approach to culture calls the literary field. Müller’s study thus combines text-based literary analysis with Bourdieu’s context-based approach to the literary field to reflect the social rules, conventions and success strategies of the high modernist life-writers’ authorial self-positioning among their peers as a self-objectifying process. Müller’s study, however, does not only convince the reader as far as its carefully researched and critically self-conscious discussion of the theoretical framework is concerned. It is equally convincing in its exemplary focus on three stages of modern self-writing: on Henry James, who paved the way for modernist fiction as far as the narratological design of his texts is concerned: the unfiltered and epistemologically contingent presentation of figural thought and perception; on James Joyce as “the most consistent self-objectifier” (18); and on Ernest Hemingway, whose iceberg-like fiction hides its selfanalytical dimension in terms of what remains unsaid although the apparently ‘simple’ and minimalistic diction cunningly implies full textual transparency. Joyce - whose work bridges the gap between the subject-centred protagonist of the traditional nineteenth century Bildungsroman (the unfinished Stephen Hero) and the depersonalized, fragmented and dislocated postmodern self (Finnegans Wake) - functions as the main axis of Müller’s book. In this respect, the study not only shows how Joyce gradually distances himself from his youthful persona Stephen D(a)edalus as a self-finding process; it also shows how Joyce, as a self-reflective artist, fragments, confronts and integrates conflicting aspects of his self within various authorial personae in Dubliners and Ulysses, only to overcome the very notion of selfhood in Finnegans Wake. Of course it is far from coincidental that Müller’s book on The Self as Object reflects Pound’s high modernist ideal of artistic objectivity and T.S. Eliot’s equally important concept of the ‘objective correlative’ - an aspect, which is discussed both as a topic in its own right and as a concept at work in the texts of Joyce and Hemingway. By contrasting Eliot’s contribution to the objectified relational self of modernity with Joyce’s (post)modernist deconstruction of the self as a concept in Finnegans Wake, the study is fully aware of the paradigm-shift performed in Joyce’s final book, which transgresses the modernist representational mode. By way of conclusion one might say that Müller has written a very thought-inspiring book indeed; a substantial monograph that will provide him with the opportunity firmly to establish himself in the academic field of Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies. If we want to find shortcomings, we might say that some of the lengthy passages and certain over-scrupulous bits of circumstantial documentation have the occasional smack of a doctoral dissertation rather than the brevity and pointedness of a doctoral thesis turned into a book. And one might add that Montaigne might have been men- ((( tioned among the discussion of the founding fathers of life-writing and textual self-exploration. But such minor queries must not discredit the merit of Müller’s monograph, which discusses a corpus of texts that may be reckoned among the most ‘writerly’ and least ‘readerly’ samples of experimental world literature - and yet the reader of The Self as Object gets the impression that Müller accomplishes this task of extremely challenging textual analysis in a concentrated but quite relaxed state of authorial serenity. A case study of the works of one of the three authors presented by Müller would have constituted the topic for a dissertation of potentially very high quality - the way in which Henry James, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway are integrated into the much wider scope of the present book, however, deserves to be greeted with admiration. , *% ) 5 / " % 7 ' B ! E 5" > "0 7 ( % * (5 6 * - ". : 0 - + *% % *% Its blurb claims for this monograph what Thomas Carlyle would have called "grand combinations" (History of Frederick the Great [1858-65], IV, 3). To translate the blurb’s florid language into more sober English: in a first step Old English saints’ lives will be reduced to a single structural model, a model that will emerge from meticulous analyses, combining text linguistics, traditional rhetoric and pragmatics. In a second step the new and important results from these analyses will be related to the historical and cultural setting of late tenth-century England. Such a combination of texts and history will reveal, most importantly, that the texts’ raison d’être was the strengthening of English national identity and the legitimation of Anglo-Saxon kings (cf. also 285). The book’s grand title is reduced on the blurb to a selection from Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (which, however, is not - as maintained throughout - a homiliary, and its uitae were not used for preaching during Mass; cf. 31-2, 48 and passim). Unfortunately, the corpus of texts under scrutiny here is nowhere clearly defined; the information given on the non-Ælfrician pieces in London, BL, Cotton Julius E. vii (the principal manuscript of the Lives of Saints collection) is negligible (33); and vernacular verse hagiography, of which there is a substantial amount, for example, is entirely neglected by the author. With regard to the first step - the textual analyses of the various uitae -, it has to be said that what seems to have come as a surprise to the author (a fairly uniform ‘Textstrukturmodell’) may occasion much less surprise in other students of hagiography: the pattern according to which saints’ lives (not only Old English ones) unfold themselves allows for little variation, irrespective of the method of narratological analysis that is applied. It has also to be said that not many readers will feel inclined to accompany the author on her quest for the ‘model’ through some 130 pages (141-273) of analyses "entlang von Nacherzählungen der Legenden" (30), lengthy repetitions of contents which are combined with long lists of ‘motivemes’ ("Motiveme") for the uitae under discussion; recurring ones, of course, such as "/ gefangennehmen, fesseln/ ", "/ vor den Richter führen/ ", "/ zum Götzenopfer auffordern/ ", etc. (193). As to the second step - the texts’ message to a late tenth-century English audience - the development of a common ‘English’ identity among the Anglo- Saxons has been a moot point and the subject of much and often controversial discussion among Anglo-Saxonists during recent decades - a discussion which is scarcely mentioned in Lensing’s book. In any case, scholars are agreed that a sense of ‘common Englishness’ had been established well before the 990s (the date of the Lives of Saints), and that by then, ‘English’ minds were preoccupied with the more pressing needs of dealing with the Viking onslaughts - a preoccupation which is prominently reflected in the Lives of Saints. Lensing’s second hypothesis, that Ælfric’s saints’ lives served to legitimize the Anglo-Saxon kings, has not much to speak for it either. The West Saxon dynasty, acting as ‘Kings of all England’ from about 927 onwards, was the oldest royal house in tenth-century Europe, and as such, it enjoyed a considerable prestige in Carolingian, Capetian and Ottonian court circles, who sent their embassies with costly presents in exchange for royal princesses as marriage partners. Even if English influence on the Continent was diminishing in the second half of the tenth century, there is plenty of unequivocal and contemporary evidence for the respect and loyalty which the West Saxon royal house could command from its subjects right up to the disastrous end of the reign of King Æthelred II (‘the Unready’), in 1016. In other words, it would have been rather pointless for Ælfric to aim to legitimize Anglo-Saxon kings and kingship by the examples of (say) the Northumbrian king Oswald (d. 642) and the East Anglian king Edmund (d. 869), in spite of what Lensing says (e.g. 272). In her historical discourse as well as elsewhere, Lensing reveals a pervasive failure to consult the literature relevant to the points under discussion. Thus, her authority for King Æthelred’s reputation (and for her philologically flawed discussion of a byname, "rædeleas", which, however, was not attached to him at any time) is a German history of Old English literature, published in 1971 (64-5 and n. 174). Her authority for the date of the synod of Whitby (663 or 664) is a German medievalist with a focus on Middle English literature (40, n. 67). Her authority for coronation orders in Francia and Anglo- Saxon England is an article by a historical linguist on the structure of Ælfric’s Life of King Edmund (268-9, 271, and notes). Her authority for the composition of the king’s council (the witan) and for the Winchester style in art history is a standard work on the monastic order in early medieval England (48, n. 93 and 62, n. 169). And so on. The author is astonishingly unaware of the scholarly tools for, and the recent significant advances in, source studies of Anglo-Saxon authors (the Fontes Anglo-Saxonici project; it is not possible to source any Anglo-Saxon text by means of the Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts …Written or Owned in England up to 1100; cf. 35 and n. 62). For Ælfric’s sources and for all other medieval texts readers are referred to secondary literature and their quotations of such texts; as a rule, references to, and quotations from, editions of the primary texts themselves do not occur (e.g. 264, n. 682; 281, n. 756; 288, n. 784). There is a great number of errors concerning simple historical facts (e.g. King Edgar was not educated at Glastonbury [54]; there was no revival of double monasteries [housing monks and nuns] during the Benedictine reform [55] - on the contrary; no second translation of St Swithun in 974 is reported by the Frankish monk Lantfred [264 and 290]; the remarks on the tenthcentury cult of the female saints of Ely glaringly contradict the historical evidence [288]). Numerous further errors concern the texts discussed by the author (e.g. St Æthelthryth did not suffer from a chronic disease [264]; Ælfric’s Life of King Oswald is not a frame narrative, the king’s marriage to a West Saxon royal princess cannot have mattered to Ælfric since he does not even mention it, and Oswald’s relics did not remain in Lindsey but were transferred to Gloucester in Ælfric’s Life [266-7]). One could fill page after page recording the errors and manifold shortcomings in this monograph. Thomas Carlyle’s remark alluded to above referred to the Anglo-Saxons, whom he held incapable of fostering "grand combinations" with regard to political theory and philosophy in general. Unfortunately, Lensing fails to refute him. Her book was accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the University of Münster in 1998; how it obtained its imprimatur is not easy to see. It was published by an established publisher in a series directed by three editors (one of them deceased). Did neither of the survivors realize that the book in its present form was not suitable for publication? + *% % *% 1 5 $ / " *% =% " 7 ' 8 J " ((( 7 *% 0 = ( & % 9 & & C& & = ( % ( 5 1 $*% 9 2 *% - . ( 5 ! 6 "0 - KJ " $ Die Globalisierung als fortschreitender historischer Prozess ist eine Tatsache, die einem an jeder Straßenecke begegnet. Globalisierung als Perspektive zu denken, ist aber weit weniger einfach und auch weit weniger selbstverständlich. Mit dieser Frage beschäftigt sich die von Ulfried Reichardt verfasste, als „Studienbuch Kulturwissenschaften“ beim Akademie Verlag erschienene Studie (zur Frage der Perspektive vgl., im Anschluss an Sebastian Conrad und Andreas Eckert, v.a. 26). Dass es nicht einfach ist, so eine Perspektive einzunehmen, ist schon an den vielen Imperativen und Verpflichtungserklärungen ersichtlich, mit denen die Einführung daherkommt: Dass in den 14 Kapiteln des Buchs (an die sich ein „Serviceteil“ mit kommentierten bibliographischen Angaben und Internetlinks 1 sowie ein Anhang mit Gesamtbibliographie, Personenregister und Glossar anschließen) sehr viel ‚gemusst‘ wird, lässt zwar sicher auf ein nachhaltiges Interesse des Autors für seinen Gegenstand und einen didaktischen Impetus schließen, dieser kippt aber manchmal etwas ins Pathetische, wenn es z.B. heißt: „Wir brauchen nun eine Weltgeschichte der Welt“ (29). Reichardt entfaltet ein Panorama von wissenschaftlichen Ansätzen, die es möglich machen, Globalisierung zu denken. Dieses Panorama ist extrem umfassend und, soweit dies dem Rezensenten nachvollziehbar ist, auch bestens informiert, aber es treibt ein prinzipielles Problem von Einführungsliteratur (und noch dazu, wenn sie von den Verlagsvorgaben her so penetrant ‚durchdidaktisiert‘ sind wie die Studienbücher des Akademie-Verlags 2 ) auf die Spitze: Hier taucht ein Gespenst der Globalisierungstheorie als fortgesetzte Entgrenzung nationaler, disziplinärer und sprachlicher Zuständigkeiten auf, das nirgendwo greifbar wird, aber gleichzeitig eine Metaperspektive auf das gesamte Feld der Kulturwissenschaften einzufordern scheint. In diesem schlimmsten Fall wäre Globalisierung, wissenschaftlich gesehen, schlicht und ergreifend ‚Allzuständigkeit‘ für jede Form von Kultur auf der ganzen Welt und zu jeder nur denkbaren Zeit. 1 Ob es beispielsweise sinnvoll ist, in diesem Zusammenhang auch laufende Graduiertenprogramme anzugeben, kann aufgrund der Aktualisierungsbedürftigkeit solcher Informationen bezweifelt werden. Andererseits zeigt die Aufnahme solcher Informationen auch, wie kurzfristig die Absatzchancen eines solchen Buchs (bzw. einer Auflage davon) auf dem Buchmarkt offensichtlich eingeschätzt werden. 2 Sind die synoptischen Randglossen wie auch die kommentierten bibliographischen Angaben am Ende jedes Kapitels durchaus sinnvoll, dürfte sich das angesprochene Lesepublikum durch die „Fragen und Anregungen“, mit denen die Kapitel abgeschlossen werden, wohl eher in die gezwungene Atmosphäre der Abschlussklausur einer Einführungsvorlesung versetzt als wirklich zum Nachdenken angeregt fühlen. Zwar hat Reichardt eigentlich eine sehr sinnvolle Vorstellung dessen, was eine globalisierungstheoretische kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektive sein kann, indem er in Anschluss an William James’ Konzept des Pluriversums (vgl. 18) davon ausgeht, dass eine globale Perspektive keine umfassende und entgrenzte Metaperspektive auf die Welt bieten kann, in der ‚partikulare‘ Perspektiven wie diejenige, die sich auf Nationales konzentriert, aufgehen. Vielmehr geht es ihm um die aktive Konfrontation verschiedener Perspektiven auf ein Ganzes, das nie von außen beobachtet werden kann. Insofern beteuert Reichardt durchaus zu Recht: „Globales Denken bedeutet keineswegs, dass immer die ganze Welt erforscht werden muss.“ (63) 3 Die ersten Kapitel bieten in der Tat verschiedene Perspektiven auf das Phänomen der Globalisierung aus sozialtheoretischer bzw. geschichtswissenschaftlicher Sicht an und führen über eine Menge von divergenten, aber durchaus kenntnisreich dargestellten Begriffen zum zentralen, „Theorien des Globalen“ gewidmeten Kapitel 4, in dem die bislang entwickelte Argumentation zur These des aktiven Perspektivismus zusammengefasst wird. Dies erläutert Reichardt u.a. in Anlehnung an den Philosophen François Jullien, wenn er mit Letzterem darstellt, dass aus einer sinologischen Sichtweise das westliche Konzept der Rationalität durchaus nicht universalisierbar, sondern weltregional gebunden sei. Daraus zieht Reichardt folgende wichtige Konsequenz: „Auch globales Denken muss sich seiner Positionalität bewusst sein, diese mit anderen Standpunkten in Beziehung setzen und dann in einen Dialog eintreten.“ (67) Doch leider hält sich Reichardt selbst nicht durchgehend an diese Prämisse. Was nämlich folgt, sind zwei Kapitel, die genau diese Positionalität implizit dementieren und symptomatisch für den gänzlich unperspektivischen ‚Allzuständigkeitsanspruch‘ von Teilen von Reichardts Einführung stehen. So versuchen diese Kapitel allen Ernstes, in Häppchen von 10-15 Seiten allgemeine Grundlagen der Kultur- (Kapitel 5) und der Medientheorie (Kapitel 6) zusammenzufassen, anstatt solche Ansätze problemorientiert in andere Kapitel zu integrieren - damit wird eine perspektivische Beschreibung von Theorien der Globalisierung aufgegeben zugunsten der Illusion, dass die Theorie der Globalisierung nichts weniger als eine Metatheorie der Kultur- und Medienwissenschaften sei. An dieser Stelle muss man fast befürchten, dass der in Kapitel 5 von Reichardt mit für eine Einführung recht dezisionistischer Rhetorik in Aussicht gestellte global turn (vgl. 81) derjenige wäre, der alle weiteren turns, an denen es der Kulturwissenschaft in den letzten Jahren nun wahrlich nicht gemangelt hat, überflüssig machen könnte, weil er sich all diese turns irgendwie einverleibt. Hat man jedoch diese beiden in dieser Form nicht nur überflüssigen, sondern sogar der Gesamtargumentation zuwider laufenden Teil der Einführung hinter sich gebracht, wird man mit einer positiven Überraschung entschädigt: 3 Ein Beispiel für die didaktische Aufbereitung des Bandes durch die bereits erwähnten Fragen am Kapitelschluss: Am Ende des Kapitels 4, aus dem das Zitat stammt, heißt es unter „Fragen und Anregungen“ zu diesem Thema: „Bedeutet global zu denken, dass man immer die ganze Welt im Blick haben sollte? “ Ab Kapitel 7 wird Reichardts Einführung (endlich) sehr viel konkreter, weil sie beginnt, spezifische Felder zu untersuchen, auf denen ‚Kulturen des Globalen‘ fassbar werden. Zwar gibt es auch hier noch einmal ein eher allgemeines und teilweise redundantes Theoriekapitel zu „Interpretationen des Globalen“ (Kapitel 9, das in etwas unglücklicher Weise den „Repräsentationen des Globalen“ in Kapitel 8 gegenüber steht und damit eine scharfe Grenze zwischen ästhetischer Praxis und theoretischer Reflexion suggeriert), das aber zum Glück nicht versucht, Globalisierungstheorie als Meta-Standpunkt zu profilieren, sondern erneut das Prinzip der perspektivischen (Wolfgang Iser) bzw. kontrapunktischen Lektüre (Edward Said) für geeignet erklärt, globale Lektüren zu profilieren. Sinnvollerweise enthält dieser zweite Teil der Einführung aber vor allem Kapitel, in denen die Entwicklung eines ‚globalen‘ Blicks an bestimmten Arbeitsfeldern historisch nachvollziehbar wird, ohne dass damit eine vollständige kulturelle ‚Entortung‘ einhergeht: Exemplarisch zeigt Reichardt dies insbesondere an der Untersuchung der Populärkultur amerikanischer Prägung, die zum umstrittenen Agenten einer weltweiten Dynamik wird (Kapitel 7); in ähnlicher Weise bietet auch Kapitel 13 zur ‚globalen Stadt‘ eine problemorientierte und somit auch historisch nachvollziehbare Einführung in Bereiche, in denen Theorien des Globalen alternative Perspektiven sichtbar machen können. Ohne Abstriche gut gelungen und informativ ist auch das im engeren Sinn literaturwissenschaftliche Kapitel 10 zu „Nationalphilologien und Globalisierung“, weil es erkennbar macht, mit welchen konkreten Positionen neuerer literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Debatten globalisierungstheoretische Ansätze in Verbindung zu bringen sind und von welchen anderen Positionen sie sich abgrenzen. Hier wird die Einführung zu einem wirklich hilfreichen Instrument, das dem Leser Argumente an die Hand gibt, wie sich eine ‚Literatur des Globalen‘ anders als bestehende Hinsichten auf Literatur positionieren kann. Verwunderlich ist allein, dass einem anderen historischen Kristallisationspunkt von Globalisierung, nämlich der Geopolitik, so gut wie keine Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wird 4 - ein Kapitel hierzu hätte noch dazu den Vorteil gehabt, dass es Teile der vorgestellten medien- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Positionen aus Kapitel 5 und 6 problemorientiert hätte integrieren können. Das ebenfalls interessante Kapitel 11 zu „Versionen der Literatur des Globalen“ macht schließlich einen eigenständigen Vorschlag zur Unterscheidung verschiedener Analyseebenen, auf denen in literarischen Texten das ‚Globale‘ in den Blick kommen kann. 5 Dieser avancierten literaturwissenschaftlichen Reflexion gegenüber muss das darauf folgende Kapitel 12, das Musik, Kunst 4 Bspw. wird die einschlägige Studie von Niels Werber (2001): Die Geopolitik der Literatur. Eine Vermessung der medialen Weltraumordnung. München: Hanser, nur in Zusammenhang mit dem Schlagwort ‚Geopoetik‘ angeführt und nicht als eigenes, wichtiges Paradigma des Globalisierungsdenkens gewürdigt. 5 Reichardt unterscheidet: (1.) Texte, die Globalisierung in ihren Formen und Verfahren zeigen, z.B. durch den Gebrauch von Vielsprachigkeit; (2.) Texte, die Globalisierung als Prozess thematisieren, und schließlich (3.) Texte, die für sich selbst ‚Welten entwerfen‘, ohne dabei notwendigerweise auf die Globalisierung der ‚einen‘ Welt zu referieren. und Film gemeinsam abzuhandeln versucht, notwendigerweise abfallen. So sinnvoll es sein mag, angedeutet zu bekommen, auf welche ästhetischen Felder die Kulturen des Globalen auszudehnen sind, scheint hier doch wieder der bereits kritisierte Anspruch durch, eine globale Perspektive als ein Instrument misszuverstehen, das alle Felder kultureller Praxis ‚abdecken‘ will. Die Einführung mit dem Konzept des ‚Kosmopolitismus‘ (Kapitel 14) zu beenden, ist dagegen in einer Gliederung, die leider nicht durchgängig klar und stringent ist, ein starker Schluss, der die möglichen, jedoch durchaus umstrittenen politischen Ansprüche einer Theorie des Globalen aufs Beste dokumentiert. Zusammenfassend könnte man also gut und gerne auf diejenigen Kapitel der Einführung von Ulfried Reichardt verzichten, die die ‚Literaturen und Kulturen des Globalen‘ als häppchenweise portionierten Umarmungsversuch der gesamten Kultur- und Medientheorie darstellen. Interessant und sowohl zur Einführung als auch für versierte Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaftler hilfreich ist Reichardts Einführung hingegen immer da, wo sie problemorientiert zeigen kann, dass eine ‚globale‘ Perspektive nicht einfach ein entdifferenzierender ‚Sammelbehälter‘ aller denkbaren kulturellen Praktiken der Welt ist, sondern im durchaus interessierten und positionsgebundenen Dialog mit anderen Ansätzen steht. Davon würde man gerne mehr lesen. KJ " $ = $ 5 7 ' 8 / Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de NEUERSCHEINUNG JETZT BESTELLEN! Saskia Kersten The Mental Lexicon and Vocabulary Learning Implications for the foreign language classroom Language in Performance, Band 43 2010, XVI, 197 Seiten, 25 Abb., 18 Tab., €[D] 54,00/ SFr 76,90 ISBN 978-3-8233-6586-0 Lexis was, for a long time, paid scant attention to in foreign language teaching. Over the last 20 years, however, vocabulary acquisition has become a focus of academic research. In particular, the Cognitive Linguistic perspective on foreign language learning offers a rich theoretical framework for research in this area, since it encapsulates both ease of learning and a more profound knowledge of the target language. Learning vocabulary in school contexts, however, is still strongly associated with rote learning in many parts of the world, that is, the repetition of items, usually using lists with little or no contextual information. The implications of Cognitive Linguistics form the basis of an intervention study carried out in German primary schools. This study investigates whether lessons enabling learners to elaborate on words and thereby process the vocabulary more deeply lead to better long-term retention of these items. The results of this empirical study are used to evaluate the relevance and benefits of the theoretical implications of vocabulary research for primary school learners of English. 085410 Auslieferung Oktober 2010.indd 12 08.10.10 14: 44 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de NEUERSCHEINUNG JETZT BESTELLEN! Karen Junod / Didier Maillat (eds.) Performing the Self Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 24 2010, 196 Seiten, €[D] 49.00/ SFr 69.50 ISBN 978-3-8233-6613-3 Performing the Self offers a cross-disciplinary dialogue about fundamental issues related to identity construction and identity performance. Written by linguistic and literary scholars, the present collection of essays argues against an essentialist view of the self and demonstrates in various ways how identities - whether they are defined as national, sexual, gendered, cultural, professional, virtual, linguistic or in some other way personal - are the products of multiple constructions and interconnected performances. Indeed, ‘performing the self’ is shown to be an act of constant questioning and staging, a relentless process which one perpetually revises and readjusts. 111810 Auslieferung Dezember 2010.indd 14 02.12.10 17: 29 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de NEUERSCHEINUNG JETZT BESTELLEN! Claudia Meindl Methodik für Linguisten Eine Einführung in Statistik und Versuchsplanung narr studienbücher 2011, 302 Seiten €[D] 22,90/ SFr 32,90 ISBN 978-3-8233-6627-0 Wie erhebt man linguistische Daten und wertet sie professionell aus? Mit der Umstellung auf Bachelor und Master haben viele Universitäten Lehrveranstaltungen zur Methodik in die Module ihrer Studiengänge aufgenommen. Das Studienbuch gibt dazu passend eine anwendungsorientierte Einführung in die Versuchsplanung und in die beschreibende und erklärende Statistik. Neben Tipps aus der Praxis werden auch die Grundlagen methodischen Arbeitens wie die Erkenntnis-, Mess- und Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie vermittelt. Mathematikkenntnisse werden nicht vorausgesetzt. Die Autorin erklärt den Umgang mit Formeln, führt aber auch in die gängigen Statistikprogramme (SPSS und R) ein. Durch anschauliche Beispiele und Übungsaufgaben ist das Lehrbuch auch zum Selbststudium geeignet. Zielgruppen: Studenten der Linguistik und der angrenzenden Disziplinen, Lehrende im Bereich Methodenlehre. 077211 Auslieferung August 2011.indd 4 16.08.11 14: 57