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Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) Heft 1-2 Vorwort des Herausgebers……………………………………………………………….3 Artikel: Andreas Mahler Liaisons dangereuses? Recto- und Verso-Verknüpfungen bei La Fontaine und Joyce (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung einer Ameise und einer Grille) ............ 5 Johannes Scherling Focalizing Memory - Synchronicity and Historicity in the Discourse on the Charlie Hebdo Attack in UK Media ....................................................................... 17 Tamami Shimada Morphosyntactic Features in Flux: Awareness of “Irishnessness” and “Standard” in Hiberno-English Speakers............................................................... 49 Nick Scott Academic Writing and Culture: A Study of Austrian Tertiary-Level EFL Learners .................................................. 75 Joshua Nash Placenames and Ecolinguistics: Some Considerations for Toponymists ................ 99 Nursen Gömceli & Allan James Hiberno-English and beyond in J.M. Synge‟s The Playboy of the Western World: a Literary Linguistic Analysis of its Dramatic Significance ......................105 Nassim Balestrini Life Writing in the Internet Age: Miranda July and the Limits of Art as Social Practice.....................................................................................................127 Walter W. Hölbling The Power of Visual Discourse: 21 st Century US-American Films „Against the Grain‟ ..................................................................................................................151 Silke Jandl The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Adapting Jane Austen in the Internet Age ..................167 Maximilian Feldner Bringing Bloom to the Screen: Challenges and Possibilities of Adapting James Joyce‟s Ulysses ..........................................................................197 Inhaltsverzeichnis 2 Daniela Wawra Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? ....................219 Eva Triebl …or not to be. The Strategic and Non-Strategic Use of Negative Identifiers in Online Forums ................................................................................................247 Rezensionen: Isabel Karremann Roland Weidle, Englische Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit. Eine Einführung (Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik 37), 2013. ....................................271 Walter Grünzweig Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt, Embracing Differences: Transnational Cultural Flows between Japan and the United States, 2013...........................................................273 Der gesamte Inhalt der AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Band 1, 1976 - Band 40, 2015 ist nach AutorInnen alphabetisch geordnet abrufbar unter http: / / wwwgewi.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 € 88,- (Vorzugspreis für private Leser € 72,-) zuzügl. Postgebühren. Einzelheft € 54,-. Doppelheft € 88,-. Die Bezugsdauer verlängert sich jeweils um ein Jahr, wenn bis zum 15. November keine Abbestellung vorliegt. © 2015 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG, Dischingerweg 5, 72070 Tübingen. E-mail: info@narr.de. Internet: www.narr.de. Die in der Zeitschrift veröffentlichten Beiträge sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Alle Rechte, insbesondere das der Übersetzung in fremde Sprachen, sind vorbehalten: Kein Teil dieser Zeitschrift darf ohne schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages in irgendeiner Form - durch Fotokopie, Mikrofilm oder andere Verfahren - reproduziert oder in eine von Maschinen, insbesondere von Datenverarbeitungsanlagen, verwendbare Sprache übertragen werden. Printed in Germany ISSN 0171-5410 Vorwort des Herausgebers Liebe Leserinnen und Leser, Es ist eine große Freude, Ihnen hiermit den 40. Jahrgang unserer anglistisch-amerikanistischen Zeitschrift aus Österreich vorzulegen. Wir durften eine ganze Generation von AnglistInnen und AmerikanistInnen wissenschaftlich anregend begleiten. Ein Privileg. Ich danke von Herzen für das andauernde Interesse an und die kritische Begleitung unserer Zeitschrift. Die Auswahl guter Beiträge ist der Schlüssel für das Leben dieser Zeitschrift. Ich danke den Mitherausgebern und Gutachtern für ihre sicher nicht leichte Aufgabe. Ich danke dem Redaktionsteam für die oft sehr komplizierte Arbeit an den Beiträgen. Ihr alle erweckt diese Zeitschrift durch euer Mittun zum Leben. Danke. Ich danke auch dem Verleger, Gunter Narr, für sein Engagement für die Zeitschrift und sein Vertrauen in unsere Arbeit an ihr. Als ich die Zeitschrift 1976 in Graz gründete, war nicht vorauszusehen, dass sie so erfolgreich werden würde. Ich danke deshalb allen, die an diesem Erfolg mitgewirkt haben. Bernhard Kettemann Herausgeber Arno Heller Wo sich Amerika erfand Große Erinnerungsorte in Neuengland A. Francke Verlag 2015, 352 Seiten, zahlr. farbige Abb. €[D] 26,99 ISBN 978-3-7720-8576-5 Neuengland ist eine Region im äußersten Nordosten der USA , etwa halb so groß wie Deutschland, mit 15 Millionen Einwohnern in sechs Bundesstaaten, die weniger als ein Fünfzigstel des amerikanischen Territoriums ausmachen. Und doch schlägt hier das historische und kulturelle Herz der Nation . Nirgendwo wird das europäische Vorurteil eines geschichtslosen Amerika eindrucksvoller widerlegt als hier. Jeder Ort pflegt selbstbewusst mit Museen, Gedenkstätten und Denkmälern seine Geschichte und kulturellen Hervorbringungen. Dabei geht es nicht nur um die Weitergabe von Wissen und Traditionen, sondern immer auch um die Suche nach nationaler Identität . Arno Heller erzählt die Geschichte der amerikanischen Selbst(er)findung auf überaus originelle Weise - bewusst nicht in Form einer historischen Übersicht, sondern anhand anschaulicher, spannender und auch kritisch hinterfragender Erkundungen von acht zentralen Gedächtnisorten der USA. In Wort und Bild wirft er einen neuen Blick auf die Keimzelle des amerikanischen Traums , auf Natur und Kultur, Literatur und Kunst, Geschichtliches und Kurioses, Tradition und Moderne . Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (07071) 97 97-0 \ Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 \ info@francke.de \ www.francke.de Stand: Oktober 2015 · Änderungen und Irrtümer vorbehalten! Liaisons dangereuses? Recto- und Verso-Verknüpfungen bei La Fontaine und Joyce (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung einer Ameise und einer Grille) Andreas Mahler The present article addresses two diametrically opposed types of text-making. Drawing on the French poet Jean de La Fontaine‘s fable of ―The Ant and the Grasshopper‖ as well as on the Irish modernist James Joyce‘s corresponding counterfable of ―The Ondt and the Gracehoper‖, hidden somewhere in part III of his interminable ‗Work in Progress‘ Finnegans Wake, the argument first explores the (conventional) text-making strategy of transparently turning linguistic material (verso) into sense-making gratifications (recto), thus centripetally producing the illusion of semantic unity (and unified meaning), before it describes its complementary counterstrategy (or ‗tactics‘) of playfully turning seemingly meaningful elements (recto) back into more and more textual material (verso), centrifugally creating a never-ending proliferation of (textual) diversity and infinity. In other words, it aptly strives to show the grasshopper‘s (gracehoper‘s) revenge on the (useful but boring) dutifulness, diligence, and sobriety of the ant (ondt). In der Folge geht es mir darum, zwei grundverschiedene Arten textueller Verknüpfung aufzuzeigen. 1 Hierfür gehe ich aus vom allseits bekannten 1 Der vorliegende Beitrag ist die schriftlich ausgearbeitete Version eines Vortrags, den ich auf dem an der Humboldt Graduate School vom 1.-2.11.2013 veranstalteten Workshop zum Thema ―Binden, Knoten, Liieren. Techniken und Verfahren der Formwahrung in den Künsten‖ gehalten haben. Ich danke den Organisatoren, allen voran Ethel Matala de Mazza, für die freundliche Aufnahme und die äußerst produktive Diskussion. Die Überlegungen gehen zurück auf mein Münchner (WS 07/ 08) und mein Grazer Seminar (WS 10/ 11) zu Joyces Finnegans Wake. Allen Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmern danke ich für ihr großes Engagement und die nötige Geduld in den Diskussionen; mein besonderer Dank gilt Christina Scholz für ihre intensive Beschäftigung mit der Joyce‘schen Fabel und das Teilen einer gan- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Andreas Mahler 6 Saussure‘schen Bild von der Sprache als einem Blatt Papier mit der Unterscheidung zwischen einer ‗Vorderseite‘ - der recto-Seite (A), ihrem Inhalt, also der aktivierten Vorstellung - und einer ‗Rückseite‘ - der verso-Seite (B), dem zugehörigen Material - Signifikat und Signifikant samt all ihrer Prozessualität und Dynamik (Abb. 1). 2 Abb.1 Diesem Modell gleicht zudem auch meine Textauswahl. Wie auf einem Handout besteht sie ebenfalls gleichsam aus einer recto- und einer verso- Seite und zeigt anhand ein und derselben präsentierten Geschichte zwei gegenläufige Prozesse. 3 Auf meiner recto-Seite werden in einer Fabel des nicht unbekannten französischen Autors Jean de La Fontaine - so meine These - verso-Verknüpfungen in recto-Gratifikationen verwandelt, während auf der verso-Seite gegenläufig - in einer wesentlichen Ergänzung derselben Geschichte durch den Iren James Joyce - zudem recto- Verknüpfungen in verso-Gratifikationen verwandelt werden. 4 Da nicht alle des Französischen mächtig sind, habe ich bei La Fontaine eine Übersetzen Menge von Einsichten und Ideen. Alle Fehler gehen natürlich zu meinen Lasten. 2 Zum Bild vom Blatt Papier siehe Saussure 1967: 132-135, v.a. 134; die Abbildung 133. 3 Zur Zeit des Workshops (2013) hatte die Fabel im übrigen noch einmal erneute Konjunktur durch den damaligen Aufschwung der bundesdeutschen Piratenpartei und den nimmermüden (seine eigene, nicht ganz ertragreiche Kunst verteidigenden) Verweis ihres damaligen kurzfristigen Vorsitzenden Ponader in diversen Talkshows auf das Kinderbuch von der Maus Frederick. 4 Zur Beschreibung von Textverknüpfungsprozessen und Sprachspielen als versorecto-Spiele bzw. recto-verso-Spiele siehe Mahler 2006: 225-234, sowie auch die Überlegungen in meiner Grazer Antrittsvorlesung Mahler 2010: v.a. 110-116. Liaisons dangereuses? 7 zung beigefügt; für das uns allesamt (oftmals vermeintlich) vertraute Englische habe ich dies unterlassen. In beiden Fällen liegt ein Cosinusähnliches Kippspiel vor. 5 Das eine produziert, gemäß unserer Gewohnheit, vornehmlich Semantik 6 ; das andere produziert das, was man im Anschluss an Lewis Carroll (und nicht zuletzt sodann auch Gilles Deleuze) sich angewohnt hat, als ‗Nonsens‘ zu bezeichnen. 7 Zum ersten Text: Recto: Die Lache der Ameise LA CIGALE ET LA FOURMI 1 La Cigale ayant chanté Tout l‘Été, Se trouva fort dépourvue Quand la bise fut venue. 5 Pas un seul petit morceau De mouche ou de vermisseau. Elle alla crier famine Chez la Fourmi sa voisine, La priant de lui prêter 10 Quelque grain pour subsister Jusqu‘à la saison nouvelle. Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle, Avant l‘Oût, foi d‘animal, Intérêt et principal. 15 La Fourmi n‘est pas prêteuse; C‘est là son moindre défaut. « Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud? Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse. — Nuit et jour à tout venant 20 Je chantais, ne vous déplaise. — Vous chantiez? j‘en suis fort aise. Eh bien! dansez maintenant.» 8 5 Zur Figur des Cosinus siehe Mahler 2006: 232. 6 Zur einprägsamen Rede von einer allfälligen ―Tyrannei der Bedeutung‖, deren Hinweis ich meinem Grazer Kollegen Walter Bernhart verdanke, siehe Barthes 1990: 275; zum Gedanken einer - die europäischen Kulturen insonderheit ab der Epoche der Klassik prägenden - sprachlichen ‗Transparenz‘, welche die verso-Seite so weit wie möglich negiert und die recto-Seite als vermeintlich einzige absolut privilegiert siehe Foucault 1980: 74 ff. und passim. 7 Zu einlässigen sprachbewussten Untersuchungen zu den Texten Carrolls siehe die einsichtsreichen Bücher von Deleuze 1993 und Lecercle 1994. 8 Ich übernehme den Text der Fabel (samt der französischen Zeichensetzung) der Ausgabe La Fontaine 1668/ 1975: 35; die deutsche Prosaübersetzung stammt von Hermann Lindner (1976: 278). Andreas Mahler 8 [Die Grille und die Ameise. Nachdem sie den ganzen Sommer gesungen hatte, stand die Grille ohne jeden Vorrat da, als der kalte Nordwind gekommen war: nicht das kleinste Stück Fliege oder Regenwurm. Da ging sie zur Ameise, ihrer Nachbarin, lamentierte über ihre Hugersnot und bat sie, ihr etwas Korn zu leihen, damit sie bis zum nächsten Frühjahr überleben könne. ―Noch vor August, bei meiner Tierehre,‖ sagte sie zu ihr, ―werde ich Euch die geliehene Summe samt Zinsen zurückzahlen.‖ Die Ameise aber verleiht nicht gern; hierin liegt einer ihrer kleineren Fehler. ―Was habt Ihr denn in der warmen Jahreszeit gemacht? ‖, sprach sie zur Borgerin. ―Tag und Nacht sang ich, mit Verlaub, für jeden, der kam.‖ - ―Ihr habt gesungen? Soll mir recht sein! Gut, dann tanzt jetzt.‖] Der Text verbindet syntagmatisch 22 Zeilen, organisiert in neun Sätzen bzw. satzwertigen Gliedern, und zerfällt argumentativ-rhetorisch zunächst einmal in zwei große Teile: (I.) die Notlage der Grille (V. 1-14) und (II.) das Ausbleiben der Hilfe durch die Ameise (V. 15-22). Syntaktisch unterteilt sich dies sodann des weiteren in (Ia.) den Hunger der Grille als Notlage (V. 1-6), (Ib.) ihre Bitte um Hilfe (V. 7-11) und (Ic.) das Versprechen der Rekompensation (V. 12-14) sowie (IIa.) die Frage der Ameise nach dem Grund für die Notlage (V. 15-18), (IIb.) deren Explikation durch die Grille (V. 19-20) und (IIc.) die Verpassung eines erklärungsadäquaten Rats durch die Ameise (V. 21-22) samt Hohngelächter. Paradigmatisch gestützt wird die Zweiteilung zudem durch den Wechsel von Paarreim in (I.) (―chanté‖ - ―été‖; ―dépourvue‖ - ―venue‖; ―morceau - ―vermisseau‖ etc.) zu umarmendem Reim in (II.) (―prêteuse‖ - ―chaud‖ - ―défaut‖ - ―emprunteuse‖ etc.). Der Bitte um Gleichstellung begegnet eine Struktur der Entgegensetzung. Es geht mithin ganz klassizistisch um These und Antithese. Pragmatisch wird dies des weiteren gestützt über die auf eine vermeintliche (d.h. fiktive) Situation referierenden Hauptredegegenstände: in I die Grille; in II die Ameise, welche sodann über Pro-Formen (―Elle‖ 7 , ―La‖ und ―lui‖ 9 , ―elle‖ 12 , ―son‖ 16 , ―elle‖ 18 ), Periphrasen (―La Fourmi sa voisine‖ 8 , ―cette emprunteuse‖ 18 ) und die Pronomina in der direkten Rede (―je vous‖ 12 , ―vous‖ 17 , ―Je‖ und ―vous‖ 20 , ―J‘‖ 21 und den Imperativ ―dansez‖ 22 ) eng miteinander verknüpft werden, so dass über die angenommene Referenzidentität der jeweiligen Pro-Formen hinsichtlich der Referenz des Textes das entsteht, was man gemeinhin ‗Kohäsion‘ nennt. 9 Das syntaktische Argument und die über Pro-Formen und Textdeiktika erzielte referentielle Kohäsion wird schließlich noch ergänzt durch die 9 Die klassischen Grundlagenwerke zur Unterscheidung einer textsyntagmatisch definierten ‗Kohäsion‘ im Gegensatz zu einer kontextpragmatisch bestimmten ‗Kohärenz‘ sind nach wie vor Halliday/ Hasan 1987 sowie de Beaugrande/ Dressler 1981; siehe auch die gängigen Lexikoneinträge. Liaisons dangereuses? 9 Isotopienbildung auf der Ebene der Semantik. 10 Sie stellt zunächst zeitlich mit dem Nordwind (―la bise‖ 4 ) und dem Sommer (―au temps chaud‖ 17 , ―l‘Oût‖ 13 bzw. vor allem dem ―Tout l‘Été‖ 2 in der dreisilbigen, scheinbar zeitvergeudenden - mithin quasi dreimonatigen - Extrazeile in all den Siebensilblern) die kalte und die warme Jahreszeit in Opposition und korreliert dies mit einer vor allem Teil I kennzeichnenden Isotopie der Vorsorge und der Arbeit bzw. deren Ausbleiben (―fort dépourvue‖ 3 , ―Pas un seul petit morceau‖ 5 , ―mouche‖, ―vermisseau‖ 6 , ―famine‖ 7 , ―grain‖ und subsister‖ 10 ) und einer vornehmlich Teil II prägenden Gegenisotopie des Vergnügens und der Muße (―chantais‖ und ―ne vous déplaise‖ 20 , ―chantiez‖ und ―fort aise‖ 21 , ―dansez‖ 22 und natürlich auch ―chanté‖ 1 ). Hieraus resultiert mit Blick auf eine aufklärungsgeprägte Wirklichkeit nunmehr aus Sicht einer extrapragmatisch bestimmten ‗Kohärenz‘ folgende Verknüpfungsstruktur 11 : Die verso-Elemente des syntaktischen Textaufbaus einer paradigmatisch (in Verszeilen, mit Reimen) organisierten Syntagmatik, seiner über Binnenreferenzen vernetzten Ligatur samt der über Lexeme bestimmten semantischen Argumentation produziert auf recto-Ebene die Entgegensetzung von ―Arbeit‖ und ―Vergnügen‖, näherhin von ―Leben‖ und ―Kunst‖, raison und déraison und gibt der lachenden Ameise recht. Dem antwortet - in etwas obliquem Versteck, gleichwohl mit Verve - der Joyce‘sche Gegentext: Verso: Die Rache der Grille The thing pleased him andt, and andt, 1 He larved and larved on he merd such a nauses The Gracehoper feared he would mixplace his fauces. I forgive you, grond Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping, For their sukes of the sakes you are safe in whose keeping. 5 Teach Floh and Luse polkas, show Bienie where‟s sweet And be sure Vespatilla fines fat ones to heat. As I once played the piper I must now pay the count So saida to Mohammlet and marhaba to your Mount! Let who likes lump above so what flies be a full‟un; 10 I could not feel moregruggy if this was prompollen. I pick up your reproof, the horsegift of a friend, For the prize of your save is the price of my spend. 10 Der Isotopie-Begriff geht zurück auf die semantischen Untersuchungen des französischsprachigen Balten Algirdas J. Greimas; für eine knappe Zusammenfassung siehe Kallmeyer et al.: 1986: 143-161, für seine einlässige Nutzung im Rahmen einer strukturbewussten Textanalyse siehe etwa Schulte-Sasse/ Werner 1986: 68-89. 11 Zum Konzept der ‗Kohärenz‘ vgl. oben Anm. 9. Andreas Mahler 10 Can castwhores pulladeftkiss if old pollocks forsake ‟em Or Culex feel etchy if Pulex don‟t wake him? 15 A locus to loue, a term it t‟embarass, These twain are the twins that tick Homo Vulgaris. Has Aquileone nort winged to go syf Since the Gwyfyn we were in his farrest drewbryf And that Accident Man not beseeked where his story ends 20 Since longsephyring sighs sought heartseast for their orience? We are Wastenot with Want, precondemned, two and true, Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue. Ere those gidflirts now gadding you quit your mocks for my gropes An extense must impull, an elapse must elopes, 25 Of my tectus takestock, tinctact, and ail‟s weal; As I view by your farlook hale yourself to my heal, Partiprise my thin whins whiles my blink points unbroken on Your whole‟s wherecabroads with Tout‟s trightyright token on. My in risible universe youdly haud find 30 Such oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind. Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense, (May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense! ), Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime! But, Holy Saltmartin, why can‟t you beat time? In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. Allmen. 12 Die Joyce‘sche Gegenfabel von ―Ondt‖ - einer portmanteau-gleichen Überlagerung von ―ant‖, ―and‖ und einem dänischen Wort für ‗schlecht‘, ‗schmerzhaft‘ 13 - und ―Gracehoper‖ - der Überschreibung des ―Grashüpfers‖ mit portmanteau-ähnlichen Verschiebungen 14 - entstammt Buch III (―The Book of the People‖), Kapitel 1 aus James Joyces Finnegans Wake, und kontrastiert in einem Traum die beiden Zwillingssöhne von ―H.C. Earwicker‖ (man notiere den Insektennamen): den arbeitsam bürgerlichen (und damit ameisengleichen) ―Shaun the Postman‖ und den sich 12 Die gesamte Episode findet sich in Joyce 1939/ 1980 (=FW): 414-419, der zitierte Abschnitt 418 f.; ich nummeriere lediglich die Gedichtzeilen, nicht den Prosarahmen (die Kursivierungen finden sich so im Original). Für einen Überblick zu den verschiedenen Forschungsansätzen zu Finnegans Wake siehe Füger 1994: 251-299; zu einzelnen medienwie materialbewussten Lektüren siehe etwa Reichert 1989, Polloczek 1993: 9-29 sowie Senn 1983 und 1999. 13 Ich entnehme dies wie eine Fülle weiterer Anregungen in der Folge dem zwar nicht immer ganz zuverlässigen, aber in seiner Zentrifugalität und Fülle gleichwohl immer noch äußerst anregenden Kommentar von McHugh 1980: insbes. 418-419. 14 Zum Portmanteau-Morphem siehe den entsprechenden Eintrag etwa in Bußmann 1990: 594; zum Faszinosum des ―Grasshopper‖ als Literaturtier, berühmtermaßen vor allem etwa bei e.e. cummings, siehe Mahler 2010. Liaisons dangereuses? 11 zum Schriftsteller berufen fühlenden (und hierin grillenähnlichen) Künstler ―Shem the Penman‖. Der Joyce‘sche Text ist lesbar wie eine Antwort aus der Sicht der Grille (―I forgive you, grondt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping‖ 3 ), welche sich scheinbar einsichtig gibt (―As I once played the piper I must now pay the count‖ 7 ) und der sich königlich, wo nicht hämisch amüsierenden, schurkisch-rücksichtslosen Ameise (―He larved and larved on‖ 1 ) gegenüber einräumt: ―I pick up your reproof‖ 11 , wenngleich sich deren Lehre bereits hier als Danaergeschenk (―horsegift‖ 11 ) entpuppt, weil, so das Argument des Zwillings Shem, die Dinge der Menschheit (des ―Homo Vulgaris‖ 16 ) immer zu zweit kommen (―These twain are the twins‖ 16 ) - wie recto und verso und somit eben auch ‗Leben‘ und ‗Kunst‘. Das heißt, das Wichtige an der Gegenfabel ist vor allem das verknüpfende, syntagmatisch operierende ‗und‘, ―andt, and andt‖ 0 . Damit sind wir auf der anderen Seite der Medaille (bzw. des eingangs aufgerufenen Blattes Papier). Statt wie die La Fontaine‘sche Fabel in klassizistisch-transparenter Ausschließlichkeit strategisch aus verso-Elementen recto-Gratifikationen zu beziehen, 15 beginnt der Joyce‘sche Text aus den recto-Elementen der intertextuell bekannten Fabel - zunächst der vor allen Dingen metrisch über die sorgsam nachgeahmte Struktur der Anapäste aufgerufenen Fabel Äsops, 16 sodann aber vor allem eben auch, wie noch zeigen ist, derjenigen La Fontaines - taktisch verso-Gratifikationen zu basteln, mithin neues ungeahntes Material bereitzustellen, intratextuell an der Oberfläche zu operieren, Signifikanten in Signifikanten umzuknüpfen, Text aus Text herzustellen, und auf diese Weise neue verso- Elemente zu kreieren, welche erst im Nachhinein wiederum suggestiv werden auf mögliche recto-Effekte. 17 Das Textverfahren schaltet dementsprechend um von semantikzentrierter Zentripetalität zu einer gleichsam ‗kornukopische‘ Sprachfülle gebärenden Zentrifugalität. 18 Ich beschränke mich auf einige wenige Beispiele. 15 In diesem Sinne wäre also klassizistischer Sprachgebrauch ein rein ‗diskursiver‘, der Sprachlichkeit in vollstmöglicher Transparenz auf Sachverhalte der Wirklichkeit abzubilden sucht; zur Identifikation des ‗Zeitalters der Transparenz‘ allein mit ‗Diskursivität‘ siehe nochmals Foucault 1980, zu einer diesbezüglichen Diskussion des Verhältnisses von Diskursivität und Konterbzw. A-Diskursivität siehe Mahler 2010a. 16 Diesen Hinweis verdanke ich meiner Grazer gräzistischen Kollegin Eveline Krummen (für eine englische Prosaversion vgl. auch Aesop 1978: 142). 17 Mit dem Gegensatzpaar von von oben her kommender, machtbewusster ‗Strategie‘ und von unten aus agierender, widerständiger ‗Taktik‘ beziehe ich mich auf die Überlegungen zu unterschiedlichen Formen und Funktionen von Praktiken bei de Certeau 1988: 21-26, v.a. 23, und 85-92, v.a. 87 f.; zum Textknüpfen, wie generell zur Textil- und Webmetapher in bezug auf Textbildungsprozesse, siehe die weitreichende Studie von Greber 2002. 18 Zum Gedanken und Konzept vom Text als Füllhorn, eines ‗cornucopian text‘, mit einer (rhetorisch ausgerichteten) Unterscheidung zwischen res-bestimmten Kornu- Andreas Mahler 12 Solches tut der Joyce‘sche Text zunächst im Rekurs auf die dem Viktorianer Lewis Carroll abgeguckten portmanteaus 19 : ―ant‖ gebiert ―ondt‖, ―grasshopper‖ ―gracehoper‖, ―laughed‖ ―larved‖, ―made‖ ―merd‖, ―noises‖ ―nauses‖ usw. Dies ist das - u. a. späterhin bei den nouveau romanciers programmatisch Verwendung findende - Verfahren sprachlicher Generatoren 20 , welches zunächst neben der Findung neuer, von der Sprache arbiträr nicht realisierter Signifikanten vor allem darum bemüht ist, auch semantisch Ausgegrenztes, insbesondere Sexuelles, Skatologisches und ähnliches anspielungsreich hereinzuholen, also etwa ―merd‖ 1 für ―made‖, ―nauses‖ 1 für ―noises‖, und umgekehrt ―fauces‖ 2 als Suggestion von ―faeces‖. 21 Zum zweiten etabliert die Fabel nunmehr paradigmatisch ein sich aus dem ‗Ohrwurm‘ des Vaters wie der ‗Ameise‘ und der ‗Grille‘ der beiden Zwillingssöhne (bzw. zusätzlich aus den ―mouches‖ und den ―vermisseaux‖ der La Fontaine‘schen Fabel) enzyklopädisch entfaltendes, generierendes (‗entpuppendes‘) Gewimmel von Insekten und Käfern 22 : von ―larved‖ 1 über ―faucheux 2 ‖ (frz. Spinnenart) 23 , ―Floh‖ 5 , ―Laus‖ 5 , ―Biene‖ 5 , ―Wespe‖ 6 , ―piper‖ 7 , ―morgrugyn‖ 10 (walis. ‗Ameise‘), ―primpeallán‖ 10 (it. ‗Käfer‘), ―culex‖ 14 (lat. ‗Mücke‘), ―pulex‖ 14 (lat. ‗Floh‘), ―locust‖ 15 (‗Heuschrecke‘), ―termite‖ 15 (‗Termiten‘), ―tick‖ 16 (‗Anballung von Würmern‘), ―gwyfyn‖ 18 (walis. ‗Motte‘), ―drewbryf‖ 18 (walis. ‗Käfer‘), ―volants‖ 22 (allem, was fliegt), ―gadflies‖ 23 (‗Bremsen‘) bis hin zu allem, ―Tout‖ 28 , einem ganzen ―universe‖ 29 von durch den Text kreuchenden und fleuchenden Lexemen, gipfelnd im ―saltmartino‖ 34 (it. für eine Hüpferart). Das heißt, der Joyce‘sche Gegentext schiebt sich syntagmatisch quasi aus sich heraus. Nicht geht es um ein mimetisch-referentielles Abbild eines außertextuellen Gewimmels von Insekten, sondern es geht rein innertextuell um die im Prinzip endlose, unabschließbare performative Herstellung von immer noch mehr Insekten und Käfern aus Lexemen. 24 kopien im Gegensatz zu verba-bestimmten Kornukopien, siehe Cave 1979: v.a. 5-34 und 171-182. 19 Zu solchen Textverfahren siehe auch die Lektüren in Geier 1986, zu Carroll v.a. 108-123. 20 Zum Generatorenverfahren in der Textkompositionstechnik des Nouveau Roman siehe Ricardou 1973. 21 Zum Grundgestus eines ‗literarischen‘ Hereinholens von Ausgegrenztem unter dem Stichwort einer ‗Positivierung von Negativität‘ siehe, im Anschluss an die Überlegungen des Philosophen Joachim Ritter (1989), die anregenden theoretischen Ausführungen bei Warning 1974. 22 Über solche Verfahren verwandelt sich der literarische Text in eine res- und verbagetriebene Enzyklopädie, wie sich dies in der Neuzeit von Erasmus und Rabelais bis hin zu Joyce und Borges beobachten lässt; vgl. hierzu nochmals Cave 1979 sowie die Beiträge in Wiethölter/ Berndt/ Kammer 2005. 23 Ich stützte mich hier ein weiteres Mal ausgiebig auf die Vorschläge in McHugh 1980, 418-419. 24 Zur wichtigen und produktiven texttheoretischen Unterscheidung zwischen referenz- und damit weltbezogener ‗Mimesis‘ und textgenerativer ‗Performanz‘ siehe Liaisons dangereuses? 13 Dieses Verfahren infiniter Textbildung aus Text 25 zeigt sich im Kleinen etwa in der enzyklopädischen Hereinholung aller Himmelsrichtungen zur Kreation eines ganzen Textuniversums: Has Aquileone nort winged to go syf Since the Gwyfyn we were in his farrest drewbryf And that Accident Man not beseeked where his story ends 20 Since longsephyring sighs sought heartseast for their orience? La Fontaines ―bise‖ gebiert hier den ―aquilone‖ 17 , den Nordwind, als ―nort‖ 17 , welcher nach Süden (―syf‖ 17 ) weist, ohne den Westen (―Accident‖/ ‗occident‘ 19 ) und den Osten (―heartseast‖ 20 und ―orience‖ 20 ) zu vergessen. Und dasselbe ereignet sich im übrigen nochmals kleiner, gedrängter und vollkommener in Zeile 30: ―Such oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind‖ (meine Entkursivierungen), wo sich das Paradigma des ‗Rindes‘ im ―ox‖, im ―beef‖, im ―meat‖ und im ―veal‖ immer wieder neu artikuliert, bis - fürs erste - ―soveal‖ (‗soviel‘) in sprachlicher Erschöpfung zurückliegt (―behind‖), dass zum nächsten geschritten werden kann. 26 Die Art der Verknüpfung hat sich mithin gedreht: Neben die Produktion von Sinn (recto-Gratifikationen) aus Material (verso-Elementen) stellt sich gleichberechtigt, vielleicht gar vergleichgültigend 27 , die Produktion von immer noch mehr Material (verso-Gratifikationen) aus vermeintlich gegebenem Sinn (recto-Fixierungen). Dies ist nicht mehr aus verso- Verknüpfungen gewonnenes world-making; es ist aus recto- (und im gleichen Zug zudem auch aus verso-)Verknüpfungen gesponnenes, typisch Joyce‘sches text-making. 28 Es ist dies das für Joyce eindringlich reklamierte intratextuelle Verfahren der ‗nodes‘ (Textknoten) und ‗trellises‘ (Textspaliere) 29 , wie dies unlängst erst noch einmal Scarlett Baron einlässig zusammengefasst hat: ―Joyce produced a self-generating textual yarn or ‗concatenated series of intratextual echoes‘.‖ 30 die Überlegungen in Iser 1993: 426-515, v.a. 481-504; zum weiterführenden Gedanken einer solchermaßen am Textsyntagma entlanggeführten ‗Emergenz‘ von (verso und recto simultan her- und bereitstellender) ‗Zweistelligkeit‘ siehe die postum publizierten Überlegungen in Iser 2013. 25 Zum Phantasma vom ‗unendlichen Text‘ siehe Frey 1990. 26 Zu solchen Paradigmatisierungen als zugrundeliegende Vertextungsprinzipien siehe die Überlegungen in Warning 2001. 27 Zu einer ausführlichen Darstellung bereits in der frühen Neuzeit wirksamer ‗literarischer‘ Strategien einer im Zeichen der (pyrrhonischen) Skepsis stehenden ‗Vergleichgültigung‘ siehe Lobsien 1999: 9-84. 28 Zum (modernistischen) Wandel von einem referenzgläubigen world-making zu einem sprach-/ medienbewussten text-making siehe, vor allem auch mit Blick auf Joyces literarische Entwicklung, Mahler 2013; zu den Mechanismen des Textwirkens siehe in diesem Zusammenhang auch nochmal Greber 2002. 29 Zu den (textuellen) ‗nodes‘ and ‗trellises‘ bei Joyce siehe Hayman 1978-79. 30 Siehe Baron 2002: 255; das Zitat im Zitat entstammt Crispi/ Slote 2007: 14-15. Andreas Mahler 14 Joyces Textfabel von der Grille und der Ameise zeigt der Verknüpfung andere Seite: die andere Seite der Medaille, die andere Seite des Blattes Papier. Sie zeigt nicht nur die eine ‗positive‘ Seite der Bedeutung [+a]; sie zeigt beide Seiten zugleich: die ‗positive‘ bedeutungstragende wie die ‗negierte‘ bedeutungsmachende [±a] - Liieren, Verknüpfen, Binden (unsere Kooperationstätigkeit) hier wie dort. Entsprechend geht der Schluss: My in risible universe youdly haud find 30 Such oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind. Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense, (May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense! ), Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime! But, Holy Saltmartin, why can‟t you beat time? Dem ernsten Universum der auf üble Weise (―ondt‖) fleißigen Ameise steht gegenüber ein unernstes (―risible‖ 29 ) Universum des Gracehoper - welches die Ameise im übrigen, so bitter es ist, kaum je erreichen wird (‗you hardly will find‘ 29 ), weil es ihrem ‗einseitigen‘ Ernst für immer verschlossen bleibt - ein Universum, wo sich das Supplement (‗extra‘ 29 ) des Unvereinbaren (―beeforeness‖ und ―behind‖ 30 ) 31 trifft (―meat‖ 30 ) und wo damit etwas gelingt und ‗Gegensinn‘ stiftet ―(May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense! )‖ 32 , was der arbeitsamen Ameise nicht vergönnt ist, nämlich: ―[to] beat time‖ 34 - Simultaneität. Wo der La Fontaine‘sche Text in aufklärerischer Oppositivstellung und bierernstem Unhintergehbarkeitsgestus triumphiert, dass, wer sich allein der Kunst verschreibt, nicht leben kann, zeigt der Joyce‘sche Gegentext - diese Lehre scheinbar, aber doch auch eben nur zum Schein, bestätigend -, dass, wer ohne Kunst lebt, vom Leben nur die Hälfte hat. Lebt der lebensweltliche Ernst von der Negation dieser Dialektik, betreibt die Kunst deren Positivierung: ist die Ameise auf der einen Seite der Medaille, ist der Gracehoper als vordergründiger loser (‗hopefully‘) auf beiden. Literaturverzeichnis Fables of Aesop (1978). Transl. S.A. Handford (Penguin Classics). Harmondsworth: Penguin. 31 Vgl. in diesem Zusammenhang auch das schöne englische Wort ‗preposterous‘, wie es Anwendung gefunden hat etwa in der ―Induction‖ zu Ben Jonsons Jahrmarktkomödie Bartholmew Fair (1614), wo es zu Beginn des Stücks den (fiktiven) Rechtsvertretern darum geht, das Publikum in wahrstem Sinne ‗preposterously‘ - und nicht etwa, wie immer wieder in missverstandener ideologiekritischer Sicht behauptet, in spaßverderbendem einseitigen Ernst - über den vorgängig geleisteten Eintritt und den nachgängig zu leistenden Applaus auf einen karnevalsgemäßen Genuss des Stücks im Sinne des ‗Nonsens‘ zu verpflichten; siehe hierzu näherhin Mahler 1993: 81-93, insbes. 89. Liaisons dangereuses? 15 Baron, Scarlett (2012). „Strandentwining Cable‟. Joyce, Flaubert, and Intertextuality (Oxford English Monographs). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barthes, Roland (1990). ―Die Rauheit der Stimme.‖ R.B. Der entgegenkommende und der stumpfe Sinn. Kritische Essays III. Transl. Dieter Hornig. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 269-278. Beaugrande, Robert Alain de & Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler ( 2 1981). Einführung in die Textlinguistik [1973] (Konzepte der Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 28). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Bußmann, Hadumod (ed.) ( 2 1990). Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft [1983] (KT 452). Stuttgart: Kröner. Cave, Terence (1979). The Cornucopian Text. Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon. Certeau, Michel de (1988). Kunst des Handelns. Transl. Roland Vouillé. Berlin: Merve. Crispi, Luca & Sam Slote (eds.) (2007). How Joyce Wrote „Finnegans Wake‟. A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. 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Eine andere Geschichte der frühneuzeitlichen Literatur. München: W. Fink. McHugh, Roland (1980). Annotations to Finnegans Wake. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Andreas Mahler 16 Mahler, Andreas (1993). ―Komödie, Karneval, Gedächtnis. Zur frühneuzeitlichen Aufhebung des Karnevalesken in Ben Jonsons Bartholmew Fair.‖ Poetica 25. 81-128. Mahler, Andreas (2006). ―Towards a Pragmasemiotics of Poetry.‖ Poetica 38. 217- 157. Mahler, Andreas (2010). ―Performing Arts. ‗New Aestheticism‘ and the Media.‖ AAA 35. 101-120. Mahler Andreas (2010a). ―Diskurs. Versuch einer Entwirrung.‖ ZfSL 120. 153- 173. Mahler, Andreas (2013). ―Joyce‘s Bovarysm. Paradigmatic disenchantment into syntagmatic progression.‖ Comparatio 5. 249-295. Polloczek, Dieter (1993). Vernetzungsstrukturen. Faulkner, Pynchon, Barthelme (Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der Schönen Künste 88). München: W. Fink. Reichert, Klaus (1989). Vielfacher Schriftsinn. Zu Finnegans Wake (es 1525). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Ricardou, Jean (1973). Le nouveau roman. Paris: Seuil. Ritter, Joachim (1989). ―Über das Lachen.‖ [1940]. J.R. Subjektivität: Sechs Aufsätze [1974]. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 62-92. Saussure, Ferdinand de ( 2 1967). Grundfragen der Allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft [1916]. Transl. Herman Lommel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Schulte-Sasse, Jochen & Renate Werner ( 4 1986). Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft [1977] (UTB 640). München: W. Fink. Senn, Fritz (1983). Nichts gegen Joyce. Joyce versus Nothing. Aufsätze 1959-1983. Ed. Franz Cavigelli. Zürich: Haffmans. Senn, Fritz (1999). Nicht nur Nichts gegen Joyce. Aufsätze über Joyce und die Welt 1969-1999. Ed. Friedhelm Rathjen. Zürich: Haffmans. Warning, Rainer (1974). Funktion und Struktur. Die Ambivalenzen des Geistlichen Spiels (Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der Schönen Künste 35). München: W. Fink. Warning, Rainer (2001). ―Erzählen im Paradigma. Kontingenzbewältigung und Kontingenzexposition.‖ Romanistisches Jahrbuch 52. 176-209. Wiethölter, Waltraud, Frauke Berndt & Stephan Kammer (eds.) (2005). Vom Weltbuch zum World Wide Web. Enzyklopädische Literaturen. Heidelberg: Winter. Andreas Mahler Institut für Englische Philologie Freie Universität Berlin Focalizing Memory Synchronicity and Historicity in the Discourse on the Charlie Hebdo Attack in UK Media Johannes Scherling 1. Introduction “We spin the events of the past to show that we always tend to behave well and our opponents badly or that we are normally right and others wrong. Therefore, it goes without saying, we are in the right again this time.” (Macmillian 2010: 93) Historicity is an important concept in people‟s conceptualization of the world and their respective place in it. It helps us to make sense of ourselves, our actions, and our environment in the present, and it serves as a basis for future decisions (cf. Leudar et al. 2008, 2011; Reisigl and Wodak 2009). This applies to people‟s personal histories as well as to macro-histories of nations, continents or the world at large. In the latter cases, however, and with the rise of mass media in the 20 th century in particular, what used to be the task of professional historians has increasingly shifted into the hands of what Leudar and Nekvapil call “lay historians” (2011: 68). Historian Margaret Macmillian argues along the same lines when she maintains that “much of the history that the public reads and enjoys is written by amateur historians” whose view on history “ignores […] nuances in favor of tales that belong to morality plays but do not help us to consider the past in all its complexity.” (2010: 36-37) Such „lay historians‟ include politicians as well as journalists or other professions with an impact on public opinion. 1 1 This is not to say that histories written by historians are in any way less constructions than those propagated by lay persons, but only that the former, by virtue of their profession, are equipped with knowledge and methodology which permits them to construct history with more complexity. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Johannes Scherling 18 The practice of ‗lay historians‘ may become problematic when important decisions are based on apparent, simplified or selective historical causalities or contiguities because to a certain extent we draw on our knowledge of the world and its history when we attempt to process, categorize and evaluate contemporary events in the news. History, in this respect, gives us a different, a unique perspective on happenings around us (cf. Reisigl/ Wodak 2009: 90), but also, or especially, on such beyond our perception - what Walter Lippmann (2008: 183) calls ―the invisible world‖ - which we become witness to only through mediation by authoritative sources, such as TV or newspapers. When we encounter events in the world through media, these are rarely insulated, but mostly subject to certain smallor large-scale contextualizations, the embedding into a wider narrative through which we make sense of them by drawing on historical meaning. For Macmillian (2010: 54-58), the choice of such historical meaning is also connected to Benedict Anderson‘s idea of ‗imagined communities‘, i.e. ―groups, like nations or religions, that are so big that we can never know all the other members yet which still draw our loyalties‖ in that history can be seen as ―a way of enforcing the imagined community.‖ This means that whatever histories are drawn on in a particular discourse may also give clues as to how such imagined communities see themselves within the greater historical narrative. History, therefore, frequently serves as such an identityshaping narrative, and the aspects of the past that we choose to focus on in our attempt to understand the world and situate ourselves within history, can profoundly alter the way we interpret what we see and hear around us. A case in point is the discourse on Islamic terrorism since 9/ 11, where a selective choice of historical contexts and causalities shape our idea of the nature of the phenomenon and the measures to be taken against it. A very recent example of the conceptualization of terrorism through the selective embedding into historical contexts can be seen in the media discourse on the attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which occurred in January 2015. It is this discourse that this paper wishes to explore within a cultural studies framework, but drawing mainly on conceptual and methodological aspects of the Glasgow University Media Group‘s Thematic Analysis enriched with concepts from other fields concerned with historical contextualization in order to investigate how history is used to give meaning to what happened and how it is employed as a basis for future action. Focalizing Memory 19 2. Theoretical background 2.1. Thematic Analysis The Glasgow University Media Group has been working on a framework for analyzing the content of media texts since the 1970ies (cf. Glasgow Media Group: online). Their central claim is that [t]he media are central to the exercise of power in society. They can set agendas in the sense of highlighting some news stories and topics, but they can also severely limit the information with which we understand events in the world. (Philo 2011: 173-4) The group‘s so-called Thematic Analysis is concerned with investigating the frameworks and causalities in which certain news events are embedded by the media and through which they are likely to be interpreted by the audience. It is based on the assumption that in any contentious area there will be competing ways of describing events and their history. Ideas are linked to interests and these competing interests will seek to explain the world in ways which justify their own position. So ideology (by which we mean an interest-linked perspective) and the struggle for legitimacy go hand in hand. (ibid: 174) In their analyses of the discourses on issues such as immigration, economic problems or the Israel-Palestine conflict, they focus on how meaning is established in news discourse by exploring how situations, actions or events are made meaningful and which of the various possible explanations are mostly drawn upon, i.e. which of them are dominant, which are backgrounded and which are excluded. The assumption behind this is that ―[i]f some explanations were present on the news and others were absent, then […] this would affect what TV audiences understood and believed.‖ (ibid: 174-5) If, for example, economic problems are explained dominantly by blaming the workforce and union strikes rather than by outlining the mistakes of managers (cf. ibid: 174), this is likely to influence the audience‘s view on the matter and establish what the Glasgow University Media Group terms an explanatory theme, which is defined as ―an assumed explanation [that gives] a pattern or structure to an area of coverage‖ (ibid: 175), i.e. an implicit assumption that structures news coverage without being explicitly mentioned. Thematic Analysis, therefore, strives to identify which perspective dominates in the news discourse on particular events or whether due space is given to alternative viewpoints or explanations. Hence, when an event is covered in the news, there is a need to investigate whether the factors that led to this event are explored and explained, or whether the Johannes Scherling 20 reporting ignores or simplifies potential causality chains that might have contributed to the event taking place. This is done by ―break[ing] down the text to identify the major subject areas that are pursued in the news, then examine the explanatory frameworks which underpin them‖ (Philo et al. 2013: 31). Philo and Berry (2011: 176-7) illustrate the impact of the choice of perspective on event meaning with an example from the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. ITV News had the headline: ‗Trouble continues as Hezbullah take three Israeli soldiers prisoner‘ (7 October 2000). One side can therefore be seen as initiating the ‗trouble‘. This was commonly reported, but a small number of news programmes also reported that the Israelis had been holding Lebanese hostages for many years and that the kidnap was linked to this. If the audience has this information then it may alter how they understand the events and the judgments that they make. There are in effect two competing explanatory themes. The first implies that one side is a victim and the second shows that both sides have taken hostages. Historical contextualization can thus be seen as imperative to the way the audience interprets events and which reactions or consequences they will judge to be appropriate and which not. In a study by Greg Philo regarding news content on developing countries, the following findings were presented: 1. That the decision made by broadcasters (on commercial criteria) about what viewers would desire to watch have in the long run produced very negative responses in TV audiences towards the developing world. 2. That audiences are misinformed about the developing world because of the low level of explanations and context which is given in television reporting and because some explanations which are present are partial and informed by what might be termed ‗post-colonial beliefs‘. 3. That a change in the quality of explanation which is given can radically alter both attitudes to the developing world and the level of audience interest in the subject. (Philo 2004: 201-2) Hence, representation of agents, actions and events in the news have an impact on the understanding of viewers or readers, and the perspective and explanation that are chosen can be seen as shaping the audience‘s interpretation of the world to a significant extent. Event meaning, therefore, is constructed based on a particular perspective which is in turn a reflection of power interests. Focalizing Memory 21 2.2. History as a source of meaning A particular privilege of power is that it creates interpretive dominance over contemporary events as well as history at large. Through privileged access to public opinion makers, powerful groups are in a position to propagate their own interpretations of current happenings and link these to select events in history. (cf. Herman/ Chomsky 2002) In doing so, they give additional meaning to events and shape the flow of historical narratives that we perceive these events to be continuations of, i.e. they use history as an explanatory framework. 2.2.1. Context: Historical (re)embedding An approach that takes the discursive constructions and invocations of history into account is the ‗Discourse-historical approach‘ (DHA) by Wodak et al. (2009), which is located within the larger field of Critical Discourse Analysis. Wodak et al. stress that there is not one history, but several competing histories, one of which is usually the dominant one. Within DHA, histories are incorporated into texts by way of intertextuality, through which ―texts are linked to other texts, both in the past and in the present‖ (2009: 90), by explicit references to topics or actors, by reference to the same events, by allusions, or the transfer of main arguments, among others. They call such transfer of elements from other texts ‗recontextualization‘, i.e. they are taken out of their original context and re-embedded into a different one, in which they may acquire a different function and/ or a different meaning. Wodak and Richardson (2009: 90) call the process of taking an element out of its original context ‗decontextualization‘. Recontextualization can, for instance, be observed when contrasting a political speech with the selective reporting of the speech in various newspapers. A journalist will select specific quotes which best fit the general purpose of the article (e.g. commentary). The quotations are thus deand re-contextualized, i.e. newly framed. They can partly acquire new meanings in the specific context of press coverage. (ibid: 90) Thus, de-contextualization presents an element as meaningful by itself, as unconnected to other related meanings and thus as constituting a starting point or semantic ‗ground zero‘ for future meanings to be connected to and made meaningful by. Recontextualization, on the other hand uses elements from other texts in order to ‗borrow‘ meaning and authority from previously established discourses and to suggest a connection existing between the texts, even though the actual connection, if any, may be of a different nature. Such intertextual strategies, therefore, draw on aspects of history to help interpret present events, but in doing so inevita- Johannes Scherling 22 bly impose a certain frame and meaning on them, which might be different if other historical contiguities were highlighted. 2 2.2.2. Distal versus proximal factors: Historicity and Syncronicity Blommaert‘s concept of ‗synchronicity‘ (cf. 2005) approaches the topic with regard to ―a point in history from which one speaks‖, including ―the selective inclusion and exclusion of layers and aspects of history, the condensation of several historical layers into one, and the construction of a representation of the past (and potential features) from the perspective of a created present, showing a particular position in history‖ (Fairclough 2015: 42). Blommaert argues, following Braudel (1981) that ―the slow patterns of history are beyond the grasp of subjects-in-history‖, and that people are reliant on experiencing things around them in ‗event time‘ or synchronically. This means that people draw on knowledge that is immediate to their realities in interpreting the world around them, i.e. they rely on the fast-paced synchronic background, and ignore the much more slowly developing historical background (cf. Blommaert 2005: 127-129). Quoting Ginzburg (1999), Blommaert argues that there is a difference between how historians and non-historians approach history: while the latter attempt ―to restore the different historical frames in which events occurred‖, the former ―reduce complex historical developments to strict synchronicity‖ (2005: 130). It can be suggested that ‗lay historians‘, too, will have a tendency towards synchronic contextualization in explaining current events which is shaped by what they experience as immediate in their contexts. For Blommaert (ibid: 135), people have no way of perceiving what he calls ―the deeper layers of our system‖, i.e. the larger historical contexts, but only ―see and experience its surface.‖ Thus, someone who can make us feel that our own experiential reality is the only relevant one and our historical position the only ‗normal‘ one, stands a good chance of convincing us that we are right after all, and that intellectuals‘ analyses are just abstract, elitist […] hullabaloo. (ibid: 135) As a consequence, synchronicity is not only the practice applied by lay historians, but also the practice that is most likely to resonate with our life experience because it does not create dissonance with what we believe to know about the world. 2 In DHA, history is seen as one of many aspects of discourse and is not at the center of interest, but for this paper, DHA‘s concepts of contextualization, recontextualization and decontextualization will be drawn upon to shed light on the historical dimensions that events are constructed as being part of. Focalizing Memory 23 2.2.3. History and future action: structured immediacy An interesting, somewhat complementary approach to Wodak et al. and Blommaert, is proposed by Leudar and Nekvapil, employing the concept of ‗structured immediacy‘ (2011, based on Leudar et al. 2008). The focus of this concept lies in ―how people make the past formulated as a history consequential in their local activities and produce it through those activities‖ (2011: 68). They are therefore interested in how the past, how history is discursively implemented, not only to explain present actions and events, but in rendering past and present causal to future actions. [E]very interaction takes place in a concrete environment but that environment can be understood under varied descriptions through being connected by participants to wider ranges of circumstances. Such circumstances range broadly and may include aspects of culture, institutions and personal histories of participants as well as the happenings that more immediately envelop activities. (Leudar et al. 2008: 865, quoted in Leudar/ Nekvapil 2011: 67) In their approach, Leudar and Nekvapil are interested in how people as ‗lay historians‘ ―relate contemporary activities to historical narratives available to a community and through doing this provide the activity with history-contingent meanings‖. Thus they focus on how references to the past are functionally utilized in order to heighten the understanding of the present, i.e. on ―history as a source of meaning‖ (ibid: 68). In their 2011 paper, they employ their concept of ‗structured immediacy‘ to analyze the differences between the invocation of history of then- US-president George W. Bush and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of 9/ 11, and conclude that, while bin Laden relates to colonial and neocolonial history as catalyst and motivation for the attacks on 9/ 11, Bush starts off from a blank slate, making 9/ 11 historically ground zero from which he projects into the future and justifies in advance any action to be conducted in response to these attacks. Thus, while bin Laden attempts to downgrade the size of the event by comparing it to what he sees a history of suffering by Muslims at the hand of Western powers, thus drawing on distal factors, Bush upgrades the attacks by making them historical ground zero without any relevant precursors, thus capitalizing on proximal aspects of event history. These different renderings then become consequential in the argumentation and justification for present or future actions. These three approaches serve three different purposes: while Wodak et al.‘s DHA highlights the process in which historical meaning is detached from its source and reapplied to other contexts, Blommaert‘s approach emphasizes the tendency of preference of proximal over distal factors because they are closer to people‘s everyday experiences; Leudar and Nekvapil‘s notion of ‗structured immediacy‘, finally, takes into account Johannes Scherling 24 how historical contextualizations of events serve as sources of authority, reasoning and justification for present and future actions. Seen thus, all three of them can be usefully combined to obtain a more complete picture of the workings of historical framings in discourse. 3. The discourse of the Charlie Hebdo attacks The attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 triggered an immense response in the Western media, some of which was very emotional. They were interpreted partly by linking them to the terror attacks of 9/ 11 3 , thereby framing them within the greater clash of civilizations narrative (cf. Huntington 1996). An interesting aspect in the discourse was that, even though the background of the attack remained unclear, the media immediately engaged in contextualizing the attack by linking it to recent or not so recent events in world history, thus arguably acting as ‗lay historians‘. The very spontaneous nature of these contextualizations in the face of only few verifiable facts therefore warrants a closer linguistic investigation into how the past is drawn upon to situate these attacks meaningfully in history and how it serves as grounds for future action. 3.1. Research questions and methodology The research questions that will inform my analysis revolve around the question of whether and how history is used to explain the attacks on Charlie Hebdo or to argue for possible actions in the future. They are: a. How are the assailants, how are the victims described? How is the attack framed? b. How is the attack historically contextualized? Which aspects of history are drawn upon for this contextualization? Which ones are left out? Are there any instances of deor re-contextualization? c. How are causes and motivations for the attack construed? Are these historically embedded or contextualized? d. What is the effect of the historical framing used? Methodologically, because of its limited scope, this study will mostly rely on the DHA‘s concept of intertextuality (and within it, the notions of deand re-contextualization), combined with Blommaert‘s notion of synchronicity and Leudar‘s concept of structured immediacy to give credit to the multidimensional effects of the use of history as explanation for present 3 Well-known activist Alice Schwarzer even went as far as calling it ―Europe‘s 9/ 11‖ (cf. ―Europas 9/ 11‖ [online]) Focalizing Memory 25 events as well as for future actions and reactions. These concepts will then be employed within the greater framework of Thematic Analysis. 3.2. Sources Editorials and opinion columns from 8 major UK newspapers (4 tabloid, 4 broadsheet, with different political orientations) were selected as sources for the analysis. The genre of opinion article was chosen because it explicitly represents the subjective points of view of the journalists or - in case of an editorial - of the newspaper itself and can therefore be seen to have a persuasive function and an impact on the opinion of the respective readerships. For the purpose of the analysis, I chose a mixture of British broadsheet and tabloid newspaper articles, in order to investigate whether the incident is contextualized differently within their political spectrum. The newspapers selected are: - The Guardian (broadsheet, liberal) - The Observer (broadsheet, liberal) - The Telegraph (broadsheet, conservative) - The Financial Times (broadsheet, centrist) - The Independent (tabloid, liberal) - The Daily Mail (tabloid, conservative) - The Express (tabloid, conservative) - The Mirror (tabloid, liberal) From each source, one article was chosen for analysis. The requirement was that it was published in the first few days after the attack, i.e. in its immediate aftermath when facts and causes were not yet completely clear and still under investigation. Of all articles selected, only the Observer editorial was published more than one day after the incident. 3.3. The Charlie Hebdo magazine Established in 1970, Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical magazine that features cartoons and caricatures of a highly provocative nature aimed mainly at various religions, political parties, their respective leaders and other public figures and institutions. Its often radical and offensive tone has resulted in much protest and criticism as well as in several attacks, the latest of which happened in January 2015. (cf. BBC 2015: online) 3.4. Summary of the incident On January 7, 2015, two masked men of Algerian descent and with a Muslim background forced their way into the Paris headquarters of the Johannes Scherling 26 satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo while a staff meeting was in progress and opened fire, killing 12 people (including two policemen) and wounding eleven. The assailants managed to flee, but were soon tracked down and eventually killed during a shootout with the police. Investigations soon revealed an apparent connection to the local Yemenite branch of the terrorist group al-Qaeda. As a consequence of the shooting, political leaders throughout the Western world reaffirmed the importance of freedom of expression and freedom of press and hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to show solidarity with the satirical journal attacked. (cf. ―Charlie Hebdo‖: online) 3.5. Analysis of UK newspaper editorial and opinion discourse The data will be analyzed by first identifying the text population and closely scrutinizing the way it is represented in the news articles. This will then be followed by an analysis of the distal factors put forth in the news articles, after which the proximal factors informing the discourse will be more closely examined. The implications of text population representation as well as shortand long-term historical contextualization will then be extensively discussed. 3.5.1. Description of text population The way the main proponents of a text (the so-called text population) feature in a particular discourse can reveal important clues as to the basic conceptualizations informing the underlying world view since the language we choose to represent them entails subjective choices and categorizations (cf. Goatly 2000: 64; Talbot 1992). In this sense, exploring how participants and events in the discourse on Charlie Hebdo are described is an important step in comprehending what kind of ideological stance is being promoted and which potentially problematic fields may be hidden or backgrounded thus. The token/ type counts in this section were conducted using WordSmith 5 (Smith 2008f.). The general text population in all selected texts consists of two major groups: ‗them‘ and ‗us‘, along with the event itself. ‗They‘ consists of the assailants and radical Islam(ists), while ‗we‘ consists of two subgroups: those that were killed and the countries and people whose values they stand for. From the nature of the event, it is clear that the attribution to the perpetrating side will be negative; it is, however, still relevant to explore in detail which attributions are used and whether these potentially sideline other aspects. Table 1 below shows how the assailants (and those they are seen as historically connected to) are referred to and which ideas/ concepts they are associated with. Focalizing Memory 27 Noun phrases Adjective phrases Further collocates Proper names killers well-trained hate-filled darkness lone-wolf terrorist Mohamed Merah hooded thugs battlehardened Islamist terror organisation al-Qaeda attackers very comfortable with assault weapons in their hands some warped version of Islam ISIS terrorists militaristic Barbarism Ayatollah Khomeini defenders of Islam Islamic radicalism Mohammed Bouyeri militant Islamists radical Islam Kim-Jong Un two masked men wielding AK-47s Islamist threat Kouachi brothers members of al-Qaeda Islamic extremism AQAP idiot extremists hardline Islamic theocracy Islamic fundamentalists militant Islam thugs and murderers Muslim bullying Muslim fanatics wave of Islamic attacks murderous zealots barbarous intolerance brutes who despise our liberal values weapons of war Muslim hardliners Islamic Caliphate Fanatics axe-wielding Islamist cold-blooded killers those who want to destroy us people trained in a terror camp masked gunmen Jihadi Kalashnikovs Table 1. References to 'them'. Johannes Scherling 28 What becomes very clear here is that there is an overwording (cf. Fairclough 2015: 133) of terms related to Islam (10 types/ 85 tokens, of an overall 1.927 types/ 6.659 tokens; see table 2 below), which indicates a potential site of ideological struggle. In this case, it could be argued that the strong focus on attributes related to religion reveals that the attacks are being interpreted - and the attackers represented - as connected to and conditioned by Islam, i.e. as purely religiously motivated. The massive foregrounding of this aspect might lead readers to see and judge the incident only from this very simplified and reductionist viewpoint, backgrounding or ignoring larger, socio-political and historical contexts in both the explanation of the causes for the attack and in deciding the appropriate reaction to it. Islam 20 tokens Islamist (adj) 6 tokens Islamists 1 token Islamic 12 tokens Islamophobic 3 tokens Islamified 1 token Islamisation 1 token Islamism 1 token Muslim (adj) 23 tokens Muslims 17 tokens Table 2. References to Islam. In addition to overwording, the use of words such as ―barbarism‖ or ―barbarous‖ conjures up a binary worldview of civilization fighting barbarism, where ‗we‘ represent the civilized world, while ‗they‘ are barbarians and hence representatives of a group not as ‗developed‘ as civilized people and therefore by definition inferior (cf. Jackson 2005: 47ff). These representations have the effect of making any deeper search for motives almost unnecessary since they are at the same time descriptions of the agents as well as explanations for their actions (barbarians fighting against civilization) and simultaneously draw on the ‗clash of civilizations‘ narrative. They thus entail motivation and render any other kind of impetus implausible. Tables 3 and 4 show how the ‗we‘-part of the text population is characterized. Table 3 represents references to ‗us‘ as those who stand against the attackers, while Table 4 illustrates how a particular part of ‗us‘, namely the victims - both people and concepts -, are referred to. Focalizing Memory 29 Noun phrases Proper names/ group names Ethnonyms all those who are appalled by these crimes President (Francois) Hollande European, American, Arab, Muslim, Christian and Jew, black, brown and white alike marchers, demonstrators, office workers, journalists, bloggers, politicians and governments who declared, with one voice: “Je suis Charlie” Nicolas Sarkozy Europe, including Britain the French nation Winston Churchill a free and liberallyinclined country such as France Voltaire the free world Michel Houellebecq Table 3. References to 'us'. Victims (general references) Victims (proper names) Victims (concepts) journalists Salman Rushdie right to free speech civilian office Theo van Gogh right to offend French citizens Charlie Hebdo strident secularism those in the West considered to have criticised or shown lack of respect to the religion Charb tolerant, democratic and inclusive society defenceless people Cabu freedom of expression that is the pillar of any democratic society journalists who exercised the fundamental, priceless right to freedom of speech and expression Tignous France’s core secular values irreverent secularists Corinne Rey principle of free speech that underpins Western societies the editor and many of his senior staff Lee Rigby our freedoms innocent people Lars Vilks our civilization Johannes Scherling 30 martyrs Lars Hedegaard principles of liberty and democracy names that signal irreverence, joie de vivre and humour Geert Wilders our liberal values victim free press radicals heroic commitment to freedom the most daring of all publishers in Europe police officers Jews Table 4. References to the victims. First of all, what is conspicuous is the comparatively frequent use of proper names (16 types/ 75 tokens, versus 7 types/ 23 tokens for ‗them‘, 3 types/ 18 tokens of which relate to terrorist group names such as al- Qaeda), which focuses on the individuality of the victims and those standing with them, as opposed to the way the assailants are portrayed - mostly nameless and in plural form, associated with large, amorphous groups. While the representation of ‗us‘ also includes some generic references, these are either used in addition to proper names rather than as the only source of descriptive reference (―The dead included names - Charb, Cabu, Tignous […] in death, it would not be an exaggeration to call them martyrs‖, ―Radicals, as the murdered journalists assuredly saw themselves, have always mocked Christian humbug, just as Charlie Hebdo did‖) or else in enumerations (―marchers, demonstrators, office workers, journalists, bloggers, politicians and governments who declared, with one voice: ‗Je suis Charlie‘‖, ―European, American, Arab, Muslim, Christian and Jew, black, brown and white alike‖) suggesting ‗our‘ unity against ‗them‘. This seems to propose a dichotomy between ‗us‘ who are individuals, each different from the other and with our own will, and ‗them‘, the ‗other‘ who are all subject to the same group mentality and will, to the effect that readers may obtain a stereotypical image of Muslims as all being driven by the same goal and the same motivation by virtue of being members of the same religious group. Furthermore, the description of the text population of ‗us‘ shows a much greater differentiation with many different groups and subgroups being referred to independently, strongly implying individuality, while ‗they‘ are all subsumed under large-group labels such as ‗Islamist‘ or ‗terrorist‘ rather than, e.g. by their country of origin. In addition, there are many references to freedom of expression which the victims stood and ‗we‘ stand for, and which is presented as the ideological victim or target of the attacks. There are also some terms that Focalizing Memory 31 relate to laicism, such as ―strident secularism‖, ―irreverent secularists‖ or ―France‘s core secular values‖, which indicate that the main struggle is construed as taking place between religious and secular world views and ideologies. This connection is established by association because ‗we‘ embody these values and ‗we‘ were attacked so these values must have been the target. One other term used for describing the killed journalists stands out: ―martyrs‖, which was used in the Independent editorial and which frames the incident in terms of a religious struggle, since a martyr is someone who dies for their religious beliefs. Such depiction of ‗us‘ suggests that Western secular values and religious irreverence are the core issue and therefore the main - or rather, only - motivation for the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Finally, the event itself is also part of the text population, and showing how it is referred to and characterized should give an indication as to what kind of macro-frame the incident is considered to be a part of - i.e. which classification scheme is adopted for it - at the price of exclusion of other possible frames (cf. Goatly 2000: 52). Table 5 below gives an overview on how the event itself is defined by the various newspapers. beyond belief, indeed beyond words appalling acts of inhumanity horror unleashed by weapons of war in a civilian office a crude attempt to stifle a publication and its journalists jihadi terrorism an attack on the French nation as a whole, on the values and beliefs that have sustained it, and on the message of liberty, equality and fraternity the atrocity in Paris attack on faith an attack on free speech an attack on the life spiritual Islamist terror attack an act of utter godlessness bloody assault ongoing struggle for enlightenment - Europe’s gift to the world - and a gathering, hate-filled darkness dreadful terrorist atrocity an assault on freedom of expression more than a human tragedy a matter to concern the intelligence services calculated act of intimidation, an attack on the freedom of expression that is the pillar of any democratic society just the latest chapter in a long, concerted campaign to shut down criticism and discussion of one religion, its founder and its teachings jihadist attack about the right of every single one of us to be free to express ourselves appalling spectacle insidious campaign to stamp out our freedoms Johannes Scherling 32 a new and sinister step in the escalating conflict between faith and free expression a challenge to our freedoms not just another atrocity perpetrated by Muslim fanatics brutal killing a profound attack on the principles of liberty and democracy a sinister development a monstrous campaign of assassination spread of barbarous intolerance across Europe Table 5. References to the attack. Based on this list, there are three aspects that are primarily focused on in the framing of the Charlie Hebdo attack. The first is concerned with the quality of the attack (―appalling spectacle‖, ―monstrous campaign‖, ―brutal killing‖, ―terror attack―, ―horror‖, ―appalling acts of inhumanity‖), which connects back to the description of the assailants as ―barbarous‖ and suggests something less-than-human at work. The second connects the event to the frame of radical Islamism that - as with the gruesome beheadings by ISIS - shows no humanity or compassion, but brutally targets our freedoms to quiet any criticism of Islam in order to subvert our liberal societies and impose a totalitarian ideology (―Islamist terror attack‖, ―not just another atrocity perpetrated by Muslim fanatics‖, ―jihadi terrorism‖, ―jihadist attack‖). The third frame is that of a long-going, continuous conflict between Islam and the democratic West, of which the attacks are considered the latest instantiation (―a new and sinister step in the escalating conflict between faith and free expression‖, ―just the latest chapter in a long, concerted campaign to shut down criticism and discussion of one religion, its founder and its teachings‖, ―ongoing struggle for enlightenment - Europe‘s gift to the world - and a gathering, hate-filled darkness‖). The additional implication is that the attacks constitute something completely new and more horrifying than any of the previous attacks, which becomes clear with phrases such as ―a new and sinister step‖ or ―a sinister development‖, both suggesting that this attack was somehow worse and different in quality than what had happened before within the framework provided, such as the Madrid bombing of 2004 or the murder of the Dutch film director Theo van Gogh. This framing accomplishes two things: on the one hand, it presupposes and emphasizes the existence of an increasingly escalating fundamental conflict between religion (in particular Islam) and democratic societies and their liberties, implying an inherent incompatibility between the two. It thus depicts the attacks in reductionist terms, similar to what former US-president George W. Bush formulated in 2001 when he said, Focalizing Memory 33 They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. (Bush 2001: online) The discourse on the Charlie Hebdo attacks - through frames such as the ―attack on our freedom of speech‖ - is clearly intertextually related to, but also interdiscursively part of the larger discourse and narrative of the so-called War on Terror proclaimed in 2001. The effect this achieves is to explain such acts of terror first and foremost in terms of religious sensitivities, which makes them appear irrational in absolute terms, not necessitating further explanation. Any attempt at investigating deeper motives is thus rendered redundant and - reinforced by the characterizations of people trying to do so (―Western apologists for these terrorists‖, ―cringing, pusillanimous critics‖) - even as impious with regard to those that were murdered. On the other hand, such frames manage to instill fear as the phrasing not only suggests that the attack was part of a larger agenda (―monstrous campaign‖) - fear-inspiring in itself -, but also that it constitutes an aggravation of the threat by virtue of their deliberate nature of targeting specific individuals (―commando-style raid‖), suggesting that everyone who criticizes Islam may become a potential target . These two effects of the framing emphasize the already dominant narrative of the conflict between the ‗enlightened‘ West and ‗totalitarian‘ Islam. This narrative is further bolstered in particular by how the attacks are historically positioned and where their causes are located in media discourse. 3.5.2. Distal factors: narrative embedding As mentioned above, the way events or actions are embedded historically is highly relevant. Depending on which (part of a) historical narrative is chosen to serve as a fundament for understanding or explaining them, the interpretations open to readers will be quite different. In addition, the choice of historical background provided also points to aspects of ideologies a certain discourse is imbued with and to which perspective is being taken in selecting specific (aspects of) histories over others (e.g. by selecting such in which a particular party is always the patient, another always the agent). A comparative view of such historical clues between the texts selected for this paper may also reveal whether these ideologies and perspectives are consistent across different media outlets. Of the articles chosen, each to some extent attempts to locate the shooting in a larger historical narrative, i.e. none of them entirely decontextualizes the issue and lets it stand as a singular, self-explanatory event. As table 6 shows, the articles embed the attacks more or less into three major narratives. Johannes Scherling 34 The attacks are historically connected to 1. Jihadi terrorism in Europe (commencing in 2004) 2. The fight of Islam(ists) against critical/ comic depiction of Islam (from 1989) 3. A struggle for attention between ISIS and al- Qaeda (recent) Table 6. Perceived historicity of the attacks (ranked by frequency of mention). Starting with The Guardian, but echoing through all of the articles, the attacks are seen as part of an Islamist terror campaign (―jihadi terrorism, which has been a rare but very real menace in the west throughout this young century‖), and likened to other past terrorist incidents (―Madrid train bombings of 2004‖, ―the Woolwich murder of 2013‖, ―the murder of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh‖) - a connection which is constructed in the article by reference to the the utterances that were reportedly made by the respective killers (―The targeting of Charlie Hebdo, which was followed by the cry ‘we have avenged the prophet Muhammad‘, looks like another such case‖). The Telegraph extends the context for the attacks even further back in time and pinpoints its beginnings to the reactions caused by the publication of Salman Rushdie‘s book The Satanic Verses (―from the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie 25 years ago for writing The Satanic Verses to the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, who made a controversial film about Islamic culture‖) and content-wise sees it as part of violent overreactions of Muslims or Muslim countries to what is perceived as the West‘s patronizing attitude towards Islam (―the price of belittling Islam has been high‖). In more recent terms, it is linked to a firebombing of Charlie Hebdo‘s offices in 2011 (―after the magazine published a ‗halal‘ comic book on the life of the Prophet and named Mohammad as its guest editor for the week‖). The Financial Times sees the attack as the latest in a series of events causally linked to caricatures which have enraged members of the Muslim faith (―a Danish newspaper first attracted the ire of Muslims by publishing cartoons that lampooned the Prophet Mohammed‖, ―not the first time Charlie Hebdo has been attacked for publishing its own cartoons satirising Islam‖). The fatwa against Rushdie is interpreted as the original pattern which the attacks follow (―The Iranian regime set the precedent when it issued a fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie in response to his book The Satanic Verses‖) Interestingly, the narrative of Islamic reactions to offensive publications is enriched here by the mentioning of North Korea (―North Korea has just used cyber violence to prevent the distribution of an unflattering film about its leader Kim Jong Un‖). This suggests an attempt to tap into the established ‗Axis of Evil‘ frame, which Iraq, Iran and North Korea were seen a part of, and thus to the original War on Terror conceptualization. The problematic aspect, of course, is Focalizing Memory 35 that, while a connection between the Charlie Hebdo killings and the Rushdie or van Gogh cases appears to be believable due to the consistent Islam framing in politics and the media, the connection to North Korea is only drawn by what is perceived to be similar actions targeted at stifling critical views (―many attempts to use intimidation to silence satire and dissent‖) and may seem less convincing and more owed to an ideological positioning still attached to the aforementioned - and contested - ‗Axis of Evil‘ narrative. The Independent follows a similar line of argument, interpreting the attacks as part of what it sees as a conflict between religious fundamentalism and freedom of speech (―With the rise of Islamist terrorist groups and attacks on newspaper offices […] other publications chose to tread carefully around Muslim sensitivities‖) and as part of the narrative arch of fatwas against critics of Islam (―from the 1989 fatwa on Salman Rushdie to that issued on Geert Wilders‖). The Daily Mail reserves a lot of space for its interpretation of the attack‘s historical context. It also sees the incident as a continuation of an ongoing conflict (―just the latest chapter in a long, concerted campaign to shut down criticism and discussion of one religion, its founder and its teachings‖, ―there have been a very troubling number of attacks carried out in the name of Islam on those in the West considered to have criticised or shown a lack of respect to the religion‖), mentioning explicit examples such as the murder of film-maker van Gogh or the 2005 protests against cartoon depictions of the Prophet in a Danish newspaper. The conflict is seen as ranging back to the Iranian fatwa against Rushdie (―This campaign has been gathering pace for at least 25 years. It really started in the West in 1989 after the publication of Salman Rushdie‘s novel The Satanic Verses‖). Each of these alleged precedent cases is given very detailed coverage in the article. The implication of framing the attack as part of a campaign is very obvious: it suggests it was planned long beforehand in order to serve the goal of the overall campaign and will not remain the last (―This campaign has been gathering pace for at least 25 years‖), but will be followed-up by other attacks, as implied by the use of present perfect tense (―has been gathering pace‖). The very clear connection to Islam and criticism of it, along with the detailed description of previous attacks makes the threat emanating from Islam appear visceral and immediate, and suggests a clear and present danger for all who dare criticize the religion. For the Express, the killings‘ immediate historical contiguity lies in the 2011 firebomb attack, but is - in a greater context - linked to a threat posed by radical Muslims in Europe (―Islamism represents a growing menace within Europe, as reflected in an [sic! ] catalogue of incidents like the Madrid train bombing […] in 2004 or the murder of the Dutch artist Theo van Gogh […] or the beheading of Lee Rigby […] in 2013 or in the murder of four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels last May‖). It is Johannes Scherling 36 also seen connected to other attacks involving people of Muslim faith (―In separate attacks in northern France in December, a pair of Muslim drivers deliberately ploughed into pedestrians at packed Christmas makets [sic! ] shouting Alahu Akbar - ‗Allah is the greatest,‘ the very phrase used by the Charlie Hebdo assailants.‖) Similar to The Guardian, the Express attempts to link two possibly unconnected incidents by what the attackers were shouting, which might be problematic considering that the phrase per se is not an exclusive property of terrorists. Once more, therefore, the incident is contextualized within the historical narrative of violent attacks against Western targets in the name of Islam, though the inclusion of both the Madrid bombing and the museum killings appear to be out of immediate context considering that the overall frame of the article is the reaction of Muslims against criticism of their religion, but the effect is an embedding in the ‗War on Terror‘ narrative. The Mirror offers a broader historical contextualization and connects the attacks back to other major and minor incidents involving what was described as Islamic terrorism. It appears the virus of daily, deliberate targeting of civilians to avenge some claimed offence against an extreme form of Islam has spread into Europe. London suffered 52 deaths in the 7/ 7 attacks of 2005, a year earlier the Madrid train bombings took the lives of 191 and a dozen were mown down in France recently. In 2008 in Mumbai 164 died and even as far as Sydney, Australia, a hostage-taker last month executed two in a cafe. The author of the article sees the immediate historical context of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in a rivalry between al-Qaeda and ISIS, the latter of which having gained much more media attention lately. It is a serious terror network but has suffered huge setbacks in recent years after a string of devastating CIA drone attacks on ringleaders. In addition increasingly unstable Yemen is flooded with French spies from its DGSE wing the French MI6-trying to recruit locals to help in the fight against terror. This has severely impeded AQAP‘s desire to create an Islamic Caliphate there and the network has long wanted to strike at the heart of France, not just to regain some credibility in the shadowy world of terrorism but also to avenge French ambitions in the Middle East. In this case, the Charlie Hebdo incident is put squarely within the larger historical framework of the ‗War on Terror‘ and large-scale blowbacks such as Madrid and London, but is also given an additional political twist by proposing it is an attempt by al-Qaeda to recapture the limelight against ISIS and to take revenge on France‘s secret operations in Yemen as a part of the fight against terror. This article, therefore, recontextualizes the attacks in Paris as parts of an ongoing competition among terror- Focalizing Memory 37 ist groups for attention, which suggests a very superficial motivation for the killing of so many people and, alongside the proposition that the attack wanted to avenge French counterterrorist measures in Yemen - by definition a benevolent action -, makes it appear all the more calculated, ruthless and cold-blooded. It also bears mentioning that all this was conjectured on the very day of the killings and before any real facts could have been corroborated. As much as the historical contextualizations differ in detail and extent among the various newspapers, they all point more or less in the same direction: the attacks are to be understood as part of an ongoing conflict between the West and radical Islam/ Islamic terrorist groups, the latter of which fight against freedom of expression and for worldwide dominance and attention. The historical perspective offered here, thus, makes the evaluation of the conflict almost self-evident and presents it in a very simplistic and binary light - the enlightened West championing freedoms and liberties and the backward Islamists who wish for a demise of democracy (―What they want is to drag Europe, including Britain, into a new dark age of totalitarianism, where hardline Islamic theocracy prevails‖, The Express). The historical context, thus, serves to emphasize the Western narrative of civilization and of bringing democracy, knowledge and liberty to the world and helps to make any Western actions taken before or after the attacks (such as secret French operations or CIA drone attacks in Yemen) automatically justified with regard to this larger, honorable goal of preventing the downfall of Western liberalism, thereby whitewashing the huge number of civilian casualties. It also makes any attacks seem purely due to religious reasons without any deeper motivations informing the actions, thus rendering them all the more irrational and impossible to understand. This reductionist contextualization of events leads to an understanding of their origins that backgrounds or ignores any larger, socio-political motivations that may be connected to Western foreign interventions in large parts of the Islamic world throughout the last and the current century and creates the risk of triggering a response that is not directed so much at the source of the problem than at its symptoms. 3.5.3. Proximal factors: Causes and motives Considering that at the time where most of these articles were published, the attack had only just occurred, the way in which they present causes and motives for the killings deserves a closer inspection. This is because the lack of facts necessitates drawing on personal assumptions as well as already established narratives rather than substantiated research (making the journalists ‗lay historians‘) and basing the suggested responses on these. Johannes Scherling 38 By and large, three main causes can be identified across the articles (see table 6): local factors, international factors, and religious factors. The major motives and goals for conducting the attack are seen as intimidation, silencing of criticism, crippling of freedoms and liberal values and establishing a theocracy. Cause 1 Religious factors (Islamic fundamentalism, Muslim sensitivities) Cause 2 Local factors (poverty, discrimination, integration) Cause 3 International factors (colonial past, Western ‘misadventures’) Table 7. Causes for the attack (ranked by frequency of mention). Motive 1 Crippling freedom of speech as well as liberal, secular values Motive 2 Silencing of criticism of Islam Motive 3 Intimidation Motive 4 Establishing an Islamic theocracy Table 8. Motives for the attack (ranked by frequency of mention). The Guardian identifies various local factors as causal for the attacks (―poverty and discrimination at home may create fertile conditions for the spread of extremism and western misadventures abroad can certainly inflame the risks‖). It is important to mention that this depiction represents Western foreign policies only as aggravating factor, but not as a fundamental cause. As far as such ‗misadventures‘ are constructed as mere responses to terrorism, it follows that to some extent this cannot be helped since they are acts of self-defense. Indeed, the argument is also mitigated by the use of a euphemism (―misadventures‖) and further weakened by a juxtaposition of Western foreign policy to acts of terrorism (―barbarism has been justified with reference to western war-making in the Muslim world‖), where the collocation of ―barbarism‖ and ―justified‖ creates a contradiction which further undermines the validity and acceptability of this factor, since barbarism can never be justified. The motivation for the attack is seen as deriving from a misled interpretation of Islam (―an inspiration that appears to come from some warped version of Islam‖ in an attempt to spread panic (―If they are allowed to force a loss of nerve‖). The appropriate response, according to the editorial, lies in strengthening the Western values that were attacked (―the necessary resolution to defend Republican virtues‖, ―all those appalled by these crimes must use the free speech which the killers sought to silence‖). Therefore, the response links up only to the religious motivation, but not the suggested social and political causes that the article casually mentions. For The Observer, some causes lie in French domestic policies towards its minorities. Focalizing Memory 39 French Muslims also speak of routine, entrenched discrimination, of insensitive restrictions such as curbs on women wearing a veil, and of a French policy of assimilation and integration […] which has failed to achieve equal rights and equal treatment. It is this same embattled Muslim community, fractured, underprivileged, marginalized and disrespected which produced the killers. The suggested response is in line with the cause identified and suggests changing these policies (―The urgent, daunting challenge […] is to plot different, more conciliatory path […] to tap into this spirit of unity, forging a new reality for both majority and minority communities‖, ―The response […] should also include wider acceptance of the proper limits to individual and social freedoms, including free speech‖). The article is thus consistent in its call for a response to the causes mentioned and sees these entirely in problematic integration policies in France. The Telegraph, while conceding that the circumstances surrounding the attack were still unclear (―it is not yet clear who was responsible‖), wagers that the major reason for the attack was retaliation for the offending of religious feelings (―revenge on the publication and its employees for lampooning the Prophet Mohammed‖). It sees the causes for the tensions between different ethnicities in France in part in France‘s past foreign policies (―Partly this is a legacy of [France‘s] colonial past‖), but also as deriving from failed domestic social policies (―also the result of its failure to integrate, and the aggressive secularism of the French state‖). The article does not suggest a response, but mentions that as an effect of the shootings and similar incidents Muslims will face hostile reactions (―Anti- Muslim attitudes are growing across Europe‖) and thus precipitates a reaction based on the fundamental assumption of a religiously motivated attack.For the Financial Times, the motives are seen as entirely connected to religious sensitivities and totalitarian ideas (―intimidation to silence satire and dissent‖, ―to seed an insidious form of self-censorship‖). The response, according to FT, should be to to strongly but calmly reaffirm France‘s libertarian values. (―The broader challenge is for politicians and the public to cleave to France‘s core secular values and express defiance without stoking the fires of blind revenge.‖) There are no causes mentioned in the article, but the motives suggest, by virtue of presupposition, the publication of critical cartoons as the major cause (―Nearly a decade has passed since a Danish newspaper first attracted the ire of Muslims‖, ―The right of Charlie Hebdo to lampoon religion should not be in doubt‖). For The Independent, the cause can be traced to France‘s strictly secular principles and its unwillingness to modify those in consideration of the feelings of religious persons (―The Republic‘s strict form of secularism, known as laȉcité, has long rubbed up against the Islamic faith of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East‖, ―The 2004 ban on wearing the hijab […] in schools showed the Republic unwilling, like Hebdo itself, to Johannes Scherling 40 compromise its principles in deference to religion‖). Integration policies are not seen as causal in this article (―Broadly, in fact, the state‘s attempt to foster integration has met with success‖); the cause, by implication, is exclusively religious in nature. The motivation of the killers, accordingly, was to destabilize our basic liberties (―chill the principle of freedom of speech that underpins Western societies‖). The verb used in the relative clause (―underpins‖) seems to suggest that the target was not merely freedom of speech, but to bring down Western society as a whole, because eliminating the fundament of a society would consequentially bring it down. The response proposed is for all free journalists to honor and carry on Charlie Hebdo‘s courage (―it falls on all organs of the press - in the Arab world as much as in the West - to treat them [the victims] as such [martyrs]; to honour the stance they took as the most daring of publishers‖), which reaffirms the narrative that they died for their beliefs in a struggle revolving around religion, killed for their own (secular) beliefs (―martyrs‖). In addition, the high degree (or rather, absence) of deontic modality reinforces this by depicting this reaction as the only possible way, thereby precluding any other causes and motives for which other reactions would have been more fitting (e.g. change of social or foreign policies). The Daily Mail‘s article, focusing as it does on placing the attacks within a certain narrative arch, hardly concerns itself with causes and responses, but mentions the silencing of criticism and revenge against those who have ridiculed Islam as motives for the attacks (―campaign to shut down criticism and discussion of one religion, its founder and its teachings‖, ―attacks […] on those considered to have criticised or shown a lack of respect to the religion [Islam]‖). Along with the detailed historical contextualization (see above), this presents a picture of an everintensifying war between Islam and the West, born out of offended religious feelings alone. The Daily Express locates the assailants‘ motives within the clash of civilizations narrative, according to which the freedom-loving West is intrinsically at odds with the traditions and ideologies of middle-eastern cultures (―these brutes who despise our liberal values‖, ―What they want is to drag Europe, including Britain, into a new dark age of totalitarianism, where hardline Islamic theocracy prevails‖, ―those who want to destroy us‖). The immediate cause for the attack is seen in Charlie Hebdo‘s particular style of designing their cartoons (―Charlie Hebdo was ruthlessly targeted by the terrorists precisely because, in its own irreverent, mocking style it has dared to challenge Muslim faith‖). An additional, circumstantial cause is also seen in Europe‘s ruling politicians and their failed immigration policies (―the same traitors who have eagerly promoted the systematic import of Islam […] through mass immigration and the destruction of our borders‖), i.e. large-scale immigration of people from Islamic countries is seen as responsible in large parts. The Focalizing Memory 41 implied reaction is to undo and reverse these policies and reestablish and strengthen the borders. In the Daily Mirror, the motive for the attack is seen in a fight for attention and credibility between al-Qaeda and ISIS, but the attack is also framed in terms of revenge for French anti-terror operations. In the past two years al-Qaeda has suffered from a massive switch of attention to their disenfranchised former brothers-in-arms from Islamic State […] [T]he network has long wanted to strike at the heart of France, not just to regain some credibility in the shadowy world of terrorism but also to avenge French ambitions in the Middle East So while religion plays no explicit role in the reasoning here, which focuses on terrorist groups, it does so implicitly by the inherent connection of terrorist groups (through the War on Terror frame) with Islamic fundamentalism. By and large, all articles show a similar stance: the immediate causes for the attack are located proximally in the irreverent cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo, while some medium-term causes are pinpointed in France‘s strict secularism and failed integration policies. Western interventions in Muslim countries are only mentioned in one article, which however immediately invalidates the argument by contrasting it with the ―barbarism‖ of the attack on Charlie Hebdo and others like it. Even this mention, however, is proximal, rather than distal in nature as it refers to interventions after 9/ 11. Accordingly, the suggested responses consist of calls for the reaffirmation of freedom of speech and the defense of Western secular values. The construction of causes and responses hence underscores the basic frame in which the attacks are embedded, where the ‗enlightened‘ West in its advanced and superior position is under threat from a backward ideology which shows neither self-irony nor compatibility with Western ―liberal values‖. The West is consequentially seen as passive entity and victim, under attack only because it values and exercises its basic freedoms, not because of any actions that might have triggered terrorism to emerge in the first place. Such causal relations render the incident more brutal and aggressive since it appears to be motivated by a blind hatred of Western values and liberties, of what ‗we‘ have and ‗they‘ do not. 4. Discussion What has become clear in this analysis is that all of the articles frame the attacks in similar and very consistent ways - both with regard to how the actors and events are linguistically represented and with regard to the Johannes Scherling 42 narratives they are seen as part or continuation of. The fact that they are conceptualized in related terms indicates a hegemonic perception whose impact on readers - despite the subtle differences in discourse across the different media - is to suggest authenticity and truthfulness; if all the media report on the event by and large in similar ways, then this is likely to be taken as an authentic picture of ‗reality‘. In the case of Charlie Hebdo, the dominant narrative represented the attacks as religiously motivated and almost exclusively related to irreverent cartoons of the Prophet. It embedded the incident as historically contiguous to, and as coherent continuations of, previous acts of aggression and violence perpetrated by Muslims against Western individuals or societies, reaching back as far as the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini. In doing so, the event is imbued with synchronic meaning, as the narrative of the conflict between Islam and the so-called free world is topical and experiential. Local factors and experiences of exclusion and discrimination in Western societies are mentioned as additional aggravations to help explain the why of the killings. What is conspicuous, though, is that distal socio-political factors (the ‗historical background‘ according to Blommaert) hardly seem to play a role in explaining the attacks. Only in two cases is there any passing mention of Western interventionist foreign policies (in The Guardian) or the history of colonialism (in The Telegraph), but both are immediately neutralized by means of juxtaposition to the atrocity of the crime at hand and by stating that eventually, the responsibility lies solely with the perpetrators, through which any historically motivated explanation is cancelled because arguing for historical factors would suggest an apologetic attitude. The incident is therefore de-contextualized from the complexity of its original background and re-contextualized along the lines of the dichotomous and reductionist frame of the culture war and its dependant, the ‗War on Terror‘. An additional effect of constructing the Charlie Hebdo attack and similar events as primarily religiously motivated is that there seems to be no necessity to inquire further in order to identify other, non-synchronic factors which are not part of a dominant narrative and which could serve as insightful explanations, but which would require a deep and radical reflection on the role of Western countries in creating the very conditions under which such violent attacks are conceived as a viable option to make oneself heard. In omitting such factors, the reactions that are called for - reaffirming our freedoms, fighting terrorism, strengthening security - are bent to be aimed at circumstantial and synchronic aspects - aspects that make sense in present, contemporary context - rather than at the historical macro-reasons behind many of nowadays‘ terrorist acts. Such spontaneous, unreflected reactions run the danger of being ineffective in that they treat symptoms and not the source of the problem. They may even be counterproductive or dangerous if a call for strengthening free- Focalizing Memory 43 dom of expression and a crackdown in security leads to an increased targeting and deriding of one religion and its members, thus exacerbating the problem and making the construct of a religiously motivated conflict even more into a self-fulfilling prophecy than it has already become. The religious framing of the incident is aided by the overwording of terms related to Islam, by which the focus is laid entirely on one aspect amongst many, rendering a highly complex and historically burdened matter in very simplistic terms as a ‗clash of cultures‘ or at least a conflict of enlightenment against totalitarian ideologies. The attack and its historic antecedents are consistently represented as initial actions, while moves by the West are represented as mere reactions, which means that ‗they‘ are depicted as actors, while ‗we‘ are patients, making ‗them‘ the active and aggressive part to whose actions ‗we‘ have to react to preserve our freedoms, creating what Macmillian (2010: 37) calls ―tales that belong to morality plays‖ that lack historical complexity, and that essentially draw a black and white picture of events and actors. According to Moustafa Bayoumi, such positions are justified ―by arguing on the level of ‗ideas‘, although their knowledge of Islamic theology and jurisprudence is sorely limited [which] allows them to bracket off the messy history of America‘s ‗war on terror‘‖. (2015: 132) Such narrative conceptualizations, as a consequence, make it easier to see Western foreign policy towards Islamic countries in terms of defensive actions, while ‗their‘ actions are always those that incite new violence, even though it could conversely be seen as a reaction to Western actions as well. The Guardian editorial makes this paradigm very explicit when it says, ―Different societies may overreact to terrorism in different ways, but all are prone to do so somehow - witness the Senate‘s report on American torture for one example‖. Torture, invasion, civilian deaths and other violation of human rights and international law are thus euphemized as ‗overreactions‘, to be criticized but understandable from the context of the times by virtue of being reactions to ‗barbarous attacks‘. Due to the lack of historical background, the same privilege is not awarded to the perpetrators of ‗their‘ crimes. ―If you are using the argument from history,‖ wrote Walter Lippmann (1922: 123), one of the fathers of public relations, ―you are fairly certain to select those dates in the past which support your view of what should be done now.‖ The conscious choice to only include a synchronic background of the ‗War on Terror‘ and a culture war and blend out any historical background of the narrative creates the impression that violent and immoral acts always originate from Muslim countries or Muslim groups. The image this propagates is that there is something inherently violent to Islamic countries, their people and their faith and that this violent rage is easily triggered through derisive or irreverent comments on their religion. This construal of the cause/ effect relation becomes the basis for decision-making, thus structuring our immediate reactions in terms of motivation and justification in the sense of Leudar et al.‘s concept of Johannes Scherling 44 structured immediacy. For Bayoumi, ―the idea that Muslims bear collective responsibility for individual acts […] derives from the Orientalist trope that everything Muslims do anywhere is motivated solely by their faith in Islam‖ (ibid) and can thereby be attributed also to what Philo (2004: 201-2) calls ―post-colonial beliefs‖. This thinking can be seen actively at work in regular calls for all Muslim groups to distance themselves from the brutal actions of a few, as though the ‗imagined community‘ of Muslims were collectively liable for any actions of any of its members. Even though some of the articles make vague references to the long-term past, such as French colonialism in Algeria, the assailants‘ country of origin, or Western interventions in Muslim countries, these are treated as merely circumstantial and not central to explaining the attacks. Therefore, the outrage of Muslims against cartoons of Mohammed and their violent reactions to them are seen as conclusive and self-contained explanations which can be understood without taking into account anti- Muslim discourse in the West and the histories of invasion, occupation and regime-change in Muslim countries - Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, to name only a few - in which the US and many European countries have been involved. The analysis of editorials and opinion columns in UK newspapers has shown that the shooting at Charlie Hebdo was reported on in largely similar terms throughout the political spectrum. There is not much difference in how these texts draw upon and select synchronic and historical background in order to embed the attack into a certain narrative context, which serves as explanatory theme (cf. Philo 2011), or framework for interpretation. There is no noteworthy attempt to analyze the complex historical and political context that such a terrorist attack entails; the event is made meaningful by depicting it as the latest in a series of attacks against the West because of its freedoms and liberties, which locates it within the omnipresent war on terror narrative. This frame already entails many assumptions - or ―assumed explanations‖ (Philo 2011: 175) - that need not be explicitly stated anymore because they are so well established - such as that there is an inherent incompatibility between Islam and Western values, that ‗they‘ attacked first, that ‗we‘ want peace and democracy and that ‗our‘ values are universal ones. By tapping into this narrative, the event becomes almost self-framing and selfexplanatory, its historical background implied, reaching back to the terror attacks of 9/ 11 which themselves were discursively constructed by the Bush administration as ‗ground zero‘, as a new starting point of history, and thereby decontextualized (cf. Leudar/ Nekvapil 2011). By continuing the narrative of the fundamentalist, evil and liberty-despising terrorists, the newspaper accounts on Charlie Hebdo ignore the larger historical background of colonialism, military invasions and economic exploitation and both reaffirm and reinforce synchronic knowledge of the ‗age of terror‘, thereby limiting the meaningful interpretation of the attacks to its Focalizing Memory 45 binary structure in which the West stands for enlightenment, while the (Middle) East stands for darkness and totalitarianism. This is not to say that proximal factors such as religious fanaticism are not important motives as well; evidently, they do play a major role and are stressed by the attackers themselves and therefore it is justified to mention them in order to provide an immediate context. However, it is clear that such fanaticism is itself rooted in long-term developments that have provided the incentive for such fundamentalism to grow, and by only tackling the issue of Islamic fundamentalism, rather than the reasons for it, such argumentation is prone to trigger the wrong responses - a crackdown on powerless groups while retaining foreign and economic policies that fuel the resentment against the West among these groups. 5. Conclusion The almost complete absence of any mention of Western meddling in creating and intensifying the problem of terrorism in the first place effectively paints a picture in which attacks on Western soil lead us back to the very question former US president George W. Bush asked: ―Why do they hate us? ‖ However, for want of any historical explanation, the reasons remain an inexplicable enigma and result in political and social reactions that do not target the deeper sources of a struggle which is increasingly constructed as a religious conflict instead of a deeply political and historical one. The all too consistent take on the horrible event throughout the various liberal and conservative media outlets raise questions regarding the role of the media as a fourth estate and regarding what investigative journalist John Pilger has termed ―censorship by omission‖ (2006: online). As long as events in world history are reported on from an exclusive Western perspective, relying on synchronic background and almost blending out historical context, there is a palpable risk that the threat of terrorism may get worse before it gets better. ―It is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the suffering it produces‖. These words of the German philosopher Theodor Adorno (cited in Bayoumi 2015: 134) point to a vulnerable facet of our Western self-concept as an enlightening and benevolent influence on humankind, which we find difficult to question because it at the very core of our cultural self-concept. A recent report by the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize Winners Physicians for Social Responsibility and others claims that the US-led ‗War on Terror‘ has - by the end of 2013 - cost 1.3 million - mostly civilian - lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (cf. Physicians for Social Responsibility et al. 2015: online). The numbers reported in the media, the authors say, grossly underestimate the death toll, another instance of what Chomsky and Herman have called ‗unworthy victims‘ (cf. Herman/ Chomsky 2002). This stands in stark contrast to media rep- Johannes Scherling 46 resentation of ‗worthy‘, i.e. Western victims, such as the journalists at Charlie Hebdo. As long as Western countries do not acknowledge the full extent of the devastating effects of their political and economic foreign policies regarding Muslim countries on local civilian populations and as long as the media do not live up to their difficult job of questioning official narratives, terrible events such as the attacks on Charlie Hebdo may well reoccur. Ethnical and religious profiling as well as military confrontations in response to terror on the one hand, and the continuation of Western selfcentered and selfish foreign policies on the other hand will not serve as a solution to the problem which stands at the core of our contemporary ‗Age of Terror‘ - global inequality and exploitation. A change of the dominant narrative, however, seems not very likely, since ―radical challenges of hegemonic narratives sometimes entail massive debates and lead to huge conflicts.‖ (Wodak/ Richardson 2009: 231) Our belief in Western benevolence and ourselves as a force of good in the world is such a hegemonic narrative that should be challenged. In the words of Lindsey German: ―[I]t is not Muslims who are the problem but the foreign policies that have helped create terrorism. That is what needs to change.‖ (2015: online) And that is one lesson that could be drawn from analyzing the use, misuse and abuse of history in the discourse on Charlie Hebdo. Bibliography Bayoumi, Moustafa (2015). ―‘Why Do They Hate Us? ‘‖ The Nation, April 2015. 132-134. BBC (2015). ―Charlie Hebdo and its place in French journalism‖ [online]. BBC online. (June 1, 2015). Blommaert, Jan (2005). Discourse: a Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braudel, Fernand (1981). The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (Civilization and Capitalism Vol. I). New York: Harper & Row. Bush, George W. (2001). ―Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.‖ The White House. [online] http: / / georgewbush-whitehouse. archives.gov/ news/ releases/ 2001/ 09/ 20010920-8.html (April 5, 2015) ―Charlie Hebdo‖ [online]. Wikipedia. http: / / en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Charlie_ Hebdo#2015_ attack (March 29, 2015) ―Europas 9/ 11‖ [online]. Kleine Zeitung, January 11, 2015. www.kleinezeitung.at/ k/ politik/ aussenpolitik/ 4636719/ Alice-Schwarzer-im-Interview_Europas-911 (April 13, 2015) Fairclough, Norman (2015). Language and Power. 3rd edition. New York: Routledge German, Lindsey (2015). ―Charlie Hebdo: Only A Change In Foreign Policy Can Reduce The Risk Of Further Terror Attacks.‖ [online] Morning Star, January 9th 2015. (March 26, 2015) Glasgow Media Group (n.d.). ―Timeline‖. [online] www.glasgowmediagroup.org/ images / stories/ pdf/ timeline.pdf (June 1, 2015). Focalizing Memory 47 Ginzburg, Carlos (1999). The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late- Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice. London: Verso. Goatly, Andrew (2000). Critical Reading and Writing. New York: Routledge. Herman, Edward S. & Noam Chomsky (1988/ 2002). Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon. Huntington, Samuel P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster. Jackson, Richard (2005). Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counterterrorism. New York: Manchester University Press. Leudar, Ivan, Wes Sharrock, Jacqueline Hayes & Shirley Truckle (2008) ―Therapy as a 'Structured Immediacy'". Journal of Pragmatics 40: 863-85. Leudar, Ivan & Jirì Nekvapil (2011). ―Practical historians and adversaries: 9/ 11 revisited.‖ Discourse and Society 22(1). 66-85. Lippmann, Walter (1922/ 2008). Public Opinion. New York: BN Publishing. Macmillian, Margaret (2009). The Uses and Abuses of History. London: Profile Books. Physicians for Social Responsibility et al. (2015). Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 years of the “War on Terror”. [online] www.psr.org/ assets/ pdfs/ bodycount.pdf (April 10, 2015) Philo, Greg (2004). ―The mass production of ignorance: news content and audience‖ In: C.A. Paterson & A. Sreberny (eds.). International News in the 21st Century. Eastleigh: Libbey. 199-224. Philo, Greg & Mike Berry (2004/ 2011). More Bad News From Israel. London: Pluto Press. Philo, Greg, Emma Briant & Pauline Donald (2013). Bad News for Refugees. London: Pluto Press. Pilger, John (2006) [online]. ―The first real casualty of war.‖ johnpilger.com. http: / / johnpilger.com/ articles/ the-real-first-casualty-of-war (April 10, 2015) Reisigl, Martin & Ruth Wodak (2009). ―The discourse-historical approach (DHA)‖. In: Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds.). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 87-121. Scott, Mike (2008f). Wordsmith Tools 5.0. Talbot, Mary (1992). ―The construction of gender in a teenage magazine.‖ In: Norman Fairclough (ed.). Critical Language Awareness. Harlow: Longman. 174- 199. van Dijk, Teun A. (2009). ―Critical discourse studies: a sociocognitive approach.‖ In: R. Wodak & M. Meyer (eds.). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 62-86. van Dijk, Teun A. (2012). ―The Role of Press in the Reproduction of Racism.‖ In: M. Messer et al. (eds.). Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Wien: Springer. Wodak, Ruth & Michael Meyer (eds.) (2001/ 2009). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 2 nd edition. London: SAGE Publications. Wodak, Ruth & John E. Richardson (2009). ―On the politics of remembering (or not)‖. Critical Discourse Studies, 6(4). 231-235. Corpus of newspaper editorials/ opinion columns ―The Guardian view on Charlie Hebdo: those guns were trained on free speech.‖ The Guardian, January 7, 2015. [online] (March 25, 2015) ―The Observer view on the Paris attacks.‖ The Observer, January 11, 2015. [online] (March 30, 2015) Johannes Scherling 48 ―A terrible price for freedom of speech.‖ The Telegraph, January 7, 2015. [online] (March 25, 2015) ―A murderous attack on freedom of expression.‖ Financial Times, January 7, 2015. [online] (March 25, 2015) ―The murder of Charlie Hebdo staff is an assault on freedom of expression. All organs of the press must resist it.‖ The Independent, January 7, 2015. [online] (March 25, 2015) ―A threat to every single one of us: The cold-blooded outrage in Paris is about our right to be free to express ourselves.‖ The Daily Mail, January 7, 2015. [online] (March 25, 2015) ―Paris massacre is proof of Islamist threat to Europe.‖ The Express, January 7, 2015. [online] (March 30, 2015) ―Charlie Hebdo shooting: Killers stalk their prey and mercilessly kill a police officer.‖ The Mirror, January 7, 2015. [online] (March 30, 2015) Johannes Scherling English Department University of Graz Morphosyntactic Features in Flux Awareness of “Irishnessness” and “Standard” in Hiberno- English Speakers Tamami Shimada This paper highlights sociolinguistic aspects of the morphosyntactic forms in Hiberno-English (HE), focusing on some well-known features. Major concerns are to illustrate speakers‘ awareness of the forms based on a conducted survey and to discuss the direction of change. The evidence from the survey suggests that morphosyntactic forms in Southwest Hiberno-English (SwHE) are unevenly marked in speakers‘ subjective judgments of ‗use‘, ‗non-use‘, ‗Irishness‘, and ‗bad grammar‘. For example, such forms as Taking three plates she is, I do be taking three plates. (‗I usually take three plates.‘), and I am after taking three plates. (‗I have just taken three plates.‘) are mapped differently onto a sociolinguistic dimension, in which ‗Irishness‘ and ‗Standard‘ are two salient categories of speakers‘ awareness. The survey provides the data that serve for a consideration of change in SwHE. They include: diverging judgements within the same syntactic feature category (PP vs. VP fronting), the regional difference in the use of amn‟t I~? , and the contrast of two tense-aspect forms, do be and be after. In the process, the formation of social meaning and the rise of metalinguistic interaction are also addressed. The paper proposes the concept of morphosyntactic conformity to explain the awareness data with regard to language change. 1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to elucidate speakers‘ roles in language change with data from Hiberno-English (HE). Speakers‘ sociolinguistic awareness of salient characteristics in HE is described and some changes in progress are discussed. The paper, for example, illustrates how such characteristics as do be V-ing and be after V-ing are differently perceived by speakers in terms of ‗use/ non-use‘, ‗Irishness‘ and ‗bad grammar‘. The question as to what provokes such differences is then addressed. The AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Tamami Shimada 50 present argument is based upon field research, and recognition of the interplay of social meanings has emerged from local interviews. A survey was undertaken in order to describe how linguistic forms, including salient grammatical characteristics and lexical items of HE, are perceived by speakers. The description of salient characteristics in grammar and vocabulary is a major research area on HE (e.g. van Hamel 1912, Bliss 1972, Harris 1993, Kallen 1997, Filppula 1999, Dolan 2000, Hickey 2007). The study of HE has been developed by the examination of HE-specific constructions mainly in contrast with British Standard English. 1 In relation to the earlier publications on HE, this paper examines the sociolinguistic aspect of the features that characterise HE. It concentrates on how speakers of HE perceive various features and other non-specific grammatical characteristics and map them in their awareness. This study further attempts to detect factors underlying the selection of particular forms. It is intended to provide clues for exploring changes in progress in HE, by depicting what speakers‘ awareness is really like and by examining its relevance to the selection of linguistic forms. Among the features described in the literature, some of them seem to have become obsolete while others are maintained in contemporary vernaculars. My question was, therefore, if this is the case, what determines the rise and fall of a particular linguistic construction in the grammatical system. This paper investigates what is relevant to the selection of features and what is the role of speakers as agents of sociolinguistic awareness in language change. 2 It is based on the fundamental working assumption that speakers‘ awareness can be a factor that motivates use or disuse of certain linguistic forms and thus, from a broader perspective, affects the grammatical system, leading ultimately to change in the language. Speakers‘ sociolinguistic awareness, in theory, reacts to social variables in the outer world, including norms and significant community icons, and affects the actual use of linguistic forms. This awareness may thus serve as active molecules directly affecting the use of language, thus constituting an external factor in language change. Awareness is assumed to act upon the use or disuse of a particular grammatical and lexical form in the system via interactions and verbal accommodation among speakers. 1 Terminologically, the word ‗characteristics‘ is used here to refer to the HE-specific forms and constructions, while ‗features‘ is also employed in line with other studies of HE. Filppula (1999) uses the term ‗distinctive features‘, with HE contrasted to other dialects of English. The word generally seems to refer to ‗non-standard grammatical characteristics‘ as used by Harris (1993), indicating features which ―don‘t correspond to institutionalized norms‖ (ibid: 139). 2 See James Milroy (2003) for the significance of the speaker in language change and the relevant discussion. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 51 2. Speakers’ awareness of Irishness and Standard 2.1. Background of awareness We may first consider in which socio-historical contexts HE is spoken and on what basis linguistic communication using HE can be produced. Ireland has achieved its present socio-economic status very rapidly in the past forty years or so. Social change must be taken into consideration for the examination of linguistic phenomena in the current Irish situation. More recently dubbed the ‗Celtic Tiger‘, the Republic of Ireland‘s financial development has roared forward, starting in the mid-1990s. Globalization has had a tangible impact on its economy. Immigration from Europe, Asia and South America to rural as well as urban areas has introduced yet another level of complexity to the language situation. Also, speakers of contemporary varieties of HE are increasingly exposed to different varieties of English as well as English as an international language. This recent complexity is notable, since it lays the foundation for how speakers conceptualize their linguistic uniqueness or local value in language as a cultural resource. A more important issue in understanding the sociolinguistic matrix within which speakers of HE conduct their linguistic interactions is the linguistic history of language shift from Irish to English that Ireland has experienced since the seventeenth century. Irish is designated as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland in its Constitution; the Irish language is not daily spoken by most of the people in Ireland but is regarded as indispensable cultural capital in present-day Irish society. It is noteworthy that Irish people are conscious of the history of the colonisation by the English, as shown in the following comment written in a questionnaire: ―Our English is colonial English so it isn‘t as refined [as] ‗British English‘. Sometimes we Irish don‘t take something that is enforced on us‖ (age group: under 30, college student, Cork, 1999). This consciousness of history is likely to raise awareness in the linguistic arena. By virtue of the socio-historical consciousness, speakers are aware of their linguistic distinctiveness from British English on the one hand and of a normative use of English on the other. The former awareness of distinctiveness in HE is referred to as awareness of ‗Irishness‘, and the latter as awareness of ‗Standard‘. The survey to be introduced in section 3 was designed upon the assumption of these two types of awareness and the result of the survey actually confirms ‗Irishness‘ and ‗Standard‘ as significant categories in speakers‘ awareness. 2.2. Awareness of Standard In interview sessions with speakers of HE, they often describe certain forms and speech patterns as ‗bad grammar‘ in their own words. Needless Tamami Shimada 52 to say from a linguistic perspective there is no such a thing as bad grammar as long as the form makes sense as part of a grammatical system. However, speakers of HE in general, seem to refer to ‗Standard‘ when pointing out bad grammar in particular constructions. The word ‗Standard‘ is here used as a representative term to refer to the collective image in speakers‘ minds as to what are ‗correct‘, ‗right‘, ‗authorized‘ or ‗legitimated‘ speech patterns and grammatical forms. Although the words ‗correct‘, ‗legitimated‘, ‗standard‘ and ‗grammatical‘ express notions that should be separated, they are, in speakers‘ perceptions, almost identical or closely related to each other (Milroy 1999). Milroy and Milroy (1998) provide an important remark on the ideological quality of a standard language as follows: ―…it seems appropriate to speak more abstractly of standardisation as an ideology, and a standard language as an idea in the mind rather than a reality −a set of abstract norms to which actual usage may conform to a greater or lesser extent‖ (Milroy and Milroy 1998: 19). My term awareness of Standard is in this vein, and the ‗Standard‘ in speakers‘ minds is sharply distinguished from Standard Language as it is actually spoken. For example, ‗Standard‘ in English speakers‘ minds is not entirely in accordance with Standard English. Standard English is ―a social dialect which is distinguished from other dialects of the language by its grammatical forms‖ (Trudgill 1999: 125); Standard English is the language of education and official communication and has an established orthography (Greenbaum 1996: 14). Standard, on the other hand, is a conceptual entity, which is a set of the abstraction of norms held to be true by speakers of the language. This Standard has been put in quotation marks to indicate that it is constructed in speakers‘ minds through everyday linguistic practice and interaction with the outer world. A certain awareness of Standard, presumably, arises in any variety of language that has a standard or prestigious form. 3 However, in addition to the general legitimacy of Standard that language as a social medium entails, English in Ireland, being taught and learned in the postcolonial context, has placed itself in the position of being a ‗target language‘ that ‗learners‘ should acquire. This may have forced HE speakers to adopt a learner‘s mentality. This mentality, in turn, legitimates the Standard; 3 The subjective judgements of linguistic forms sometimes have close reference to other socially significant categories. For example, Aikhenvald (2001) illustrates the identification of calqued forms as ‗incorrect‘ in Tariana speakers in Brazil. There is a strong constraint against language mixing in Tariana, and the constraint operates against loan forms and items that contain Tuano-like sounds. In this condition, morphosyntactic constructions calqued from east Tuano languages are identified as ‗incorrect‘ Tariana. Socially significant categories depend on linguistic or speech communities. In the case of HE, I assume that ‗Irishness‘ and ‗Standard‘ can be extracted as sociolinguistically significant categories. This assumption has developed especially through participant observation in my fieldwork. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 53 speakers of HE are exposed to constant reference to Standard. This maintains awareness. 2.3. Awareness of Irishness Speakers of HE are likely to view their language as distinct from other English varieties, and this view, as is often the case, is based on their understanding of the historical background. In a survey that the present author conducted in 1999 in Cork, 4 two thirds of the 103 respondents described their language as ‗Irish English‘ or provided specified equivalents in their own words (for example, Hiberno-English, Gaelic English, Cork English) rather than describing it as ‗English‘. 5 In addition, almost 90% of the respondents reported differences between their English and other Englishes including British English and American English. The reason given by a respondent who reported that Irish English was more appropriate to refer to their language may evidence his/ her awareness of certain patterns of Irish in their speech. A comment was: ―Irish English [describes our English better than English], because we, as Irish, have developed our own interpretation of the English language‖ (age group: under 30, college student, Cork, 1999). A number of the respondents furthermore recognised the significance of ‗Irishness‘ in their language in terms of identity, as in the following remark: ―I prefer ‗Irish English‘ as it does differentiate and helps keep our national identity even though we don‘t speak our national language.‖ (age group: under 30, college student, Cork, 1999); ―our English is colonial English so it isn‘t as refined with ‗British English‘. Sometimes we Irish don‘t take something that is enforced on us‖ (age group: under 30, college student, Cork, 1999). These speakers are aware of the distinctiveness of their English. Many respondents explained the uniqueness of HE as due to its association with the Irish language: ―I must confess that I am not very proficient at Irish, but am still proud of the amount I know. This also influences, in some ways, how I speak English, hence the term Irish English‖ (age group: 31-50, housemaker/ mother, Cork, 1999). ―The people of Ireland, although for the most part, we do not speak Irish, the Irish lan- 4 The 1999 survey was an open-ended questionnaire (N=103). Ninety percent of the respondents were university students under the age of thirty. The survey was done for the purpose of discussing language and identity in the Irish context. 5 The survey included the question: Which do you think describes your language better, „English‟ or „Irish English‟? (If you find another name, please write it down.) Note that the term ‗Hiberno-English‘ is not given in the questionnaire. The results were: English-34 (33.0%), Irish English-59 (57.3%), others-10 (9.7%). ‗Others‘ included ‗Hiberno English‘, ‗Hibernicised English‘, ‗Irish/ English‘, ‗Gaelic-English‘, ‗Cork English‘, ‗Enriched English‘, ‗Waterford Irish English‘, etc. Significantly, respondents not only connected their English in some ways with ‗Irish English‘ but also even specified it more precisely in their own words. The result thus generally reveals the favoured distinction between ‗Irish English‘ and ‗English‘. Tamami Shimada 54 guage has influenced how we speak English. There are direct translations from an Irish sentence to English in many of our ‗sayings‘ the British lack this‖ (age group: under 30, college student, Cork, 1999). These citations signal the importance of HE in terms of ethnolinguistic identity. HE is described by speakers today with such words as ‗our own interpretation‘, ‗direct translations‘, and ‗colonial English‘. This perception amounts to saying that English spoken in Ireland is not the entire adoption of an enforced language. HE is a form of the use of a newly developed language that has been shaped by their own interpretation of English. There are a number of expressions or speech patterns which many speakers of HE regard as ‗Irish‘, despite factual origins. In the survey, these included such lexical items as ‗gas‘ (fun), ‗fella‘ (man), and ‗amadán‘ (stupid) and greeting expressions such as ‗How‘s she cutting? ‘ (How are things going? How are things with you? ), ‗How‘s the craic? ‘ (What is the fun? ) and grammatical characteristics such as ‗She is inside in Roches Stores.‘ (She is in Roches Stores), ‗I am after my work‘ (I have done my work.) and ‗A thirst came on me‘ (I am thirsty). These examples were given in the respondents‘ answers to the question in the survey: Please list expressions or phrases that you regard as Irish English. Irishness can be defined as what speakers know about their reflection of the Irish language in their HE, and also as what they regard as constituting their uniqueness in terms of ethnic and ethnolinguistic identity. It is important to highlight the property of ‗Irishness‘ as a mental construction. The word craic is one of the most telling examples to illustrate that speakers‘ perception of Irishness may differ from etymological fact. In the survey that will be more closely addressed in the later sections, a dominant comment on the Irishness question was ‗They have Irish words‘, but the words that the respondents suggested were not necessarily of Irish origin. One of such examples is craic. The word craic is not Irish-Gaelic origin in a proper sense while the speakers regarded it as an Irish word in their speech in English. According to Dolan‘s Dictionary of Hiberno-English (1999: 77), ―Irish craic is the ModE loanword crack < ME crak, loud conversation, bragging talk; recently reintroduced into HE (usually in its Ir spelling) in the belief that it means high-spirited entertainment‖. However, craic is recognised as an Irish word by speakers. Interestingly, speakers of HE maintain the Irish spelling in their use of English. What can be an effective force in the actual use of language is not so much what it is actually as what speakers themselves find in the language and in a particular linguistic form or its constructions. For example, the respondents commented: ―‗Craic‘ is a uniquely Irish word which we have incorporated into the English language‖ (2006, Listowel, born in 1980s, female); ―craic is originally Irish. Amadan is originally Irish. Cnambhshealing is originally Irish‖ (2006, Cork, born in 1920s, male). Craic gained the highest points in the answer to ‗use‘ in the survey that will be introduced in the following sections; and was highly marked as ‗Irish‘ almost equal to Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 55 the other two lexical items of actual Irish origin, namely amadan (‗stupid‘) and cnambshealing (‗complaining‘). It is noteworthy that the example containing craic is most popular, or favoured, in the listed sentences in the questionnaire. Many of the respondents reported their use of the word; they recognised ‗Irishness‘ in the example having craic. 3. A survey of speakers’ awareness In 2006, I conducted a survey in Cork and Listowel (County Kerry) 6 primarily for the purpose of completing a grammatical description to substantiate the reference to the social connection of grammatical structures in Southwest Hiberno-English (SwHE), i.e. the southwest varieties of HE spoken in the area of the counties Cork and Kerry. A questionnaire was devised to ascertain speakers‘ sociolinguistic awareness of particular grammatical features and lexical items. Sixty-four respondents were sampled: thirty-eight from Listowel and twenty-six from Cork. From Listowel, there were twenty men and eighteen women, aged fifteen to seventyeight years. From Cork, there were nine men and seventeen women, aged thirteen to eighty years. Seven respondents participated in the interview and the remainder filled out an anonymous form. The sample was structured to reflect the community in terms of variety of social categories so as not to be biased in age group and occupation. The number of respondents was relatively even across the age range. In terms of occupation, they included students, retired people, managers, shop keepers, sales assistants, teachers and housewives. A smaller number of the respondents were factory workers, drivers, self-employed, childminders, caretakers, secretaries, volunteer workers, librarians, actors, train conductors, therapists and painters. All except one person had received secondary school education and approximately half of the respondents aged thirty years and over marked University/ College/ Institute as their most recent academic institution. Survey respondents were asked to choose from twenty-six sentences listed below those that accorded with the following five statements: (i) a sentence that they would use themselves; (ii) a sentence that they would not use on any occasion (including family-talk and friend-talk); (iii) a sentence whose meaning they cannot understand; (iv) a sentence that they think contains ‗bad grammar‘; and (v) a sentence that they think shows ‗Irishness‘. This method was adopted so that the markedness of the 6 The population of Cork County and City total was 447,829 in 2002 and 481,295 in 2006; that of County Kerry was 132,527 in 2002 and 139,835 in 2006 (Census 2006: volume 1). Cork City is located on the southwest coast of Ireland and is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland; Listowel, described as the Literary Capital of Ireland, has produced world famous writers such as John B. Keane and Bryan MacMahon. See 4.4 for these two places in terms of speech community. Tamami Shimada 56 listed features in the speakers‘ awareness could then be highlighted, as compared with a counter-method where they had to judge each sentence under the given five indices. This method has the secondary benefit of revealing speakers‘ attitudes. For example, some respondents chose more numbers in (i) than in (ii) and other respondents did the reverse. This may reveal their positive and negative attitudes towards characteristics of HE and/ or to responding to the survey questions in general. Furthermore, it is well-known that there is often a disjunction between a speaker‘s self-report and actual speech behaviour; behaviour may be inaccurately reported and self-assessment is usually inconsistent. Selfreport, however, yields valuable sociolinguistic data, especially for the consideration of awareness and identity, since reporting their linguistic behaviour can exhibit a speaker‘s aspect of acting identity. Speakers‘ subjective judgements and self-reports represent a part of the knowledge of the language as a living entity in actual use. They can offer an important clue to the nature of the forces causing change in the linguistic system. The twenty-six sentences listed in the questionnaire were chosen to include a selection of the salient grammatical features of HE. Sentences were presented in random order: see Appendix for the task given; the categorised version is given below. A. Unmarked sentence (a) She takes three plates from the cupboard. B. Non-canonical constituent order (b1) From the cupboard she takes three plates. (b2) Taking three plates she is. C. Cleft-like sentence (c1) It is from the cupboard that I take three plates. (c2) ‘Tis lovely she is. (c3) It is lovely that she is. D. There… sentence (d1) There‘s no one can deny it. (d2) I knew there was good news in you. (d3) There was a great housekeeper lost in you. E. Do be V-ing/ AdjP form (e1) I do be taking three plates from the cupboard. (e2) She does be lovely with her long hair. F. Be after V-ing/ NP sentence (f1) I am after taking three plates from the cupboard. (f2) Tom is after his supper. G. So-called perfect sentences (g1) They are visiting here many years. (g2) My sons have visited there for many years. H. Cliticisation (h1) We‘ll visit here tomorrow. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 57 (h2) The two of us‘ll take three plates from the cupboard. (h3) You‘ve the name of a good employer. (h4) Amn‘t I like a scarecrow? (h5) ‘Twouldn‘t be a good thing. I. “Non-standard” usage (i1) She take three plates from the cupboard. (i2) She been taking them home ever since. (i3) I asked for today‘s special and she putting plates on the table. J. Lexical items (j1) How‘s the craic? (j2) That amadán put eggs in my bag. (j3) Don‘t be cnamhshealing! The feature-based categories were based on the Keane corpus, 7 with general reference to Filppula (1999) for grammatical features of the southern HE dialect and to Dolan (1999) for the lexical items. Non-Irish-specific features, such as (a), (c1), (g2), (h1), (i1) 8 , and a ‗dummy‘ sentence (c3), which is not a type of sentence produced in the variety, are also included for reference. 9 The individual sentences were carefully constructed, with particular attention to the numbering of the sentences in the questionnaire. Sentences could not be too idiomatic but needed to be imaginable so that morphosyntactic aspects would be highlighted by the respondents when giving their judgements. A couple of sentences were replaced or 7 The primary data was collected from John B. Keane‘s plays and letter series written in the 1960s and 1970s; this is referred to as the ‗Keane corpus‘. It consists of examples extracted from his works. The examples are sorted by the grammatical features or categories: ‘Tis(~it is)… sentences, there… sentences, fronting, complementation, cliticisation, relative clauses, small clauses, use of prepositions, HE lexicons, tense/ aspect relates and the do be form etc. The Keane corpus as a whole comprises over 18,000 words. It consists of the examples from John B. Keane‘s (1928-2002) play-scripts and letter series. He is known as a major Irish writer with many successful plays and books (Smith and Hickey 2002). The following is the list of his works cited in this paper, headed with their abbreviations: SIV Sive (1959), SRG Sharon‟s Grave (1960), HHM The Highest House on the Mountain (1961), MYM Many Young Men of Twenty (1961), FLD The Field (1966), STD Letters of a Successful TD (1967), RES The Rain at the End of Summer (1968), CHT The Chastitute (1981). The use of this corpus, containing play-scripts and everyday usage of the spoken language from a couple of decades ago, is nonetheless effective for the purpose of investigating ongoing change. 8 (i1) was included as a non-standard feature which is often observed in varieties of English. For example, the lack of the third person singular present-tense marker -s is one of the common ‗mistakes‘ of learners‘ English. (i1), which seemed to stimulate respondents‘ grammatical awareness, was listed as (1) on the questionnaire sheet. (i1) was followed by the corresponding grammatical pattern (a) so that respondents could readily start the task of judgement. 9 While sentences (h2) and (h3) are based on examples in the Keane corpus, these instances may be seen in other varieties of English. The sentence (c3) is a ‗dummy cleft‘ since there is no such example of ‗It is (adjective) that ….‘ in either HE or the standard variety. Tamami Shimada 58 altered after a pilot survey to avoid factors that might interfere with direct judgement of the morphosyntactic features under examination. For instance, the pilot version included She takes three plates from the dresser for (a) as an unmarked feature-free sentence. This sentence, however, was judged by informants as Irish, contrary to my expectation, because of the use of the word dresser. Thus, the neutral or less-culturally-marked word cupboard was employed instead of dresser or press. 10 The survey comprised eight pages in total, including the cover letter, one fact sheet for respondents‘ personal information, two pages concerning speakers‘ sociolinguistic awareness of morphosyntactic and lexical forms in HE, and four pages asking about speakers‘ attitudes and social orientation. 11 The questionnaire was time-consuming for respondents, but priority was given to the quality of information at the cost of efficient survey management. Respondents were anonymous and were asked to complete the questionnaire after prior instruction by the author and key supporters (local people who cooperated with the present author‘s work as informant/ consultants). The survey was supplemented by interviews with informants. Thus, the survey yielded both questionnaire data and, though sometimes hesitatingly, meaningful comments based on speakers‘ intuition which could not be obtained by anonymous surveys. Speaker feedback offered qualitative support for the results of this survey. 4. Linguistic forms in a sociolinguistic dimension The evidence gathered from the survey suggests a sociolinguistic significance of linguistic forms in HE. 12 The results of the survey are summarised in this section with particular attention to the selection of linguistic forms and the direction of change in HE. For the relevant discussion in section 5, the major research concerns are addressed in the light of three salient findings (4.1, 4.3 and 4.4). The discussion of the rise of extra- 10 This might be reminiscent of Labov‘s (1973) examples illustrating the difficulty that can beset attempts to tap native speaker intuition on syntactic structure, in this particular case concerning the so-called ‗positive anymore‘, Interviewer: Can people say around here We go to the movies anymore? Subject: We say show, not movies. (cited by Milroy and Gordon 2003: 175) This kind of dialogue also occurred in the elicitation concerning syntax. In passing, I came to learn in one informant session that speakers of Southwest-HE say pictures, not show or movies. Actually, a respondent gave the following sentence: She took three plates off the press. (Listowel, born in 1950s, male) in his note of ‗what we would say‘ for (a). 11 The second survey (Sheet B), which is not analysed in this paper, is designed to examine speakers‘ orientations and identity, and their relationship with linguistic evaluations. 12 See Shimada (2010b) for a detailed sociolinguistic description of the respective forms in the twenty-six examples. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 59 linguistic meanings is included in 4.2, since this underlines the importance of speakers‘ sociolinguistic awareness. Extra-linguistic meanings are formed by the awareness raised in linguistic interactions in the community, and this can affect the use/ disuse of linguistic forms marked in the awareness dimension. 4.1. Marked and unmarked forms The first finding is given as a general observation of the results of the subjective judgments. The survey confirms that different features were judged differently. Finding 1. Morphosyntactic forms are unevenly marked in speakers‘ subjective judgements of ‗use‘/ ‗non-use‘, ‗Irishness‘ and ‗bad grammar‘. Different judgements on different forms are noted as significant as confirmed in Table 1. Table 1. The number of respondents who marked a given example in each question. 13 14 Lexical items, in general, gained more marks than morphosyntactic features in terms of use, non-use, bad grammar and Irishness. Of the morphosyntactic features, the do be form of (e1) and (e2) (named the E group) was highly conspicuous. The less marked feature was the so-called perfect sentence (the G group). In the judgement of bad grammar, the do be form was exceedingly marked. A have perfect sentence and a type of there… sentence, besides lexical items, were least judged as bad grammar. In respect of Irishness, lexical items were considerably more marked than 13 The result of question (iii) about intelligibility (i.e. ‗Don‘t understand the meaning of the sentence‘) is not included in Table 1, since the current focus is sociolinguistic awareness. Regarding incomprehensibility, the lexical example (j3) cnamhshealing was outstanding (n=23), although this word tended to be understood by the majority of the Listowel respondents who were born before 1960. The survey confirmed that (h4) amn‟t I …? failed to be understood by younger Cork respondents. 14 These figures do not show non-positive yes. That is, if respondents said ‗all‘, ‗same as Q1‘, ‗all except…‘ and the like, instead of specifying the number, they were not counted since such responses did not exhibit ‗markedness‘ in terms of speakers‘ awareness. Tamami Shimada 60 the other groups. Of the morphosyntactic features, (c2) ‟Tis lovely she is was marked in the Irishness category (n=28), and (d3) There was a great housekeeper lost in you (n=18) and (h5) having ‟twouldn‟t in the sentence initial position followed (n=18). There is an obvious division between use and non-use judgements depending on the featured groups. The majority of respondents reported their use in the D group (There… sentences), the F group (be after Ving/ NP sentence), the G group (perfect sentence), the H group (cliticisation), and to some extent in the J group (lexical items). By contrast, the B group (non-canonical constituent order), the C group (cleft-like sentence), the E group (the do be V-ing/ AdjP form) and the I group (‗non-standard‘ usage) were regarded as non-use. It is noted that two examples in the E group were both judged as non-use, far more often than the other groups. A significant difference among examples in the same group was observed especially in the B and C groups. 15 4.2. Extra-linguistic meanings of linguistic forms Table 1 shows different items mapped differently onto a sociolinguistic dimension, where Irishness and Standard are two salient categories to describe speakers‘ awareness. In communication settings, meta-linguistic interactions rise by means of speakers‘ perception of Irishness and bad grammar. 16 The use of linguistic forms, being differently located in awareness, entails meta-linguistic interactions. Linguistic forms in HE, both lexical and morphosyntactic forms, can obtain extra-linguistic meanings in addition to the linguistic meanings by virtue of speakers‘ awareness of Irishness and Standard. The do be form, the most marked grammatical form in speakers‘ awareness, is a prominent example by which the construction of extra-linguistic meanings can be lucidly explicated. In SwHE, do be V-ing/ NP functions as a habitual marker, where do and be are joined together and have no prosodic prominence in this do and be combination. Speakers confirm the habitual meaning in contemporary varieties of SwHE. (1) We do be praying for you in our prayers, whenever we get the notion to kneel. ‗We usually/ always pray for you in our prayers, whenever…‘ 15 The inconsistency in the C group is interesting, as this could lend sociolinguistic support for the claim that ‟tis lovely she is is a separable construction from clefts of the type in standard varieties of English. See Shimada (2010a: 73ff) for a ‗noncleft‘ analysis. For the B group, see Finding 2 below in 4.3. 16 See Jaworski and Coupland (2004) for the term ‗metalanguage‘ and the use of ‗meta-‘. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 61 Importantly, speakers not only possess the knowledge of the intralinguistic meaning of a linguistic form but also of the extra-linguistic association between the form and its social connotations. The do be form is generally considered to be a deviation from the Standard, which is constructed in speakers‘ minds, and bears further negative social connotations such as ‗not-well educated‘ or ‗for poor people‘. It follows that the grammatical judgment of ‗correct‘ or ‗wrong‘ is further associated with social indicators such as education and income. This was borne out by elicited comments such as the following: ―The impression I would have is, yes, the person is… The age of the person is important. If ‘tis an old person, I would smile and ‘tis condescending smile. […] I feel superior. […] but if ‘tis the things when my pupils in the school said to me, I would correct them, you know, and would say ‗no, that is not correct‘‖ (2004, Cork, age: 50s, male); ―people who say it mostly got very little chance to go to school through poverty in the past. Now in 2004 Ireland is a rich country and you will not hear it at all‖ (2004, Listowel, age: 70s, female). These comments suggest that speakers tend to associate the use of do be with absence of a knowledge of the normative grammar learned in school. The use of do be has thus served as a criterion of education and socio-economic status. It is therefore important to note that, as well as any other social medium that yields symbolic value, such social connotations are evoked by linguistic features, being shared by members of a speech community. The connotations can exert an inevitable force on the unconscious selection and avoidance of particular linguistic forms. 4.3. Difference in the same syntactic feature category Another finding related to differential judgement of a syntactic feature category may further inform discussion on the direction of language change in the Irish context. In the do be form and the be after form, for example, the types of complement do not significantly affect speakers‘ judgements. To be precise, do be V-ing displays a similar judgemental tendency as do be NP; and be after V-ing is evaluated similarly to be after NP. However, in the examples of non-canonical constituent order or socalled fronting (Group B), there is a significant difference in judgement according to the phrasal type of the fronted constituent. In SwHE the marked constituent order is a significant syntactic device for signalling informational saliency, as is illustrated in (2). (2) Mike: (Entering). What were you doing, then, around the house? Looking here and there and walking on your toes! Pats: Thinking to steal a few eggs I was, but I changed my mind and said to myself that I would ask first before I went stealing. [SIV35] Tamami Shimada 62 In the highlighted clause, a higher value of information is placed on the first minimal constituent thinking to steal a few eggs, which means that this constituent is salient in the information structure. Saliency is syntactically expressed by marked constituent order, often along with phonological prominence. Non-finite VP, Pred-NP, Obj-NP, PP can be in the sentenceinitial position in HE. (3) Non-f. VP Gone to buy the wedding cloths they are. [SIV34] (4) Pred-NP Bloody good firing it was, too! [STD10] (5) Obj-NP Fifty pounds Dota gave to buy the clothes and the drink for the wedding. [SIV34] (6) PP Into jail ye should be put, a brace of dirty beggars. [SIV24] In the questionnaire, two types of the sentence were included. (b1) PP From the cupboard she takes three plates. (b2) Non-f. VP Taking three plates she is. This B group (b1, 2) was judged as generally non-used. It might be that the respondents found it difficult to picture a non-contextualised scene from a sentence because this syntactic pattern is closely related to the expression of the informational salience in context. Noteworthy is that speakers‘ judgements of (b1) and (b2) diverged. Despite the corpus-based diversity of the phrasal category for the fronted constituent, the judgements were inconsistent. The VP-fronted sentence Taking three plates she is is regarded as bad grammar with Irishness less marked, while the PP-fronted sentence From the cupboard she takes three plates is comparatively free from the linkage of Irishness and bad grammar. This is summarised under Finding 2. Finding 2. Speakers‘ judgements within the same grammatical feature sometimes differ, for example, non-finite VP-fronted vs. PP-fronted sentences. Finding 2 seems to offer an important clue for examining the relationship between linguistic forms, on one hand, and speakers‘ awareness of Irishness and Standard, on the other. Consider first what leads to the diffusion of the judgement between the VP-fronted and PP-fronted sentences. Table 2 clarifies the discrepancies in the judgements of bad grammar and Irishness. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 63 PP fronted VP fronted Bad grammar 8 21 Irishness 2 10 Table 2. Judgement of non-canonical constituent order: Obtained figures. The VP-fronted sentence (b2) is marked in terms of speakers‘ awareness; more respondents reported (b2) for their answers to non-use, bad grammar, and Irishness than they did for (b1). The reason for the disparity is supplied in some of the comments that revealed the speakers‘ awareness of Irish-Gaelic syntax. One comment on (b2) is given in the interview: ―You wouldn‘t say it in English. That‘s the way you speak in Gaelic. […] It‘s correct in Irish, bad in English‖ (2006, Listowel, male, born 1930s). The comment is well-directed, weighing Irish on the one hand and standard varieties of English on the other. The Irish sentences, corresponding to the two HE sentences judged in the survey, are given in (7) and (8). (7) From the cupboard she takes three plates. Ok. Ón gcófra a thógann sí trí phláta. [Irish] from (the) cupboard PRT takes she three plates Acceptable. From the cupboard she takes three plates. [Standard English] (8) Taking three plates she is. Ok. Ag tógant trí phláta át sí. [Irish] (at) taking three plates is.REL she Unacceptable *Taking three plates she is. [Standard English] The VP-fronted type in (8) ranked fourth in the bad grammar judgement in the twenty-six examples included in the questionnaire, while (7) ranked among the last five in the judgement of ‗Irishness‘. It can be fairly concluded that the judgemental difference between (b1) and (b2) arises on account of acceptability. In other words, certain criteria may have been formed with reference to ‗Standard‘. Knowledge of the Irish language is likely to affect judgement. This is further examined in 5.2. 4.4. Regional difference In general, the two speech communities under investigation, Cork and Listowel, can be included in the larger category of the community of SwHE on the grounds that they share the same code, while at the same time there are differences in urbanization and the type of major industry between these two places. That is, the association between a linguistic form and the meaning, manners of expression and sociolinguistic norms are shared in these places; this underpins the common sociolinguistic ascription of the two varieties. In other words, these two sub-varieties derive from fairly a coherent speech community, although occasional Tamami Shimada 64 differences are observed in vocabulary and phonology. The survey confirmed this general observation; the data from Cork and Listowel display similar tendencies across many linguistic features. However, there was a morphosyntactic feature which revealed a regional difference, as summarised in Finding 3. Finding 3. A regional divergence between Cork and Listowel is observed in the amn‟t I~? example, while many of the forms do not exhibit such divergence. Amn‟t I ~ is exemplified in (9)-(11) from the Keane corpus; (10) among these was included in the survey. (9) Amn't I the same as any other man? [HHM66] (10) God help us, amn‟t I like a scarecrow always,… [SIV 4] (11) Amn‟t I supposed to have a fortune or something? [HHM 7] The difference in speakers‘ judgements between Listowel and Cork was most prominent in the amn‟t I ~? example. The use and non-use judgements in the two places were as follows: use (n=2) and non-use (n=12) in Cork, and use (n=8) and non-use (n=8) in Listowel. In addition, four respondents in Cork, only one in Listowel, reported unintelligibility of the amn‟t I ~? example. Cork respondents, in general, were unlikely to use amn‟t I, regarding it as comparatively bad grammar, while a certain Irishness was also recognised. Amn‟t I ~? was a marked feature in Cork, since a larger number of the Cork respondents reported ―non-use‖ of this form than they did for the missing of third-person singular -s ending. Listowel speakers, in contrast, tended to report their use of amn‟t I~? and associated this form more with Irishness than with bad grammar. Interestingly, in Listowel, amn‟t I~? was not so marked as the Two of us‟ll ~ example (h2) and the cliticisation of the non-auxiliary verb have (h3). The ‟twouldn‟t example (h5), in turn, was the most marked item in Listowel. The data shows that Listowel speakers, both younger and older, are likely to use ‟twouldn‟t and associate it with Irishness. To Cork speakers, on the other hand, ‟twouldn‟t is nothing but a type of unmarked cliticisation. 5. Linguistic forms in flux On the basis of the observations in section 4, one may now discuss what causes the changing pattern of features in HE, and what affects speakers‘ sociolinguistic awareness. It was confirmed, in 4.1 and 4.2, that linguistic forms in HE are mapped onto a sociolinguistic dimension with the two salient societal categories of Irishness and Standard and that particular linguistic forms can have extra-linguistic meanings by virtue of speakers‘ Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 65 awareness. The judgement by speakers may be derived from speakers‘ knowledge of these meanings. Given this, let us now examine what linguistic properties induce the formation of the extra-linguistic meanings. Findings 1-3 in section 4 are here used to consider the direction of change in relation to speakers‘ awareness. In this section, what determines subjective judgements is discussed with particular reference to tense-aspect forms. 5.1. Visualised judgemental tendencies To clarify the difference of subjective judgements in linguistic forms, consider tense-aspect forms, with the examples of do be V-ing, be after Ving, be V-ing time-Adv and a lexical item, craic, for reference. (e1) I do be taking three plates from the cupboard. [do be habitual] (f1) I am after taking three plates from the cupboard. [be after perfect] (g1) They are visiting here many years. [be V-ing time-Adv] (j1) How‘s the craic? [lexical item] The meaning of (f1) is close to that of the sentence ‗I have (just) taken three plates from the cupboard‘ in standard varieties, although the HE example conveys the emotion-explicit nuance of ‗hot news‘. The meaning of (g1) is most likely to be paraphrased in a standard variety as ‗I have {visited / been visiting} here for ten years‘. The lexical item craic, meaning ‗fun‘, is etymologically of Old English origin, while this word is believed to come from Irish, as illustrated in 2.3. This belief seems to stimulate the use of the phrase for those who have a bilingual knowledge of Irish and English. 17 Figure 1 visualises the judgemental tendencies of the four examples. The example (j1) gained the highest points in the answer to the use question; its high degree of marking as possessing Irishness is almost equal to other two lexical items of Irish origin. The lexical item craic displays the opposite tendency against the do be form. The do be habitual in (e1) and the be after perfect in (f1) are both marked in awareness, but (f1) is considered comparatively favourably while (e1) is unfavourably judged in light of the informants‘ subjective reports of non-use. Remarkably, the be perfect continuous example They are visiting here many years in (g1), though its use being comparatively confirmed, is unmarked in terms of the speakers‘ awareness of Irishness and Standard. (g1) is the most unmarked in speakers‘ awareness despite its distinctiveness from a crossdialectal perspective. 17 ‗How‘s the craic? ‘, underpinned by many ‗use‘ notings, was one of the most popular expressions which speakers wrote down for the requested example of ‗Irish English‘ in the author‘s questionnaire survey in 1999. See also 2.3. Tamami Shimada 66 Figure 1. Judgement tendencies of the four tense-aspect forms. 5.2. Morphosyntactic conformity Given the different judgemental tendencies regarding different linguistic forms, one of the most intriguing concerns is what makes the difference in speakers‘ awareness. This can be discussed with the four examples in 5.1. For example, one could explain why do be is marked as bad grammar with the dominant report of non-use. Likewise, be after is, on the other hand, in comparison reported as use, while Irishness is equivalently recognised in these two forms. 18 In a similar vein, the question arises why be perfect continuous is not marked in speakers‘ awareness; markedness being as little as with the have perfect. The be after perfect, however, attracts speakers‘ attention compared to other perfect expressions. How are these tendencies to be explained? A persistent clue to such questions may be the excessive marking of non-use and bad grammar in the do and be combination. Interviewees frequently revealed a strong reaction to the do be form for its bad grammar, as testified in the written comment from a Listowel respondent: ―We never say ‗do be‘ or ‗does be‘ [; it is] considered very bad grammar‖ (Lis- 18 Interesting data concerning the ‗acceptability‘ of these two types of sentence in HE is provided by Hickey (2007), who undertook a questionnaire on the acceptance of sample sentences to younger respondents. Hickey (2007: 207, 234) reports for the test sentence She‟s after spilling the milk a 96% acceptability rate in County Kerry (n= 24) and 93% in County Cork (n=84) and for She does be worrying about the children 13% in Kerry and 6% in Cork. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 67 towel, born in 1980s, female). Do be and does be are stigmatised in this way. Some respondents acknowledged the habitual category in Irish grammar and the Irishness judgement of the do be form was as high as the be after form. Speakers‘ judgements, however, do not take advantage of this reference to Irish. The reason is explained by the intuitional imprinting of normative grammar and conventionalisation. A more essential reason can be deduced from interviews and comments with the respondents: The sequence of do and be causes unacceptability of this form in their speech. That is, the sequence of two auxiliaries, do and be, does not meet the criterion of Standard by a morphosyntactic constraint in the linguistic knowledge of speakers. In other words, the form of do be does not meet morphosyntactic conformity in the light of their awareness of the grammatical rules of the Standard. The be after V-ing form is a contrasting example, with its adherence to morphosyntactic conformity. The be after form, having two types of the complement V-ing and NP, does not violate English morphosyntax, despite the distinctiveness from Standard English. The noun categories including gerund follow a preposition, which conforms precisely to English morphosyntax. It is important to note that this morphosyntactic conformity is distinguished by semantic congruity, which refers to the meaning of a given form. If this matches that of Standard English, then the form agrees in semantic congruity. Speakers of SwHE are highly conscious of morphosyntactic conformity, but not of semantic congruity. A form that satisfies morphosyntactic conformity is generally accepted insofar as the form has semantic distribution in the grammatical system of SwHE. Finding 2 shown in 4.3 helps further explain morphosyntactic conformity in relation to speakers‘ subjective judgements. The VP-fronted example Taking three plates she is was judged as relatively bad grammar, in proportion half as often as do be V-ing; the PP-fronted type From the cupboard she takes three plates was judged as less bad than the VP-fronted example. This supports the view that English morphosyntactic constraints, involving speakers‘ awareness of Standard, affect speakers‘ judgement. Despite the fact that Irish allows for this syntactic pattern and many speakers of HE know about this (see (8)), the acceptability in Irish, while fostering awareness of Irishness, does not overturn the judgement of bad grammar. On the contrary, this acceptance in Irish morphosyntax may sometimes highlight disconformities in English and veer to the violation of the morphosyntactic conformity. The fronting of the non-finite VP, thus, does not sufficiently satisfy morphosyntactic conformity in SwHE. 5.3. Forms in flux: Some changes in progress Two forms, namely amn‟t I~? and the do be form, are noted here for their potential implication for change in progress. Local differences in Finding 3 in the previous section are noteworthy for the consideration of lan- Tamami Shimada 68 guage change in the speech community as seen in the data from two places. Milroy (1987: 86) notes that ―it seems reasonable to assume that insight can be gained into the process of their formation if a set of data from a city is compared with a set from a surrounding area‖, then citing the remark of Labov (1972: 300), since ―linguistic change and rapid dialect mixing appear to be a general characteristic of urban dialects‖. In the present work, the data of Cork City is assumed to represent an urban variety and Listowel Town a semi-rural variety. The example Amn‟t I like a scarecrow? was comparatively judged as ‗bad grammar‘ in the Cork survey but was rather unmarked in Listowel. This may indicate a potential shift of the amn‟t I form towards disuse owing to normative awareness, with the alternation of aren‟t I (e.g. Aren‟t I like a scarecrow? ), although this form actually remains in use. 19 Amn‟t I, which highlights variations in flux in rural and urban varieties, may serve as an example for investigating the dynamism of HE. This explains how knowledge about a standard variety affects use/ disuse of linguistic forms. The do be form is another interesting example for discussing change in progress. A linguistic form once labelled ‗bad grammar‘, often along with the social meaning of ‗not well-educated‘ and ‗for poor people‘, is a warning light. The attention that the form then attracts may have hindered speakers from using this ‗stigmatised‘ form. 20 The do be form, generally speaking, seems to be moving into disuse, if we focus on the contemporary situation. This is confirmed by the dominant tendency in speakers‘ reports of non-use. It is true, however, that the majority of the SwHE speakers, both urban and rural, even the younger generation, have recognition or knowledge of the linguistic meaning of the do be form. The linguistic knowledge of speakers, moreover, is formed by reference to the Irish language as follows: ―The phrase ‗I do be…‘ is a direct translation from Irish. In the Irish language there are 2 present tenses - ‗I am‘ and ‗I do be…‘, but in English there‘s only one. But this direct translation isn‘t used in all parts of the country‖ (2006, Listowel, born in 1980s, female). 19 There are examples including recent usage from a national newspaper. For example, And all the whole juggling our sense of, ―What the hell am I doing here? Why amn‟t I living in Vegas with a stripper? ‖ [Jul 28, 2009, The Irish Times, written by a columnist who is originally from Dublin and lives in Cork]. and[…] I never thought I‘d get it because in some ways I thought the view would be ‗sure, amn‟t I getting enough? ‘…. [Feb 01, 2008, The Irish Times, part of quotation of the speech by a Clare musician]. 20 It is, however, not intended to imply that the do be form is or will be entirely lost in this dialect. There are SwHE speakers who internalise this construction in their grammar. A characteristic linguistic feature of which speakers are aware of its unfavourable social connotations may come to be assigned covert prestige (cf. Labov 2001 ‗The nonconformity hypothesis‘). Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 69 This respondent listed only the do be example in her response to the question of Irishness, but she did not identify this form as ‗bad grammar‘ unlike the majority of older respondents. Younger speakers today are more generous towards this form, though the database was too small to demonstrate a generational tendency. Thus, it can be assumed that the do be habitual was in active use until the 1950-1960s, but today, in relative decline, it is taking on unfavourable social connotations associated with its conspicuous non-standardness. Furthermore, such negative connotations may be disappearing due to disuse; this is slightly but nonetheless definitively indicated by the generational analysis of results. In the survey, Listowel respondents born before 1935 and between 1960 and 1980 and Cork respondents born after 1976 did not associate the do be form with Irishness; the younger generations meanwhile displayed a relative absence of the ‗bad grammar‘ judgement. In sum, awareness of Standard, which is constructed from normative school grammar and models of Standard English, sometimes assigns negative social connotations to the features that deviate from the speaker‘s criteria of Standard. However, those connotations may eventually disappear as a result of increasing disuse caused by the excessive markedness of the given linguistic form. The examples of amn‟t I~? and do be, revealing a certain status of being in flux, seem to attest the significance of normative permeation. It can be assumed that particular social settings activate awareness of Standard towards non-Standard forms which violate morphosyntactic conformity. Awareness of Irishness, largely due to actual knowledge of the Irish language, may determine the social connotations of a particular feature, contributing to change in HE via the actual use/ disuse of forms. It should be noted that extra-linguistic meaning and connotation is socially dependent by nature, reflecting the values cultivated in a given speech community. In the survey, the evaluation of linguistic items could vary according to the fluctuation of the attitudes towards Irishness and Standard in the sociocultural context. Whether a positive or a negative connotation is associated with a particular linguistic form depends on the direction in which social attitudes are shifting. 6. Conclusion This paper has described sociolinguistic aspects of morphosyntactic forms in SwHE. It has illustrated speakers‘ awareness of the forms based on a survey, drawing on some significant findings, discussed the direction of change. Morphosyntactic forms in SwHE are mapped differently onto a sociolinguistic dimension, where Irishness and Standard are two salient categories in speakers‘ awareness. The findings such as divergent judgements within the same syntactic feature category (non-finite-verb-phrase vs. preposition-phrase fronting), the regional difference of amn‟t I~? , and Tamami Shimada 70 the contrast of two tense-aspect forms, do be and be after, lead to the suggestion of morphosyntactic conformity to explain the factor that is relevant to the selection of linguistic forms. Examination of the tendencies in the subjective judgement of grammatical forms suggests that whether a given sentence meets morphosyntactic conformity or not depends on the speakers‘ awareness of Standard, and the disconformities cause the judgement of bad grammar. The awareness of Irishness, maintained largely by speakers‘ knowledge of Irish-Gaelic, sustains the significance of the forms in which Irishness is perceived. It is likely that the forms that speakers recognise as Irish were more marked than others, usually leading to either use or non-use, determined by morphosyntactic conformity. With this conformity being established, Irishness obtains positive connotations. The balance between Irishness and Standard is the key to the direction of morphosyntactic change in HE. Acknowledgements This study is supported by the respondents to my interviews and the 2006 questionnaire. I would like to express my gratitude to the respondents and to all those who have supported my fieldwork. Particularly, I would like to thank my friends, who are key consultants: Elsie Harris, Emmet Stones, and the Keane, Clifford and O‘Connor families. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Klagenfurt Conference on Corpus-based Applied Linguistics (CALK 14) in September 2014. I am grateful to Professor Allan James at University of Klagenfurt, the conference organizer, for encouraging me to submit this paper to the AAA journal, and for his many insightful comments since our fortunate encounter. This article is an outcome of my current research projects: ‗Diversity and continuity of Englishes: Hiberno-English in focus‘ (Research project number: 25770141) granted by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KA- KENHI) and ‗Sentence forms and meanings: Development from the comprehension of various theories‘ granted by Meikai University Miyata Research Grant 2014. References Aikhenvald, Alexandra (2001). ―Language awareness and correct speech among the Tariana of northwest Amazonia‖. Anthropological Linguistics 43. 411-430. Anchimbe, Eric A. (2007). Linguistic Identity in Postcolonial Multilingual Spaces. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bex, Tony and Richard J. Watts (1999). Standard English: The Widening Debate. London: Routledge. 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Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Smith, Gus and Des Hickey (2002). John B. Cork: The Mercier Press. Tamami Shimada 72 Trudgill, Peter (1999). ―Standard English: What it isn‘t‖. In: Bex and Watts (eds.). Standard English: The Widening Dabate. 117-128. van Hamel, A. G. (1912). ―On Anglo-Irish Syntax‖. Englische Studien 45. 272-292. Morphosyntactic Features in Flux 73 Appendix: Questionnaire 2006 (Part I: Awareness of morphosyntactic forms) [The left page] From the sentences (1) to (26) on the opposite page, please choose the ones that apply to the following five statements. You may choose as many as you like. If you think there is no relevant number, please fill the bracket with ―Nothing‖. Any of your comments are welcome. Question 1: Which sentences do you think you would use yourself? Your answer: [ ] Your comment: Question 2: Which sentences do you think you would not use on any occasion (including when you are talking with your family and friends)? Your answer: [ ] Your comment: Question 3: Which sentences can you not understand the meaning of? Your answer: [ ] Your comment: Question 4: Which sentences do you think have “bad grammar”? Your answer: [ ] Your comment: Question 5: Which sentences do you think show “Irishness”? Your answer: [ ] Your comment: [The right page] (1) She take three plates from the cupboard. (=a) (2) She takes three plates from the cupboard. (=i1) (3) I am after taking three plates from the cupboard. (=f1) (4) From the cupboard she takes three plates. (=b1) (5) The two of us‘ll take three plates from the cupboard. (=h2) (6) I do be taking three plates from the cupboard. (=e1) (7) It is from the cupboard that I take three plates. (=c1) (8) Taking three plates she is. (=b2) (9) I asked for today‘s special and she putting plates on the table. (=i3) (10) How‘s the craic? (=j1) (11) You‘ve the name of a good employer. (=h3) (12) They are visiting here many years. (=g1) (13) There‘s no one can deny it. (=d1) (14) She does be lovely with her long hair. (=e2) (15) ‘Tis lovely she is. (=c2) (16) It is lovely that she is. (=c3) (17) Amn‘t I like a scarecrow? (=h4) (18) We‘ll visit here tomorrow. (=h1) (19) ‘Twouldn‘t be a good thing. (=h5) Tamami Shimada 74 (20) There was a great housekeeper lost in you. (=d3) (21) She been taking them home ever since. (=i2) (22) Tom is after his supper. (=f2) (23) That amadán put eggs in my bag. (=j2) (24) Don‘t be cnamhshealing! (=j3) (25) My sons have visited there for many years. (=g2) (26) I knew there was good news in you. (=d2) Note: The corresponding indexes are given for current convenience. They were, of course, not in the questionnaire for the respondents. Tamami Shimada Department of English Faculty of Languages and Cultures Meikai University, Japan Academic Writing and Culture A Study of Austrian Tertiary-Level EFL Learners Nick Scott When language learners write an academic essay in a foreign language, they frequently make use of text conventions and discourse patterns from their native language. However, this may sometimes lead to a breakdown in communication due to different cultural expectations about the way information is presented. This paper explores these processes of sociolinguistic transfer and languaculture dissonance with a special focus on German-speaking learners of English. Using previous research from the field of contrastive rhetoric as an analytical framework, it investigates the extent to which a group of 22 Austrian EFL learners attending an advanced-level university writing course are influenced by their German-language writing culture. An analysis of the learners‘ beliefs and written work at the start of the course is followed by a period of targeted instruction informed by the findings of contrastive rhetoric research on Englishand German-speaking writing cultures. A second set of essays, written later in the course, is then analysed to ascertain whether the amount of sociolinguistic transfer observed in the students‘ work was reduced after targeted instruction. 1. Introduction In the last few decades, the emergence of new technology and growth in population mobility have led to increasing recognition of the need to prepare students for an internationalised world (see Egron-Polak & Hudson 2010; Paige & Goode 2009). This is reflected in the policy documents of many higher education institutions, whose stated aim is to produce global citizens with the ability to function in multicultural environments (see Bourn 2010). Consequently, foreign language education has undergone a shift in emphasis from communicative competence to intercultural communicative competence, which incorporates not only linguistic ability AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Nick Scott 76 but also the cultural knowledge necessary to communicate effectively with speakers of other languages (cf. Byram 2001; Feng, Byram & Fleming 2009; Sercu 2005). The integration of this cultural dimension into language education programmes has proved challenging because it requires a reconceptualisation of the fundamental nature of language learning (cf. Liddicoat, 2012). Languages must be understood not only in terms of their grammar and vocabulary, but also with respect to cultural practices that influence their speakers during the processes of meaning making and interpretation. Language and culture are not separate entities that operate independently of each other; rather, they exist in a complex interrelationship that learners must seek to understand to ensure successful intercultural communication (cf. Tomalin & Nicks 2007; Tomlinson & Masuhara 2004). Problems may arise when learners attempt to apply the rules and forms of their native language while communicating in the target language. This process is known as sociolinguistic transfer and can sometimes lead to failures in cross-cultural communication, or languaculture dissonance, due to differences about what is expected in communication (cf. Diaz 2012). Many instances of languaculture dissonance can be found in the field of academic writing, because every language has its own text conventions and discourse patterns that may be fundamentally different from those of other languages. When learners write a text in a foreign language, it may not meet the expectations of native speakers of that language and a breakdown in communication may subsequently occur. Since each person possesses a limited amount of reading energy, some readers may even abandon the text if they cannot make sense of it after a while (cf. Lebrun 2011). If such instances of languaculture dissonance could be decreased or even eliminated, it would undoubtedly be beneficial for intercultural communication. Despite widespread acknowledgement of this fact, however, there has been little discussion of how languaculture dissonance might be reduced in practice (cf. Diaz 2012; Liddicoat 2012). This paper represents an early attempt to bridge this gap, with a particular focus on German-speaking learners writing academic English. Thus far, research on assisting German speakers with the difficulties they experience when writing academic texts in English remains relatively sparse and has tended to concentrate on a limited range of discourse structures such as the usage of connectors (cf. Granger & Tyson 1996) or collocations (cf. Nesselhauf 2003). In contrast, a large number of contrastive rhetoric studies on the different writing styles of Englishand German-speaking academics have been conducted during the last few decades. Contrastive rhetoric has not been without its critics and the field has undergone a number of recent changes, which are discussed in Section 2 below. Nevertheless, it remains perhaps the most comprehensive Academic Writing and Culture 77 source of information on the discourse structures commonly used by English and German speakers in their writing. Identifying these structures allows the creation of an analytical framework that can then be used to examine the beliefs of German-speaking EFL learners about academic writing as well as the written texts they produce in English. In this paper, learners‘ beliefs are investigated using a questionnaire that was administered to a group of German-speaking EFL students attending an advanced-level university writing course. This is followed by an examination of a set of opinion essays written in English, which were produced after an introduction to the text type that took place during the first two lessons of the course. These essays are analysed not only with regard to discourse structures but also in relation to the biographical information from the questionnaire, which is used to explore possible links between the students‘ linguistic background, previous writing instruction and the amount of sociolinguistic transfer observed in their work. Finally, a second set of opinion essays, which were written later in the course after targeted instruction, is also analysed. These essays are examined to explore the possible effect that explicit discussion of Englishand German-language discourse structures can have on raising awareness of culture-specific writing styles and reducing languaculture dissonance. 2. Literature Review 2.1. Contrastive Rhetoric and Rationale Contrastive rhetoric seeks to understand how a learner‘s first language influences their writing in a foreign language by comparing texts written by native and non-native speakers of English. The traditional approach, which dates back to the work of Kaplan (1966), has been heavily criticised in recent years due to its tendency towards a reductionist view of national cultures as static, monolithic entities (cf. Atkinson, 2004; Kubota & Lehner 2004) and because it neglects to consider the role of other factors such as the writer‘s educational background and previous experience of L1/ L2 writing in text formation (cf. Liu 2010; Xinghua 2011). Kaplan (2005) himself has acknowledged some of the shortcomings of his original approach. In spite of this, however, studies continue to emerge that report promising findings for implementing contrastive rhetoric-oriented writing instruction in the classroom (cf. Walker 2006; Xing, Wang & Spencer 2008). In addition, new approaches such as the move from contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric, which uses research methods that go beyond the text to promote a broader view of crosscultural writing, have once again breathed life into the field (cf. Connor 2004, 2008, 2011). Nick Scott 78 This paper attempts to take these recent developments into account, while also harnessing the value of earlier contrastive rhetoric studies. In recognition of the fact that rhetorical patterns do not necessarily derive from negative transfer from the writer‘s L1 but may also be influenced by other factors, the analysis of written work produced by a group of German-speaking EFL learners is supplemented by a questionnaire designed to elicit biographical data and explore the learners‘ beliefs about academic writing in English. This multifaceted approach allows the study to go beyond mere textual analysis and begin to understand some of the complex processes that have often been neglected during more traditional approaches. Earlier work in the field is not completely discounted, however, because it remains a useful source of information as long as its limitations are understood. The discourse structures identified by various researchers as characteristic of an Englishor German-language writing style can be used to create an analytical framework, which allows an examination of the learners‘ written work. If it does show signs of a supposedly German-language style, this can be situated within the broader context of the learners‘ educational background and previous experience as well as their beliefs about academic writing and possible explanations can be considered. 2.2. Englishand German-Language Writing Cultures Early studies on the different writing styles of English and German speakers were not always based on empirical evidence and tended to be rather speculative. Galtung (1981), for example, identifies four intellectual styles within academia, which include a ―Saxonic‖ and a ―Teutonic‖ approach. The Saxonic approach is described as very strong in terms of hypothesis generation and collection of data, but weak in terms of theory formation and paradigm awareness. The Teutonic approach, on the other hand, focuses more on theory formation instead of data, which is used primarily to illustrate rather than demonstrate. Both approaches are considered strong at commenting on the work of others, although they do so in different ways: while the Saxonic style is claimed to promote cordial debate and team work, Teutonic intellectual discussions are said to be more concerned with highlighting weaknesses in others‘ arguments. Galtung‘s description of these two intellectual styles is interesting, but it is also purely anecdotal: it is based, as he himself acknowledges, on ―impressions and intuitions‖ rather than hard evidence (Galtung 1981: 817). Despite its speculative nature, however, there are a number of studies that provide empirical support for Galtung‘s thesis. The most substantial of these is the work of Clyne (1981, 1987, 1991), who analysed 52 academic texts written by English and German speakers according to four main parameters: textual hierarchy, dynamics, symmetry and uniformity. He found that texts written by German speakers not only displayed more Academic Writing and Culture 79 subordination in the hierarchy of propositions, but were significantly more asymmetrical. This asymmetry was often the result of digressions, which occurred more often in texts written by German speakers. Clyne‘s analysis also showed that texts written by German speakers were more frequently characterised by discontinuity, created for example by abandoning an argument mid-way through its development and starting a new one. English speakers, on the other hand, used more advance organisers as well as topic sentences in their writing. Definitions were more frequent and normally placed near the start of the text if the author was English educated, and examples, quotations and statistics were more likely to be embedded into the text by English academics rather than presenting them in an unintegrated fashion, which was more common in German texts. Clyne‘s research has been criticised for not revealing its corpus sources (cf. Sachtleber 1993) and using terminology such as ―digression‖ and ―circular style‖ that implies a negative view of the writing of German speakers (Pöckl 1995). Despite these criticisms, however, several other studies have come to similar conclusions about the differences between English and German academic writing. In his analysis of text structures, for example, Schröder (1988) suggests that English writing is characterised by a point-early structure where the main point is made at the beginning of the text, whereas German speakers tend to employ a point-late structure with the main point at the end of the argument. Similarly, an analysis of English, French and German journal articles by Trumpp (1998) found that 63% of English paragraphs started with a topic sentence compared to only 36% of German paragraphs. Hutz (1997) is more critical of Clyne‘s work, arguing that although English texts display a higher frequency of metalanguage designed to facilitate text comprehension, this is compensated for in German texts by a larger number of markers of logical relationships. His findings have subsequently been questioned by Siepmann (2006), however, who criticises the lack of consideration of multi-word markers in Hutz‘s analysis, which may have skewed his results. In addition, some writers may use logical markers to camouflage incoherence or digression, and variation in the use of metadiscursive expressions among English native speakers must be taken into account (cf. Siepmann 2006: 138-9). Two other areas investigated by Clyne, namely thematic progression and the use of text structuring devices, are considered by Baumann (1998). Baumann‘s analysis suggests that German texts are more likely to deviate from the main topic and typically contain fewer text-structuring devices than texts written by English speakers. Another study by Buhl (1999) found that German speakers were less likely to define technical terms, and their papers exhibited fewer instances of metacommunication. Consequently, both Baumann and Buhl agree with Clyne that in Englishspeaking countries, ―most of the onus falls on writers to make their texts Nick Scott 80 readable, whereas it is the readers who have to make the extra effort in German-speaking countries‖ (Clyne 1987: 238). Recent research also supports Clyne‘s suggestion that passive constructions are more common in texts written by German speakers. In a corpus analysis of medical and linguistic texts, Busch-Lauer (2001) found that particularly in medical texts, German speakers used more impersonal constructions than English speakers. A study of English and German scientific writing conducted by Baumgarten (2008) produced similar findings, suggesting that although German speakers are beginning to use more personal constructions in scientific discourse due to their increasing exposure to English, this is a relatively new development and many still write in a more impersonal style. Another recent study by Thielmann (2009) compared research article introductions written by English and German speakers. The articles written by English speakers were usually linear and displayed a high level of internal coherence, while those written by German speakers required readers to create this coherence for themselves. In a similar vein, Breuer (2013) found that essay introductions written by German-speaking students often did not adequately define the topic or lacked a clear thesis. Her analysis also showed that passive constructions were a common feature of the students‘ work as well as digressions, which sometimes constituted as much as 50% of the text. In sum, there is a sizeable body of research on the different writing styles used by Englishand German-speaking academics. A summary of these writing styles and the suggested differences between them can be found in the table below (see Figure 1). The ten categories in this table will be used as the basis for a questionnaire investigating beliefs about academic writing held by German-speaking students attending an advanced-level writing course as well as an analysis of the students‘ essays before and after targeted instruction. The design of this questionnaire and methodology used to examine the students‘ work are presented in the following section. Aspect of Writing Reference(s) English German Linearity Clyne, 1987; Baumann, 1998; Thielmann, 2009; Breuer, 2013 Strict focus; texts contain few departures from the main topic. Less strict focus; texts more likely to depart from the main topic. Continuity Clyne, 1987 Characterised by continuity; each argument is fully developed be- More likely to be characterised by discontinuity, e.g. Academic Writing and Culture 81 fore proceeding to the next one. leaving an argument mid-air and starting a new one. Symmetry Clyne, 1987 Characterised by textual symmetry and propositional symmetry. Frequently characterised by textual and/ or propositional asymmetry. Paragraph Structure Trumpp, 1998 Paragraphs usually begin with a topic sentence that summarises its main point. Fewer topic sentences; main point often revealed at the end of the paragraph. Text Structure Schröder, 1988; Breuer, 2013 Point-early structure (main point usually made at the beginning of the argument). Point-late structure (main point revealed at the end of the argument). Definitions Clyne, 1987; Buhl, 1999 More definitions; usually placed at beginning of the text. Fewer definitions; usually found later in the text. Data Integration Clyne, 1987 Examples, quotations and statistics always integrated. Examples, quotations and statistics sometimes unintegrated. Personal Constructions Clyne, 1987; Busch-Lauer, 2001; Baumgarten, 2008 Many personal constructions. Fewer personal constructions. Advance Organisers Clyne, 1987; Hutz, 1997; Siepmann, 2006 Advance organisers used to indicate how the text will be structured. Fewer advance organisers than in English. Relationship between Writer and Reader Clyne, 1987; Baumann, 1998; Buhl, 1999 Reader-oriented; main focus is on clear communication of ideas. Hierarchical; complex language is used to demonstrate the writer’s authority. Figure 1. Summary of suggested differences between English and Germanacademic writing. Nick Scott 82 3. Methodology The study was conducted with a group of German-speaking students attending an advanced-level EFL writing course at an Austrian university. Participation in the study was voluntary, with 22 of the 26 students in the class agreeing to take part. The students had all been studying English at university for at least four semesters, which offered two important advantages. Firstly, they possessed a high level of linguistic proficiency corresponding to approximately level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference, which enabled them to concentrate primarily on the discourse structures in their writing rather than problems with vocabulary and grammar. Secondly, all the students had previously attended at least two universitylevel writing courses. If any of the discourse structures from the analytical framework were found in their essays, therefore, these would be more likely to be a product of sociolinguistic transfer from the students‘ native language as opposed to inexperience with expectations of writing at university level. The main focus of the course was the production of a five-paragraph opinion essay and a magazine article. Of these two text types, the opinion essay was selected as the most suitable for analysis since an effective essay would need to include the aspects of writing under investigation in this study such as a thesis statement and topic sentences as well as examples, quotations and statistics to support the writer‘s argument. It was hypothesised that this text type might have an influence on the students‘ approach to writing since the five-paragraph essay is very much an artefact of the English-language writing culture. If German-language discourse structures were still detected in the students‘ essays, however, then this would probably be a product of sociolinguistic transfer from their native language. The study comprised three parts. Firstly, a questionnaire was conducted to elicit biographical information and explore the students‘ beliefs about academic writing in order to help contextualise the findings. Secondly, a set of opinion essays, produced after an introduction to the text type during the first two lessons of the course, was examined for evidence of possible German-English sociolinguistic transfer. Thirdly, a second set of opinion essays, produced after targeted instruction that foregrounded the different discourse structures said to be used by Englishand Germanspeaking academics, was analysed in comparison to their first essays to see whether a reduction in sociolinguistic transfer could be observed in their writing. The remainder of this section is divided into three subsections, which correspond to these three parts. Academic Writing and Culture 83 3.1. Questionnaire The questionnaire consisted of three main sections. The first section was designed to elicit biographical information that could potentially be related to the students‘ writing style such as their nationality, native language(s) and the country of their secondary school education. The second section focused on the language-learning history of the participants, who were asked whether they had attended a secondary school where English was the main language of instruction or had spent an extended period of time studying in an English-speaking country. In addition, they were questioned about whether they had received essay writing instruction in their native language, in English, or in both English and their native language at school, as well as their perceived familiarity with the opinion essay text type prior to attending the course. These questions were designed to reveal any previous exposure to English-speaking discourse patterns, which might have an influence on the students‘ written work. The third section of the questionnaire focused on beliefs about essay writing in English. The participants were presented with ten statements about academic writing based on the categories previously established in Section 2. Each statement expressed a particular attitude towards an aspect of academic writing, which the students could respond to using a sixpoint Likert scale to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with each statement. In addition to these three sections, the questionnaire included a consent form. The students were assured that taking part in the study was voluntary and their participation would not affect their grade for the course. Their responses would be used to conduct research on the influence of culture on academic writing and would be reported on the condition of strict anonymity. The questionnaire was piloted four times with colleagues and students from the target population. Based on the feedback from these pilots, a number of changes were made to the wording of certain items to make them as clear and unambiguous as possible. The questionnaire was presented to the students at the end of the first lesson. It was introduced by the course instructor, who was also the survey administrator. In accordance with guidelines suggested by Dörnyei (2010), the purpose and significance of the study were explained, and it was emphasised that participation was voluntary. The students were assured that their responses would be treated confidentially and invited to ask questions about the study and questionnaire. The questionnaire itself was completed by participants at home in an attempt to minimise the risk of students copying each other‘s responses, and to allow participants more time for reflected responses. The completed questionnaires were returned to the instructor at the beginning of the next lesson. Nick Scott 84 The data from the questionnaire were recorded in a spreadsheet and analysed. The responses to the statements about academic writing were converted into numerical scores and the average score for each statement was calculated. The biographical data were then compared with these scores to explore possible links between the students‘ beliefs about academic writing in English and their previous exposure to English-language discourse patterns. The results of this analysis are presented in Section 4. 3.2. First Set of Opinion Essays The questionnaire was followed by a first set of opinion essays, which were written after an introduction to the text type that took place during the second and third lessons of the course. These two ninety-minute periods included a discussion of model texts and the completion of practice exercises provided by Oshima and Hogue (2007: 168-180) in their overview of opinion essays. The students were then asked to write an essay on one of the topics suggested by Oshima and Hogue (2007: 173), which they handed in at the beginning of the fourth lesson. These essays were analysed in relation to the framework established in Section 2. This framework was used to create a list of ten features that might be considered signs of German-English sociolinguistic transfer (see Figure 2). 1. The writer uses overly complex language that obscures the intended meaning. 2. The topic sentence is either missing or ineffective in one of the body paragraphs. 3. The writer departs from the main topic of the essay. 4. The writer uses impersonal constructions in a way that seems awkward or forced. 5. A thesis statement is missing from the introduction or is ineffective. 6. One of the body paragraphs is noticeably longer or shorter than the others. 7. A potentially ambiguous term is defined later in the essay or remains undefined. 8. The writer does not adequately develop their point before moving on to the next argument. Academic Writing and Culture 85 9. The writer presents data such as a statistic or quotation in an unintegrated fashion. 10. The writer does not include an advance organiser where it would facilitate comprehension, or uses an advance organiser incorrectly. Figure 2. List of features suggesting German-English sociolinguistic transfer. For most features, two or more occurrences were considered necessary before German-English sociolinguistic transfer could be assumed. The only exceptions were features 5 and 6: here, one occurrence was considered sufficient because feature 5 refers to the thesis statement, which is normally found just once within an essay, and feature 6 concerns the overall structure. Since determining the presence of some of these features is somewhat subjective (e.g. ‗overly complex‘ in feature 1, or ‗seems awkward or forced‘ in feature 4), the support of two colleagues was enlisted to provide a degree of validation and triangulation during the analysis of the data. The data were analysed to determine the extent to which the students‘ essays appeared to represent a German-language writing culture. These findings were then compared with the information obtained from the questionnaire to see whether there was any link between the students‘ linguistic background or previous exposure to English-language discourse patterns and the degree of possible sociolinguistic transfer in their written work. The results of this analysis can be found in Section 4. 3.3. Targeted Instruction and Second Set of Opinion Essays After the first set of essays had been corrected and returned to the students, the next three ninety-minute lessons were used for targeted instruction that focused on the discourse structures suggested to be typical of an Englishand a German-language writing culture respectively. These discourse structures and the supposed differences between the two writing styles were highlighted in accordance with recent research, which suggests that raising students‘ awareness of the culture-specific language schemas used in their own language as well as English is essential for avoiding languaculture dissonance (cf. Diaz 2012: 37-8). These schemas were explicitly foregrounded using three methods: (1) teacher-guided analysis of German-language discourse structures taken from the first set of student essays; (2) comparison with English-language discourse structures from texts produced by the instructor; and (3) writing exercises that required the students to rewrite selected parts of their homework in a style more in line with the expectations of English-speaking readers. Nick Scott 86 This targeted instruction was followed by another homework task that required the students to write a second opinion essay. The students‘ work was again analysed for evidence of possible sociolinguistic transfer according to the ten categories presented in Figure 2. The findings of this analysis were then compared with the findings from the first set of opinion essays to determine possible changes following the targeted instruction. A summary of these findings as well as the results of the comparison can be found in Section 4. 4. Results This section is divided into three subsections that correspond to the methods used to investigate the students‘ beliefs about academic writing and their written work: the questionnaire, the first set of opinion essays, and the second set of opinion essays. 4.1. Questionnaire The biographical data from the questionnaire confirmed that all participants were Austrian, their native language was German, and they completed their secondary school education in Austria. However, two students had attended a school where English was used as the main language of instruction, while two other students had spent up to six months studying abroad. The amount of previous essay writing instruction varied significantly among the participants. Of the 22 students, three stated they had never been taught how to write an essay at school, while eight had received instruction only in German. Two students had been taught how to write an essay in English but not in German, and nine students had received instruction on essay writing in both English and German. Previous exposure to the text type also varied. Six of the 22 students said they had never heard of an opinion essay prior to the start of the course, while six were not only familiar with the text type but had also received previous instruction on how to write an opinion essay. The remaining ten students reported having heard of an opinion essay, although they had not had any previous instruction on how to write one. The biographical section of the questionnaire was followed by a section on beliefs about essay writing. The participants used a six-point Likert scale to respond to ten statements about essay writing, six of which reflected beliefs suggested by the analytical framework in Section 2 to represent an English-language writing culture, while the other four reflected beliefs suggested to be typical of a German-language writing culture. Their answers were then converted into numerical scores, with a score of 1 representing strong disagreement with the statement and a Academic Writing and Culture 87 score of 6 representing strong agreement. The mean score for each statement can be found in the table below (see Figure 3). Statement Writing Culture Average To demonstrate their authority, the writer of an essay should use complex language. German 3.59 In the main body of an essay, each paragraph should include a topic sentence. English 5.41 The writer may depart from the main topic of an essay in order to provide more general information. German 3.95 In an essay, the writer should avoid using personal constructions such as ‘I’ or ‘we’. German 3.36 The main argument of an essay should be stated in the introduction. English 5.09 Each paragraph of an essay should be roughly the same length as the others. English 3.91 If it is necessary to define any key terms, this should be done towards the end of an essay. German 4.55 In an essay, each point should be fully developed before the next point is presented. English 5.05 The writer should avoid using a quotation as a stand-alone sentence. English 4.50 In an essay, the writer should indicate in advance how it will be organised or structured. English 4.36 Figure 3. Student beliefs about essay writing in English. These results indicate a strong preference for several discourse structures that are suggested to be typical of an English-language writing culture such as topic sentences, a point-early structure and sequential develop- Nick Scott 88 ment of ideas. In addition, students tended to agree with the statements that the writer should avoid using quotations as stand-alone sentences and should indicate in advance how an essay will be structured. The idea that each paragraph of an essay should be roughly the same length was met with more of a mixed response, however, as were the four statements designed to reflect a German-language writing culture. Indeed, the statement suggesting that key terms should be defined towards the end of an essay received an average score of 4.55, implying that students largely agreed with this perspective when writing in English even though it is more typical of a German-language writing culture. Interestingly, no significant link was found between the students‘ responses and their previous exposure to English as a language of instruction. The two students who had studied abroad in an English-speaking country had average scores of 4.60 and 4.40, which is only marginally higher than the mean score of 4.38, while the average scores of the two students who attended a school where English was used as the main language of instruction were both below the mean (4.20 and 3.50 respectively). A comparison of the students‘ previous essay writing instruction with their beliefs about academic writing also produced surprising results. As expected, those students who had received no instruction on essay writing at school had an average score (4.23) that was below the mean. However, those who had only received instruction on how to write an essay in English had the lowest average of all four groups (4.16), while those who had received instruction in both English and German - and might therefore be most attuned to the cultural differences between the two writing styles - were only marginally above the mean with an average of 4.39. The group which scored highest, suggesting that their beliefs about essay writing were most typical of an English-language writing culture, was in fact the students who had been taught how to write an essay only in German (4.49). A comparison with previous familiarity with the text type produced similarly counterintuitive results, since the highest average score was obtained by the students who had never heard of an opinion essay before (4.47). In contrast, those students who had received specific instruction on how to write an opinion essay had the lowest average score (4.27), while those who had heard of an opinion essay but not taught how to write one had an average of 4.40. 4.2. First Set of Opinion Essays The first set of opinion essays were analysed using the method described in Section 3. German-English sociolinguistic transfer was deemed to have taken place in cases where the issue described in the left-hand column of Academic Writing and Culture 89 the table below occurred multiple times, except for issues 5 and 6 where only one occurrence was required (see Figure 4). Issue Essays containing evidence of sociolinguistic transfer Essays not containing evidence of sociolinguistic transfer 1. The writer uses overly complex language that obscures the intended meaning. 36% 64% 2. The topic sentence is either missing or ineffective in one of the body paragraphs. 36% 64% 3. The writer departs from the main topic of the essay. 45% 55% 4. The writer uses impersonal constructions in a way that seems awkward or forced. 0% 100% 5. A thesis statement is missing from the introduction or is ineffective. 27% 73% 6. One of the body paragraphs is noticeably longer or shorter than the others. 64% 36% 7. A potentially ambiguous term is defined later in the essay or remains undefined. 0% 100% 8. The writer does not adequately develop their point before moving on to the next argument. 41% 59% 9. The writer presents data such as a statistic or quotation in an unintegrated fashion. 32% 68% Nick Scott 90 10. The writer does not include an advance organiser where it would facilitate comprehension, or uses an advance organiser incorrectly. 41% 59% Figure 4. German-English sociolinguistic transfer in the first set of opinion essays. A comparison of these results with the questionnaire data reveals some notable discrepancies between the students‘ beliefs about academic writing and their written work. With regard to body paragraph length and departures from the main topic, a certain amount of sociolinguistic transfer was expected since the students‘ responses to the questionnaire did not indicate a strong preference for an English-language writing culture in these areas. However, a number of essays also displayed signs of sociolinguistic transfer concerning topic sentences and thesis statements, in contrast to the marked preference for an English-language writing culture implied by the questionnaire. A similar amount of sociolinguistic transfer was detected concerning the use of advance organisers and data integration, which suggests that although the students were theoretically aware of the difference between the Englishand German-language writing styles in these areas, they were sometimes unable to apply this knowledge in practice. On the other hand, no sociolinguistic transfer was found regarding definitions or impersonal constructions. This was unexpected given that a number of students indicated a preference for a German-language writing style in these areas in the questionnaire. The lack of sociolinguistic transfer concerning definitions might be explained by the fact that students were writing about well-known topics, so explanations of unfamiliar terms were not always necessary. However, the absence of impersonal constructions from the students‘ work is perhaps surprising in light of the findings of the questionnaire. The results from the first set of opinion essays were also compared with the students‘ biographical data. Once again, previous exposure to English as a language of instruction appeared to have little influence on the amount of sociolinguistic transfer in the students‘ work. The essays written by the two students who attended a school where English was used as the main language of instruction both showed signs of sociolinguistic transfer in four different areas, which was slightly higher than the mean of 3.22, while the work of those students who had previously studied abroad in an English-speaking country showed signs of sociolinguistic transfer in three and five areas respectively. However, comparisons with previous essay writing instruction produced rather surprising results. Those students who had not received any Academic Writing and Culture 91 previous instruction on essay writing scored slightly below the mean with sociolinguistic transfer occurring in an average of three areas per essay, while those students who had only received essay writing instruction in German scored an average of 2.75. In contrast, the students who had only received essay writing instruction in English (4.50) and those who had received essay writing instruction in both English and German (3.44) both scored above the mean. Familiarity with the text type also seemed to confer little benefit regarding the amount of sociolinguistic transfer in students‘ work. The group with the lowest average was the students who had never heard of an opinion essay before the start of the course (2.66), while those who had heard of an opinion essay but had never been taught how to write one averaged 3.33. The group with the lowest average was actually the students who reported having received instruction on how to write an opinion essay at school, who scored 3.66. 4.3. Second Set of Opinion Essays Following targeted instruction, the second set of opinion essays were analysed using the same method as the first set. Two of the students did not submit a second assignment, so they were omitted from the analysis. The results can be found in the table below (see Figure 5). Issue Essays containing evidence of sociolinguistic transfer Essays not containing evidence of sociolinguistic transfer 1. The writer uses overly complex language that obscures the intended meaning. 30% 70% 2. The topic sentence is either missing or ineffective in one of the body paragraphs. 30% 70% 3. The writer departs from the main topic of the essay. 20% 80% 4. The writer uses impersonal constructions in a way that seems awkward or forced. 0% 100% 5. A thesis statement is missing from the introduction or is ineffective. 25% 75% Nick Scott 92 6. One of the body paragraphs is noticeably longer or shorter than the others. 40% 60% 7. A potentially ambiguous term is defined later in the essay or remains undefined. 0% 100% 8. The writer does not adequately develop their point before moving on to the next argument. 45% 55% 9. The writer presents data such as a statistic or quotation in an unintegrated fashion. 30% 70% 10. The writer does not include an advance organiser where it would facilitate comprehension, or uses an advance organiser incorrectly. 25% 75% Figure 5. German-English sociolinguistic transfer in the second set of opinion essays. As can be seen, the most significant improvement occurred in relation to departures from the main topic of the essay, which fell by 25%. Noticeable improvements also occurred in the areas of body paragraph length (down 24%) and advance organisers (down 16%), while more modest changes were observed regarding overly complex language and topic sentences (both down 6%) as well as thesis statements and data integration (both down 2%). However, the proportion of students who did not adequately develop their points before moving on to the next argument was actually higher in the second set of essays, increasing by 4%. Similar to the first set of opinion essays, previous exposure to English as a language of instruction did not appear to reduce the amount of sociolinguistic transfer in the students‘ work. The essays written by the students who attended a school where English was the main language of instruction both showed signs of sociolinguistic transfer in three areas, compared to a mean average of 2.45 for the class as a whole. Those students who had previously studied abroad in an English-speaking country had an average of 2.50, which was also slightly above the class mean. However, comparison of the second set of opinion essays with the students‘ previous essay writing instruction produced results that corresponded more closely to what one might intuitively expect. The essays of those students who had not received any essay writing instruction at school showed signs of sociolinguistic transfer in an average of three areas, which was significantly higher than those students who had received Academic Writing and Culture 93 essay writing instruction in German (2.25) and in English (2.00). The only slightly surprising finding was that those students who had been taught how to write an essay in both English and German, and might therefore be expected to be most attuned to the differences between the two writing styles, had an average of 2.57 which was slightly higher than the class mean. Comparison of the second set of opinion essays with the students‘ familiarity with text type, on the other hand, produced similarly counterintuitive results to the first set of essays. The group with the lowest average was once again the students who claimed never to have heard of an opinion essay before the start of the course (2.00), while those who reported they had heard of an opinion essay but had never been taught how to write one had a significantly higher average of 2.50. The group with the highest average was the students who had received instruction on how to write an opinion essay at school, who scored 2.80. 5. Conclusion The results of the targeted instruction in this study are encouraging, showing that a moderate reduction in sociolinguistic transfer may be achieved by foregrounding the different discourse structures used by Englishand German-speaking writers. The second set of opinion essays demonstrated improvements in seven of the eight areas in which sociolinguistic transfer was observed in the students‘ work, with reductions ranging from a very minor 2% to a more considerable 25%. These findings support the suggestion made by Diaz (2012) that raising students‘ awareness of the culture-specific language schemas used in their own language as well as in English may represent a useful method for reducing languaculture dissonance in writing. On the other hand, the examination of learners‘ beliefs about academic writing produced some rather unexpected results. In contrast to their essays, which displayed a number of signs of possible German-English sociolinguistic transfer, the students‘ responses to the questionnaire indicated a preference for an English-language writing style in most of the areas investigated in this paper. The reason for this discrepancy is unclear. One interpretation could be that the German-language rhetorical style posited by various researchers in the field of contrastive rhetoric does not in fact exist. Given the findings of the analysis of the students‘ written work, however, I would suggest that a more likely explanation is that the students were theoretically aware of the discourse structures used by English-speaking writers from other courses at university in which these may have been discussed, but they were not yet able to apply these discourse structures in practice. Nick Scott 94 Comparisons of the students‘ beliefs and written work with the biographical data from the questionnaire also produced some surprising results. Students who had received previous instruction on how to write an opinion essay or who had received general essay writing instruction in English scored lower than their peers, even though the latter sometimes reported they had never even heard of an opinion essay before attending the course. Similarly, attending a school where English was used as the main language of instruction or studying abroad in an English-speaking country appeared to confer no significant advantage concerning sociolinguistic transfer. The reason for these seemingly counterintuitive findings is again unclear, but it is possible that the students who had more previous experience began the course with greater confidence in their writing ability, which may have led them to pay less attention to the instruction than those for whom the text type was completely new. Alternatively, Atkinson (2004) suggests that students‘ writing can be affected by several different ―small cultures‖ such as student culture and youth culture in addition to national culture. It may be that these small cultures also exerted an influence on the students‘ written work, but in ways not revealed through the questionnaire. Taken as a whole, the findings of this paper show that cultural differences in writing style are a complicated issue; an issue that will only become more complex in the future as a result of more contact between different writing cultures and the increasingly blurred boundaries between national cultures and identities. As Matsuda (2002) has pointed out, however, contrastive rhetoric should be seen as a communal endeavour in which each individual helps to establish a collection of resources that may then be used by others. One such resource is the targeted instruction used in this study, whose efficacy as a potential method for reducing languaculture dissonance was demonstrated. In addition, the proposed analytical framework could be used in various educational contexts. Learners may wish to use it as a self-reflective tool which provides them with a set of criteria that can be used to examine the discourse structures in their work without necessarily assuming the existence of culture-specific writing styles, or it could be used by instructors as a basis for the discussion and analysis of academic texts in the classroom. Finally, this paper also reveals some directions for future research. The discrepancy between learners‘ beliefs about academic writing and their written work is an interesting and potentially fruitful subject for ethnographic studies, and the correlation between the self-perceived ability of students and their actual performance as well as the influence of so-called small cultures on academic writing may warrant further investigation. While the overall results of the present study are mixed, therefore, it is hoped it may still contribute to the communal endeavour of contrastive rhetoric by demonstrating the efficacy of a potential method for reducing lan- Academic Writing and Culture 95 guaculture dissonance, providing a set of tools that can be used in the classroom, and highlighting areas for future research. References Atkinson, Dwight (2004). ―Contrasting rhetorics/ contrasting cultures: why contrastive rhetoric needs a better conceptualization of culture‖. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3. 277-289. Baumann, Klaus-Dieter. (1998). ―Die sprachliche Realisierung von Wissenstrukturen in Fachtexten des Englischen und Deutschen‖. In: Lutz Dannenberg & Jürg Niederhauser (eds.). Darstellungsformen der Wissenschaft in Kontrast: Aspekte der Methodik, Theorie und Empirie. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 299-317. Baumgarten, Nicole (2008). ―Writer construction in English and German popularized academic discourse: The uses of we and wir.‖ Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 27/ 4. 409-438. Bourn, Douglas (2010). ―Students as global citizens‖. In: Elspeth Jones (ed.). Internationalisation and the student voice: Higher education perspectives. New York: Routledge. 18-29. Breuer, Esther (2013). ―Academic writing in L1 and FL.‖ In: Bernadette O‘Rourke, Nicola Bermingham & Sara Brennan (eds.). Opening new lines of communication in applied linguistics: Proceedings of the 46 th BAAL annual meeting, 5-7 September 2013. Edinburgh: Heriot-Watt University. Buhl, Silke (1999). ―Gestaltungsprinzipien wissenschaftlicher Texte im Sprachenpaarvergleich Deutsch-Englisch am Beispiel von Texten Einsteins und Russels zur Relativitätstheorie‖. In: Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast (ed.) Wege der Übersetzungs- und Dolmetschforschung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 117-142. Busch-Lauer, Ines (2001). ―Kulturspezifik in englischen und deutschen Originaltexten - Medizin und Linguistik im Vergleich‖. In: Ulla Fix, Stephan Habscheid & Josef Klein (eds.). Zur Kulturspezifik von Textsorten. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. 51-67. Byram, Michael (2001). Developing intercultural competence in practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Clyne, Michael (1981). ―Culture and discourse structure‖. Journal of Pragmatics 5. 61-66. Clyne, Michael (1987). ―Cultural differences in the organisation of academic texts. English and German‖. Journal of Pragmatics 11. 211-247. Clyne, Michael (1991). ―The sociocultural dimension: The dilemma of the German speaking scholar‖. In: Hartmut Schröder (ed.). Subject-oriented texts: Languages for special purposes and text theory. Berlin: de Gruyter. 49-67. Connor, Ulla (2004). ―Intercultural rhetoric research: Beyond texts‖. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3. 291-304. Connor, Ulla (2008). ―Mapping multidimensional aspects of research: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric‖. In: Ulla Connor, Ed Nagelhout & William Rozycki (eds.). Contrastive rhetoric: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 299-315. Connor, Ulla (2011). Intercultural rhetoric in the writing classroom. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Diaz, Adriana (2012). Developing critical languaculture pedagogies in higher education: Theory and practice. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Nick Scott 96 Dörnyei, Zoltan (2010). Questionnaires in second language research: Construction, administration, and processing (2 nd ed.). New York, London: Routledge. Egron-Polak, Eva & Ross Hudson (2010). Internationalization of higher education: Global trends, regional perspectives - IAU 3 rd Global Survey Report. Paris: International Association of Universities. Feng, Anwei, Michael Byram & Mike Fleming (2009). Becoming interculturally competent through education and training. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Galtung, Johan (1981). ―Structure, Culture and Intellectual Style‖. Social Science Formation 20. 817-856. Granger, Sylviane & Stephanie Tyson (1996). ―Connector usage in the English essay writing of native and non-native speakers of English‖. World Englishes 15. 19-29. Hutz, Matthias (1997). Kontrastive Fachlinguistik für den fachbezogenen Fremdsprachenunterricht: Fachzeitschriftenartikel der Psychologie im interlingualen Vergleich. Trier: WVT. Kaplan, Robert (1966). ―Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education‖. Language Learning 16. 1-20. Kaplan, Robert (2005). ―Contrastive rhetoric‖. In: Eli Hindel (ed.). Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 375- 392. Kubota, Ryuko & Al Lehner (2004). ―Towards critical contrastive rhetoric‖. Journal of Second Language Writing 13. 7-27. Lebrun, Jean-Jacques (2011). Scientific writing 2.0: A reader and writer's guide. New Jersey: World Scientific. Liddicoat, Anthony (2012). ―Foreword‖. In: Adriana Diaz, Developing critical languaculture pedagogies in higher education: Theory and practice. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. ix-xii. Liu, Xinghua (2010). ―An investigation of Chinese University EFL learners‘ knowledge about writing‖. Language Studies Working Papers 1. 3-15. Matsuda, Paul (2002). Mission impossible? An agenda for contrastive rhetoric in the 21 st century. Contrastive Rhetoric Roundtable, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Nesselhauf, Nadja (2003). ―The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for teaching‖. Applied Linguistics 24/ 2. 223-242. Oshima, Alice & Ann Hogue (2007). Introduction to academic writing: Third edition. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education. Paige, Michael & Matthew Goode (2009). ―Intercultural competence in international education administration‖. In: Darla Deardoff (ed.). The SAGE handbook of international competence. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. 333-349. Pöckl, Wolfgang (1995). ―Nationalstile in Fachtexten? Vom Tabuzum Modethema‖. Fachsprache 17. 98-107. Sachtleber, Susanne (1993). ―Textstile in der Wissenschaftssprache‖. In: Hartmut Schröder (ed.). Fachtextpragmatik. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 61-79. Schröder, Hartmut (1988). ―Fachtext, interkulturelle Kommunikation und Aufgaben einer spezialisierten Didaktik/ Methodik des fachbezogenen Fremdsprachenunterrichts‖. In: Claus Gnutzmann (ed.). Fachbezogener Fremdsprachenunterricht. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 107-124. Sercu, Lies (2005). ―Teaching foreign languages in an intercultural world―. In: Lies Sercu & Ewa Bandura (eds.). Foreign language teachers and intercultural competence: An international investigation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 1-18. Academic Writing and Culture 97 Siepmann, Dirk (2006). ―Academic writing and culture: An overview of the differences between English, French and German‖. Meta: Translators‟ Journal 51/ 1. 131-150. Thielmann, Winfried (2009). Deutsche und englische Wissenschaftssprache im Vergleich. Hinführen - Verknüpfen - Benennen. Heidelberg: Synchron Wissenschaftsverlag der Autoren. Tomalin, Barry & Mike Nicks (2007). The world‟s business cultures and how to unlock them. London: Thorgood. Tomlinson, Brian & Hitomi Mashuhara (2004). ―Developing cultural awareness: Integrating culture into a language course‖. Modern English Teacher 13/ 1. 5- 11. Trumpp, Eva (1998). Kultur- und textsortenspezifische Vertextungsstrategien. Eine kontrastive fachtextlinguistische Untersuchung zum Kommunikationsbereich der Sportwissenschaft: English - Deutsch - Französisch. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Walker, Deron (2006). ―Improving Korean university student EFL academic writing with contrastive rhetoric: Teacher conferencing and peer-response can help‖. Journal of Asia TEFL 3/ 4. 71-111. Xing, Minjie, Jinghui Wang & Kenneth Spencer (2008). ―Raising students‘ awareness of cross-cultural contrastive rhetoric in English writing via an e-learning course‖. Language Learning and Technology 12/ 2. 71-93. Xinghua, Liu (2011). ―Directions in contrastive rhetoric research‖. Language Studies Working Papers 3. 58-65. Nick Scott English Department University of Graz Jonas Löfström / Betina Schnabel-Le Corre (eds./ éds.) Challenges in Synchronic Toponymy Défis de la toponymie synchronique 2015, 372 Seiten €[D] 78,- ISBN 978-3-7720-8479-9 Due to globalization, synchronic approaches in toponymy arise increasing interest among linguists. This volume takes stock of different approaches to synchronic toponymy presenting linguistic studies on toponyms - in as various fields as grammar, morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics - which describe their structure and lexical status, their semantic facets, applied to the psychological, sociological and political implications of their use and function in discourse. All these factors account for the great variety of linguistic projects related to toponyms, i.e. modelling, as well as the use and normalization of toponyms in spoken and written contexts. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (07071) 97 97-0 \ Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 \ info@francke.de \ www.francke.de Stand: Oktober 2015 · Änderungen und Irrtümer vorbehalten! JETZT BESTELLEN! Placenames and Ecolinguistics Some Considerations for Toponymists Joshua Nash Placenaming (toponymy) has not received much explicit attention from ecolinguists. An outline of ecolinguistics as relevant to toponymy is given. Using several exemplary toponyms in Norf‘k, the language spoken on Norfolk Island, South Pacific, a definition of an ecologically embedded language is put forward. Ecolinguistics can be broadly divided into two themes. The first deals with environmental discourse analysis, often termed eco-critical discourse analysis, critical ecolinguistics, and the language of ecology and environmentalism. The second deals with interactions between humans, mind, and environment, can be expressed through lexico-grammatical studies of how humans talk about and adapt linguistically to new and foreign environments. This second strand is commonly referred to as language ecology or the ecology of language. I will not be overly concerned with the first. Since its beginnings in the 1980s and 1990s in Western universities, ecolinguistics has grown into a research field in its own right, although the boundaries of what ecolinguistic analysis is and how one should go about doing ecolinguistic research has not been made explicit by scholars working in the field. The linguistic community has also questioned the relevance of ecolinguistics as a subdiscipline in general and called into question on what theoretical ground ecolinguistics actually stands. 1 There have also been several critical voices concerning specific aspects of ecolinguistic research. Goddard (1996) and Siegel (1997) launched well weighted and justified critiques against some of the key tenets in (Australian) ecolinguistics. Goddard critiqued ecolinguistic work from a se- 1 For polemical reviews of ecolinguistic work see Edwards (2008) and Ostler (2001). AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Joshua Nash 100 mantic and universalist perspective; Siegel took a line based in pidgin and creole languages and language documentation in the Pacific. With the exception of some recent reflections on what might constitute ecolinguistic theory and thought (e.g. LeVasseur 2014), scholars and theoreticians have not been overly explicit in stating the theoretical breadth of ecolinguistics and its practical implications for general linguistic theory. Ecolinguistics provides several conceptual questions. As regards toponymy I am concerned with one major empirical question: How can relationships involving people, language, place, and names be measured in and through using toponyms? Research in linguistics has generally focused on linguistic structure decontextualised from the environment the language is spoken. Sociolinguistic research has contributed significantly to an understanding of language use and language in social context just as ecolinguistics has created awareness of language as an ecological phenomenon (Haugen 1972). Some ecolinguistic research has focused on more obscure issues, to the extent that some would claim much of what is in the interest range of ecolinguistics does not concern linguistics at all. Regardless, there is a need for contextually sensitive empirical analyses which ask questions about interrelationships concerning language, culture, and the natural environment without being alienated from mainstream linguistics. Broad philosophical analyses of the relationship between lexicon and environmental management are important in their own right. However, it leaves unanswered the question of how to analyse specific aspects of particular linguistic ecologies (e.g. toponyms). There is a distinct gap in linguistics and toponymy of a method and theory which outlines how along with formal structural analysis the ecological implications of toponyms and their connection to the nexus of place where they develop and exist should be analysed. Such an approach will not only emphasise the efficacy of the structural analysis but will also accentuate the multitude of cultural and ecological parameters necessary to consider when conducting an ecolinguistic analysis of toponyms. I reflect briefly on elements relevant to an ecolinguistic consideration of toponymy. These reflections are based on my linguistic fieldwork conducted on Norfolk Island, South Pacific where Norf‘k is spoken and used in toponymy (Nash 2013). The anthropological linguist Edward Sapir illustrates how history may be reflected in toponyms: only the student of language history is able to analyse such names as essex, norfolk, and sutton into their component elements as east saxon, north folk, and south town, while to the lay consciousness these names are etymological units as purely as are ―butter‖ and ―cheese‖. the contrast between a country inhabited by an historically homogeneous group for a long time, full of etymo- Placenames and Ecolinguistics 101 logically obscure place-names, and a newly settled country with its newtowns, wildwoods, and mill creeks, is apparent. (Sapir 1912: 231) As one of the early proponents for exploring relationships between language and its bio-cultural environment, Sapir‘s suggestions about toponymy are still remarkably relevant. In traditional views of linguistic analysis, languages can be studied without any reference to the bio-cultural context in which they are used. They can also be transplanted and replaced by other languages; they are arbitrary codes to express universal cognitive categories. These concepts have been at the heart of the ecolinguistic critique of traditional linguistics. The idea that linguistic practices are detachable from the world suggests one can distinguish between two prototypical language types: (1) ecologically embedded languages, and (2) disconnected languages. These are idealised types and in reality most languages are a complex mix between being constructed by their environment and constructing their environment (Mühlhäusler 2003: 2). However, such a split between conceptions of what languages are is useful in an empirical analysis. An ecologically embedded language should exhibit the following properties: 1. Words reflect social interaction between humans and their environment, e.g. Moo-oo Stone on Norfolk Island is an offshore rock formation with a large amount of moo-oo, or native Norfolk flax; Dar Fig Valley is the name of a valley where locals used to grow figs; Deep Water is a fishing location on the east coast known for the depth of the water in this area. 2. Lexical and grammatical forms are not regarded as arbitrary, e.g. the toponym Johnny Nigger Bun Et (English: Johnny Nigger Burnt It) as a grammatical unit is a sentence. It expresses an idiosyncratic Norfolk personal name form, i.e. ‗Johnny Nigger‘ remembers the uncontrolled burning of a coastal area by an American whaler who came to live on Norfolk in the 1800s. 3. The same word can be used to describe human and other life forms, e.g. the Norf‘k horg (pig, hog) is used to describe animals, humans and even the name of a fishing location. Dar Horg is named after a terrestrial feature which resembles a pig from the sea. 4. The lexicon and grammar of space reflects topography, e.g. Out ar Station is in a distant location on Norfolk; Up in a Stick is topographically ‗up‘ in comparison to the administrative centre of Norfolk which is ‗down‘. 5. Language is a memory of past interactions between humans and nature, e.g. Gun Pit is a concrete structure on the west coast of Norfolk built during World War II. It is also the name Joshua Nash 102 of the fishing ground Ar Gun Pit which uses Gun Pit in one of its marks. A diachronic approach is of vital importance to the study of synchronic patterns of language use. An understanding of the interrelated phenomena can be achieved by interacting in real-world situations, with members of the respective speech communities living in the actual ecology where the language is spoken and used every day. Names associated with tourism on Norfolk (Hibiscus Lodge, Daydreamer Holiday Apartments, Fletcher Christian Apartments, Bligh Court) show how history affects and is reinterpreted through placenames. The vision of Norfolk as an island paradise is reflected in these names. This ecocritical (re-)construction of Norfolk is seen in many domains of naming including the reintroduction of Polynesian names and a distinct absence of Australian anthroponyms. An ecolinguistic point of view considers toponyms as important cultural and environmental artefacts and events. By having access to toponyms and their histories, toponymic maps, and toponymic books or gazetteers, the tapestry of toponymic and topographic contours (names and the world) is revealed (cf. Mark et al.‘s 2011 volume Landscape in Language). Ecolinguistics provides a basis upon which the analysis of this crossdisciplinary mix of linguistic and environmental relationships can be undertaken. An ecolinguistic investigation gives a philosophical and conceptual framework for what I believe can result in a more accurate and detailed description of toponyms in their historical and ecological contexts. References Edwards, John (2008). ―The ecology of language: Insight and illusion‖. In Angela Creese, Peter Martin & Nancy H. Hornberger (eds). Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Vol. 9: Ecology of Language. Berlin: Springer. 15-26. Goddard, Cliff (1996). ―Cross-linguistic research on metaphor.‖ Language & Communication 16/ 2. 145-151. Haugen, Einar (1972). The Ecology of Language. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. LeVasseur, Todd (2014). ―Defining ‗Ecolinguistics‘? : Challenging emic issues in an evolving environmental discipline.‖ Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 5. 21-28. Mark, David M., Andrew G. Turk, Niclas Burenhult & David Stea (eds.) (2011). Landscape in Language: Transdisciplinary Perspectives [Culture and Language Use 4]. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Mühlhäusler, Peter (2003). Language of Environment - Environment of Language. London: Battlebridge. Nash, Joshua (2013). Insular Toponymies: Place-naming on Norfolk Island, South Pacific and Kangaroo Island, South Australia. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Placenames and Ecolinguistics 103 Ostler, Nicholas (2001). ―Little Jack Horner‘s Christmas Pie, Review of Fill & Mühlhäusler (eds.). The Ecolinguistics Reader.‖ [online] www.ogmios.org/ ogmios_files/ 1711.htm. (25 May 2015). Owen, Charles (2004). ―Review of Fill & Mühlhäusler (eds.), The Ecolinguistics Reader.‖ Language & Communication 24. 183-193. Sapir, Edward (1912). ―Language and environment.‖ American Anthropologist 14. 226-242. Siegel, Jeff (1997). ―Review article: Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region by Peter Mühlhäusler (1996).‖ Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17. 219-238. Joshua Nash Discipline of Linguistics University of New England Christian Mair English Linguistics An Introduction bachelor-wissen 3., aktualisierte Auflage 2015 X, 262 Seiten, zahlr. Abb. € [D] 18,99 ISBN 978-3-8233-6956-1 “English Linguistics” is a compact and easy-to-use introduction to English linguistics which + is tailored to the needs of students of English at German, Austrian and Swiss universities, + contains graded exercises to motivate students to carry out independent research, and + bridges the gab between linguistics and the literary and cultural-studies components of the typical BA in English Studies. Bachelor-wissen “English Linguistics” goes beyond the usual introduction in offering accompanying web resources which provide additional material and multi-media illustration. English ���������� ������������� 3 rd ������� �������������� Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (07071) 97 97-0 \ Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de Stand: September 2015 · Änderungen und Irrtümer vorbehalten! JETZT BESTELLEN! Hiberno-English and beyond in J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World A Literary Linguistic Analysis of its Dramatic Significance Nursen Gömceli & Allan James The Hiberno-English employed by J.M. Synge in The Playboy of the Western World has been the source of controversy ever since the play’s premiere at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1907. While its very linguistic hybridity between Irish and English was not deemed by all literary nationalists at the time to be a suitable medium for the expression of a newly emerging Irish cultural identity, the main protagonist of the play, Christy Mahon, nonetheless transforms his own personal identity through his skilful manipulation of the very same language. This paper, by means of a close interpretation of the play’s development, aims to show that the hybrid Hiberno-English indeed functions as a language of liberation. It will provide a detailed literary linguistic analysis of the different levels of dramatic meaning expressed by Synge’s language as code and text, demonstrating how ‘primary text’ (i.e. dialogue) and ‘secondary text’ (i.e. stage directions) work in tandem to effect the characterisation of Christy. 1. Introduction The literary linguistic analysis of Anglophone play texts of the classic ‘bourgeois’ era of drama of the late 18 th , 19 th and earlier 20 th centuries has not been pursued with great intensity, on the whole leaving close textual analysis firmly in the hands of literary scholars. Much of the more linguistically focussed analysis of drama of the modern age has tended to either concentrate on Shakespeare’s plays or to engage with later 20 th century plays (e.g. Stoppard, Pinter, Wesker, Ionesco in translation). In a modest attempt to adjust this state of affairs, this paper analyses the 1907-premiered and much vaunted The Playboy of the Western World AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 106 (PWW) by John Millington Synge. The aim is to show that this play, marked by its eminent stageability, its intense narrative and its literarytextual richness within the conventional bourgeois mode of drama, provides fertile ground for an in-depth linguistic analysis: PWW owes its historical significance for the Literary Revival Movement in Ireland, its position on nation and identity of the time, and not least its continuing literary and dramatic acclaim of over a hundred years mainly to its remarkable language. 2. Controversial language (still) PWW is a three-act play which tells the story of a young man whose repugnant account of patricide turns him into a hero in the Mayo village where he arrives as a stranger taking refuge. The play has been revived numerous times worldwide since its first production in 1907. It has been translated into German, French, Mandarin Chinese, has been turned into a film, a musical theatre (e.g. Tennessee Playboy by Triad Stage 2013), and it has been adapted various times more recently, where the protagonist Christy Mahon has appeared in diverse images and identities such as a Nigerian asylum seeker in a suburb in West Dublin, as in Roddy Doyle and Bisi Adigun‘s production of 2007 at the Abbey Theatre; a Chinese fugitive in urban Beijing, as in the 2006 production of the Irish Pan Pan Theatre; or as the Playboy of the West Indies who lives in Trinidad and ‗speak[s] English spiced with a Creole dialect‘ (Lincoln 2014), as in Mustapha Matura‘s version of 1984. Owing this continuing interest and reputation over the decades also to its scandalous premiere at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin at the turn of the 20 th century, PWW is today widely accepted as one of the masterpieces of Irish drama, and it continues to be staged regularly worldwide, also in the second decade of the 21 st century: For example, it has been staged by The Old Vic in London in 2011 (London Theatre Guide 2014), by The Lyric Theatre in Belfast in 2012 (Maguire 2012), by The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in Madison in 2013 (Shakespeare Theatre 2014), and by The Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland in 2014 (Artists Repertory 2014). Interestingly enough, despite the great appreciation of the play in the world of drama, PWW has mainly been received negatively by theatregoers, which is shown in the reactions to one of the latest productions of the play in the mainstream theatres, The Old Vic performance in London, directed by John Crowley. While most of the reviews of the play by theatre critics are positive, their attitudes to its language are often ambivalent and some of the reviews even reflect dissatisfaction with the play. For instance, the theatre critic and scholar Karen Fricker (2011), writing for The Irish Theatre Magazine, describes the language employed in the play as an ―unfamiliar dialect‖ and comments that ―[i]t was [. . .] risky to Irish Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 107 it up so much as to risk Oirishness‖, while adding that ―the integrity of the musical, linguistic, and stylistic choices, and the commitment of the performers to characters‘ emotional lives and relationships compels and sustains audience credulity.‖ Similarly, Henry Hitchings (2011) in the London Evening Standard comments that ―the vividness of Synge's poetic language comes across well, though some will find it obstructively odd‖ (What‘s On Stage 2011). Indeed, for most of the audience ―the decision to use such a strong Irish accent was a bad one. The cast may as well have been speaking in Russian for all [they] could understand‖ (What‘s On Stage 2011). As can be seen, most of the reaction to the play in the cited reviews centres on its language, the ‗Irishness‘ of which is heftily discussed, as was the case with the first group of audiences at its premiere in 1907. Synge‘s Playboy was originally written as part of the Irish Literary Revival Movement and introduced to Irish audiences as the first Irish play of the Abbey Theatre, which started as the domain for the national representation of Ireland and was established with the aim of promoting Irish language and Irish culture by bringing the history and lives of Irish people onto stage in the early 20 th century, a time when Ireland was declaring its wish for independence from Britain. Thus, the play created a shock effect on its contemporary audiences, which even caused a riot in the theatre during the third act of the play. From then on, the closing scenes were performed as in a dumb show. In a telegram that Lady Gregory sent to William Butler Yeats, with whom she had founded the Abbey Theatre, at the end of Act I, she wrote ―Play a great success‖ (Ellis 2003). Her second message, however, sent during the performance of Act III, reads as follows: ―Play broke up in disorder at the word ‗shift‘‖ (Ellis 2003). Performed in the national theatre at a time when there was a growing sense of nationalism and Ireland was trying to build a new national and cultural identity for itself, the play was regarded as a piece which far from promoting Irish culture had debased the Irish people in front of the whole world ―in the foulest language [they had] ever listened to from a public platform‖, as Arthur Griffiths (cit. in Foster 2000: 91), the leader of Sinn Fein, fulminated. According to the nationalists of the time, the language of the play was not Irish at all, and its so-called ‗hero‘ Christy Mahon was a disgrace to the Irish nation and the notion of Irish heroism. The opinion was that the Irish people could not be so misguided as to make a man who tells them stories about how he killed his father their hero, nor could the Irish girls be so indecent to appear in their ‗shifts‘, i.e. petticoats, in front of a man, as was implied by Synge through the words of his protagonist Christy Mahon, in the scene where he declares his love for Pegeen: ―It‘s Pegeen I‘m seeking only, and what‘d I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe, from this place to the Eastern World? ‖ (3.54). Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 108 It was this particular use of the word ‗shifts‘, which was associated with adultery and prostitution at the time that caused the riot in the theatre. Thus, soon after his first encounter with Irish audiences, Synge was attacked not only as a ―faker of peasant speech‖ (qtd. in Kiberd 1979: 59), but also as a ―moral degenerate‖ (qtd. in Foster 2000: 91) and ―outside agitator‖ (Harrington 2000: 10) who had betrayed their Movement and their national values. Indeed, Synge‘s hero did neither speak a pure Irish, but a hybrid of English and Irish, nor was he representative of a true Irish hero who would arouse the nationalistic feelings of the Irish people and make them proud of their ‗Irishness.‘ However, according to the playwright, this was the very intention of his material, which was perceived by his audiences as a ‗betrayal‘ of his own nation, while in fact it was his ―revolutionary‖ (Kiberd 1993: 203) contribution to the Irish nationalistic cause aimed at revealing the essence of the Irish spirit. As Cusack (2009) clearly explains in his work The Politics of Identity in Irish Drama, in contrast to the nationalists who worked for the Gaelic League and were linguistically conservative in their views, such as e.g. Douglas Hyde, Patrick Pearse, and Arthur Griffiths, Synge did not regard the English language and culture as an ―impurity in Irish identity that had to be removed‖ (121). Quite the contrary, he was ―specifically attracted to the discontinuities created when Irish and English cultures intersected‖ (Cusack 2009: 119). Furthermore, as Kiberd (1995) notes, while the nationalists/ revivalists were strongly attached to the precolonial past only to have control of it in the present, Synge‘s ―deepest desire was to demonstrate the continuing power of the radical Gaelic past to disrupt the revivalist present‖ (187). Thus, as Cusack (2009) claims, he would be able to ―disrupt the colonial identity projected onto Ireland by England‖ (121). To this end, however, Synge did not choose to be part of a violent political revolution, even though he defined himself as a ―radical [. . .] who wanted to change things root and branch‖ (cit in Kiberd 1995: 175), but chose to ―work in [his] own way‖ (cit. in Murray 1997: 67) for Irish independence, as he wrote to Maud Gonne in his 1897 letter of resignation from L‟Association Irlandaise, which she had established: ―I wish to work in my own way for the cause of Ireland, and I shall never be able to do so if I get mixed up with a revolutionary or semi-military movement‖ (qtd. in Murray 1997: 67). Having thus put an end to his short-lived attachment to a semi-military movement, Synge indeed continued to work for the Irish cause ―in [his] own way‖ (cit. in Murray 1997: 67) , which was ‗acting through words‘ rather than following any violent action. Eventually, the outcome of such an approach was the prominence of language in the work of the playwright, which was dedicated to the Irish Literary Revival and to meet the Irish audiences at the Abbey, the national theatre of Ireland. Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 109 The language of the play which was highly criticised by its audiences was the outcome of Synge‘s attraction to the intersection of Irish and English cultures, which in the end led him to develop the linguistic hybrid of Irish and English, known as Hiberno-English (cf. 4.1. below). As described by Cusack (2009), this dialect ―was a fusion of two entirely familiar languages, his audience‘s declared ‗native‘ tongue and the tongue they most commonly spoke and understood‖, yet ―the actual product was unlike anything Synge‘s audience had heard before‖ (132). Hence, Synge was seriously attacked by his nationalist audiences who "could not embrace the new hybrid language which [he] was magnifying in its carrier Christy‖. Overlooking the political significance of this dialect from a critical perspective, they debased Synge as an ―unapologetic ascendancy parasite, stocking up his tourist‘s notebook with self-serving studies in a dying culture‖ (Kiberd 1995: 174) and his dialect as a ―hopeless half-way house‖ (cit. in Kiberd 1995: 174). 3. Christy Mahon’s liberation through language In the play Christy Mahon, the most prominent projector of Synge‘s Hiberno-English among all the other characters, arrives in the village situated ―on a wild coast of Mayo‖ (1.2) in the dark, as a mysterious stranger who looks ―very tired and frightened and dirty‖ (1.8), who only reveals that he is running away from the police, but fails to articulate otherwise even the reason for this escape to the curious villagers in the public-house (shebeen) he first goes into - despite the insistent curious and suspicious questions of the people he encounters there, namely, Pegeen, her fiancé Shawn, her father Michael and his farmer friends Philly and Jimmy. When he is finally confronted by Pegeen, who truthfully remarks, ―You did nothing at all. A soft lad the like of you wouldn‘t slit the windpipe of a screeching sow‖ (1.10), he feels insulted yet continues to deny this truth, whereupon Pegeen reacts resorting to a violent deed, though in a ―mock rage‖: ―Would you have me knock the head of you with the butt of the broom? ‖ (1.10). Feeling truly threatened by Pegeen, Christy in a flash responds ―in a sharp cry of horror‖, seeking protection behind a lie: ―Don‘t strike me. I killed my poor father, Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that‖ (1.10). With this reply, however, he instantly magnetises the villagers, who now approach him not only with curiosity but also with great respect and admiration, declaring him a ―daring fellow‖ (1.10) who heroically killed his father ―in a windy corner of high, distant hills‖ (1.11). As Christy becomes more conscious of the villagers‘ growing admiration for him, he begins to feel stronger, flirts with Pegeen, at which he ―expand[s] with delight‖ since this is his ―first confidential talk he has ever had with a woman‖ (1.15), and prides himself on that false identity: Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 110 ―Up to the day I killed my father, there wasn‘t a person in Ireland I knew the kind I was‖ (1.15). ―I a seemly fellow with great strength in me and bravery of...‖ (1.16), he continues, yet just at that moment, a knock on the door terrifies him, reducing him to his former self as a shy, timid, fearful boy: ―Oh, glory! it‘s late for knocking, and this last while I‘m in terror of the peelers [the police], and the walking dead‖ (1.16). Thus, not only his instant reaction, but also his choice of vocabulary reveals how incongruous he is with the heroic identity he gains from his invented story about the murder of his father. Indeed, when Widow Quin enters to take Christy to her own place for the night since ―it isn‘t fitting [. . .] to have his likeness lodging with an orphaned girl‖ (1.17), Christy feels insecure and begins to talk ―shyly‖, ―doubtfully‖, and ―timidly‖ (1.17), at which Widow Quin suggestively comments: ―Well, aren‘t you a little smiling fellow? It should have been great and bitter torments did rouse your spirits to a deed of blood. [. . .]. It‘d soften my heart to see you sitting so simple with your cup and cake, and you fitter to be saying your catechism than slaying your da‖ (1.17). In this scene, we also witness the rivalry between Pegeen and Widow Quin over Christy. While Pegeen insists that she ―will not have him stolen off and kidnabbed while himself‘s abroad‖, Widow Quin claims that not only her place located on ―rising hill‖ but also she herself as a woman who has ―buried her children and destroyed her man‖ will be a ―wiser comrade for a young lad than a girl‖ (1.18) like Pegeen. Act I comes to an end with Christy‘s words of self-satisfaction in the privacy of his room: ―[T]wo fine women fighting for the likes of me - till I‘m thinking this night wasn‘t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by‖ (1.20). The following act of the play, Act II, is the part where we observe Christy gradually developing into a poet-like figure, eloquent and fluent in his speech, through which he gains the admiration of the women in the village. As the second act opens, we see the girls Susan, Sara, Nelly and Honor in Pegeen‘s shebeen, strongly wishing to ―set [their eyes] on a man killed his father‖ (2.20). Discovering through his boots that Christy is at home, they ask him to come in, upon which he does so ―as meek as a mouse‖ (2.23). Showered with gifts like eggs, butter, cake and pullet, all of which the girls offer him by showing their concern for a man who must have fallen weak ―since [he] did destroy [his] da‖ (2.23), Christy finds himself in an astounded state. Just at this moment, the arrival of Widow Quin, who orders the girls to make Christy‘s breakfast ready and then invites Christy to start telling them how he killed his father, puts Christy back into a self-confident mood since he is aware that his story of this violent but brave act will keep him in his socially respected position among the women, too. So ―beginning to be pleased‖ (2.24), he makes a start to his narration, which indeed soon turns him into a hero among his listeners who admire him for his brave deed and wonderful speech. Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 111 Soon afterwards, however, the unexpected arrival of Christy‘s father Old Mahon, who has been looking for him everywhere in his anger and frustration with his head in bandages and plaster, instantly takes Christy back to his insecure and timid state. ―[C]owering in terror‖ (2.35) behind the door in the shebeen, he fears that his father will reveal to the villagers his true nature as a coward, lazy and irresponsible man, as a result of which, he thinks, he will fall from Pegeen‘s grace. So he begs Widow Quin, the only witness to his father‘s arrival, to keep Old Mahon‘s arrival a secret and help him to preserve Pegeen‘s interest and love for him. As he expects, he receives Widow Quin‘s support in return for a ―mountainy ram and a load of dung‖ (2.37), and so he joins the girls waiting for him and leaves for the mule race. In the race, which takes place in the last act of the play, Christy turns out to be the fastest jockey, and is admired even more by all the villagers, both men and women, whose great cheering of him makes Old Mahon suddenly see and recognize his son. Determined to have his revenge of him, Mahon leaves the crowd and rushes to beat him. In the meantime, Christy is announced as the champion winner of the race and is given three gifts: a bagpipe, a three-horned blackthorn and a fiddle which was previously played by a poet. Indeed, parallel to this symbolism, it is in this scene that Christy regains his poetic skills and flourishes in his speech. Especially in the succeeding scene, which is like a love duet between Pegeen and Christy and very rich in romantic imagery, Christy excels in his eloquence. Pegeen is now totally in love with this man who, in her own words, ―has such poet‘s talking, and such bravery of heart‖ (3.46), and announces to her father her decision to marry Christy, not Shawn, and he in the end consents to their marriage. Just at that moment, however, Old Mahon and Widow Quin, followed by a crowd of villagers booing Christy, rush into the shebeen and reveal the truth about him and his invented story of killing his father with a loy also to Pegeen and her father. Thenceforth, like the altered public view of Christy, Pegeen also changes in her approach to Christy, who is now for her ―an ugly liar‖ who was only ―playing off the hero‖ (3.52). Deciding publicly that they should get rid of him in order to save themselves from a future destruction by the law, the villagers headed by Pegeen put a tight rope around his arms and a double hitch over his head, and start pulling Christy on the floor to give him his retribution and have him hanged by the police, which according to Michael James is a sign of their ―pity‖ for him, since ―hanging is an easy and speedy end‖ (3.55). Throughout this scene, where comedy is mixed with tragedy, Christy‘s growing indignation makes him feel much stronger than ever before, and in his anger and desperation he asks Pegeen if he is not a ―proven hero in the end‖ (3.54), after all what he did in the race in front of all people, to which she distantly replies, in her famous most widely quoted words: ―there‘s a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed‖ (3.55). Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 112 Observing that Christy does not give up and challenges them all for their ‗dirty deed‘, Pegeen ―blows the fire, with a bellows‖ and ―burns his leg‖ (3.56), as he is still tied up. When Old Mahon comes back exactly at this moment to take his son, all the villagers who had been thinking that he must have already died at his fight with Christy after the race, run away in their shock leaving Christy there. Surprisingly, while Old Mahon, and probably an audience as well, expect Christy to follow his father in order to find security and protection back in his roots in his miserable state, Christy refuses to go with him ―like a gallant captain with his heathen slave‖ (3.57) in his words, and declaring himself as the ―master of all fights from now‖ (3.57), he leaves the Mayo village, heading out to a new future in an unspecified place. As Cusack (2009) remarks with regard to Synge‘s plays, in his work ―only the individual who controls language can control his or her destiny‖ and ―the radical transformation occurs when the individual discovers or is taught to use this speech [which he learns from the community] selfconsciously to redefine himself‖ (120). In this line, it is highly significant in the play that Synge develops his protagonist as a character who ‗constructs‘ an identity for himself ‗through language‘, and thus reaches a state of liberation from the repressive forces in his own community. As shown above in the analysis of the play, when Christy Mahon arrives in the Mayo village as a total stranger with nothing known about his background except that he is escaping from the police, who stood for the British law at the time when the play was written and staged, which in return stands as a reminder of the colonising force, he is a timid and shy person who is in need of help and encouragement to hold a fluent conversation. Yet with the realisation that his momentarily invented lie about having murdered his father, which he in fact develops into an epic story with the massive contribution of the villagers who thus conversely construct this identity as hero for Christy, makes him the centre of attention and a figure of respect and admiration, he develops into an articulate speaker and gradually excels in his speech, talking like a poet, as observed in the second act of the play. Correspondingly, it can be argued that this false identity constructed through language and only existing in words, functions positively for Christy as an instrument to help him gain his confidence, even though it inevitably collapses at some stage. It is through this artificial identity that Christy feels empowered and confident and so wins Pegeen‘s heart and becomes the champion jockey at the mule race. Thus Christy for the first time in his life proves himself a success in front of the people, as a result of which he also ‗acts‘ like a real heroic character, as we see in the third act of the play where his heroism is no longer only reflected in his words, but also in his actions, as emphasised in the stage directions. He talks and acts ―raising his hands‖, ―sharply‖, ―more threateningly‖, ―in low and intense voice‖, ―almost shouting‖, or with ―his voice rising and growing‖ Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 113 (3.52-56). Thus undergoing a considerable transformation in his character through his heroic speech which leads him to gain ―heroic consciousness and heroic action‖ (Cusack 2009: 120), at the end of the play Christy is no longer the meek and insecure young boy who is in need of support and hides behind the power of words to make him feel powerful, but a self-confident and naturally brave man who has become aware of his own capacities and has thus grown into maturity. This development in Christy‘s character is equally reflected in his decision to leave the Mayo village and his father behind, both standing for his past and his old ties, and going into a new future which he himself will shape and determine through his own will. This decision Christy makes at the end of the play is a sign for his determination to liberate himself from his old ties, from a past that has imposed on him an identity which had never been his own. Additionally, it indicates that he will seek his future at a place where he will be allowed to exist freely not only in the identity he himself has discovered as his own but also by ‗using the language he wants to use.‘ Hence, he eventually refuses, in his own words, to be the ―heathen slave‖ of the ―gallant captain‖ (3.57), Christy at the end of the play experiences a transition from restriction and oppression into freedom and liberation. Thus, his ―transform[ed] speech leads to [the] liberation of [his] consciousness‖ (Cusack 2009: 120). Declan Kiberd observes that on a symbolic level this transition Synge‘s protagonist undergoes through Act I into Act III corresponds with Frantz Fanon‘s dialectic of ―decolonisation from occupation, through nationalism, to liberation‖ (1995: 184). Accordingly Act I, with Christy in his father‘s cruel home standing for the Irish self-disgust under colonial misrule, represents Ireland‘s ‗decolonisation‘ process from occupation under British rule. Act II, where Christy discovers an over-flattering image of himself not only in the villagers‘ admiration of him but also in the mirror of Pegeen‘s shebeen, which according to Kiberd represents the ―acme of the Irish pride under the conditions of a self-glorifying revival‖ (1995: 184), stands for ‗nationalism‘. Act III highlights ‗liberation‘ in that Christy goes to his own future in the identity he himself has discovered, refusing the identity given to him by the villagers - in Kiberd‘s words, the hero image in the mirror held up to him by the villagers who themselves are ruled by a distant authority under colonialism. Going back to Fanon, Kiberd further explains that liberation should not be confused with nationalism, since nationalism ―still persists in defining itself in categories imposed by the coloniser‖ (1995: 184), and explains that true liberation would occur only when a nation reaches a self-critical capacity with an awareness of the self and integrates the positive with the negative, and the past with the present (1995: 85). Correspondingly, it can be argued that Synge‘s intended message in PWW, for which he was almost ―crucif[ied]‖ (qtd. in Kiberd 1995: 167) during his lifetime for having misrepresented Irish nationality, was to offer a new Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 114 concept of ‗Irishness‘ that was not based on nationalism or revivalism but on ‗liberation‘. In this line, what Synge offers for true liberation is a new ‗hybrid‘, a creative and innovative way of redefining Irishness, without a complete refusal of the traditional. In the play, this idea of ‗hybridity‘ is reflected at two levels: in the transformed identity of the protagonist Christy Mahon, who symbolically and tellingly becomes the champion winner of not the horse race but the ‗mule‘ race, an animal which itself is a hybrid by its nature, and in the hybrid language Christy uses. While leaving the Mayo village and going into a new future, Christy no longer wants to kill his father - symbolizing the traditional - but instead constructs a new life for himself in his own unique identity as a self-conscious and an independent person in a new future away from the Mayo village under the colonial rule. As for Christy‘s hybrid language, which will be examined in further detail in the subsequent parts of this paper, it could be perhaps argued that on a symbolic level this is the most important element in the play in conveying the playwright‘s message to his audience. Making Christy - the main and most eloquent projector of his hybrid language - the character that reaches liberation, Synge highlights ‗language‘ as the key element in the formation of a unique national identity and a major instrument on the way towards liberation from oppression and extreme nationalism. The language he offers to this end is the hybrid of Hiberno- English, through which Synge emphasises the fact that the new model of language should not exclude the traditional completely but show elements of the new as well, through the use of which not only a ―negotiation between modernity and tradition‖ (Zingg 2013: 80) is possible, but also a unique national identity distinct from the identity imposed by the colonising power can be formed. 4. Hiberno-English: literary dialect as code and as text In the preceding two sections, Synge‘s Hiberno-English has been highlighted: in 2. from a ‗code‘-centred perspective, and in 3. from a more ‗text‘-centred perspective. This means that the language of the play has been considered firstly in terms of its linguistic characteristics as the anglophone ‗variety‘ or dialect in which the work is written as such and secondly in terms of its dramatic function for the play. In addition to considering the play‘s effects on readers and audiences, it was discussed how Hiberno-English is used to signal Christy‘s character transformation(s) within the plot. From a linguistic point of view, the focus of a code analysis is on the grammatical, lexical and orthographic/ phonological characteristics of the play‘s language itself, considering for example, the consistency and appropriateness of the play‘s linguistic realisation on page and stage (including even its pure intelligibility to a Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 115 readership/ audience). The focus of a text analysis is on how certain linguistic choices express the dramatic semiotics of the play, e.g. the development of character, plot and setting. This type of analysis can, for example, pay attention to the varying syntactic complexity and lexical density of PWW‟s main protagonist‘s utterances as his character develops. In the following sections, the literary linguistic interpretation of the play will focus on how the ‗variety‘ is used to achieve various semiotic effects locally in the play text as such. 4.1. Synge’s language as code The language of PWW has been the object of intermittent linguistic analysis since the 1970‘s, with the texts of all six of Synge‘s plays systematically included in the Corpus of Irish English of Hickey (2003). And of course in any case, as has been pointed out in the previous sections, the language characteristics of the play have been at the forefront of its public impact, starting with the Abbey Theatre audience‘s original objection to the word shifts. Critical discussion then and since has partly revolved around issues of the ‗authenticity‘ or ‗verisimilitude‘ of Synge‘s Hiberno- English relative to the dialects found in the west and south-west of Ireland of the time (cf. the playwright ‗as faker of peasant speech‘ - or not; 2. above), but increasingly linguistic analysis has focussed on the structural details of the literary dialect of PWW and other Synge plays with reference to the Irish language and in view of general features of Irishinfluenced English and the cultural values that it signifies (cf. especially Bliss 1971; Kiberd 1993; L‘Hôte 2003). Additionally, Sullivan (1980) traces the history of Hiberno-English as a dramatic medium since Elisabethan times pointing out an increasing preference over time in plays for the use of marked syntactic features of the variety as opposed to the originally favoured phonological ones. With regard to the authenticity/ verisimilitude issue, he sees literary Hiberno-English as a legitimate variety in its own right, noting tellingly that ―[t]he central intention of the playwright is not an isomorphic presentation of the dialect but a theatrical portrayal indicative of certain essentializing social characteristics‖ (Sullivan 1980: 208). Indeed the literary dialect has been labelled a ―heightened‖ ―distillation‖ and ―intensification‖ (Kiberd 1993) of corresponding non-literary varieties. Linguistic studies of Synge‘s Hiberno-English trace its inspiration in the literary work of Douglas Hyde, a leading member of the Gaelic League in the late 19 th century‘s striving for Irish independence and who in his Beside the Fire (1890) and Love Songs of Connacht (1893) translated the original Irish into an ‗Anglo-Irish‘ (Bliss 1971). Whereas in the former ―he was intentionally using the dialect to reproduce not the letter but the spirit of the Irish folk-tale‖ (Bliss 1971: 38) thereby introducing expressions which had no counterpart in the Irish original, in the latter he ―re- Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 116 produced the Irish idioms of the original‖ (Bliss 1971: 38), i.e. literally. These two features combined with the fact that Hyde translated the songs into prose were of great influence on the subsequent shaping of Synge‘s Hiberno-English. One literary linguistic effect was that the playwright ―transformed the language into a code, elaborate in complication, simple in its principle‖ (Deane 1971: 140) - capable of showing the richness of expression of peasant speech as represented in a dramatic medium. The few available accounts of the structural characteristics of the Hiberno-English (H-E) of PWW draw attention to its grammatical, lexical (and, marginally, phonetic) typicalities. Its structural characteristics are on the one hand those shared with the spoken rural Irish English of the late 19 th century, and on the other those which are unique to Synge‘s literary dialect itself. Thus, for instance, the presence of the ‗BE after + V-ing‘ immediate perfective construction is a well-known syntactic feature of Irish English of the 19 th century and since (cf. Shawn: ―Aren‘t we after making a good bargain ...‖, 1.4), as is the Irish-derived morphological feature of the diminutive suffix ‗-een‘ : cf. ‗cnuceen‘ (=‗little knock‘ - hillock), ‗Pegeen‘ (=‗little Peg‘ - Peggy), ‗poteen‘ (=‗little pot‘ - illicit whiskey) , ‗priesteen‘, ‗shebeen‘ (= Irish ‗sìbìn‘ i.e. ‘little jug‘ country pub), and the contemptuously used ‗Shaneen‘ (=‗little Shawn‘). A more complete, but still not fully comprehensive, list of the grammatical typicalities of the H-E of the play would also include: a. subordinating ‗and‘ usually followed by a non-finite verb (cf. Pegeen: ―and I piling the turf‖, 1.6) or a verbless clause altogether (cf. Pegeen: ―and you a fine lad‖, 2.29) b. clefting as ‗it‘ + ‗is‘ + complement + relative clause (cf. Christy: ―It‘s little I‘m understanding‖, 2.29) c. unbound reflexives such as ‗himself‘, ‗itself‘ (cf. Shawn: ―Where‘s himself? ‖, 1.3) d. zero relative pronoun following Subject (cf. Pegeen: ―a fine lad is the like of you‖, 3.47) e. ‗let‘ imperatives (cf. Shawn: ―Let you not be tempting me‖, 1.6) f. ‗is it? ‘ as invariant tag question (cf. Michael: ―You‘d be going, is it? ‖, 1.7). Orthographically, it is only the spellings of ‗divil‘ (devil), ‗kidnabbed‘ (kidnapped), ‗lepping‘ (leaping), ‗riz‘ (raised) and ‗polis‘ (police) that signal a specifically H-E pronunciation, there being no differences indicated in the pronunciation of the characters themselves (e.g. of Christy as coming probably from Munster, Co. Clare, as opposed to the other characters as natives of Co. Mayo in Connaught). The whole play is otherwise written in Standard English spelling, the assumption of Synge being that actors would use H-E pronunciation in any case in performance. Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 117 In summary, Bliss (1979) lists seven types of ‗non-standard words and phrases‘ which characterise the H-E of all Synge‘s plays (but most prominently PWW). With exemplifications added here, they are: a. those adopted directly from Irish (e.g. notably ‗loy‘ - long narrow spade; ‗banbhs‘ - piglets; ‗cleeve‘ - Irish ‗cliabh‘, wicker basket; ‗curagh‘ - frame boat) b. those translated from Irish (most prominently, ‗playboy‘ - Irish ‗buchachaill báire‘) c. ‗mistranslations‘, (e.g. in PWW ‗gaudy‘ for ‗splendid‘, original Irish ‗gréagach‘) d. words and phrases formerly used in Standard (British) English, now obsolete (e.g. ‗for to‘ in PWW; cf. Christy: ―goat‘s milk for to colour my tea‖, 2.23) e. those in general dialect use in England and Scotland (e.g. ‗skelp‘ meaning ‗quick blow‘ (cf. Jimmy: ―Look at him skelping her! ‖, 3.42); negator ‗never‘ for ‗not‘ with past tense (cf. Sara: ―I never seen to this day‖, 2.23), which also illustrates verb past participle as preterite; ‗them‘ as third person plural subjective and demonstrative (cf. Nelly: ―them‘s his boots‖, 2.22, also illustrating nonstandard verb concord) f. those in dialect use in limited areas (e.g. in PWW ‗peelers‘ for ‗police(men)‘) g. those which are unique (see below). 4.2. Synge’s language as text The material identity of the language of literature is text and the properties of the code are of course crafted for particular semiotic effect. Thus, the presence but also the great frequency of the Irish-derived present habitual (durative/ iterative) ‗(DO BE) + V-ing‘ in the play (cf. Christy: ―Is it often the police do be coming into this place […]? ‖, 1.8) is a grammatical marker of ‗code as text‘. Indeed, a count of the occurrence of this verb form in all six plays of Synge reveals that it is most frequent in PWW with 1.7 occurrences per sentence of play text (Bliss 1971: 41). In this respect L‘Hôte (2003: 43-51) highlights the ‗different temporality‘ of Irish peasant culture which Synge expresses by the frequent presence in the text of this habitual construction together with the other habitual ‗DO + V‘, (cf. Sarah: ―Did you never read in the papers the way murdered men do bleed and drip? ‖, 2.22) combined with the immediate perfective construction ‗BE after + V-ing‘ just discussed. With particularly the latter, L‘Hôte asserts that this temporality is captured as ‗circular‘, ‗recurrent‘, but partly ‗linear‘ too (2003: 50). Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 118 At this point it should perhaps be noted that selected linguistic structures which are ‗functionalised‘ for literary purposes do so as ‗defamiliarisation‘ devices (Douthwaite 2000) and via ‗foregrounding‘ (Mukařovsky 1964). They effect value-added meanings contextually, expressed as ‗deviation‘, i.e. unexpected irregularity of structure, and ‗parallelism‘, i.e. unexpected regularity of structure (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010: 31-32). In dramatic text, as ‗implicit‘ cues (Pfister 1993) in protagonists‘ speech (or in speech addressed to them), such structures mainly serve the characterisation of the dramatis personae themselves - in PWW most prominently of Christy Mahon. Given the rich literary idiom of the play, the cues are contextually also ‗poetic‘ in their effect. At a local, text-world level of reference in PWW, there is considerable evidence of crafted structural patterning within phraseology and prosody. With regard to phraseology, increasing syntactic complexity and lexical density characterises Christy‘s speech as he profiles himself favourably, in the first instance to Pegeen. Building his image as a well-travelled man, he produces strings of double-stacked pre-modifying adjectives in his narrative (cf. ―I am walking the world […] into stony scattered fields, or scribes of bog, where you‘d see young, limber girls, and fine, prancing women, making laughter with the men‖, 1.14), clearly evidencing rhythmic harmony, rhetorical parallelism, and alliteration with ―stony scattered [...] scribes […] see.‖ On the other hand, enumeration of verbs in their continuous form characterises Christy‘s depiction of the repetitive monotony of his pre-‗killing‘ existence as ―and I there drinking, waking, eating, sleeping‖ (1.15) and together with alliteration ―And I after toiling, moiling [of Middle English origin], digging, dodging from the dawn till dusk‖ (1.15). However, as the second act progresses, Christy‘s syntax becomes increasingly expansive, as he relates his heroic post-‗killing‘ wandering as a fugitive to Pegeen: It‘s well you know what it‘s a lonesome thing to be passing small towns with the lights shining sideways when the night is down, or going in strange places with a dog noising before you and a dog noising behind, or drawn to the cities where you‘d hear a voice kissing and talking deep love in every shadow of the ditch, and you passing on with an empty, hungry stomach failing from your heart (2.28). Within the general paratactic style of utterance, the narration of his journey is expressed in a syntactically continuous mode - Christy on the move with a predominance of ‗V-ing‘ constructions (‗passing‘, ‗going‘), describing the environments of his journey equally via continuous (non-finite) verbs, ―lights shining‖, ―dog noising‖, ―voice kissing and talking‖. Repetition of preposition further links the circumstances as ―with… shining‖, ―with…noising…and…noising‖ to his own personal state ―with an empty, hungry stomach failing from your heart‖ (2.28). In other words, Synge Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 119 expresses the desolate continuity of Christy‘s journey using the rhetorical impact of the syntactic parallelisms and repetitions. In Act III, Christy‘s language becomes more and more ornamental as he woos Pegeen and imagines their romantic future together. While the syntax is still largely paratactic in style with verbs in their continuous ‗ing‘ form, the lexis densifies in its figurative expression, and includes imaginative metaphor, incorporating especially religious and mythological personifications: It‘s little you‘ll think if my love‘s a poacher‘s, or an earl‘s itself, when you‘ll feel my two hands stretched around you, and I squeezing kisses on your puckered lips, till I‘d feel a kind of pity for the Lord God is all ages sitting lonesome in his golden chair (3.46). And: If the mitred bishops seen you that time they‘d be the like of the holy prophets, I‘m thinking, do be straining the bars of Paradise to lay eyes on the Lady Helen of Troy, and she abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl (3.46). Thus Synge depicts the sublimity of Christy‘s declared love for Pegeen in a concentration of personified heaven-inspired images in close succession which constitute a dense field of lexical semantic hyperbole. Enumeration of ‗-ing‘ verbs also signals a physical dynamism attributable to Christy in Widow Quin‘s ―putting him down […] for racing, leaping, pitching and the Lord knows what‖ (2.24) in the subsequent sports event. Extreme alliteration is used to underscore Sara‘s euphoric toasting of Christy in celebration of his just related murderous deed of heroism: ―Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law‖ (2.26). There is also salient use made of alliteration for foregrounding effect with coordinating phrases such as Pegeen‘s ―(great) powers and potentates‖ (1.13) and ―(every) cot and cabin‖ (1.14) and Widow Quin‘s ―(are you) fasting or fed, young fellow? ‖ (2.24), all in lines addressed to Christy. In Act II, lexical chaining of the key epithet ―lonesome‖ as extreme ‗parallelism‘ occurs in the dialogue between Christy and Pegeen, highlighting the former‘s self-pitying image cultivated to gain the latter‘s favours: CHRISTY. ―[…] and I a lonesome fellow […]‖ PEGEEN. ―What call have you to be that lonesome […]? ‖ Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 120 CHRISTY. ―[…] you know it‘s a lonesome thing […]‖ CHRISTY. ―[…] odd men and they living lonesome […]‖ CHRISTY. ―How would a lovely handsome woman the like of you be lonesome […]? ‖ PEGEEN. ―[…] the like of yourself should be lonesome […]‖ PEGEEN. ―It‘s only letting on you are to be lonesome […]‖ CHRISTY. ―[…]but I was lonesome all times, and born lonesome […]" (2.28-29). Considering the textual use of metre, as Bliss (1971: 52) observes, certain metrical patterns characterise the ends of speeches - e.g. the cadence x x „x x „x, i.e. a succession of an anapest and iamb occurs no less than sixty times in PWW, and the cadence x x „x x x „x, i.e. a succession of two anapests eight times. Moreover, alexandrines (lines of six iambic feet) also occur regularly at the end of characters‘ speeches, for example: ―as naked as an ash-tree in the moon of May‖ ( 1.16, Christy), ―you‘ll wed the widow Casey in a score of days‖ (2.24, Christy), ―you‘d see him raising up a haystack like the stalk of a rush‖ (2.34, Mahon), ―for I‘m mounted on the springtide of the stars of luck‖ (3.50, Christy), ―I‘ve lost the only Playboy of the Western World‖ (3.57, Pegeen). These structural patternings enhance the rhetorical quality of the characters‘ diction as ‗poetic effect‘ via such phraseological and prosodic highlighting, adding impact to the meaning force of the lexicogrammar realised, suggesting that the character‘s ‗final words‘ are indeed just that. Turning to lexical patterning, the most prominent textual cue to characterisation (Culpeper 2001: 182-202), it has been noted that of Synge‘s plays, PWW in particular relies for its effect very largely on its ―exotic vocabulary‖ (Bliss 1971: 42), the lexically striking ‗playboy‘ itself being an idiosyncratic translation by the playwright from Irish (as pointed out by Kiberd 1993: 210). In addition, vocabulary is taken over directly from Irish without it being considered general H-E usage (e.g. as confirmed by non-inclusion in Dolan‘s Dictionary of Hiberno-English (2013)): examples are ―spavindy‖ (lame, lazy - Irish ‗speachan‘) and ―streeleen‖ (discourse flow [mistranslated from Irish ‗straoillin‘ - a swathe]). And most ‗exotic‘ of all are the words which Synge invents himself or uses idiosyncratically: e.g. ―louty‖ (clumsy), ―pitchpike‖ (pitchfork), ―swiggle‖ (swing + wiggle) or ―Mister honey‖ as address form to Christy. Another indication of the striking lexis characteristic of the play is revealed by a rough count of the words and phrases that do not occur in more than one of Synge‘s plays (Bliss 1971: 41), which shows an overwhelming presence of such ‗unique‘ items in PWW - 17.0 per ten pages of play text (e.g. as opposed to 5.5 per ten pages in Deidre of the Sorrows or 1.7 in Riders to the Sea). Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 121 It is indeed in the speech of the main protagonist of PWW that most of the codal and textual features described are manifest. L‘Hôte (2003) observes: ―He plays with words and his fight with H-E syntax is close to heroism‖ (46). This remark succinctly illustrates the fact that language as code and text indeed co-define the character of Christy Mahon, while remembering at the same time that the verbal characterisation of figures in a play text is not exhausted by a summary of the codal and textual structures associated with them. Whereas the analysis of code focuses on the more ‗grammatical‘ - in the classical sense - properties of the language employed, the analysis of text focuses on more the ‗rhetorical‘ properties of the language. Linguistically, syntactic and morphological (and certain lexical) structures dominate as salient for code characterisation, while phraseological and prosodic (and lexical) structures are salient for text characterisation. The former represent preferred paradigmatic structural choices, the latter typify syntagmatic structural patterns. However, it is doubtful whether such an analysis of code and text can, even in practical terms, be ever truly comprehensive (and the features commented on above are of course also only representative). For instance, the textual subtleties of dialogue development, weighting, balancing and harmony of turn structure, word play and humour in the code, etc. might resist strict classification, and in any case a full verbal characterisation of the protagonists is only possible when they speak their lines on stage or screen. The gamut of phonetic and paralinguistic features (accent, voice quality, tone of voice, articulatory precision, tempo, rhythm, pitch, loudness, pause, etc.) which mark characters‘ speech, i.e. their diction and delivery, remains to be specified. As for other aspects of characterisation, the performing protagonists are engaged in a ‗multimodal‘ tableau of movement and posture, body ‗language‘, facial expression, gesture, dress, etc. within a particular spatio-visual scene, all components of which further refine the ‗personae‘ they (re-)present. However, Synge‘s play script does offer explicit clues linking page with stage, literary text and performance text beyond ―the fact that verbal signs in the text are repeated as verbal signs in the performance and that they retain their linguistic code although that materiality changes from graphic to sounded signifiers‖ (Alter 1981: 114). While this is true of the dialogue script, it is the not the case with the stage directions, which do not retain their linguistic code in the conversion from graphic to sounded signification. Rather, the referents of their linguistic code in the text take on a paralinguistic and kinesic interpretation in performance. 5. Primary text and secondary text The analysis of Christy‘s transformation in 3. above highlighted the significance of stage directions as character descriptions. And even within Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 122 the individual acts of the play, Christy‘s moment-to-moment disposition is overtly expressed via the regular descriptions of his moods and emotions. For instance, he moves in Act I from being ―very tired and frightened and dirty‖ on arrival in the shebeen, speaking ―in a small voice‖ (1.8), behaving initially ―dolefully‖, ―bashfully‖, ―peevishly‖ (1.9), and ―shyly‖ with ―his feelings hurt‖ and ―offended‖ (1.10) in the company of Pegeen, Jimmy, Michael and Philly (and Shawn) as he begins his tale, to ―swelling with surprise and triumph‖ (1.12) as his story receives gradual acceptance, to ―expanding with delight at the first confidential talk he has ever had with a woman‖ (1.15) in his tête-à-tête with Pegeen (with Shawn still in the background) to returning uncertainty as he acts ―doubtfully‖ (1.17) and ―timidly‖ (1.19), feeling again challenged in the company of the recently entered Widow Quin. This close analysis of representative character descriptions over a limited stretch of the play‘s action shows again how important the ‗secondary text‘ (cf. Ingarden‘s ‗Nebentext‘ (1973)) of the play is for capturing Christy‘s shifting frame of mind and behaviour. Supplementing the ‗primary text‘ (his actual language, his ‗lines‘, Ingarden‘s ‗Haupttext‘) as the verbal expression of him as character, the information in the secondary text adds a directly behavioural (mental/ physical) dimension to his depiction and thus to a more complete portrayal of the ‗persona‘. From a literary linguistic perspective, it is important to confirm that ‗secondary text‘ is textual as much as ‗primary text‘ is and as such co-determines the linguistic identity of the play. Wales (1994) draws attention to the important narrative role that stage directions fulfil in dramatic text. Of the functions which she attributes to them, ‗kinesis‘ as directions of body movement and body language, ‗facial expression‘ including tone of voice, and ‗paralanguage‘ such as ‗sighing‘, ‗laughing‘, ‗crying‘, etc. are those which contribute to character description and development. As has been indicated, Synge freely employs such stage directions to this effect in PWW. Indeed ‗stage directions‘ hardly seems to be the appropriate designation for these literary devices; as part of the literary text, they constitute ongoing narrative commentary (as opposed to as part of the staging text constituting instructions/ indications to the actors and being ‗remediated‘ in the diction and delivery of the performance text as paralinguistic and kinesic features). Grammatically, these behavioural commentaries with third person and present time reference, as the above description suggests, typically take the form of adverbs (e.g. ―shyly‖), prepositional phrases as adverbials (e.g. ―in a small voice‖), present participles with or without following adverbials (e.g. ―swelling with delight‖) and past participles as adjectives (e.g. ―offended‖). They indicate the characters‘ emotional and attitudinal disposition, i.e. relating to the ‗kinesis‘, ‗facial expression‘ and ‗paralanguage‘ of Wales (1994) above. The stage directions as secondary text are Hiberno-English and beyond in The Playboy of the Western World 123 of course always in Standard English form, in contrast to the Hiberno- English primary text of PWW. The characterisation of the main protagonist, Christy Mahon, is mediated then by both the primary and secondary texts of the play. Whereas the protagonist‘s long-term transformation is from a timid country stranger to a mock hero to an incriminated victim to an emancipated ―likely gaffer‖ who‘s ―master of all fights from now‖ (3.57), which linguistically manifests itself in the primary text (in his own dialogue as well as dialogue addressed to him), his shorter term emotional vacillations (as, e.g. in the first act) are linguistically reflected in the secondary text. Thus, the linguistic properties of both text types, i.e. as Pfister‘s ―implicit figural‖ and ―authorial explicit‖ (1993: 185) characterisation techniques, jointly contribute to the development of this character. 6. Concluding remarks The present analysis aimed to show that a concerted literary linguistic approach to the meaning of dramatic discourse can illuminate the significance of Hiberno-English in Synge‘s The Playboy of the Western World (1907), highlighting its role as code, as a medium for liberation, and as text, as it serves the specific characterisation of the play‘s protagonist. Such a mode of analysis is suitably sensitive to genre-specific features of dramatic text, such as for example the acknowledgement of both dialogue (primary text) and stage directions (secondary text) as contributing to character development and the prominence of prosodic patterning as a cue to the text‘s ultimate oral performance. Thus, it may serve as a basis for further research into ‗marked language use‘ in literary theatre. References Alter, Jean (1981). ―From Text to Performance‖. Poetics Today 2/ 3. 113-139. Artists Repertory Theatre (2014). ―The Playboy of the Western World‖. [online] www.artistsrep.org/ onstage/ 2013---2014-season/ the-playboy-of-the-westernworld.aspx. (27 November 2014) Bliss, Alan (1971). ―The Language of Synge‖. In: Maurice Harmon (ed.). J.M. Synge Centenary Papers 1971. Dublin: Dolmen Press. 35-62. Bliss, Alan (1979). ―A Synge Glossary.‖ In: S.B. Bushrui (ed.). A Centenary Tribute to J.M. Synge 1871-1909. Gerrards Cross: Smythe. 53-72. Cusack, George (2009). The Politics of Identity in Irish Drama: W.B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory and J.M. Synge. New York: Routledge. Culpeper, Jonathan (2001). Language and Characterisation. People in Plays and Other Texts. Harlow: Pearson Education. Deane, Seamus (1971). ―Synge‘s Poetic Use of Language‖. In: Maurice Harmon (ed.). J.M. Synge Centenary Papers 1971. Dublin: Dolmen Press. 127-144. Nursen Gömceli & Allan James 124 Dolan, Terence P. (2013). A Dictionary of Hiberno-English. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. Douthwaite, John (2000). Towards a Linguistic Theory of Foregrounding. Alessandria: Edizioni dell‘Orso. Ellis, Samantha (2003). ―The Playboy of the Western World, Dublin, 1907‖. The Guardian, 16 April. [online] www.theguardian.com/ stage/ 2003/ apr/ 16/ theatre.samanthaellis. (25 November 2014) Foster, Roy (2000). ―Yeats at Fifty‖. In: Richard English & Joseph Morrison Skelly (eds.). Ideas Matter: Essays in Honour of Conor Cruise O'Brien. USA: University Press of America. 89-102. Fricker, Karen (2011). ―Rev. of The Playboy of the Western World, by J.M. Synge.‖ Irish Theatre Magazine, 27 September. [online] www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/ Reviews/ Current/ Playboy-of-the-Western-World. (20 November 2014) Harrington, John P. (2000). ―The Founding Years and the Irish Theatre That Was Not‖. 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(20 November 2014) Wales, Katie (1994). ―‗Bloom Passes Through Several Walls‘: The Stage Directions In Circe‖. In: Andrew Gibson (ed.). Reading Joyce‟s Circe. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 241-276. What‘s On Stage (2011). Rev. of The Playboy of the Western World, by J.M. Synge. Theatre Club, 25 September. [online] club.whatsonstage.com/ ? pg=198& page=428&perpage=10&max=9748&types=U. (25 November 2014) Zingg, Gisela (2013). Is There Hiberno-English on Them? Bern: Peter Lang. Nursen Gömceli Department of English Language and Literature Akdeniz University, Antalya Allan James Department of English and American Studies Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 \ Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de Stand: August 2015 · Änderungen und Irrtümer vorbehalten! JETZT BESTELLEN! 113311 Auslieferung Dezember 2011.indd 10 29.11.11 17: 13 Ridvan Askin, Philipp Schweighauser (eds.) Literature, Ethics, Morality: American Studies Perspectives Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature (SPELL), Vol. 32 2015, 238 Seiten €[D] 49,00 ISBN 978-3-8233-6967-7 . This timely volume explores a wide range of North American literary texts that engage with moral and ethical dilemmas, from William Dean Howells’s and Henry James’s realist novels to Edward Sapir’s intermedial poems, from John Muir’s unpublished letters and journal stemming from his 1893 tour of the Swiss Alps to Jonathan Franzen’s bestselling The Corrections, from Rudy Wiebe’s A Discovery of Strangers to the poetry of Robert Lowell. Many of the contributions also critically engage with and reflect on some of the most prominent voices in contemporary theoretical debates about ethics such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jürgen Habermas, Emmanuel Levinas, Axel Honneth, Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, and Julia Kristeva. This volume thus aptly covers the panoply of contemporary ethical and moral interventions while at the same time providing distinctively American Studies perspectives. Life Writing in the Internet Age Miranda July and the Limits of Art as Social Practice Nassim Balestrini Drawing on theories in American Studies, life writing, visual arts, and media studies, this essay explores how artists dedicated to egalitarianism experience the limits of Internet-based participatory art. Through multimedia life writing, ―indie‖ artist Miranda July critically reflects on her own artistic idealism and its rootedness in American myths of emotionally fulfilling social relationships fostered by progressive technology. The American multimedia artist Miranda July (b. 1974), who emerged from the 1990s independent art scene in Portland, Oregon, and who received prizes for her first full-length film (Me and You and Everyone We Know, 2005) and her short story collection (No One Belongs Here More Than You, 2007), has been both vilified as a self-centered ‗hipster‘ and praised as an ‗indie‘ artist. 1 As July works in analogue and digital media, and as she addresses individual and shared experiences in physical and virtual realities, understanding her recent œuvre contributes valuable insights into the social consequences of living inside and outside digitally mediated contexts. Through negotiating power relations in mediated and unmediated human encounters, July probes and critiques the politics of her artistic convictions. Her indie-artist ethos - which she understands as promoting egalitarianism by foregrounding the lives of marginalized individuals - highlights a set of conflicted relations implicit in her medial choices. July‘s online art project Learning to Love You More (2002-2009; hereafter LTLYM), initiated in collaboration with American visual artist Harrell Fletcher (b. 1967), shifts agency from traditional artist-audience relations to relations among participants in digitized exchanges. This socially mo- 1 Compare Koppel and the website www.ihatemirandajuly.tumblr.com to Onstad and various sources referenced in this paper. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Nassim Balestrini 128 tivated empowerment of Web users realized July and Fletcher‘s desire to allow diverse, previously unheard voices to surface in digital communication. 2 Contrasting with this optimistic outlook, July‘s feature film The Future (February 2011) and her monograph It Chooses You (July 2011) address how digital media detrimentally affect perspectives on oneself and others. July concludes that, although she has repeatedly harnessed technology to facilitate conversations about its effects on mind and spirit, digital media undermine her socially oriented art because she, as an artist transforming others‘ experiences into marketable products, unwittingly positions herself within a problematic hierarchy. July‘s recent work is highly topical because it demonstrates that the purportedly egalitarian politics of her art cannot easily withstand the personal challenges of human interaction outside digitally mediated contexts. Despite the possibilities of online self-presentation and interaction, digital forums can create deceptively impersonal exchanges and exclude more people than intensive Web users may acknowledge. As LTLYM and It Chooses You rely on life writing and both employ and address digital communication, comparative analyses of these works plumb the depths of the crises July experiences (as an artist, individual, and partner in a relationship) and their relevance for contemporary imaginaries of the Internet and its implications. Whereas LTLYM optimistically envisions linking people through virtual communication, The Future and It Chooses You critique idealizations of the Internet‘s potential for individual and social change. The seeming risk involved in initiating and curating a participatory website - a risk grounded in the unpredictability of random users‘ contributions - is ironically dwarfed by July‘s volatile experience as screenplay writer, film director, and book author. Unexpectedly, interacting with individuals outside digital mediation makes her question the postulates of the more obvious positions of control over her own work as filmmaker and author as well as the ideally ‗uncontrolled‘ features of open-access LTLYM. The Future and It Chooses You show that, first, individuals who consider themselves part of digital media-dominated socioeconomic environments can lose touch with reality by relying on digital communication and digital self-definition; second, they illustrate the corollaries of abstaining from habitual Internet use and of interacting with individuals who do not practice online immersion. July‘s self-definition as an artist inclined towards equality and democracy pivots on her ability to mediate between her Web-dominated social environment and the world of people (and potential objects of artistic scrutiny) who do not have access to this environment but who - according to her outlook - should be included in her artistic purview. In a wider 2 All LTLYM references are accessible at www.learningtoloveyoumore.com and http: / / www.sfmoma.org/ explore/ collection/ artwork/ 134671. Life Writing in the Internet Age 129 sense, July‘s works emblematize the necessity to ponder social relations within and outside digital mediation as being more complex than polemicized dichotomies (such as analogue/ digital, real/ virtual, producer/ consumer) suggest. Intersections between recent concerns shared by American studies, life writing, art theory, and media studies inform this discussion of the cultural imaginary at the root of Miranda July‘s art. Particularly the unresolved tensions between the emotional and rational components of her perspective on others, which lead her to rethink her attitude toward the Internet and toward her own artistic understanding of ‗authenticity‘ and ‗reality,‘ resonate with current debates about art, digital media, and sociopolitical agency in contemporary America. Life Writing, Art, and Media Criticism The fact that the Internet has created new options for self-expression challenges Americanists to contemplate digital communication as possessing its own cultural poetics, embedded in a both localized and globalized world. July accepts the same challenge as an artist addressing the Internet‘s role in her own life and in the lives of other real persons and fictional characters. Since the 1990s, American studies scholars have been highlighting processes and interdependencies in the study of cultural history (Radway 2002, Rowe 2000, Levander/ Levine 2008). Rather than validating extant social and cultural hierarchies, research seeks to understand culture as a dynamic matrix of forces that potentially corrupt the conceptualization and practice of liberty and other Enlightenment ideals (in all their interpretative breadth), that is, of ideals which still fire the imaginations of participants in and observers of American society (Giles 2006, Traister 2010). The very definition of terms like democracy determines assessments as to how Web-based life writing and art as well as Web-based social interaction in a wider sense foster or inhibit the realization of such ideals. Current scholarly conversations within life writing studies, art criticism, and media studies single out this core issue. Hierarchy and agency figure prominently in attempts to theorize online life writing, as in Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson‘s suggestion to discuss it in terms of ―self-expression and self-help,‖ ―self-dramatizing,‖ ―voyeurism‖, and the slippery slope between ―authenticity‖ and a mere ―authenticity effect‖ (cf. Smith/ Watson 2010: 184; also see Arthur 2009: 74-75). They associate online life narrative with three current areas of interest, ―performativity, positionality, and relationality‖ (Smith/ Watson 2010: 214; also see Smith 2011: 566) which focus on performative identity choices, varying subject positions, and acts of perceiving one‘s life through another‘s life rather than identifying as the comparatively insular individual of Enlightenment-inspired autobiographies (Eakin 2008: 31, 50). Performative and relational life writing nevertheless includes ―identi- Nassim Balestrini 130 ty protocols‖ (23) which constrain narratives because societies protective of individuality impose their own normative emplotments and thus inhibit self-directedness (32). As transgressions against such norms tend to be judged morally, Eakin ―conclude[s] that ethics is the deep subject of autobiographical discourse‖ (50). In my view, ethics is equally central to life writing-related art aimed at realizing Enlightenment ideals and to the criticism of life writing that questions normative ―personhood.‖ Furthermore, the disembodied quality of online life writing highlights the potential for hoaxes and self-inventions (e.g., in terms of gender and ethnicity) and thus interrogates the ethics of contemporary modes of producing and consuming life writing at all (cf. Eakin 1999: 4, Whitlock/ Poletti 2008: xv, Egan 2010). Linked subjectivities, as in constructing one‘s story through a loved one‘s life (Eakin 2008), also inform Nicolas Bourriaud‘s theory of ―relational aesthetics‖ within the artist-work-recipient nexus. Discussing art of the 1990s, he argues that each individual‘s interpretation of art creatively produces meaning and knowledge. While art has always depended on periodically redefined human relations (Bourriaud 2002: 14, 26), some artists elevate relationality to the extent that ―inter-subjectivity does not only represent the social setting for the reception of art (…) but also becomes the quintessence of artistic practice‖ (22) (cf. Rebentisch 2007: 64). 3 ―[M]odels of sociability‖ (Bourriaud 2002: 28) inherent in specific works segue into ―relational microterritories‖ (33) (cf. Larsen 2006: 172- 83 esp. 172, Glissant 2006: 75, 78, Goldenberg/ Reed 2008: n. pag., Nesbit/ Obrist/ Tiravanija 2006: 186). Bourriaud does not discuss online relationality but uses audio/ audiovisual works and the Internet as central tropes for ―modes of production‖ (Bourriaud 2010: 8). He regards ―(…) DJs, Web surfers, and postproduction artists‖ as ―‗semionauts‘ who produce original pathways through signs‖ (18). Although Bourriaud postulates that recombining preexisting materials counteracts master narratives and guarantees what he calls heteroglot art (46, 94) and while his pathfinding concept dismantles the dualism of active producers and passive consumers, he does not take into account new hierarchies of leaders and followers. 4 Analyzing the Internet as a virtual and openly accessible locale for down-/ uploading by individuals (who are not obliged to reveal their names or physical whereabouts to online readers) broadens the debate toward social contexts beyond art production and reception. Both process-focused relational art and the sociopolitical implications of Bourriaud‘s online interactions are relevant because July and Fletcher are 3 Likewise, media historians reject ―the strict dichotomy of production and consumption‖ (Gitelman 2004: 61, also see Boddy 2004: 191, Trend 2001: 4). 4 Schorgl includes Bourriaud in her reading of LTLYM, but neither she nor other researchers provide sustained discussions of July‘s work in light of relationality. Life Writing in the Internet Age 131 socially oriented professional artists while LTLYM participants predominantly are non-artist Web users. Celebrating relational art as politically laudable and empowering demonstrates a dilemma which plagues both July and scholars in the disciplines discussed in this section. Claire Bishop finds that while Bourriaud ―equate[s] aesthetic judgment with an ethicopolitical judgment of the relationships produced by a work of art,‖ he fails to suggest criteria for assessing such relationships (Bishop 2004: 65, cf. Fowle/ Larsen 2005: 20). By assuming that relationality is ―intrinsically democratic‖ (67), he excludes art-induced antagonisms. Bishop also wonders whether stressing ethical, harmonious artist-perceiver relations undermines relationality per se by making it a prime object of commercial and political cooptation (Barok 2009: 2, 3). 5 That is, if relational art produces feel-good experiences, it will be marketed as bringing people together in enjoyable environments and it will attract governmental funding for art that fosters social cohesion. Similar to the murky politics of an ―authenticity effect‖ in life writing, relational art would thus lose its integrity. Media studies shares the concern with an anti-hierarchical plurality of coexisting factors characteristic of context-oriented American studies, life writing scholarship, and relational aesthetics. Instead of proclaiming the high hopes or the dire predictions of populist polemics regarding the Internet‘s cultural effects (cf. Keen 2012, Lunenfeld 2011), Qvortrup asserts that the digital age has produced ―a networks society‖ (Qvorthrup 2012: 248) featuring the Web as one network among many. Jenkins, too, suggests neither to presuppose that media consumers are ―coopt[ed]‖ through consuming content provided by media conglomerates nor that media participation unfailingly expresses ―audience resistance‖ (Jenkins 2012: 222). Just as Jenkins ponders concrete effects of economic power and specific media user behaviors, Dahlgren suggests replacing the Habermasian ‗public sphere‘ with multiple ―civic cultures‖ (Dahlgren 2012: 132) constituted by ―structure‖ (e.g., Internet access), ―representation‖ (media content disseminated to specific recipients), and ―interaction‖ (133). Not only does Dahlgren consider economic factors along with semiotic and sociopolitical implications of what is broadcast, consumed, and discussed, but he also stresses that ―interaction‖ applies to encountering and to discussing media content; thus, scholars should study the ―circulation of meaning‖ (133-34). These claims are relevant to July‘s works because multiple ―civic cultures‖ allow coexisting discourses (such as ―the affective, the poetic, the humorous, the ironic‖ [143]) rather than, as in a 5 To Bourriaud, ―the artist models and disseminates disconcerting situations‖ (Bourriaud 2002: 31) and ―[a]rt (…) is no longer seeking to represent utopias‖ (46). Shared disciplinary concerns surface here since Bishop‘s outlook parallels the perceived voyeurism in trauma narratives (Smith 2011: 568-69, Schaffer/ Smith 2004). Nassim Balestrini 132 singular ‗public sphere,‘ only the discourse of ―deliberative democracy‖ based on intellectual reasoning (see Lievrouw 2011: 214, who roots digital-media activism in the aesthetics of movements like ―Dada and Situationism‖). Whether online ―civic cultures‖ will become ―action-scapes‖ (Broeckmann 1999: 441) productive of political opinions remains to be assessed in each particular context. Dahlgren‘s inclusion of ―cultural factors‖ in political agency is particularly apt for studying life writing posted on LTLYM because participants engage in performative acts in which positionality (cf. Smith/ Watson 2010, Eakin 2008) marks either assuming or relinquishing agency. Consequently, relational structures in LTLYM invite scrutiny as ―civic cultures‖ (Dahlgren 2012) or ―relational microterritories‖ (Bourriaud 2010). Since LTLYM is a curated website aimed at empathy-focused interaction (not only between website creators and users, but also among the latter), power relations, conceptions of freedom, and potentially competing notions of egalitarianism and democracy are at stake. How then does this Internet project, which emanated from art as social practice, balance tolerance-based heterogeneity with ―minimal shared commitments to the vision and procedures of democracy, which in turn entails a capacity to see beyond the immediate interests of one‘s own group‖ (Dahlgren 2012: 145)? Is the politicized ethics of LTLYM subject to the criticism Bishop levels at Bourriaud? As the following discussion of LTLYM demonstrates, July envisions art, be it analogue or digital, as offering aesthetic and affective tools to negotiate the psychological and social effects of technology. In her post-LTLYM work, her personal sensitivities then unpredictably interfere with transforming sociopolitical ideals into viable art. Learning to Love You More In audio monologues, videos, full-length films, short stories, photographs, and sculptures, July consistently emphasizes communication. 6 She explains: ―We don‘t know how to reconcile spirituality with technological progress and growth, and as a nation we don‘t acknowledge that this is a problem or even a topic. (…) It certainly gives me a sense of urgency; I want to create room for [such a] conversation‖ (Bryan-Wilson 2007: 195; also see Dodson/ Barnett et al 2011, Elmhirst 2011, Onstad 2011). Fletcher, a visual artist and professor of Art and Social Practice, expresses a 6 Regarding her multimedia works, see Taubin; Chang; Cote; Scott, ―Video as Art.‖ On her 2005 film, see Halter; Johnson; Scott, ―An Artistic Eye Wide Open‖ and ―Young Filmmaker‖; Thomson; Rabin. Her non-video art is discussed in Hall; Maak; ―Miranda July.‖ For her short stories, see Balestrini. Visitors ‗completed‘ July‘s participatory sculptures at the 2009 Venice Biennale by using them as photo spots (―Miranda July‖ n. pag.). Life Writing in the Internet Age 133 similar desire: ―People often asked how I‘m able to entice random strangers into working with me on art projects about their own lives. (…) As it turns out, people really like to be paid attention to. (…) I have formed collaborations with people to produce exhibitions and public art projects about aspects of their lives that might otherwise have gone unnoticed, sometimes even by themselves‖ (Fletcher 2002: n. pag.) . Intent on fostering discussion of social issues, July contemplates technology‘s effects while Fletcher encourages autobiographical self-expression. A hallmark of conceptual art and art as social practice, their curatorial function in LTLYM resembles the impetus provided by a life-writing ―coaxer,‖ that is, by ―any person or institution or set of cultural imperatives that solicits or provokes people to tell their stories‖ (Smith/ Watson 2010: 64). 7 Although July and Fletcher mastermind the interactive website, they reserve the floor for online participants. But, according to Jörgen Svensson, even exchange-based art focused on ―an opportunity for increased communication‖ (59) may position the artist as generous giver above the viewerparticipant as grateful recipient (47). Svensson‘s assessment implicitly confirms Dahlgren‘s assumption of culturally ingrained power structures. Aware of the traditionally asymmetrical artist-audience relation, July and Fletcher created an online realm for performative, relational, and positional creative expression guided by rules meant to protect the participants‘ rights. The project archive‘s 2010 acquisition by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art bespeaks its acceptance in the art world. As art as social practice, LTLYM transcends confessional or self-help websites. Problems nevertheless arise when the online project spills over or rather back into the offline world. This circumstance prefigures July‘s qualms about overly optimistic views on the social inclusivity of digital uploading and downloading. In the preface to their 2007 LTLYM book, Fletcher and July anticipate being perceived as towering artist-figures: ―Sometimes it seems like the moment we let go of trying to be original, we actually feel something new - which was the whole point of being artists in the first place‖ (Fletcher/ July 2007: n. pag.). While they critique timeworn Romantic notions of genius and originality, they do not characterize everyone as a born artist. 8 Rather, the ―complex world‖ of their online project reflects ―the frequently wild, sometimes hilarious, and quietly stunning creative lives of a few people living on Earth right now‖ (n. pag.). Between May 2002 and May 2009, more than 8,000 individuals uploaded ―reports‖ in response to up to 70 ―assignments‖ posted on learn- 7 July‘s Joanie4Jackie video chain letter for women, initiated in the mid-1990s, prefigures her role in LTLYM (Ingram et al. 134; Hilderbrand 195-223). 8 Fletcher rejects Beuys‘s claim that all individuals are artists (―Some Thoughts‖ [n. pag.]). Regarding alternatives to the ―lone artist‖ stereotype, see Fischer and Vassen. Nassim Balestrini 134 ingtoloveyoumore.com. 9 Assignments required artisanal dexterity and creative acts (like writing, drawing, building, sewing, sculpting, producing photographs, audio, or video recordings) and other types of expertise (like gardening, health-related advice, and technological skills). Some comprised several steps: 1) create something material like a drawing; 2) find a ‗real-world‘ location in a private or public place; 3) photograph the drawing in this very location; 4) upload the digital image. 10 Participants engaged in self-scrutiny and social interaction. They used (offline) physical materials and environments, as well as analogue and digital tools. Although numerous assignments encouraged autobiographical selfdepiction (including confessional components), July and Fletcher did more than provide detailed instructions and an online space for sharing life writing. Relationality-oriented assignments challenged respondents to represent elements in self-depictions of a person they will most likely never meet face to face. Besides overcoming geographic distance, such relationality through digital communication experiments with positionality and performativity, even with multi-positionality, as in assignments in which respondents try to experience another life writer‘s emotions, thus taking the ―intersubjective act‖ (Smith/ Watson 2010: 26) of life narrative literally. As relationally oriented assignments require collaborating with and/ or presenting one‘s work to relatives, friends, or strangers, such online communication presupposes offline ―civic cultures‖ (to use Dahlgren‘s concept). Whenever the uploader presents others, s/ he assumes the agency of the coaxer/ mediator, but foregrounds the presented other(s), as in assignment No. 2, ―Make a neighborhood field recording,‖ which showcases not the ethnographer but the singers s/ he recorded. 11 More strikingly, LTLYM envisions in-depth interpretation of someone else‘s report. For so-called ―piggy-backing‖ assignments such as No. 19, ―Illustrate a scene or make an object from Paul Arensmeyer‘s life story,‖ a Web user must first read Arensmeyer‘s response to No. 14, ―Write your life story in less than a day,‖ in order to translate a verbal description into a different 9 This structure recalls American high-school instruction and self-help publications (cf. Julia Cameron‘s The Artist‟s Way, a bestseller since 1992). Compare Dezeuze‘s criticism to Stasko‘s positive assessment (212, 214) of this LTLYM characteristic. Regarding the numbers, see http: / / www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/ hello/ index.php. To Hansson et al., LTLYM exemplifies ―crowd-sourcing‖ (n. pag.). 10 http: / / www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/ displays/ index.php. Also see Gibson Yates 34. Besides the 2007 book, art museums, galleries, schools, senior citizen centers, as well as spin-off websites, film festivals, and radio shows featured LTLYM ―reports.‖ 11 Other variants are documenting other people‘s relations (No. 39, ―Take a picture of your parents kissing‖) or ―recreat[ing] a feeling that someone else had‖ (No. 13, ―Recreate the moment after a crime‖). Life Writing in the Internet Age 135 medium. 12 The conscious effort not to misrepresent Arensmeyer‘s depiction acknowledges that artistic agency equals power. Positionality also functions to counterbalance hierarchy in No. 65, ―Perform the phone call someone else wished they could have,‖ as the instructions demand: ―Try to be faithful to the emotional tone of the original dialogue.‖ Such instructions emphasize LTLYM‘s incentive to ―bring people together and give them a new way to feel something‖ (Fletcher/ July 2007: 155). 13 This intersubjective focus of emotional novelty coheres with Bourriaud‘s ―relational aesthetics‖ in which sampling and editing of pre-existing content expresses social relations (cf. Bourriaud 2010). LTLYM assignments also drive home Eakin‘s point that relationality explodes the Enlightenment myth of individual autonomy (Eakin 1999: 43-98, cf. Smith/ Watson 2010 ) because life writing that includes another person‘s auto/ biography undermines the self-other dichotomy (Eakin 1999: 58) and because appropriating the other‘s story asserts narratorial command (61). The innovative potential of LTLYM resides in gearing this appropriation not towards self-reflection but towards intersubjectivity; additionally, the assignments may require face-to-face encounters. The ―relational microterritor[ies]‖ of LTLYM thus alternate between offline relations and virtual online closeness which overcomes geographical distance. Is LTLYM then only a seemingly egalitarian forum that prevents real exchange among strangers and that rather promotes its own normative personhood (cf. Smith/ Watson 2010: 186, Smith 2011: 668; regarding the partisan misuse of the term ‗democracy,‘ cf. Dean 2010: 84)? Does it trigger standardized narratives whose voyeurism confirms entrenched power relations (Smith 2011: 568-69)? What about economic factors regarding online access (571)? 14 As a curated project, LTLYM must be approached within an art historical context, 15 but whether intersubjectively exploring emotions produced normative narratives - either because the website attracted a homogeneous user group or because the curators were reluctant to display certain self-depictions - remains hard to gauge (cf. Schiller 1995: 163, Chatfield 2012: 122-23). 16 The danger of evoking stereotypical responses (rather than encouraging independent thinking and, thus, individual and social change) surfac- 12 July speaks of ―piggy-backing‖ in http: / / www.sfmoma.org/ explore/ multimedia/ videos/ 481. 13 This parallels 1960s situationist art intended ―to produce new social relationships and thus new social realities‖ (Bishop, ―Introduction‖ 13). 14 Kroker and Weinstein predict that the Internet‘s egalitarian potential will succumb to service providers‘ monetary interests (Kroker/ Weinstein 1994: 149). 15 LTLYM evokes Rancière‘s ―‗third way‘ of a micro-politics of art‖ relying ―on a game of exchanges and displacements between the world of art and that of non-art‖ (86). 16 See responses to assignments No. 34 and No. 59 in the online archive and in Fletcher and July. Nassim Balestrini 136 es, for instance, in narratives of suffering. 17 One example offers striking evidence for both the possibility of offline interaction resulting from online life writing and the possibility of voyeurism. Laura Lark‘s response to No. 14, ―Write your life story in less than a day,‖ spawned assignment No. 22, ―Recreate a scene from Laura Lark‘s life story.‖ Furthermore, the book based on LTLYM includes an essay in which Lark mentions her subsequent artistic collaboration with Fletcher. Lark‘s report on No. 14, a harrowing description of growing up in a disintegrating family fraught with financial difficulties, concludes more brightly with becoming an artist and getting married. The fact that the instructions for No. 22 characterize her ―amazing story‖ as ―a classic American tale‖ (Fletcher/ July 2007: 152) confirms the perennial popularity of ―fantasies of the selfmade individual overcoming adversity‖ at the core of ―the contemporary culture of self-help‖ because they provide ―models for conversion, survival, and self-transformation‖ (Smith/ Watson 2010: 124). Simultaneously, Lark‘s LTLYM participation highlights the concerns of art as social practice. But are culturally ingrained emplotments of ‗American lives‘ compatible with transcending the curator-respondent divide? Ideally, socially oriented art provides what Ted Purves calls a gift - in this case, an online platform inviting self-expression. In contrast to Svensson‘s cautioning against hierarchical artist-participant relations, Purves characterizes gifts as ―token[s] through which social relationships are forged, managed and preserved‖ (Purves 2004: 31). Participants who responded to numerous LTLYM assignments over the years established a long-term bond. Open access (at least for those who can go online) permits more ―than minimum social values to flourish‖ (38) to the extent that collaborative art can be ―life changing‖ (42). Purves‘s vision of ―a spirit of exchange and equality that perhaps can be seen as the hope of a gift in its truest form‖ (43) thus unhinges arguments against curated participatory websites as necessarily hierarchical and short-lived. Lark‘s exceptional collaboration with Fletcher outside the virtual realm notwithstanding, I would argue that LTLYM relocates egalitarian notions of intersubjective exchange from traditional artist-viewer relationships to relationships that respondents to assignments or readers of reports voluntarily enter without predetermined spatial or temporal limitations. Assignments frequently require withdrawing from the computer, entering the non-virtual world, and communicating with other human beings. Potentially, responses to reports may initiate abiding relations (cf. Colman 2005: 16-17). By decentering relationality from the (still hierarchical) artist-viewer nexus, LTLYM adheres to its dictum that art facilitates new emotional experiences for whoever chooses to seek them. 17 Life stories full of violence and tragedy ―position readers as secondary witnesses (…)‖ (Smith 2011: 568); consumers‘ interest in certain narratives depends on the place and time of consumption, and on marketing strategies (569). Life Writing in the Internet Age 137 Showcasing Lark‘s report as ―a classic American tale‖ remains problematic, since it focuses on the emplotment rather than its sociopolitical underpinnings. The understanding of agency promoted by LTLYM thus applies to producers and consumers alike. Assignment respondents undermine outdated notions of originality because completing the same tasks as others does not hamper their self-expression. Participating in what Dahlgren calls ―representation‖ and ―interaction‖ (Dahlgren 2012: 133) on a website contributes to ―circulation of meaning‖ (134). Significantly, LTLYM combines offline and online interaction through multi-step and ―piggybacking‖ assignments, and through access to the reports. As participants in this ―civic culture‖ or ―relational microterritory,‖ respondents decide how to negotiate prevailing norms of selfhood and social bonds; recipients select what they view and to what they respond. 18 Judging by the sheer number and the partial interrelatedness of responses, the Web project achieved its social-practice goals, even if interactivity per se does not preclude hierarchical relations (Arata 2004: 223). Arata regards interactivity as an alternative to teleology; but what happens when interactivity has a specific goal? While, in the case of LTLYM, the abstract goal - new intersubjective emotional experiences - turns uploaders and viewers into ―semionauts‖ in Bourriaud‘s sense, we must further evaluate the hierarchical implications of the curator-collaborator relation (also see Poster 1997: 260, 263). The Artist’s Doubts LTLYM attracted numerous users and has been archived as socially oriented art. July‘s engagement with the Internet in subsequent works reveals her continued concern with how digital communication impacts individuals and relationships. In LTLYM, new feelings are shared when offline experiences are represented online, often implying that one will experience a sense of relief upon revealing something. More recently, July‘s relief yields to dismay at being confronted with people without recourse to the protective computer screen and glance-determining mouse-click. Set in contemporary Los Angeles, the film The Future portrays Sophie and Jason, a couple in their mid-30s. Stung by the thought that they have reached the mid-point of their lives without having lived consciously and fully, they temporarily abandon their Internet-dominated lifestyle, hoping to gain a better grip on meaningful existence. 19 In It Chooses You July 18 An email link allowed readers to contact Lark. For another life-changing response to No. 14, see [Russell, Jacinda]. 19 On technological prowess inhibiting independent thinking, see Ross 1998: 356, 363. Nassim Balestrini 138 chronicles her struggle with the screenplay for The Future. She contemplates her artistic renderings of her own and others‘ lives in a digital media-saturated social environment. Unable to overcome writer‘s block, July began to call and subsequently interview residents of Los Angeles who placed classified ads in the weekly Penny Saver. Her book interweaves these conversations (and photographs by Brigitte Sire) with confessional passages on art, love, and death, and on her endeavor to fathom Penny Saver advertisers. Compassion for the predominately socially marginalized interviewees alternates with momentary disgust at their lives and ideas. July‘s frank discussion of her reactions exemplifies the voyeurism involved in conducting interviews in the presence of a photographer and a male escort, and in publishing (and thus selling) these texts and images (July 2011: 146-59, esp. 157). Her limited capacity to connect with individuals far removed from her own social circle shocks July who has focused a considerable amount of her attention as a writer and multimedia artist on the not-so-accepted and frequently awkward in contemporary America. It is crucial that July contextualizes her writer‘s block within her Internet-dominated lifestyle (July 2011: 6-7) and that she finds it progressively harder to ‗learn to love herself more.‘ Assuming that the Web inhibits her artistic endeavors, she addresses the downside of a phenomenon that, in LTLYM, promised empowerment. The Future demonstrates that turning your back on the online world will end senseless browsing, downloading, and uploading, but cannot answer questions about life (cf. Lévy 1997: 258, Turkle 2011: 293-94). Does the self-help incentive of LTLYM, thus, retain its significance only whenever it creates social relations beyond media consumption? July‘s Penny Saver interviews portray strangers remote from the technologically privileged who have the means to retreat into interconnected, yet solipsistic digital realms (July 2011: 57). The Future critiques digital self-assertion (particularly through Sophie‘s failed project of uploading a series of dance videos on YouTube) and accentuates challenges of digitally mediated and nonvirtual relationships. It Chooses You exposes the unpredictability of encounters with strangers and thus problematizes LTLYM‘s incentive to bring people together and to feel something new. The participatory website allows more controlled and thus comfortable/ ing interaction than immediate (and possibly more ‗authentic‘ or ‗real‘) communication with unfamiliar individuals. July‘s autocritical narrative of digital immersion coheres with Bishop‘s criticism of Bourriaud, namely that ―relational aesthetics‖ turn a blind eye to the sociopolitical reality of conflict. Ethical assessments of the artist-work-viewer/ participant relation also figure in discussions of cliquish Web ‗communities‘ established through online interactivity and in debates about artist-curators as facilitators who remain more powerful Life Writing in the Internet Age 139 than amateurs involved in collaborative projects. 20 On the part of largely anonymous Web users, Internet-mediated social relations assume an antiseptic air because users can enter and leave this world at will without considering others (Turkle 2011: 238, Dean 2010: 79). It Chooses You demonstrates that unmediated personal encounters (in contrast to uploaded words, sounds, and images) require social skills that far exceed consuming LTLYM reports. The emotional range of July‘s interview experiences illustrates the shortcomings of simple dichotomies (like virtual vs. real) and their purported sociopolitical implications. For instance, immediate and intense sense impressions in a real-life encounter trigger July‘s desire to check her email on her iPhone ―to take a little time-out‖ (July 2011: 98). Following her conversation with a breeder of wild animals that strike July as noisy and smelly, July juxtaposes ―the fullness of her [the animal breeder‘s] life‖ with her own desire ―for the kind of fictional conjuring that makes [her, i.e., July] feel useful, or feel anything at all‖ (99). Similarly, her interview with a former prison inmate monitored by an anklet makes her realize the distinction between understanding others and only evoking the impression of doing so (125). Her crumbling performance as a socially engaged artist thus calls into question a central tenet of LTLYM: the supposed benefit of ―tr[ying] to feel the reality of‖ (Fletcher/ July 2007: 143) another person‘s life. When interviewing strangers, this endeavor collides with her deficiency in spontaneously stomaching Otherness. Feeling jeopardized by o/ Others, she wonders whether reliance on digital media curbs ―the scope of what [she] could feel and imagine‖ (July 2011: 160) and bars her from noticing people living outside the Web. While she critiques potentially shallow Internet blogs as opposed to seemingly authentic oral narration in a conversation (160), she acknowledges that compassion for an interlocutor will not suffice for establishing long-term friendship (157). Thus, broad idealizations or rejections of digitally (un)mediated emotional and social relations lead nowhere. Here it is seminal to recall that LTLYM addresses the purportedly ―fragile‖ relations established by computer-networked communication (Heim 1994: 81) because numerous assignments invite people to connect with others personally and even to go public in the abstract sense of choosing a location for an object before posting a report online. The frequently central function of the physical world not only forces contributors away from their computers, but moving to/ within specific offline locales grants access to parts of LTLYM even to those who cannot go 20 See Trend, Reading, Part IV. Arning characterizes the shift from the adulated omnipotent artist to the artist as ―catalyst for a set of stimulating relationships that make up the art experience‖ (12). Gerhards and Schäfer discuss how search engines favor existing economic and political powers (148, 153, 155-56). Also see Browne. Nassim Balestrini 140 online. As assignment respondents select locales and collaborators (e.g., individuals included in recordings and individuals likely to witness a display), they emphasize intersubjectivity in Bourriaud‘s sense. LTLYM creates virtual and partially non-virtual ―relational microterritories,‖ but in It Chooses You it becomes clear that July‘s inability to extricate herself physically from interaction with strangers in unfamiliar environments forces her to reexamine the assumed comfort of online interactivity (July 2011: 132). Although The Future is not an open-access online video but a full-length film marketed to cinemas and on DVD, its mediality as well as its surreal details remove it from physical reality and make it ‗virtual‘ and fictional. Instead of presenting the physical world as more genuine and thus better, The Future and It Chooses You imply that ‗real‘/ ‗authentic‘ and ‗virtual‘ features feed into each other and that each experience and all of its components must be evaluated separately. The irony of finding the key to completing her screenplay and her film among her Penny Saver interviewees highlights both July‘s desire to relinquish artistic agency temporarily and the discomfort of not being in control. It Chooses You oscillates between crediting human doings or mere chance with how July found her interviewees and with how they affected her work (July 2011: 59, 160). Shaking the foundations of the activepassive dualism is part and parcel of reconsidering her relation to physical and digitized virtual realities (98, 159), and her understanding of reality and fiction (139, 160, 199). Intriguingly, July attempts to reconcile her contradictory emotions by suggesting that life should be regarded as a collection of particulars, ―held together only by the fragile memory of one person - or, if you were lucky, two‖ (199). Such a set of (possibly shared and thus relational) memories does not carry predetermined significance but rather resembles ―the most intricate, radical piece of art, the kind of art I was always trying to make. It dared to mean nothing and so demanded everything of you‖ (199). If the act of remembering is performative and relational and if art imitates the workings of memory, then life writing and art become inextricable. The design of It Chooses You and July‘s choice of a publisher convey the same artistic dynamics of significant details set in a partially unstable environment inviting participation and interpretation. The cover‘s retro style reflects her octogenarian interviewee Joe Putterlik‘s pre-computer aesthetics: he integrated homemade bawdy limericks into collages of visuals clipped from magazines (July 201: 182, 184-89). As the stickers on the outside of the book can be removed to reveal what is hidden underneath, each reader (or purchaser, to reintroduce money and access) can change this particular paratext. Writer Dave Eggers‘s publishing house, McSweeney‘s, ―a privately held company with wildly fluctuating resources‖ (copyright page), has produced hardcover books with both aesthetic appeal and a mixture of un/ traditional features of printed books (Starre). Bourriaud depicts sampling and DJ-ing as relationally oriented Life Writing in the Internet Age 141 ―mode[s] of production.‖ Putterlik‘s cards and the cover design of It Chooses You follow a comparable trajectory, albeit in a decidedly nondigital format. Thus, the book‘s visual aesthetics underline July‘s realization that, more consciously than in LTLYM, her art fluctuates between established and innovative forms of self-expression for heightened effect. Collected Moments and Shared ‘Realities’ in Contemporary America The comparative analysis of Learning to Love You More and It Chooses You illustrates that performativity and positionality of life writing must be evaluated in light of how digital or analogue media facilitate egalitarian or authoritarian discourses. July‘s doubts regarding empowerment through online participation reveal her artistic ethos; personal encounters with individuals whose lives alienate her sorely test her commitment to conversations among equals. July‘s thought processes culminate in an understanding of ‗authenticity‘ or ‗reality‘ as something that she, as an artist, reassembles into multi-media images which allow her to interpret herself and others as part of a web of complex social relations. 21 Although LTLYM was Web-based, the online art project frequently required uploading documents of non-virtual encounters with friends, family members, or strangers. July and Fletcher thus experimented with ―new communities‖ characterized by ―a processual openness based on temporarily shared interests, or simply on a fortuitous moment of being there at the same time‖ (Möntmann 2011: 70) - a concept reminiscent of Dahlgren‘s multiple ―civic cultures.‖ This perspective on coexisting or sequential momentary communities counterbalances romanticizations of ‗happy digital families‘ and ―replaces unitary and essentialist models of community based on presence, identification, and immanence‖ (70). 22 Rather than projecting momentary communities as fragmentary, LTLYM instrumentalizes them to question normative selfhood by experimenting with processes and contexts productive of specific constellations of individual agency and authoritative social forces. Online assignments yielded explorations of self and other, past and present, individuality and society. Respondents documented relational microterritories outside the digital realm (the way artists exhibit works in the physical world); nonetheless, digital reports potentially encouraged web users to communicate outside the project per se. Life writing in It Chooses You presupposes actual interviewer-interviewee encounters; its mosaic-like structure and photographs evoke multimedia art like Mischa Kuball‘s 100 Lights / 100 Faces (2010), 21 Compare to Virilio: ―a disturbance in the perception of what reality is‖ will ―usher in a deep crisis which will affect society and hence, democracy‖ (Virilio 2001: 24). 22 From a sociopsychological perspective, such a redefinition denies traditional notions of long-term community ties (Turkle 2011: 238-39). Nassim Balestrini 142 based on the life stories of 100 people of 100 different ―immigrant backgrounds‖ (Wappler 2011: 13). In both cases, the artist as facilitator, curator, and compiler provides structure, assumes interpretative agency, and exerts a more palpable authority than displayed in LTLYM. Performativity and positionality raise interrelated concerns and hopes regarding agency, authority, and authenticity (effects). If LTLYM reports do not require verifiable names and locations, how can readers/ viewers/ listeners perceive such self-depictions as genuine? If names and locations were required, how could one assess their authenticity, i.e., evaluate them as convincing examples of verisimilitude (Kitzmann 2003: 60)? Fletcher and July encouraged reports that followed instructions and corresponded with the website‘s goal of feeling things in a new manner and trying to experience someone else‘s emotional world by occupying another individual‘s subject position while subduing one‘s selfish desire to perform. In It Chooses You, July witnesses circumstance-induced performative behaviors that impress her as fake (180) or as ―real‖ (July 2011: 207). An amateur actor‘s ―improvis[ing]‖ (207) permits the screenplay-writer/ director to loosen her reigns, thus giving July respite comparable to the LTLYM artist-curators‘ decision not to exhibit their own works. Instead of claiming inspiration and genius, she admits in It Chooses You that artists fictionalize because real individuals remain enigmatic. Ending the narrative with her inability to unravel specific moments in an interviewee‘s life (212, 217-18) indicates the limits of assuming other subject positions - be it in positionality-oriented LTLYM assignments or as an artist. Overlapping ethical concerns, which arise upon contemplating depictions of selfhood, reality, and fiction in LTLYM, The Future, and It Chooses You, accentuate that the exigencies inherent in the production and consumption of various media (Internet, film, book) must be considered when pondering technology‘s effects. Here, funding and distribution questions loom large. The 2007 volume of LTLYM reports appeared with the Munich art-book publisher Prestel which, like McSweeney‘s, presumably appealed to July as an indie artist fearing commercial cooptation. 23 Similarly, grants from non-profit organizations supported the LTLYM website. 24 But as a filmmaker, July argues, accepting her sponsors‘ conditions for completing The Future ―seemed like a reasonable price to pay for getting to tell such a strange story in the most expensive but ultimately most accessible of mediums‖ (July 2011: 204; see MacDowell 2013: 53, Schreiber 2013: 96 on July‘s reputation as an independent director). The fact that July works in analogue and digital media, in media with com- 23 See Dean‘s study of ―the strange convergence of democracy and capitalism in networked communications and entertainment media‖ (Dean 2009: 4). 24 See www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/ hello/ creative_capital.php and www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/ grants.php. Life Writing in the Internet Age 143 paratively small and large circulations, in privately or otherwise funded media, and the fact that she addresses her ethical concerns reveal that the larger social issue of human interaction figures in all medial contexts, even if digital communication surfaces as a contradictory phenomenon which connects and divides in astonishing ways. If LTLYM foregrounds human emotions and intersubjectivity rather than technology; if The Future depicts a couple experimenting with separation from the Web; if It Chooses You contemplates lives within or outside digital or unmediated communication, how does July facilitate conversations about the psychological and social effects of technology? Much more than LTLYM, the latter two works problematize the contending forces of emotion-based relations versus technological immersion, of artistic and political idealisms, all of which figure prominently within recent studies of the social climate in the United States. Sherry Turkle argues that, instead of ―triumphalist or apocalyptic narratives,‖ we need ―narratives about how to live with technology‖ (2011: 294). July comes to the oddly Thoreauvian conclusion that, her acclimatization to abundant online information notwithstanding, encountering certain individuals made her feel ―like [she] wasn‘t living thoroughly enough‖ (It Chooses You 197). July‘s claim that the ―tenderness and attention‖ (July 2011: 216) of a love relationship counteract fear of death and loneliness coincides with Turkle‘s views on overcoming the acceptance effect fostered by online confessional forums (Turkle 2011: 230): rather than lowering one‘s expectations regarding human relations outside the Internet (231-32) and ―forgetting that what we do affects others‖ (234), Turkle suggests ―reclaiming good manners‖ (Turkle 2011: 296) by, for instance, not emailing or texting during family meals. Analogous to July‘s quandary regarding politeness toward strangers who make her squirm, Turkle commends middle-class conventions not for their own sake but rather to argue that technology use must be contemplated bidirectionally: one must assess the effect on the user and on others. Similarly, Lauren Berlant‘s concept of ―cruel optimism‖ helps contextualize July‘s work in the contemporary social climate because LTLYM and It Chooses You confront the dire emotional consequences of cruel optimism, in both cases through human interaction outside digital media and through art. While Berlant dismisses The Future as disappointingly apocalyptic, she might perceive It Chooses You - with its ethics of intense private relationships that may imply possibly meaningful existence - as confirming her theory of the affective potential of the ―avant-garde counternormative political work‖ found in art (Berlant 2011: 238). Berlant discusses the contemporary as a historicized moment. Her concepts of an ―intimate public‖ (first defined in The Female Complaint) and ―cruel optimism‖ (defined in the eponymous monograph) confirm my interpretation of July‘s conflicted artistic ethos, including her struggle with middle-class courtesy. Berlant contends that an ―affective contract‖ Nassim Balestrini 144 (2011: 66) inherent in artistic genres, that is, ―the affectivity of the historical present relayed by an aesthetic transmission‖ (66-67), has long been marginalized in American studies because ―historicism‖ and ―aestheticism‖ (67) have been perceived antagonistically. The decision to include aestheticism when studying the contemporary era supports my understanding of LTLYM: this participatory project prominently employs artistic self-expression and affect-oriented assignments to grasp the present, particularly in light of a personally recollected past. Intersubjective emotional experiences of the open-access LTYLM project create the type of ―intimate public[s]‖ Berlant identifies among individuals searching for solutions to potentially life-threatening predicaments (Berlant 2011: 226) and among voluntary associations without membership prerequisites (227). July‘s self-critical portrayal as a socialpractice artist who realizes the Internet‘s limitedness in enabling social cohesion embodies Berlant‘s central argument: ―an optimistic attachment is cruel when the object/ scene of desire is itself an obstacle to fulfilling the very wants that bring people to it: but its life-organizing status can trump interfering with the damage it provokes‖ (Berlant 2011: 227). The Internet provides a space for interaction; it simultaneously excludes Penny Saver interviewees and dominates July‘s life. Despite its threat of discomfiting encounters, non-digital communication promises pathways out of artistic gridlock. Berlant concludes that even awareness of the ―instability, fragility, and dear cost‖ of ―conventional good-life fantasies - say, of enduring reciprocity in couples, families, political systems, institutions, markets, and at work‖ (Berlant 2011: 2) cannot stop humans from trying to find ―better ways of mediating the sense of a historical moment that is affectively felt but undefined in the social world that is supposed to provide some comforts of belonging‖ (263). This perspective of expressing optimism through shared feelings that may exist against the odds of social isolation encourages interpreting the virtual relational microterritories of LTLYM reports as Berlantian attempts to create ―alternative filters that produce the sense - if not the scene - of a more livable and intimate sociality‖ (227). LTLYM does aim at providing a ―scene‖ for such ―sociality,‖ both online and offline. July‘s juxtaposition of failed and fulfilling encounters in It Chooses You strikes a balance between unwarranted and surprisingly confirmed optimism regarding her ability to connect (with) people. This reading of July‘s reflections on finishing The Future suggests an alternative to Berlant‘s comments on the film‘s ending. In an interview, Berlant characterizes the final scene in which, after Sophie has ended her affair with another man, Sophie and Jason are sitting in their studio apartment, physically apart and silent, as ―a crying clown shrug, saying, we can‘t save the world but we can find a waiting room in proximity to each other. The new Victorianism meets the new apocalypticism! ‖ (Berlant/ Greenwald 2012: 81). I suggest linking the open-ended closing scene Life Writing in the Internet Age 145 (will the couple separate or not? ) to the opening scene in which they share a couch while being immersed in their laptop screens. The partners‘ seeming togetherness evaporates through their engagement with digital technology. The closing scene demonstrates the difficulty of human relations, but it remains inconclusive regarding Sophie‘s and Jason‘s future(s). It Chooses You demonstrates that July is not satisfied with accepting the status quo and rather envisions what Turkle (2011: 234, 296) and Berlant offer as a solution, namely ―cultivating an ethical practice (…) of attentive care against the world that engenders the destruction of its vital subjects‖ (Berlant 2011: 87). If the film‘s open ending does not clearly imply such actions, It Chooses You does. July‘s artistic ethos rests on how fictionalizations offered by art - and, in the amateur context, by experimenting with relational, positional, and performative self-expression and depictions of others - provide opportunities for an affective poetics which is daring, challenging, and not entirely devastating as to how it conveys multiple perspectives on the contemporary as an interpretation of the past, the current moment, and the implied future. The crux of the matter for July as an artist and for scholars contemplating the sociopolitical implications of digital communication resides in the effects of how reality is defined and experienced. Aesthetic forms, as opposed to intellectual political discourse, legitimately enlist the surreal as an expressive mode. In The Future, the virtual and the surreal compete regarding their authenticity effect: would we accept Sophie‘s dances posted on YouTube as more real than Jason‘s ability to stop time in moments of crisis? If, as Baudrillard claims, the real and the referential embody power (Baudrillard 2010: 397), then July‘s insight that digital-world immersion nourished the illusion of living in a heightened reality, only to wake up to an unmediated reality which leaves her vulnerable, implies the necessity to create aesthetic discourses whose ‗reality‘ results in affective power that serves social practice. As a consequence, art needs to reclaim an authenticity effect that is in accordance with the autobiographical contract of life writing and that exudes the artist‘s respect for the recipient. Through its ―relational microterritories‖ (Bourriaud 2010), LTLYM created one particular ―civic culture‖ (Dahlgren 2012: 132) connecting unknown numbers of strangers, friends, and relatives, and ―circulat[ing] (…) meaning‖ (133-34) among them. By zeroing in on only a few characters in The Future, and on herself and her interviewees in It Chooses You, July illustrates coexisting discourses in flux and the artistically beneficial exercise of alternating between larger contexts and minutiae. It Chooses You begins with an interview with an elderly person completing a sex change; it ends with a widow mourning her husband of over six decades. Just as she juxtaposes a socially isolated person with a long-standing married couple, July continuously explores the entire spectrum between ‗new‘ and ‗old,‘ yet coexisting versions of individual and social existence. 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John Bridgen. Foreword. In: Wappler (2011). 13-15. Wappler, Friederike (ed.) (2011). Neue Bezugsfelder in Kunst und Gesellschaft / New Relations in Art and Society. Zurich: JPR Ringer. Whitlock, Gillian & Anna Poletti (2008). ―Self-Regarding Art.‖ Biography 31.1 (Winter 2008): v-xxiii. Nassim Balestrini Department of American Studies University of Graz The Power of Visual Discourse 21 st Century US-American Films ‘Against the Grain’ Walter W. Hölbling Looking at U.S.-produced films and documentaries since the turn of the millennium, one notices a rapidly growing number of productions that diverge from official US politics or ‗mainstream‘ attitudes yet seem to be in tune with the views of statistically significant sections and/ or ethnicities of the US population. The spectrum is remarkably broad, from Michael Moore‘s polemical ‗mockumentaries‘ to Clint Eastwood‘s, George Clooney‘s, or Gus Van Sant‘s critical ‗American‘ movies, to the films by and about ethnic ‗minorities‘ like Mexican Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Asian Indian Americans, et cetera. Also, most recently, films and documentaries about the serious problems of U.S. veterans of the latest wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have begun to make an appearance in mainstream media. Altogether, over the last 15 years, movies and documentaries have increasingly put their fingers on critical social and political issues; ethnic minorities and women in particular have become much more visible and, most importantly, they now have their own filmmakers and scriptwriters rather than leaving the ‗power of discourse‘ to the old masters. This is partly thanks to new generations of ethnic and/ or female American filmmakers, but partly also because of new digital technologies that have become available in recent years and now make the production of films as well as their distribution on DVD and via internet easier and considerably less expensive. With the creation or special audiences and virtual communities via YouTube and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, the development of a growing number of ―interpretative communities‖ that began in the 1970s has accelerated and reached a new global level. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Walter W. Hölbling 152 Positioning Before I start with my ‗discourse proper‘, let me position myself. I come from a European country with a long and, if viewed with some eclectic benevolence, almost usable past that had led its citizens for a good number of centuries to think of themselves as a blessed people living in a wonderful country of great importance at the heart of Europe - or fairly close to it. Such was our master narrative until the early 20th century; since then it has been tumbled quite a bit - the end of the Habsburg Empire, our not very glorious roles in two world wars (including our not so unwilling integration into the German ―Third Reich‖), 10 years of occupation by the victorious allies of World War II, several decades as a neutral turn-table (with an obvious Western bias) between the Cold War frontiers, the fall of the Iron Curtain and, most recently, our membership in the European Union. In response to all these upheavals, our national master narrative has been revised accordingly: We now see ourselves as a blessed people living in a wonderful small country of great importance at the heart of Europe - or fairly close to it. I am saying this not only to make readers smile but also to suggest that the strong inclination of cultures to see themselves as the center of the world, and their own point of view as the universal one, plays a decisive role for our attitudes towards other groups, especially when they belong to a society‘s minorities, are less powerful, different in customs and/ or language, located on the other side of the globe - or all of the above. Rewriting venerable master narratives is a difficult task, rarely appreciated, and one could probably claim that the larger and more powerful the country the longer it takes to change ingrained points of view. If a country as small as Austria has made only minimal adaptations to its self-image over the past 100 years, one should not be surprised that in a country as large and diverse as the U.S.A., with an inherent need for a cohesive master narrative, change often comes more slowly than expected. Yet signs have become clearly visible over the past decade and a half. My argument is that the number of films produced in the U.S. which are seriously questioning various aspects of the U.S.-American master narrative has grown to an unprecedented degree since the turn of the millennium, and that even though they often run against - or ahead of - official US politics and/ or ‗mainstream‘ attitudes they seem to be in tune with the views of statistically significant sections and/ or ethnicities of the U.S. population. From my point of view, the attempts to (re-) claim the power of discourse from the traditional (film-making) powers-that-are become especially visible among ethnic and/ or social/ cultural minorities, as well as in a number of highly critical productions that focus on what I would call ‗general grievances‘ that affect all US citizens. The attached filmography provides an inkling of the multitude of such films that have The Power of Visual Discourse 153 been produced since the turn of the millennium; in the following some are mentioned in a short survey before looking at a few more closely. General Grievances Very obvious examples for the ―general grievances‖ group are Michael Moore‘s polemical ―documentaries/ mockumentaries‖ - e.g. Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/ 11, Sicko, Capitalism: A Love Story - which have raised documentary film-making (or a contemporary version of muckraking) to new and often controversial levels. On the one hand, his films once and for all bury the old myth that documentaries are/ have to be ‗objective‘; on the other, his highly satirical and provocative techniques spark fierce discussions even among people who sympathize with his point of view. Yet Moore presents topical issues across the various fields of American daily life and points his finger at highly sensitive spots on the underbelly of the American Dream. The list of awards and nominations his work received is remarkable; somewhat surprisingly, when checking the data of his movies, only the German Wikipedia lists all those awards - the English one lists none, whatever one makes of this. Another outspoken film by TV host and comedian Bill Maher, Religulous (2008), satirically castigates all religions for meddling in politics, for which Maher, not unexpectedly, receives a rather mixed appreciation. Less straightforward but not less noteworthy are Clint Eastwood‘s films, e.g. Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Gran Torino (2009), J. Edgar (2011), and American Sniper (2014). As President Obama put it at the 2010 award ceremony for the Arts and Humanities Award, ―Eastwood‘s films are essays in individuality, hard truths and the essence of what it means to be American.‖ Even though Eastwood‘s filmic style is a couple of galaxies removed from Michael Moore‘s, his topics also touch on a cross-section of social issues and ask questions about the use and abuse of power. Flags of Our Fathers will be discussed in more detail later on. Spike Lee‘s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006, TV Mini-Series), covers the disastrous events when 2005 hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, and particularly quarters with mostly black populations. The gross incompetence of the various government agencies, and of the powerful from the local to the federal level, is examined to show how the poor and underprivileged of New Orleans were mistreated in this grand calamity, and are often still ignored today. In his highly original production Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), director Ben Zeitlin tangentially presents these events through the eyes of a six-year old girl from the resident poor living in the swamps and bayous along the Mississippi delta. Walter W. Hölbling 154 Resistance against excesses of political power is at the center of Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), George Clooney‘s movie about the hard-won success of the CBS team of journalists against the ruthless and illegal scare and defamation tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy‘s communist witch-hunt in the early 1950s. Not incidentally, I believe, was it produced at a time of heated public discussions of the Patriot Act of 2001, with its partly serious infringements on civil rights, and of the post-9/ 11 public hysteria about people who have a beard and wear (anything like) a turban. Some critics even see James Cameron‘s blockbuster Avatar (2009) as critique of the military-industrial complex and as support for peaceful and sustainable development; in view of all the computer animations and 3D-effects, though, and with Avatar 2 (2017) and Avatar 3 (2018) already announced, this project may easily end up as a timeless multisequel/ prequel saga of good vs. evil à la Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, were special effects push critical aspects into the background. The latest US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have sparked a plethora of films that criticize and/ or question official points of view and also, increasingly, present the blight of the most recent US war veterans after their return home. Altogether, film and TV productions about 9/ 11 and the ensuing military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan number about 300, including shorts and documentaries. Public Broadcasting Service (Frontline) and National Geographic (National Geographic Explorer) produced a series of TV documentaries; a selection is listed in the filmography. Films on this topic are, e.g., The Hurt Locker (2008, dir. Kathryn Bigelow), American Sniper (2014, dir. Clint Eastwood), and rather upsetting documentaries like Beyond Treason (2005), about the permanent poisoning of people and whole regions by the U.S. use of depleted uranium ammunition and rockets in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yugoslavia. The number of hits on YouTube is 1,250,000 for Iraq War, for Afghanistan 820,000, including video clips from Wikileaks; for abuse of women in the U. S. military 25,800. An early movie drama about transgender and homosexuality in the military is Soldier‟s Girl (2003, dir. Frank R. Pierson), based on real events in a Kentucky military base. The very old taboo of homosexuality in civil society is convincingly breached in Ang Lee‘s Brokeback Mountain (2005) with the love story between two cowboys, deconstructing one of the primary U.S. archetypes/ stereotypes of masculinity; two well-known U.S. authors provide the texts - Ann Proulx the original story (1998), and Larry McMurtry the script (2003). The film won three Oscars and 92 other awards and was also a commercial success in the USA and internationally, which suggests that audiences considered the topic ripe for an appropriate treatment on the silver screen. Three years later we see the release of Gus Van Sant‘s biopic Milk (2008), starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the first gay Mayor of San Francisco, who was assassinated in 1978; the release comes at a time when the discussion about gays and The Power of Visual Discourse 155 lesbians in U.S. civil society and also the US military is heating up more and more. In 2009, President Obama posthumously awards Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom (a co-recipient is South African bishop Desmond Tutu), and in the same year Californian Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger inducts Harvey Milk into the California Hall of Fame and designates May 22 as Harvey Milk Day. Incidentally or not, the ―Don‘t Ask, Don‘t Tell‖ (DADT) policy the US Military Forces had been practicing as regards homosexuality in the service is officially terminated two years later, on September 20, 2011. Even though I would hesitate to construct a direct causality, one can assume in good faith that the success of these films signifies a change in public sentiment at a time when the official civil and/ or military authorities are reluctant to acknowledge, and even more reluctant to act upon, these issues. YouTube hits for ―gay movies‖ are 9,300.000, for ―lesbian movies‖ 280.000. This question of ―normalcy‖ raised by gay and lesbian grievances is combined with ethnic grievances in the movie La Mission (2010), which presents the issue of homosexuality in the context of the tough San Francisco Mission District Latino neighborhood, where an ex-convict and single male parent works his way up to respected citizen with hard effort and super-masculine attitude and then finds out that his only son is gay. The movie played at numerous film festivals, was referred to as "an honest attempt to portray the destructiveness of violence in the Latino community", and was credited by Latino media as being both authentic and genuine in relation to various aspects of American Hispanic cultures. Ethnic Grievances This takes us to the second group of films that deal with specifically ethnic grievances and claim their right to the power of discourse which, for all practical purposes, in most cases means to re-write the traditional narratives written by the dominant Eurocentric majority over the previous 400 years or so. Altogether about 150 films are about African Americans, e.g. Joseph Sargent‘s Something the Lord Made (2004), and The Great Debaters (2007), with Denzel Washington starring and directing; both are based on historical events and feature African-American achievements in the face of racism and white supremacy of the 1930s and 1950s, respectively. More recent films are Precious (2009), The Help (2011), Django Unchained (2012), The Butler (2013), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and most recently Selma (2014), all of them quite successful with critics and audiences. The recent years have also seen a number of movies about African Americans serving in the World War II U.S. military, which was then still strictly segregated. In addition to several documentaries, like the 2008 Discovering the Buffalo (dir. Adrian Washington), dealing with grateful Walter W. Hölbling 156 memories of Italian civilians of black soldiers protecting them, and Inside Buffalo (2010, dir. Fred Kudjo Kuwornu), another documentary about the all-black 92 th Infantry Division, there is Spike Lee‘s Miracle at St. Anna (2008, based on the novel of James McBride) and also the 2012 remake of the Tuskeege Airmen, called Red Tails, dir. Anthony Hemingway. The figure for African American clips on YouTube is 5,140.000. Movies about Hispanic/ Latina/ Chicana/ o also have increased significantly during the first one and a half decade of our century: Real Women Have Curves (2002) won awards, among others, at the Sundance Film Festival. It is the coming-of-age story of a first-generation Latina who decides not to follow in the dressmaker footsteps of her mother but graduate from high school and accept a scholarship from Columbia University, against the absolute refusal of her mother. Walkout (2006, HBO), based on a true story, presents the successful protests of Mexican- Americans at a public high school in East Los Angeles. Set against the background of the civil rights movement of 1968, it is a story of courage and the fight for justice and empowerment. It supposedly inspired a real walkout against restrictive immigration laws in Colorado. The Goal trilogy (2005, 2007, 2009, partly only on DVD) about Santiago Munez, a successful Chicano soccer player, is officially sponsored by FIFA, the world soccer organization, and also spawned an internet game. It tells Santiago‘s life from playing soccer in a Mexican backyard to being member of the Newcastle team and, finally, of Real Madrid; the connection between the second and third part of the trilogy, though, is a bit arbitrary and the plot rather constructed. It is an American-Dream story which, being about soccer, comes true in Europe. In a different category, El Muerto: The Dead One (2008), based on a comic book series by Javier Fernandez, combines trendy Zombie romances and Aztec mythology and has turned into a cult film on the screen and on DVD. More soberly, in Bordertown (2006), written and directed by Oscar-nominated Gregory Nava, a cast of high-profile actors like Jennifer Lopez, Antonio Banderas, and Martin Sheen dramatizes the issue of numerous female homicides in Ciudad Juarez, the sprawling Mexican industrial city across the Texas border, and also points to the negative social consequences of the NAFTA free trade agreement for the Mexican side. - A related note is sounded in Down for Life (2009), a film based on a true story depicting a single dramatic day in the life of a 15 year old Latina gang leader in South Central Los Angeles. Figures from YouTube are 926,000 for ―Chicano‖, 873.000 for ―Mexican American‖, 926.000 for ―Latino‖, and 3,460,000 for ―Spanish American‖. Asian American and Indian American films that deal with social and cultural issues also have surfaced lately, in addition - as well as in contrast - to the numerous Kung Fu varieties and martial arts productions. The documentary An Asian American Experience (2009, dir. Cory Reed Smith) is focused on five Asian American students, their diverse back- The Power of Visual Discourse 157 grounds, and the prejudices they encounter within American society as well as the Asian American community. Great American Dream (2012, dir. Roger Lim) places its protagonist in the context of racial and social tensions in college baseball, and Uploaded: The Asian American Movement (2012, dir. Kane Diep), is a documentary that explores the growing presence of Asian Americans in pop culture since the advent of new media forms such as YouTube. On the comedy side, we have the Asian American/ Indian American couple of schlemiehls, the stoner friends Harold and Kumar, who have made their way through slapstick and cultural/ racist embarrassment in so far three movies and several TV shorts: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (dir. Danny Leiner, 2004); Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (dir Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, 2008), and A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011). A YouTube search for ―Asian Americans‖ yields 4,350,000 results. Finally, as relative newcomers on the block, Native Americans have entered the scene over the past decade, with documentaries as well as motion picture dramas and independent productions. Native Americans became a visible active part of U.S.-American cultural production only in the 1960s, with Navarre Scott Momaday‘s ice-breaking novel House Made of Dawn (1968). Films made by Native Americans with Native Americans took another 30 years to come along. In 1994, Steven R. Heape, a Cherokee Nation citizen, and Chip Richie, a second-generation filmmaker, founded Rich-Heape Films Co. with the goal to inform, educate, and encourage awareness of Native Peoples, and to preserve the history and culture of American Indians. They have since produced a number of award-winning documentaries that write Native Americans back into the history of the United States, not as the yelling chasers of the pioneers‘ wagon trains but as the people who had lived on that continent for tens of thousands of years before European settlers arrived. James Earl Jones, well-known actor and partly of Native American descent, joined the production as a narrator in several of the documentaries. Their first film was Black Indians: An American Story (2001) and garnered several awards. ―A society that wants to build the future must know its past, its real past, as it was. But what if that past had been lost, forgotten, hidden, or denied? ‖ - ―It was a black and white world in the early days of the Republic and little or no thought was given to people of mixed race, especially if they looked ‗black.‘‖ Steven Heape recalls: ―We were told ‗if you could pass for white, that's who you'd be; if not, it was usually better to be identified as black than Indian. It was this kind of thinking that later led to ‗pencil genocide‘ - changing one‘s race on a birth certificate to fit the skin color of the child.‖ Don‟t Get Sick After June. American Indian Healthcare (2010, video) can be seen as the Native American version of Michael Moore‘s Sicko, adding one more turn of the screw, so to speak, and illustrating the rather poor quality of (on paper, contractually guaranteed) health care facilities and Walter W. Hölbling 158 services for Native Americans. Our Spirits Don‟t Speak English (2008) uncovers the dark history of the U.S. government education policy and gives a voice to the traumata of countless Indian children who were forced through the U.S. boarding school system under the then popular assimilationist slogan of Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlyle Indian Industrial School - ―kill the Indian, save the man‖. Native American filmmaker Georgina Lightning also deals with this issue of cultural genocide in her film drama Older Than America (2008). Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy (2006), winner of prestigious awards, explores one of the young American republic‘s darkest periods: Andrew Jackson‘s Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the forced 800-mile march of the Cherokee Nation from their homelands East of the Mississippi to Oklahoma in 1838. Nearly a quarter of the 250,000 people of the Cherokee Nation died on the Trail of Tears. While the voice-over of this documentary is fairly even-handed and calm, another one by Joanelle Romero, Native American actress and filmmaker, is much more hard hitting. Quite suggestively, it is titled American Holocaust: When It‟s All Over I‟ll Still Be Indian (2011) and establishes multiple affinities between the extermination of Jews by the Nazis and that of 19 million Native Americans by White America. This film is not available commercially but accessible on YouTube, where entries for Native Americans number over 2,060.000. An until then unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers is the five-episodes TV documentary We Shall Remain (2009, dir. Ric Burns), part of the American Experience series that presents Native American history from King Philip‘s War in colonial times up to the resurgence of Native culture through the American Indian Movement. One of the few Native American filmmakers who produce feature films rather than documentaries is Chris Eyre, dir. of Smoke Signals (1998), which is based on short stories in Sherman Alexie‘s 1991 collection Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. This is the first American move made exclusively by and with Native Americans. Eyre also directed the awardwinning Skins (2002), based upon the novel of Adrian C. Louis that dramatizes the Native American protagonists‘ struggle for balance between the world inside and outside the reservation. - Alexie himself produced his own films, The Business of Fancydancing (2002) and 49? (2003). Exemplary readings Among the ethnic movies, The Business of Fancydancing deserves more detailed attention. Sherman Alexie, author of fiction and poetry, and also a filmmaker, sticks out as a highly individualistic person who focuses on (and sometimes also personifies) major problems of Native Americans in his writings as well as in his films. Readers who happen to know Thomas King‘s short story ―A Seat in the Garden‖ can appreciate how Native The Power of Visual Discourse 159 American humor can be put to service for deconstructing the clichés and stereotypes which first U.S.-American literature and then Hollywood have perpetuated over the centuries. Alexie, too, has a hilarious, and sometimes outrageous, sense of humor which also includes the ability of making fun of himself and his fellow Indians. The Business of Fancydancing is based on Alexie‘s 1991 poetry collection of the same name. The character that holds the film together is Seymour Polatkin, a gay half-breed American Indian poet living in Seattle, who receives accolades from non-Indians but meets with a lack of approval from those he grew up with back on the reservation. After many years, Seymour returns to the reservation for the funeral of his friend Mouse, a marvelously gifted violinist who died of alcohol and drug abuse, and Seymour's internal conflict becomes external when his childhood friends and relatives on the reservation question his motivation for writing Indian-themed poems and selling them to the mainstream public. In the end, his visit only deepens the rift between him and his former friends. The film has a loose chronological plot frequently interrupted by flashbacks and poetry readings and by what can be called a polyphonic, democratic structure, in the sense that during his visit on the reservation Seymour is only one of many voices, and actually one of the quietest, which underlines the fact that he has become a stranger to most of the people he grew up with. This is a very personal film, yet at the same time quite sophisticated and artistic. Elements of self-reflective meta-narrative suggest an attempt to present an artist whose cultural as well as sexual identity places him in an in-between space the contrasting tensions of which can only be held in a delicate balance by keeping in perpetual motion, for which Fancydancing serves as a multi-referential symbol. Two examples: Shortly after learning about the death of Mouse, Seymour gives one more public reading before setting out for the reservation, and suddenly Mouse is in the audience, and he and his violin fill the end of that sequence. Towards the end of the film, during the grieving ceremony over Mouse on the reservation, Seymour is unable to articulate his grief, only cries out inwardly, and leaves; the visuals suggest his torn personality, while the soundtrack plays a Kaddish for Mouse intoned by a Jewish-Indian friend of their youth. The interview at the beginning of that sequence illustrates the huge gap between the world of Seattle and that of the reservation. Among the ―general grievances‖ group I would like to focus on films about war issues, simply because being involved in wars abroad, since the end of World War II, seems to have become a rather ‗normal‘ experience for U.S. citizens; and because the problems of an estimated 5 million veterans and their families from more recent wars (Vietnam, the Gulf War of 1991, Afghanistan, Iraq) affect a significant section of U.S. society and have lately also found their way onto the silver screen. Walter W. Hölbling 160 I would like to start out with Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers (2006), about the battle of Iwo Jima from the point of view of the U.S. soldiers. This battle was one of the bloodiest in the World War II Pacific theater of war; altogether 29,000 people died, 5,500 of them Americans. The movie opens with a sequence in which a corpsman on a battlefield is exasperated to the point of tears as calls for help seem to come from all directions at once. It turns out that the sequence is the nightmare of a war veteran who dies soon thereafter of a heart attack and leaves his son to discover his father‘s experience during the war. These first expository sequences introduce major themes of the film and also illustrate its quite complex and interlinked structure. The fact that we see the ‚real‘ battle of Iwo Jima only after having been introduced to the personal nightmares which it spawned as well as to the media‘s staged simulacra, signifies major ideas that are further developed in the rest of the film. Altogether, one could call it a quite ‗postmodern‘ production, in the sense that it mixes traditional genres biopic, documentary, and feature film, mostly presents highly subjective versions of reality and has no chronological storyline. The past co-exists with the present at any moment; it features multiple narrator figures; the temporary and spatial distribution of characters/ speakers achieve a certain degree of Bakthinian polyphony. It also interlaces different time/ space levels - the battle itself, which is still on-going during the war bond promotion tour in Feb.-March 1945; several synchronous moments after the war; Bradley Jr.‘s research and book after the death of his father; and three different major plots: battle, promotion tour of the three/ twosome, veterans/ next generation. It blurs traditional distinctions between historical facts, personal and collective memories, dreams, fiction, and simulacra and has strong metafictional elements, reflecting on the production and the impact of its own medium and other (visual) media, and how this affects the actual events. The fact that we learn about all the war events only through selected memories - filtered through the minds of the three protagonists, mostly John Bradley‘s - underlines the film‘s focus on reality as a subjective creation and places it firmly in postmodern aesthetics, according to which there are as many realities as there are texts. Every veteran has her or his own war story, and no longer is there a single authoritative master narrator whose text is officially valid for all. The central icon of the film - the photograph of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi - shares these qualities and becomes contested terrain in several respects. We learn that the picture that grips the nation is not of the original event but of the second of its kind, with different people involved. With a fine sense of irony the film - itself the medium of simulacra par excellence - touches on the issue of authenticity, here made even more complex because, in a sense, both flag-raisings are authentic: the second one was not staged for the press either, as the soldiers were simply following orders to take down one and put up another flag, and they The Power of Visual Discourse 161 neither knew that the high brass was on their way to the top, nor that they were being photographed. To complicate the issue further, neither of the two flag-raisings signified anything like pending victory, yet this was the message that the media sent to Americans at home and to the world at large; in reality, the fighting went on for another 35 days, and thousands more would die until the battle was won. Not even to mention the fact that none of the soldiers who happened to be in the photograph has contributed anything more ‗heroic‘ to that particular event than finding a piece of Japanese water pipe, fix the American flag on it, and put it up. As we learn later in the film, each of them has his moments of personal heroism during the battle - but those are never made public. Eastwood here very deliberately picks up on the fact that gripping images brought to a mass audience by the media become free-floating signifiers whose impact and (ab)use are beyond control and become subjected to the specific historical conditions. Not coincidentally, in James Bradley Jr.‘s initial interview with the photographer of the flag-raising about the power of one single image, there is also a reference to one of the icons of the Vietnam War - the South Vietnam officer shooting a supposed Viet Cong point blank - that helped turn the mood of Americans (as well as that of the world) against U.S. support of the South Vietnamese regime. The fact that this - generically speaking rather ‗unheroic‘ - picture of the Iwo Jima flag-raising galvanizes U.S. big business as well as average Americans back home into a major bond-buying spree, makes the Public Relations campaign an outstanding success, and thus actually contributes to the American victory in World War II - this certainly is the ironic center of the movie. Eastwood‘s companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, presents the events from the Japanese point of view; even the language is Japanese, with English subtitles - a very rare if not unique attempt by a U.S. filmmaker to understand ―the other side. Though it tells a more conventional story of bravery and loyal patriotism, in both movies the fighting men are deceived by their high command resp. left without the promised support. These two films about World War II - the archetypal ‗good war‘ from the U.S. perspective - were released at a time when the two contemporary wars started by the G.W. Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq were not going well at all. Both movies deconstruct the ways politics and the military cooperate to produce glorifying stories for the public, and are quite remarkable as critical political statements. Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker, about a bomb removal squad in Iraq, is an example for the ambiguities of heroism in more recent American wars. The film won six Oscars (2009) and is based on the experience of a three-man high-tech team that defuses Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq. The screen opens with a quote from War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a best-selling 2002 book by New York Times war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges: ―The rush of battle is a potent and Walter W. Hölbling 162 often lethal addiction, for war is a drug; ‖ all the words fade out except for the last four. Fairly at the beginning, the defuser of the team is killed in an explosion, in a sequence that earned appreciation for its filmic slowmotion technique; his replacement turns out be not only a technical expert but also a ―cowboy,‖ i.e., a person who loves to take extreme risks, endangering also the rest of his team in several daring actions. After his tour of duty is over, he comes back to his girlfriend and toddler son, but soon signs up for another 365 day rotation. The final shot very obviously suggests that he has become addicted to the drug of war. Nothing could be further from the minds of Heather Courtney‘s smalltown youth in her documentary Where Soldiers Come From (2011), which won a News and Documentary Emmy for ―Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story, Long Form,‖ 2012). The film tells the story of Dominic and several of his friends who, growing up in Courtney‘s Michigan home town on the Upper Peninsula at the shores of Lake Superior, join the National Guard, and then find themselves assigned to a bombclearing unit in Afghanistan, living through very similar experiences as the characters in The Hurt Locker. Instead of dramatic action, however, there is just the tense and possibly deadly daily routine. After their tour of duty, they try to re-integrate into civil life and find it rather difficult, having to acknowledge the effects of the new silent signature wound of the Afghan and also the Iraq war, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). At the end of the movie, only Dominic, with the help of an art teacher, is able to rediscover his artistic self and expresses his troubles in the form of a narrative mural on the back wall of the college. His friends still seem too suspended in limbo, not (yet? ) able to cope with the change the war experience and TBI have wreaked in their lives. Another documentary about war veterans is Poster Girl, about female Sergeant Robynn Murray, who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and has severe problems readjusting to civil life after leaving the army. She finally finds a veterans‘ self-help group called The Combat Paper Project, where traumatized veterans produce paper out of their cutup uniforms and other army paraphernalia and use the sheets for artistic creations. The haptic quality of this process, together with the psychological effects of turning terribly negative experiences and memories into a positive artistic creation help Robynn and other veterans - like Dominic in Courtney‘s film to regain self-esteem and self-determination, and to re-integrate ino civilian life. According to conservative estimates, at least 1,3 million US veterans from the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars are currently suffering from PTSD, TBI, and physical injuries, and the resulting problems affect altogether about 5-6 million citizens. Such films have apparently helped to raise the general awareness level for these issues: President Obama, in one of his last campaign speeches in 2012, even included TBI in his list of urgent issues to be addressed. The Power of Visual Discourse 163 Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper (2014) has created a heated international public debate since its release in U.S. in January 2015, partly also because it was an amazing box office success, and partly because in real life Christopher Scott Kyle, the Navy SEAL sniper on whose 2012 bestselling memoirs about his Iraq experience the movie is based, was killed together with a companion at a shooting range by another Iraq War veteran supposedly suffering from PTSD. Eastwood manages to divide his audience, presenting the cruelties of warfare in an often upsetting mixture of scenes that show cold-blooded killing, emotional quandary, and the struggles to re-adjust to civilian life while suffering from PTSD. Again, we see soldiers in situations that only allow them to choose between bad or morally questionable options. Only very recently have the problems of female soldiers who suffered sexual harassment, assault, and rape made it onto the screen. Lioness (2008, dirs. Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers) and The Invisible War (2012, dir. Kirby Dick) are two documentaries that give voices to women in the military who were also traumatized by the war but often even more shocked and wounded by harassment and sexual aggression. To conclude this tour de force: What these films have in common, in spite of all their different styles, techniques, and topics, is their attempt to (re)claim agency and the power of discourse to critically present pressing social and political grievances in a way that clearly goes beyond mainstream entertainment and aims at making their audiences - as well as official authorities - aware of the necessity to face these issues rather than sweep them under the carpet. The multitude and variety of these films, as well as their easy availability on DVDs or YouTube, can also be understood as signals from the ongoing development of an increasingly multicultural and transnational U.S. society, local and regional backlashes notwithstanding. For ethnic as well as social groups, these film productions are an effective way to inscribe themselves into the collective American imaginary and to gain the visibility necessary in our hyper-visual age to present their specific needs and views as distinct ―interpretative communities‖ while at the same time affirming their place within a generous and tolerant America - the kind of American that U.S. President Barack Obama envisioned in his victory speech of 2012, invoking the values of Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers - and tweaking them a little to fit a truly multi-ethnic and multicultural society of our time. Selected Filmography There is little to none academic scholarship on the films mentioned or discussed, so there is no traditional list of works cited. For first information on all films please check the International Movie Database at http: / / www.imdb.com/ or put in a search on the Internet. Walter W. Hölbling 164 A Mighty Heart (2007, dir. Michael Winterbottom) A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011, dir. Todd Strauss-Schulson) American Holocaust: When It‟s All Over I‟ll Still Be Indian (2011, dir. Joanella Romero, only on YouTube) American Sniper (2014, dir. Clint Eastwood) An Asian American Experience (2009, dir. Cory Reed Smith) August: Osage County (2013, dir. John Wells) Avatar (2009, dir. James Cameron) Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, dir. Ben Zeitlin) Beyond Treason. Depleted Uranium US-WMD Iraq War Veterans Dying (2005, dir. Doug Rokke; only on YouTube) Black Indians: An American Story (2001, Chip Richie) Blazing Saddles (1974, dir. Mel Brooks) Bordertown (2006, dir. Gregory Nava) Bowling for Columbine (2002, dir. Michael Moore) Brokeback Mountain (2005, dir. Ang Lee) Buying the War (TV episode, Apr. 25 2007) Capitalism: A Love Story (2009, dir. Michael Moore) Charlie Wilson‟s War (2007, dir. Mike Nichols) CitizenFour (2014, dir. Laura Poitras) Discovering the Buffalo (2008, dir. Adrian Washington) Django Unchained (2012, dir. Quentin Tarantino) Don‟t Get Sick After June. American Indian Healthcare (2010, dir. Chip Richie) Down for Life (2011, dir. Alan Jacobs) El Muerto: The Dead One (2008, dir. Brian Cox) Fahrenheit 9/ 11 (2004, dir. Michael Moore) Flags of Our Fathers (2006, dir. Clint Eastwood) Generation Kill (2008, TV mini-series) Goal, Goal 2, Goal 3 (2005, 2007, 2009, partly only on DVD, different directors) Good Night, and Good Luck (2005, dir. George Clooney) Grace is Gone (2007, dir. James C. Strouse) Gran Torino (2009, dir. Clint Eastwood) Great American Dream (2012, dir. Roger Lim) Green Zone (2010, dir. Paul Greengrass) Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008, dirs. Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg) Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004, dir. Danny Leiner) Home of the Brave (2006, dir. Irwin WInkler) In the Valley of Elah (2007, dir. Paul Haggis) Inside Buffalo (2010, dir. Fred Kudjo Kuwornu) Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006, dir. Robert Greenwald) J. Edgar (2011, dir Clint Eastwood) La Mission (2010, dir. Peter Bratt) Last Vegas (2013, dir. Jon Turteltaub) Letters from Iwo Jima (2006, dir. Clint Eastwood) Lioness (2008, dirs. Meg McLagan & Daria Sommers) Lions for Lambs (2007, dir. Robert Redford) Milk (2008, dir. Gus Van Sant) Million Dollar Baby (2004, dir. Clint Eastwood) Miracle at St. Anna (2008, dir. Spike Lee), My Country, My Country (2006, dir. Laura Poitras) The Power of Visual Discourse 165 Mystic River (2003, dir. Clint Eastwood) No End in Sight (2006, dir. Charles Ferguson) Off to War (2005, TV series) Older Than America (2008, dir. Georgina Lightening) Our Spirits Don‟t Speak English: Indian Boarding School (2008, dirs. Chip Richie et al., video) Poster Girl (2010, dir. Sara Nesson) Precious (2009, dir. Lee Daniels) Real Women Have Curves (2002, dir. Patricia Cardoso Red Tails (2012, dir. Anthony Hemingway; remake of Tuskegee Airmen, 1995) Redacted (2007, dir. Brian de Palma) Religulous (2008, dir. Bill Maher) Rendition (2007, dir. Gavin Hood) Selma (2014, dir. Ava DuVernay) Restrepo (2010, dirs. Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger) Sicko (2007, dir. Michael Moore) Smoke Signals (1998, dir. Chris Eyre) Soldier‟s Girl (2003, dir. Frank R. Pierson) Soldier‟s Pay (2004, dirs. Tricia Regan et al.)) Something the Lord Made (2004, dir. Joseph Sargent) Standard Operating Procedure (2008, dir. Errol Morris) Stop-Loss (2008, dir. Kimberly Peirce) The Business of Fancydancing (2002, dir. Sherman Alexie) The Butler (2013, dir. Lee Daniels) The Great Debaters (2007, dir. Denzel Washington) The Ground Truth (2006, dir. Patricia Foulkrod) The Help (2011, dir. Tate Taylor) The Hurt Locker (2008, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) The Invisible War (2012, dir. Kirby Dick) The Kingdom (2007, dir. Peter Berg) The Messenger (2009, dir. Oren Moverman) The Oath (2010, dir. Laura Poitras) The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004, 3-part TVminiseries, dir. Robert Greenwald) Trail of Tears Cherokee Legacy (2006, dir. Chip Richie, video) Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War (2004, dir. Robert Greenwald) Walkout (2006, HBO, dir. Edward James Olmos) We Shall Remain (2009, dir. Ric Burns, TV documentary) When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006, TV Mini-Series, Spike Lee) Where Soldiers Come From (2011, dir. Heather Courtney) Why We Fight (2005, dir. Eugene Jarecki) WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception (2004, dir. Danny Schechter) Walter W. Hölbling Department of American Studies University of Graz Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 \ Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de Stand: August 2015 · Änderungen und Irrtümer vorbehalten! JETZT BESTELLEN! 113311 Auslieferung Dezember 2011.indd 10 29.11.11 17: 13 Maurus Roller Krise und Wandel: Das britische Drama im 20. Jahrhundert Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Identität, Autonomie und Form-Inhalt-Relation Mannheimer Beiträge zur Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, Vol. 80 2014, X, 510 Seiten, €[D] 78,00 / SFr 97,90 ISBN 978-3-8233-6860-1 Im Mittelpunkt dieser Studie steht die Auseinandersetzung des britischen Dramas im 20. Jahrhundert mit dem in der (Post-)Moderne in eine Krise geratenen menschlichen Subjekt und dessen Streben nach dem schönen Leben. Unter Einbezug aktueller kulturwissenschaftlicher Ansätze werden unterschiedliche Handlungs- und Dramenmodelle entworfen, womit eine breit angelegte Neubetrachtung des britischen Dramas von 1900 bis in die Gegenwart möglich wird. Anhand umfangreicher Analysen von Werken, die von Wilde und Shaw über Osborne, Wesker, Storey, Pinter und Stoppard bis hin zu Barker und Churchill reichen, eröffnen sich Differenzen in der Konzeptualisierung des handelnden Subjekts, die grundlegende Konsequenzen für die ästhetische Gestaltung der Dramen haben. Und es zeigt sich, dass diese damit zugleich unterschiedliche Antworten auf die Frage nach dem schönen Leben unter den Bedingungen unserer (post-)modernen Welt geben. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries Adapting Jane Austen in the Internet Age Silke Jandl The online modernized adaptation of Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, is the first literary adaptation produced exclusively on the free Internet platform YouTube. This article discusses the implications of choosing Pride and Prejudice as a source text and its suitability for the YouTube context. The mode of narration will prove to be an especially interesting subject of analysis, not only because Austen‟s style of focalization lends itself well to the vlog 1 format but also because the narrative situation raises several questions about authenticity. As The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was specifically produced for a YouTube audience, certain characteristics of the medium are addressed and analysed. The ubiquity of metareference as well as intraand intertextual references, are characteristics of YouTube content across all genres and are especially prominent in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, thereby warranting a closer examination here. The adaptation also experiments with transmedia storytelling; a fairly new concept that has grown out of the increased possibilities that come with the multifaceted developments of the ever evolving Internet. Twitter, Tumblr and Lookbook are all examples of platforms beside YouTube that have been utilized to further and/ or complement the plot and character development of the vlog series. The tools of the Internet have also enabled new and innovative ways for the audience to interact with the adaptation. All of these features combined create a transmedia adaptation that might very well be the first of many of its kind. 1 „Vlogs‟ are video blogs, primarily focusing on personal experiences or opinions usually delivered by one person to the camera. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Silke Jandl 168 1. Introduction: What is The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most enduringly popular novels of the 19th century. It has been read with enthusiasm ever since its publication in 1813 and is still one of the most widely read books, due, in part, to popular adaptations for cinema and TV. The story of Elizabeth Bennet and her family is, in fact, one of the most frequently adapted stories of all time. Several adaptations have been created in written form, as novels and short stories, sequels, prequels and rewrites. Moreover, numerous reinterpretations for the stage, the small screen and the cinema have been inspired by the novel. In April 2012 yet another adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, was launched, which will be the subject of this article. It was, however, not exactly a traditional adaptation but rather a self-proclaimed experiment. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is not an adaptation produced for the traditional screen, but specifically for the Internet platform YouTube. This version transfers the story of the Bennet family to the year 2012. Lizzie, an American graduate student, is the protagonist and primary first-person narrator telling her story in a format typical of YouTube: the vlog. Biweekly a video was posted on Lizzie Bennet‟s YouTube channel, resulting in an adaptation that spread over the course of almost an entire year, ultimately reaching one hundred episodes on the main channel and adding up to seven hours‟ worth of video material. If Q&A videos (i.e. Question-and-Answer-videos in which questions viewers have left on a previous post are addressed by the creators), bonus videos, and the videos on spin-off channels are additionally taken into account, the complete adaptation amounts to almost ten hours of YouTube content in total. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries creators also chose to embrace a transmedial approach to the adaptation process, thereby allowing them to utilize possibilities beyond YouTube for enhanced storytelling purposes. Various other Internet-based media were employed to enable an unprecedented immersive experience. Recipients can thus venture further into the story by exploring the characters‟, as well as the cast and crew‟s various social media profiles. Consequently, recipients may spend significantly more than ten hours experiencing The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, browsing real and fictitious profiles on websites like Twitter, Tumblr, Lookbook, Pinterest or Facebook. Additionally, The Secret Diaries of Lizzie Bennet, a fictitious diary in print, complementing the YouTube series was published in 2014 and a novelization from Lydia Bennet‟s perspective is due to be released later this year. These publications further strengthen the transmedial stance of the adaptation. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a highly innovative project and the first literary adaptation to use YouTube as its primary medium. It is indeed the first and so far the most successful literary adaptation expressly produced on and for YouTube. Given the fact, however, that YouTube is a comparatively recent phenomenon and has to date been largely neglected within The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 169 literary studies, scholarly literature on the topic is scarce to non-existent. In fact, most academic discourses about interactivity and online storytelling revolve around gaming (see, for example, Ryan 2001, Ryan 2006, Hutcheon 2006 and Punday 2011). Nevertheless, a number of research areas have proven adequate to illuminate the mechanics as well as the implications of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries project. Intermediality studies are chief among the theories that have informed the analysis conducted in this article. This approach is highly useful when considering the literary adaptation critically with regard to intermedial transposition and transmedia storytelling. Narratology is another area that offers valuable insights into the workings and interconnections of narrativity, mode of narration and interactivity across the relevant media. In this article, I aim to introduce The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as a possible model for future literary adaptations in the context of the Internet. In order to do so, I will discuss various issues this transmedia experiment raises. I will first illustrate that Pride and Prejudice is perfectly suited for transposition into the vlog format which is so characteristic of YouTube content. I will then analyze how this newest adaptation of Jane Austen‟s novel interacts with the source material and variants thereof before identifying issues of fictionality that result from the YouTube version. To gain a better understanding of the experimental nature of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries I will also delineate the possibilities and limitations the transposition of a literary work into a relatively new and undefined medium entails. I will outline various medium specific choices and methods and in this context pay special attention to narrativity, metareference and authenticity. Lastly, I will illustrate how the concept of transmedia storytelling relates to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and affects the role of the recipient. 2. Austen and Vlogs: Why Pride and Prejudice is Perfectly Suited for YouTube Considering that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was initially conceived as an experiment, the source text for the very first literary adaptation specifically intended for YouTube had to be carefully chosen. The popularity of the source text and its adaptability to the medium had to be taken into account, as had to be financial concerns. Linda Hutcheon has pointed out that “[f]or economic reasons, adapters often rely on selecting works that are well known and that have proved popular over time; for legal reasons, they often choose works that are no longer copyrighted” (Hutcheon, 2006: 29). Besides legal and financial benefits, the fact that Pride and Prejudice is so well known has undoubtedly been advantageous for the YouTube adaptation, at the very least initially. The first viewers of the show were arguably drawn to the videos out of curiosity, interested in how the source text might be adapted to suit the context of YouTube. Silke Jandl 170 Recipients who consciously seek out adaptations to derive pleasure, as Hutcheon stresses throughout her monograph A Theory of Adaptation, “simply from repetition with variation, from the comfort of ritual combined with the piquancy of surprise” (Hutcheon, 2006: 4, also see e.g. 114 or 142 ibid). Yet, in order to be able to feel “the pleasure and the frustration of experiencing an adaptation” through “familiarity […] repetition and memory” (Hutcheon, 2006: 21) recipients have to be aware of the source material and/ or variations of it. As Sanders indicates in Adaptation and Appropriation, […] it goes almost without saying that the texts cited or reworked need to be well known. They need to serve as part of a shared community of knowledge, both for the interrelationships and interplay to be identifiable and for these in turn to have the required impact on their readership (Sanders 2006: 97). The high level of viewer engagement that almost instantly characterized the show‟s audience is due to a great extent to the viewers‟ previous knowledge and love for the novel itself, as well as their inevitable engagement with numerous popular adaptations of Pride and Prejudice for TV and cinema screens. From a practical viewpoint, the plot focuses solely on the inner life of one family and their interactions with a few others. This renders exotic, and thus expensive, film sets unnecessary. The vlog format, which is intimate enough to adequately express the inner life of the characters, makes it possible to shoot the web series in no more than five locations. Given the series started out without any secured prospects of success and/ or income, the production costs had to be kept reasonably low, especially because the series was initially funded privately by the producers. After some time and success, the advertisements preceding and surrounding the videos paid for most of the necessary investments, before the DE- CA (“a leading digital media and entertainment company” that aims to “create high-quality video and operate a network of premium video channels,” especially focusing on female audiences, online 1) made a deal with the show, and paid for expenses after episode sixty (see online 2). Another primary reason for choosing Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice is the novel‟s suitability for adaptation in general and consequently the narrative‟s natural adaptation into the vlog format. This is in part due to the fact that dialogue is so prominent in the novel. In Mastering: The Novels of Jane Austen, Gill and Gregory argue that in the novel “[m]any of the dialogues work like drama” and that, [o]ne of the reasons that the dialogue has dramatic force is because it is vividly characterized: the characters have their own distinctive styles. For example, Mrs. Bennet is eager, agitated yet imperceptive. [...] Her style is flam- The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 171 boyant and unfocused. In contrast, Charlotte Lucas has the authorative manner of a narrator [...] [original emphasis] (Gill and Gregory 2003: 124). This is especially important in view of the prominence of „costume theatre‟ in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries to portray off-screen characters. Interestingly, Charlotte Lu, who unlike Mrs. Bennet is a central on-screen character in the YouTube adaptation, initially resembles an (almost) omniscient narrator although she exists on the intradiegetic level. Her role as narrator will be discussed in further detail below and shows that Austen‟s focalization facilitates the realization of the material as a vlog series. The suitability of Pride and Prejudice for adaptation in this context is cemented by the fact that Austen wrote about “events which could have occurred in any middle-class family of Jane‟s own time, and which could still occur - allowing for some changes of circumstance - in families today” (Le Faye 2011: 151). The realism and plausibility which result from the close observation of the people and circumstances of Austen‟s contemporaries give the novel an air of authenticity which has been attractive for readers these past two centuries. As Austen evidently was aware, first impressions are fundamental in human interaction; after all she originally intended to call her 1813 novel First Impressions. Indeed, Pride and Prejudice depicts how first impressions can be founded on prejudices or overly quick judgements. Therefore, her characters have to revise these first impressions of other people and, occasionally accept them as wrong, as new information inevitably is uncovered with the passing of time in each other‟s company. Elizabeth forms prejudiced judgements of Darcy and has to realize her mistake by accepting her own limitations in assessing the character of others. The story encourages readers to reflect on the tendency to form a first impression immediately upon meeting a stranger, and on how often these impressions prove to be false. Thus, the novel deals with one of the most fundamental aspects of social interaction and human nature, rendering it almost universally accessible. It is therefore no surprise that Austen‟s novels continue to attract audiences as well as inspire creative reinterpretations. 3. Playing with Source Texts: Intertextuality in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries The appeal of an adaptation like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries partly lies in the possibility for playing with interand intratextuality. Every adaptation indubitably alludes back to the source material, be it internally or externally. Adaptations often make use of the opportunities to refer back to the source text externally. Following Genette‟s definition of epitexts, Krämer has devised the following list of epitexts filmic adaptations can utilize for this purpose, Silke Jandl 172 das Werbematerial (z.B. Trailer, Teaser, Poster, Anzeigen, Presseheft, Websites, Tie-in-Produkte) und die Verlautbarungen (z.B. Making-of, Interviews, Featurettes, Berichten) am Film beteiligter oder auch außenstehender Personen (z.B. Regisseur, Produzent, Drehbuchautor, Autor der Vorlage, Schauspieler, historische oder literarische Experten), in denen gerne über die Art des Umgangs mit der Vorlage informiert wird. (Krämer 2011: 215) 2 Most of the period adaptations of Pride and Prejudice use some, if not most, of these epitexts. The 1995 BBC adaptation, for example, is accompanied by the book The Making of Pride and Prejudice and the thirty minute documentary Pride and Prejudice: From Page to Screen, both published and released in 1995 as well. The DVD of the 2005 adaptation comes with bonus material including an audio commentary by director Joe Wright, an additional scene (i.e. the alternative ending, intended for American audiences), discussions entitled “The Politics of Dating”, “The Stately Homes of Pride and Prejudice”, “The Bennets”, “The Life and Times of Jane Austen”, “The Pride and Prejudice Family Tree”, “Galleries of the 19 th Century” as well as “On Set Diaries”, which comprise of interviews with the cast and crew. Besides all of these features on the DVD, there were of course trailers, posters and interviews that accompanied the cinema première in 2005. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries also has a wide variety of epitexts, including, but not restricted to, posts by writers, actors and producers on various websites (e.g. Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit etc.), posters, bonus videos, an official website, interviews, a DVD release (financed via the crowdfunding website Kickstarter) and, to date, the publication of two novelizations (The Secret Diaries of Lizzie Bennet was published in June 2014 and The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet is to be published in September 2015). For modernized versions of adapted texts it is possible to allude to the source material internally as well. In Helen Fielding‟s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget and her friends are obsessed with the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and with Colin Firth in particular. There are numerous allusions to this adaptation, the name Mark Darcy itself, one of Fielding‟s central characters, is another internal allusion to Pride and Prejudice, as are various plot lines. In the cinematic adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary the direct allusions to the BBC adaptation were dropped, most probably because Colin Firth portrays Mark Darcy. Casting Colin Firth for this role, however, is in itself an additional allusion to the BBC adaptation. 2 Advertisements (e.g. trailers, teasers, posters, announcements, pressbook, websites, tie-ins) and communiqués (e.g. m aking-of, interviews, featurettes, reports) of people involved in the production or external persons (e.g. director, producer, screen-writer, writer of original source, actors and actresses, historical or literary experts), in which dealings with the source materials are readily discussed [my translation]. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 173 In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Pride and Prejudice is never explicitly mentioned, but it is alluded to several times. In the second episode, for example, Lizzie says, “I like rain, classic novels and any movie starring Colin Firth” (online 3). The “classic novels” indirectly refer to Jane Austen‟s novels, in particular Pride and Prejudice and “any movie starring Colin Firth” refers to both, the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and the adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary, both of which star Colin Firth and themselves refer back to Austen‟s 1813 novel. The fact that Lizzie mentions rain in this quote can furthermore be interpreted as a hint towards the 2005 proposal scene, one of the most memorable moments of Wright‟s adaptation. In the fourth episode Lydia has just found out that Bing Lee has arrived in Netherfield with his sister and another man: Lizzie: Does your infinite chain of sources know this ambiguously sexually oriented mancake‟s name? Lydia: Darcy. Lizzie: Darcy? That‟s it? Is that his first name or his last name? Lydia: I don‟t know, I just heard them call him Darcy. Lizzie: Well, that‟s an awful name. Lydia: I think it‟s a great name. Isn‟t that, ah, Colin Firth‟s name in that chubby Zellweger movie? Lizzie: I do love that movie (online 4). In this quote, there is an explicit reference to Bridget Jones’s Diary, and thus, by extension to Pride and Prejudice. What this quote also shows is that Lizzie is already prejudiced against Darcy, before she has even met him. She is almost determined not to like either Bing Lee or Darcy in order to spite her mother, who wants to marry her and/ or her sisters off to one of them. In the fifth episode, after having met both men, Lizzie clearly has trouble coping with the fact that Jane is getting along exceedingly well with Bing Lee, “with a man that my mother picked out and practically stalked for me and my sisters” (Lizzie, online 5). In the succeeding episode, Lizzie discusses the encounter with Darcy more fully and says, “Darcy is so obnoxious, I can‟t tell if I like Bing Lee now, or if he just seems awesome by comparison” (online 6). This predisposition towards Darcy, despite her admiration for his namesake, emphasizes her determination to dislike him. The vlog series not only alludes back to Pride and Prejudice but also to some other of Jane Austen‟s novels. In one of Lydia‟s videos, their cousin Mary mentions in passing, “I was supposed to go to Mansfield Park with Silke Jandl 174 him [Ed] today [...]” (online 7). Lydia‟s spin-off makes use of intertextuality for the entertainment of informed viewers, as Mansfield Park clearly refers to Austen‟s novel of the same name. The name Ed refers back to Edmund Bertram, who is a key character in the novel Mansfield Park. Whether Mary is likened to Mary Bennet, Fanny Price or rather to her namesake Mary Crawford, however, is almost impossible to determine, due to Mary‟s marginal role in the narrative. The connection to Mansfield Park, however, is undisputed. The very ambiguity of this intertextual reference might very well be intentional and encourage viewer engagement by leaving room for speculation. There are occasional intertextual references to other Austen novels, most notably to Sense and Sensibility, which is primarily used to define the friendship between Lizzie and Charlotte in more depth. 4. Narrative Fiction on YouTube: Elizabeth Bennet Starts Vlogging The adaptation of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on and for the Internet not only allowed for the playful use of interand intratextuality, it also provided new challenges and ways to handle them. One of these challenges in creating a narrative on YouTube is the restricted time frame of individual videos. Even though the limitation of ten minutes per video was raised to fifteen minutes in 2010 and then dropped altogether in the same year, most YouTube videos do not exceed the initial limitation. YouTube is fixed in the minds of its users as providing short, entertaining videos on every imaginable topic and in incredible quantities. As Burgess and Green point out in YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, YouTube massively scales up both the number of people publishing TV „content‟ and the number of videos available to be watched. However, few of the videos are „stories‟ as traditionally understood, not least because of radically reduced timeframes: ninety minutes for cinema; thirty to fifty minutes for TV, and one or two minutes for most YouTube (Burgess/ Green 2009: 133). Since The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was produced specifically for a YouTube audience, the story is told in a series of videos restricted to only a few minutes at a time. On average, a video for the show is approximately four minutes long, never shorter than two and never as long as eight. However, the vlog format, by being comparatively inexpensive, has enabled the creators to take the time necessary for telling the story. The one hundred videos that comprise the core of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries ultimately amount to more than seven hours of content, not counting the spin-offs or the amount of time that could potentially be spent on the various social media websites connected to the narrative. The voluntary limitation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 175 when it comes to video length plays into the YouTube convention and is by no means unprecedented. In various other YouTube web series using the vlog format, which, however, only rarely depict a continuous narrative, the limited time frame of two to eight minutes is characteristic, if not necessary to comply with viewer expectations. Even though continuous narratives are more of an exception on YouTube, experimentation into the field started early in the platform‟s history. The first notable fictitious story in vlog form was launched in June 2006 on the YouTube channel LonelyGirl15, merely a year after the founding of YouTube. It depicts snippets of the life of Bree Avery, with her as the vlogging narrator. It was presented as the authentic vlog/ life of Bree Avery but was soon revealed to be scripted and funded. This revelation was perceived as somewhat scandalous because “LonelyGirl15 violated the ideology of authenticity associated with DIY culture”, but at the same time it was […] wholly consistent with the way YouTube actually works. [...] LonelyGirl15 introduced new possibilities for experimenting with and expanding the uses of the vlog form within YouTube. The possibilities of inauthentic authenticity are now a part of the cultural repertoire of YouTube [...] (Burgess/ Green 2009: 29). Even though The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was not the first to experiment with a continuous narrative in the vlog format, it is worth noting that it has never denied its fictionality, even if it actively encouraged immersion. The official website (online 9) is entitled The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: An Online Adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Thus, it unambiguously points out and promotes the status of the vlog series as an adaptation and consequently as fiction. The YouTube channel, on the other hand, tries to preserve the illusion of authenticity to a certain degree, as demonstrated by the channel heading: Lizzie Bennet - My Diary (online 8). Interested users, however, can find the sentences, “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is based on Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice” (see for example online 10) or “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modernized adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice,” (see for example online 11) and variations thereof in the description bar beneath every video that was posted on the series‟ YouTube channel. These statements exposing the inauthenticity of the vlog are, however, placed so that viewers would only come by the clarification by consciously clicking on the “Show more” button. This practice makes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries a prime example of what Green and Burgess term „inauthentic authenticity‟. The discrepancy, however, has generated a few outraged comments from viewers who believed the vlogs were genuine. In a Q&A blogpost, Bernie Su responded to a question addressing this discrepancy: Silke Jandl 176 If I were to gripe about one thing it‟s that we seem to be getting a lot of fans responding to each other with “you know this isn‟t real right? ”, creating [...] a “divide.” I don‟t mind that a divide exists, but I do mind one side knocking on the other as “not getting it” or not interpreting it correctly. I feel it‟s kinda disrupting the experience for the viewers who want to accept it as immersive (online 12). Clearly, the web series‟ creators intended to make the vlog seem as real as possible to create an authentic show in accordance with Austen‟s novel, which is frequently referred to by literary critics as highly perceptive and observant and thus an authentic portrayal of her class and time. While the novel could lead to speculations whether the content might be based on reality, the video diary potentially opens the floor to speculation as to whether the characters and events depicted are real. Whether or not recipients remain ignorant of the fact that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is an adaptation, the vlog series does invite speculation as to whether or not the characters and events are actively influenced by viewer engagement (e.g. by leaving comments on various social media websites). This dimension of the video blog will be addressed in further detail below. 5. Experimentation: Possibilities and Limitations of a Literary Adaptation in the Vlog Format In addition to the implications of the limited time frame that is characteristic of YouTube, it has to be noted that it is vital to make the first episodes compelling enough to grip an audience and to ensure a stable viewership instantly. The web series is dependent on a large and consistent viewership attained as early as possible, in order to prevent the threat of discontinuation due to lack of funds after a few episodes. There are several methods the web series employs in order to make the initial episodes as appealing and captivating as possible. Unlike other adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries opens with one of the most iconic literary opening lines of all time: “[i]t is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” (Austen 2001: 3). In the online adaptation, Lizzie starts her first vlog by reading the sentence off the bright-pink T-Shirt her mother gave her as a present. Thereby the link between The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Pride and Prejudice is established from the very beginning. It is, of course, not a truth universally acknowledged, but it is Mrs. Bennet‟s conviction nonetheless. The first sentence, thus, demonstrably represents Mrs. Bennet‟s view rather than Elizabeth‟s. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries her mother‟s point of view is instantly, openly and unambiguously rejected by Lizzie, while readers of Pride and Prejudice have to read on to find out whose opinion this iconic first sentence actually represents. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 177 The Lizzie Bennet Diaries does not use a lot of different sets; in fact, there are always only parts of rooms visible. The location does not change very often and disregarding the spin-off episodes, there are only five different places in which Lizzie films her videos (her bedroom, Netherfield, VidCon, Pemberley and another room in her parents‟ house). TV or cinema adaptations tend to exploit the visual possibilities of film and frequently change settings to show various places, objects, and landscapes. By not drawing attention to the immediate surroundings, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is in this respect closer to Austen‟s novels which [...] are set in the mansions and manor houses of country villages, about which Jane unobtrusively tells us as much as we need to know to understand the action, without wasting time or words on purple passages describing landscape or the interior of every room of the house (Le Faye 2011: 126). In terms of appearance, however, the characters are physically defined by the very fact that they can be seen. In contrast to this, “[i]n Pride and Prejudice, in fact, no complete description is ever given of Elizabeth Bennet, because most of the action is written by Jane Austen as it is seen through Elizabeth‟s own eyes” (Le Faye 2011: 152). While the vlog format allows for figural narration, the camera inevitably and unambiguously shows us how the characters look. Nonetheless, it is not entirely comparable to other filmic adaptations either, because, for example, when the main character in a film meets another main character for the first time, their introduction is usually highlighted to the audience and in great detail. Not so in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries; for the first twenty-four episodes viewers only see four characters: Lizzie, Charlotte, Lydia and Jane. There is, however, talk of other characters, which provides recipients with indirect characterizations of off-screen characters. Moreover, Lizzie tends to employ the method of re-enacting scenes with exaggerated, almost caricature-like impressions of people who have not been on-screen. Thus, the viewers of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries have to use their imaginations - almost as if they were reading - for most of the characters before seeing them, if, indeed, they ever will see them in a video. Interestingly, these indirect descriptions as well as the costume theater element provided by Lizzie made casting the roles of actors who had already been talked about and imitated considerably more difficult: We wrote ourselves into a corner in that four different characters have all given their „impressions‟ of Darcy. As we could justify that real Wickham was a little more „douchey‟ gentleman than Lizzie‟s portrayal of him, I don‟t think real Darcy could be night and day different from Lizzie and Jane‟s Darcy. Especially since they both spent a month living under the same roof as him (online 13). Silke Jandl 178 Thus, while The Lizzie Bennet Diaries remains faithful to the source material in various ways that previous adaptations could or would not, the vlog format also undoubtedly posed unprecedented challenges. 6. Choices, Methods and their Impact: Narrativity, Metareference and Medium Specific Authenticity in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 6.1. Narrativity: Vlogging Pride and Prejudice Generally speaking, the core story is related from Lizzie‟s point of view. This means that whatever she is prepared to share on the Internet will be subjective as well as selective. Accordingly, her perspective is never presented as the whole truth. What the viewers see and hear in the videos is always filtered through Lizzie. Since her representation of events is continually challenged, she cannot be termed a reliable narrator. This is in accordance with the conventions of this narrative situation; first-person narrators are not typically reliable. A clarification has to be made, however; while vlogging always implies a certain degree of truthfulness and honesty, it is no contradiction to see vlogs being narrated unreliably. In order to attract a great number of viewers, a vlog has to be primarily entertaining. Lizzie‟s exaggerated but humorously sarcastic style of narration is almost a prerequisite for a successful vlog series, and since the videos are presented as a fictional university project on mass media, Lizzie is willing to consciously sacrifice accuracy for entertainment. Lizzie‟s point of view and her representations of off-screen characters are frequently challenged not only by her sisters but also, and most severely by her best friend and project partner Charlotte. Significantly, Charlotte assumes the (fictive) role as an editor for the first forty-two episodes and again occasionally for later episodes of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. In effect, Charlotte, not Lizzie, has the power over what is or is not shown in the videos and she can add her commentary post hoc. Besides interrupting Lizzie on-screen, she can add comments via voice over, freeze framing, textual and non-textual additions (see, for example, online 5), extra scenes (see online 14) and outright and strikingly showy auditory and visual elements: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 179 In the provided screen shot, for example, Lizzie and Charlotte are in disagreement over Jane‟s behaviour towards Bing Lee (online 81). Despite being an intradiegetic, overt narrator, this responsibility makes Charlotte similarly powerful as an authorial narrator would be. Charlotte‟s role, in a way, is to give The Lizzie Bennet Diaries an open perspective structure because her opinions frequently diverge from Lizzie‟s, exhibiting the opposing world views of the best friends. Since the series spreads over several hours in total, characterization is eventually thorough enough to allow the viewers to decide which representations are in fact reliable and which might not be. After all, as Marilyn Butler points out in relation to Austen‟s utilization of inner-thought processes and dialogue, “[p]rivate imaginings tend [...] to be irrational and fallible; direct speech may be right or wrong, true or false, but crucially it has become externalised, evidential, a part of the given world of fact” (Butler 1975: 264). Consequently, all content that is uploaded to YouTube necessarily becomes externalized and leaves it up to the viewers to assess its reliability. 6.2. Metareference as a YouTube Convention Intracompositional as well as extracompositional metareference has become a major characteristic of vlogs on YouTube. The first and most popular YouTube vloggers continuously, directly and indirectly, point to the vlog format, the platform YouTube, the mode of (re)presentation, themselves and their occupation as YouTubers. Thereby they contribute to “the eliciting of a medium-awareness” in the recipient, which according to Wolf is “the most basic function of metareference” (Wolf 2009: 25). The focus on the recipient here is crucial in the context of transmedia storytelling, which relies to a great extent on the previous knowledge of the source texts as well as the willingness of recipients to cooperate and to immerse themselves further into the story. Metareferences have become an almost inescapable convention for creators on YouTube. Since they are a genuine part of traditional vlog- Silke Jandl 180 ging, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries makes use of metareferential comments as authenticating devices. As Nünning observed, “metanarration, depending on the type and context, can just as well support the illusion of authenticity created in a text and in the act of narration” (Nünning 2004: 17). Wolf has similarly argued that metareference does not necessarily “always disrupt the aesthetic illusion” and that indeed “in some cases, in particular where metareference is employed to suggest the authenticity or truthfulness of a representation, it may even, as a secondary effect, strengthen aesthetic illusion” (Wolf 2009: 29). Because metareference is so prominent in YouTube vlogs, it enhances the aesthetic illusion in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and fosters medium specific authenticity. In Lydia‟s spin-off, the status of the vlog series as an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is handled rather interestingly. In a Q&A video she is asked to tell an anecdote from her childhood and she chooses to share with her viewers that, “[...] Lizzie used to always make me and Charlotte and Jane [...] perform plays with her in the backyard, and she would usually steal plots from books [...]” (online 16). This quote is highly metareferential, since Lydia herself is a character from a book, portrayed by an actress performing a „play‟ and recipients aware of this are invited to enjoy the metacomment. Additionally, adapting a literary text is arguably doing exactly that: “stealing plots” or, as Linda Hutcheon argues “more acurately, sharing stories” (Hutcheon 2006: 4). Of course, this is also an instance of intratextual reference, pointing to the costume theater that Lizzie repeatedly performs in her vlogs. Another equally explicit metareferential utterance in Lydia‟s video is her answer to the question of whether she ever feels like a secondary character in somebody else‟s story, to which she exclaims, “HELL NO! You‟re only a secondary character if you let yourself be! And The LY-DEE-YAH does not do background” (online 16). This remark, besides being metareferential, is also highly ironic, since Lydia is indeed a secondary character in the original Elizabeth Bennet‟s story. However, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has attempted to make Lydia herself a primary character and has, to a certain extent, been successful, especially with regard to character development. Charlotte as the fictitious editor of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries most often uses explicit metareference. She is the one who repeatedly refers to various aspects of video production, for example in episode eight, when she explains to Lizzie how to avoid the „boob close-up‟ of the previous episode or when she reflects on the expectations of viewers, “People like the DIY look. The video feels more authentic when it‟s not too polished” (online 14). These instances remind the audience that the story is constructed and that the scenes shown are selective. Since Charlotte is homodiegetic, her remarks point to the self-assembly element that goes hand-in-hand with vlogging, but they never allude to the fictionality of herself or any other of the characters. These metareferential comments, moreover, serve as authenticating devices as outlined above. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 181 6.3. Effects of Convincingly Presented Authenticity In one of the spin-off video series to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Gigi Darcy experiments with the new application “Domino” that her brother‟s firm Pemberley Digital is developing. What is most interesting about this fictional plot line is that it has drawn an unexpected audience. Remarkably, India is listed as the number two viewing country on this particular spinoff, even though it is not even among the top five nationalities of the main series‟ viewer statistics. According to Bernie Su‟s Tumblr post on February 26 th 2013, […] the high traffic from India is because [...] there are programmers there who were watching the videos thinking that it was demonstrating a real application/ user interface. [...] in some of the earlier episodes, it‟s clear that there is a slightly different audience coming in. Whether they continue to believe it to be a real application is another thing, but clicking a video for “app research? ” Makes sense to me (online 18). The set-up of the web series and all of its spin-offs is produced with such an air of authenticity as to attract the attention of an audience unaware of its status as an adaptation of Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice. The degree of authenticity of the videos, thus, creates a vacuum of ambivalence between reality and fiction. While the boundaries are still relatively clear within the YouTube content, they are less clear when it comes to additional content that is not necessary for plot development. Jane‟s Lookbook, for example, has drawn almost equal attention from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries viewers as from regular Lookbook users who remain unaware of Jane‟s status as a fictitious character. The creators of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality even further by establishing the fictional company Pemberley Digital as a real, registered company which has funded, and continues to fund subsequent literary adaptations on YouTube. Among the adaptations funded by Pemberley Digital are Austen‟s unfinished Sanditon (Welcome to Sanditon) and Emma (Emma Approved), alongside reinterpretations of Mary Shelley‟s Frankenstein (Frankenstein, M.D.) and of Lousia May Alcott‟s Little Women (The March Family Letters). One method employed to make the series seem as authentic as possible is Lizzie‟s declaration, “My name is Lizzie Bennet and this is my life” (online 10) in the first episode. This statement promises the portrayal of real, unscripted life, which is what the show essentially tries to convey. Viewers who know Pride and Prejudice, be it the novel or one of the adaptations, should be able to recognize Lizzie as a fictive character. Elizabeth Bennet is, after all, a prominent figure in literature as well as in popular culture. However, those who do not realize the adaptation status implied by the very name of the vlogger, are invited to believe the show is an Silke Jandl 182 authentic portrait of Lizzie Bennet‟s life. That this can become problematic has been shown by the serious concern recipients expressed about Lydia‟s predicament concerning the sex tape Wickham threatened to publish online, which is the appropriated equivalent of an unmarried Lydia running off with Wickham in the novel. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries had to deal with the threat of DoS attacks because recipients wanted to actively help Lydia. A DoS (Denial of Service) attack is intended to make the services of a website unavailable, at least temporarily. It costs time and money to get a site working again after a DoS attack which is why such an attack might have rendered further plot developments of the web series impossible. This goes to show that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has indeed succeeded in engaging an audience to actively participate in the story, as demonstrated by the passionate level of interest and engagement on the part of some of its viewers. Partly, this might stem from the fact that, unlike novels, films or online games, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries does not ask viewers to imagine or even navigate in an alternate reality. On the contrary, the YouTube adaptation strives to bring the characters of Pride and Prejudice further into the real world than ever before. Even though The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is actively concerned with maintaining its air of authenticity, recipients are still asked to suspend their disbelief on occasion. Most recipients are aware of the adaptation status of the web series and know the plot of Pride and Prejudice relatively well. Some of these recipients then tend to leave comments for Lizzie, which give away important events and twists. Others like to leave warnings, urging her to look out for Lydia when she starts seeing Wickham or to distrust Caroline and, of course, to reconsider her opinion of Darcy. The vast number of comments under each and every video makes the assumption that Lizzie might disregard or overlook some of them plausible, yet the Q&A videos and the frequent references to comments prove that she must have come across many messages detailing plot elements. Lydia is also faced with comments that warn her about Wickham, a problem which is solved by thematizing them in her vlogs, “[w]eirdly, a lot of you guys guessed I was gonna be hanging out with Wicks and you seemed totally judgy about it [...]” (online 19). To address these comments directly is one way of regaining authenticity. In terms of characterization, it is plausible that Lydia would bring up such comments in order to defend her choices, while Lizzie is presented as headstrong enough to disregard or ignore comments suggesting she revise her opinions. Another aspect of the web series is problematic when it comes to authenticity, namely what and who is actually shown on camera. One method employed to make it plausible that a particular conversation or person is shown in the videos is, again, to thematize it. In the case of Bing Lee‟s first onscreen appearance, for example, Lizzie dedicates a whole video to discussing the “Ethics of Seeing Bing Lee” (online 20). The problem is that Bing Lee does not and cannot know about Lizzie‟s video The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 183 project. Were he to find out about the vlog prematurely, the misunderstanding between him and Jane, which is crucial for the plot, could not be realized. When the opportunity to show Bing Lee in her videos presents itself, Lizzie posts the footage online. However, she then struggles with the ethical implications and discusses how it does not seem right to show him in her vlogs when he is under the impression that he walked into Jane filming a video letter intended only for Charlotte. At that point he had no reason to suspect that the conversation he had on camera would be posted on the Internet and since nobody enlightens him, he has not given his consent to be in Lizzie‟s vlog. This particular conflict is rather weakly solved by having Caroline convince Lizzie to leave the videos featuring her brother online. There are several instances throughout the series which are not convincingly realistic, an issue the creators were acutely aware of. Around episode sixty, for example, characters would often accidentally come into a room Lizzie was at the time filming in. This led to a number of intimate situations that were subsequently posted to the internet. The exceeding convenience of these chance encounters on camera has generated some discussion online. In response Bernie Su himself discussed some of the problems surrounding the choices they had to make: I‟ll admit it‟s a bit of a narrative leap. If we were being 100% authentic, I don‟t think Lizzie would talk about/ criticize Darcy for 6 months over 60 episodes and actually use his real name. I also don‟t think if Darcy has this crushing level of love for Lizzie, he wouldn‟t at some point [have] Googled her and discovered “everything”. It‟s a leap we have to take to keep the structure of the narrative intact. [...] In general it‟s like this. 1st priority: Tell a great story. 2nd priority: Be as authentic as possible. [Therefore, w]e do our best to justify the presence of our more dramatic episodes by Lizzie either being told by someone to post it [...] or feeling compelled to show her audience [...] (online 21). As is clearly stated in the above quote, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was occasionally required to sacrifice authenticity for the sake of the story. However, the instances of inauthenticity or implausibility do not seem to have been detrimental to the web series‟ popularity in any way, as recipients are evidently willing to suspend their disbelief to a certain extent in favour of the narrative. 7. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Transmedia Storytelling The fact that the fictional characters of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries have their own social media accounts further contributes to the authenticity the vlog series strives for and the constant increase in the variety of me- Silke Jandl 184 dia allows for new opportunities in presenting stories. „Transmedia Storytelling‟ incorporates several media, traditional and new, and thus creates an innovative way of dealing with narratives. Henry Jenkins is prominent among the scholars observing the tendency towards narrating a story across media and has defined it as follows: Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it [sic] own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story (Jenkins, 2007). The Internet is multitudinous and transitory in nature and therefore cannot be seen as a single medium. It is more accurate to consider the various websites, which serve very different purposes and utilize different tools, as separate media. YouTube, for example, provides audiovisual content, while Twitter is restricted to short and often elliptic personal comments and short text-based conversations. Lookbook is a visually oriented platform consisting of photographs and short captions. Tumblr allows the collection, manipulation and commentary of creative content, encourages the „reblogging‟ of material from basically any other website and additionally provides the tools to create blogposts; the sum of all of these activities is supposed to be representative of the users personality. Pinterest, too, allows the „pinning‟ of primarily photographic posts from various websites to showcase preferences and interests. Facebook, like Twitter, enables short text-based conversations and is used primarily to share personal thoughts, photos, videos and interests. Since The Lizzie Bennet Diaries makes use of all of these websites, it is a prominent example of how transmedia storytelling can work. There have previously been stories which have made use of several media for the furthering of the narrative. However, “[m]ost often, transmedia stories are based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories” (Jenkins, 2007). In contrast to Jenkins‟ assessment, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries focuses on individual characters and a very specific plot while putting very little emphasis on setting, and thereby exemplifies Christy Dena‟s statement that, “[n]ot everyone is thinking the same way about transmedia. While in the past this was a sign that no-one had a clue what was going on, it is now a sign that people are making it their own” (Dena 2013). Thus, just like YouTube itself, transmedia storytelling is still in the process of being defined. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries experiments with this new form of storytelling; therefore there are several potential challenges to be considered. Firstly, the plot of the series plays out in „real time‟. The twice weekly instalments represent the events that happen to Lizzie and her friends and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 185 family shortly before the video or during filming. For recipients who have not followed the series from the very beginning, navigating the amount of content that has been put out can easily become overwhelming and confusing. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has attempted to avoid confusion in that respect via readily accessible and well-structured link collections on the official website (see online 9). Those links comprehensively point to the story-relevant social media elements, Tumblr and Twitter posts and, of course, the videos. At this point, it is important to note that the decision whether or not to participate in and experience the full extent of the transmedia project lies completely in the recipients‟ hands. As Bernie Su points out, Statistics show that only 50% of our audience jumps down one story level. Meaning if 100% of the audience watches Lizzie‟s channel, only 50% would dive down to Lydia‟s and then only 10-20% would dive down to the deepest level (twitter). [...] So those of you who chose to dive down in our story world are rewarded and enriched with enhanced story experiences like San Francisco [i.e Lydia‟s vlog], Team Figi [i.e. Gigi and Fitz], and Maria mending Charlotte and Lizzie‟s friendship [i.e. Collins and Collins‟ “Better Living” video spin-off]. Everyone else gets Pride and Prejudice as a video diary and that is perfectly fine. (online 22) Consequently, there are several ways to experience The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and those who want to immerse themselves more deeply into the story can do so as often and as thoroughly as they choose. Since there are different opportunities to engage more deeply with the primary story, it is essential to explore how transmedia storytelling is realized in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The head writer of the series has emphasized on several occasions that the story works perfectly well in Lizzie‟s videos without any further transmedia elements. Thus, the transmedia aspect is additional, recipients consciously choose whether to consume more content related to the series or not. However, the series had its own transmedia team working solely on cross-medial elements, and even more importantly, these additions not only contributed in some ways to characterization but also to plot. The vlog style restricts the relating of the story elements to one main point of view. It is Lizzie‟s vlog, therefore she presents only her view of events, with some corrective interruptions from her sisters and friends. Other adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (e.g. the adaptations of 1995 and 2005) have made a point of showing more of Darcy than there is in the novel. In part this aids in explaining his behaviour and also in anticipating and understanding Elizabeth‟s change of heart about him. In contrast, a video blog by definition focuses on a single, subjective perspective. Moreover, Darcy only appears in person when well over half of the series has already played out and then only reappears occasionally, often as an Silke Jandl 186 intruder into Lizzie‟s filming. Lizzie has the liberty to talk about him without his knowledge for most of the series, while he can never speak freely and publicly about her in her own video blog. Therefore, room for Darcy‟s opinions is radically restricted, especially in comparison to other adaptations. Darcy‟s Twitter account, thus, is the only public way to express his opinion, even if he does not use it extensively. He is a rather private character, which is why it would not make sense for him to have a public video diary of his own. Even in his Twitter posts he is reserved and unwilling to discuss personal issues. The mere existence of the account, however minimally it is used, contributes to Darcy‟s characterization that otherwise falls short in the video blog. In a Twitter conversation on May 5 th 2012 (in between episodes eight and nine, online 23), Darcy is worried that Bing Lee is behaving too impulsively about Jane, but Caroline tells him, “I wouldn‟t worry too much”: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 187 This Twitter conversation shows that Darcy is worried about Bing Lee relatively early on but also that he entirely fails to consider Jane‟s wellbeing. He is prompted by Caroline‟s comment about Jane‟s indifference to regard the latter‟s motives more critically. This characterizes Darcy as someone who has his friend‟s best interests at heart, but also depicts him as being aware of his own inhibition in social situations. In addition to that, Caroline is established as manipulative, calculating and clever enough to exploit her friend‟s nature for her own ends; after all, it has been established in the videos that Caroline knows full well that Jane‟s feelings for Bing Lee are genuine. 8. Interactivity: Getting the Audience Involved One of the most interesting aspects of transmedia storytelling is the role the audience can play in plot development. The transmedia aspect of storytelling in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries seems to work according to Sanders‟ argument that “[t]he spectator or reader must be able to participate in the play of similarity and difference perceived between the original, source, or inspiration to appreciate fully the reshaping or rewriting undertaken by the adaptive text” (Sanders 2006: 45). In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth is the focalizer and therefore “her attempts to see past hypocritical words and deceptive body language encourage readerly participation, assistance and investment” (Harris 2011: 43). This participation of readers of the novel, however, remains passive, which becomes apparent when compared to the wealth of responses Lizzie receives from her viewers. On a narratological level, Lizzie, as vloggers tend to do, directly addresses her audience, which is one reason why the recipients are more likely to become active, as they “feel personally concerned by the textual utterance” because of the “immersive power of the second person” (Ryan, 2001: 138). Although Ryan argues that using “the pronoun you retains the power to hook the attention of the reader” she goes on to say that it “is a short-lived effect” and “often more an allegory of immersion” (ibid). The effect of directly addressing an audience on YouTube, however, is neither short-lived nor abstract. The practice of making use of the second person to encourage participation on YouTube is metareferential, as it always points to the medium and yet it is not, as Ryan suggests, “decentering” (ibid) but highly effective; recipients of YouTube videos (even of clearly fictional ones) comment, respond, demand, criticize, create their own imaginative alternatives, discuss and are generally extremely involved on every platform intended to encourage interaction. This and the real time development of the The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, in effect, means that Nünning‟s communication model for dramatic texts has to be modified for a YouTube series: Silke Jandl 188 This model shows the heightened dynamic that comes with the vlog series. The audience becomes the addresser by active involvement. After the first video, the recipients thus become an actual part of the production process, resulting in a vlog series that resembles a conversation. This, however, is only possible when two essential preconditions are met. Firstly, the audience has to react almost immediately upon the posting of a video, which means that they have to be real time viewers. This is due to the fact that only comments that are posted in time can be influential for the production of the next videos and only those comments can actually be mentioned or used in the Q&A videos. Audience involvement includes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 189 pressing the „like button‟, sharing the videos, creating fan art and writing fan fiction and choosing to immerse themselves more fully into the story by seeking out the additional content provided transmedially. That all of these activities have an effect is shown, for example, by the fact that the writers of the show admitted at the time that “Lydia‟s increased role in the show has entirely been due to viewers‟ reaction to her” (online 24). The opportunity to react to recipients is not exactly new. Charles Dickens, for instance, who published as well as wrote his fiction serially, regarded his readers‟ responses highly. He even changed aspects of his novels according to those responses (e.g Miss Mowcher‟s role in Emily‟s seduction in David Copperfield, see online 25). There are, however, two essential facets to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries that are different from Dickens‟ fiction. Firstly, people who want to comment on the web series can do so on various Internet platforms, they can leave comments for individual writers of the show, the producers, the actors and even the characters. Moreover, they can do so instantly, upon consumption of the respective video or social media output. Via social media accounts, recipients can actively interact with the fictive characters and coax them into commenting on the plot or other characters. Secondly, the status of the web series as an adaptation draws a well-informed audience. The general plot lines and characters of Pride and Prejudice are known to the majority of the recipients, either because of the novel itself or one of its various adaptations. This enables proficient commentary and precise criticism. While nineteenth century writers who published serially could choose whether or not to acknowledge their readers‟ responses, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries actively invited and celebrated the recipients‟ involvement and made use of it in several ways. In the case of fan fiction and fan art this would be advertised on the Tumblr sites of various persons involved in the production of the series as well as on characters‟ Tumblrs. One of the consequences of such a high level of involvement, besides allowing some adjustments to be made according to commonly expressed preferences and suggestions of viewers, is the meta-discussion about this practice. Commentary and criticism posted on one or the other social media platform or a production decision mentioned on one of the writers‟ blogs would occasionally be the starting point of a serious discussion about the adaptation process. Consequently, encouraging and rewarding active recipients not only leads to a heightened interest of the audience, but also can enhance the overall quality of the adaptation. Concerning the Q&A videos, one of the most fascinating aspects, of course, is the opportunity for viewer interaction. As Bernie Su makes clear, “The only question we‟ve ever planted was the Maria Lu question that we used in this QA [i.e. “Q&A 7”; online 26] video. Everything else is taken from the fans” (online 22). Thus, the viewers can with their comments and questions help in providing “extra character depth (and sometimes even a little plot) through these „interactive‟ videos” (online Silke Jandl 190 22). Indeed, a major part of the recipients‟ involvement is interactive and manifests in questions they were invited to leave on all the platforms utilized for the transmedia adaptation. Over the course of the series, Lizzie created ten Q&A videos in addition to the one hundred that form the core content of the adaptation. Interestingly, these videos are used to help adjust and enforce characterization. Mrs. Bennet, for example, is accused of being sexist by a Tumblr follower, but Lizzie explains that she is “less sexist than paleozoic. I‟d like to think that if I had brothers, she‟d be just as focused on finding them wives” (online 27). Unlike Mrs. Bennet, Caroline‟s manipulative nature, on the other hand, can be observed first-hand. In the third Q&A video, Caroline calculatingly comes into Lizzie‟s room when she is filming the video and presents her with a designer handbag counting on the fact that Lizzie would never normally accept such an expensive gift. She then suggests giving it away to Lizzie‟s viewers rather than returning it. Quite obviously Caroline is trying to win Lizzie‟s viewers over because she has been represented so unfavourably on the video blog earlier (see online 28). The fact that the handbag - that is shown in the Q&A with Caroline - was actually given away to a fan on Facebook (online 29) and that comments of actual recipients are featured in the videos and blogs, raises the question of where the boundary between fiction and reality really lies. In novels and films, even if the protagonist directly addressed the recipients, there is a temporal delay between production, publication, reception and reaction. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, however, this temporal divide has become basically immaterial; the story plays out in real time, is presented in real time and recipients are involved in it in real time. In this context, real time means that the beginning of Lizzie‟s story is set in April 2012 and the videos are posted very shortly after the fictive events have taken place. There is the negligible delay that is needed for producing, editing and uploading a video, which can vary between mere hours to up to a week in the case of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. As a fictional diary the adaptation represents a “relative simultaneity,” as Marie-Laure Ryan calls it because “[t]he diarist lives her life and tells it at the same time, as she recounts in discrete entries the stories of the day past” (Ryan, 2006: 79). Thus, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries does not fall into the trap of presenting the illusion of simultaneous narration (e.g. by using the present-tense), which Ryan judges “really a disguised form of retrospective narration” (ibid). Instead, simultaneity is conveyed via the narrative leap of having several key scenes happen on camera. When it comes to retrospectively related events, the temporal distance remains insignificant, even though it does enable the conscious selection of issues to be discussed publicly. This abrogation of temporal delay, of course, only holds true for those recipients who consumed the web series between April 2012 and March 2013. For those who only discover the series after its conclusion the temporal aspect becomes significant in a different way, not only because the series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 191 has already reached its end, but also because any comments, which still can be and are left on all the platforms, for all the videos, photos and posts, are rendered invalid for the course of events because, as Ruth Page observed, “[c]ompleted narratives that are posted in their entirety are unlikely to be revised and then reposted[…]” (Page, 2010: 218). It also seems highly unlikely that recipients would consciously and consistently restrict themselves to two videos a week when playlists of all the videos are so readily available. The comments then merely serve as community building tools, as a way for people to connect over the content and to generate discussions about it. Arguably, the series loses a certain amount of its appeal after its conclusion, because the real time aspect is no longer relevant. For example, only those recipients who watched the series before November 2012 were able to observe and potentially participate in the excitement for “Darcy Day”, i.e. the very first time Darcy would be present in the vlog series. After the first of November 2012, even those who make a point of watching the series from the beginning will hardly be able to avoid thumbnail pictures, the channel banner, or memes with pictures of this adaptation‟s Darcy on them. In effect, this means that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, like other transmedia projects, is firmly embedded in the time at which it was produced because the full interactive element has now expired. This is not to say that the adaptation cannot be enjoyed post episode one hundred, merely that the experience will be radically different. 9. Conclusion In a way The Lizzie Bennet Diaries project reflects current cultural tendencies, which are largely determined by the advanced technologies and our use of them. The Internet offers new channels of communication, platforms for new ways of self-expression and identity formation and innumerable opportunities for creating and showcasing artistic experiments, and it does so at an unprecedented speed. The velocity of technological changes affects our communicative behaviour, culture and art. With the Internet, art has become both, volatile and permanent. While the whole immersive experience which The Lizzie Bennet Diaries offers could only be experienced in the rigidly limited time span of one specific year, the Internet, as the saying goes, is forever. In fact, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries continues to collect views (and thus monetary rewards) and comments on all social media platforms and it will continue to do so as long as the videos remain available on YouTube. All in all, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has been a highly successful experiment; in fact, it has been more successful than any of the other four subsequent literary adaptations funded and produced by Pemberley Digital so far. The choice to adapt a novel as well-known and as beloved as Jane Silke Jandl 192 Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice has certainly played a role in the success of the series. Building on the novel‟s continued popularity and its numerous well known and popular adaptations, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was able to draw from a variety of versions of the source text and, more importantly, engage with them. This playful use of intertextuality has not only aided the creation of an interesting adaptation in its own right but has also ensured an almost instantaneous and well-informed audience. The fact that Austen made Elizabeth the figural narrator of her novel is the perfect precondition for it to be adapted into the newly emerged vlog format on YouTube. Both the subjectivity and the protagonist‟s sarcastically humorous voice are a perfect fit for a YouTube audience who appreciates the more personal and often sarcastic tone prevalent in vlogging. This, as well as the inclusion of transmedia elements, has resulted in more complex characterizations than either the novel or filmic adaptations have been able to provide in the past. In particular, characters such as Lydia Bennet and Charlotte Lu have, through the inclusion of various social media sites, gained character depth. Lydia Bennet has generated as much interest from viewers as Lizzie has, as evidenced by Lydia‟s viewer numbers on her own YouTube channel, her Twitter followers and, most recently, the fact that a tie-in novel with her as the protagonist is to be released in late 2015. The trandsmedia aspect of this adaptation has not only aided in the creation of more convincing and complex characters, but it has also given rise to questions of fictionality and reality. Concerning this transcending of boundaries between reality and fiction, I agree with Rage and Thomas, who in their Introduction to New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age point out that “the various ways in which narrators and readers treat stories told in digital media as bridges between their online and offline experiences” will have to be further investigated. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the numerous social media profiles of the fictitious characters have undoubtedly enhanced the experience of recipients who chose to immerse themselves into the story beyond the core adaptation. The transmedia extras are interesting in that they, unlike the core adaptive material, only properly work in real time, i.e. if consumed around the dates the Lizzie Bennet videos were posted. This temporal dependency fuels questions regarding the recipients‟ willingness to engage; as does, indeed the overwhelming wealth of material that accumulated during the year-long project. It is interesting to note that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries functions successfully for recipients with no interest in immersion beyond the classical storyline as well as for recipients willing to delve deeper into the Internet to find the various additional story elements. The fact that this shift in responsibility results in varying versions of the same adaptation depending on the recipient makes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries a new kind of adaptation that might be a catalyst for future dealings with literary adaptations and opens innovative possibilities concerning the role of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 193 the recipient. The adaptation is also a prime example of the utilization of new media and particularly social media to draw and engage an audience as well as further character and plot development. In future research it would be interesting to identify to which extent The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has paved the way and indeed been formative for subsequent literary adaptations on YouTube. In fact, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has already inspired a variety of different literary adaptations beyond Pemberley Digital that have adopted methods and aesthetics from the vlog series (see, for example, adaptations of James Barrie‟s Peter Pan, J. S. Le Fanu‟s Carmilla or Charlotte Brontë‟s Jane Eyre; online 30-32). In conclusion, it is clear that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries can be considered a successful transmedia experiment that can function as a model for future literary adaptations that wish to include new media and thus introduce young audiences to literature. Bibliography Andersen, Michael (2013). “How a Year of Video Blogging Brought Jane Austen to YouTube” [online]. www.wired.com/ magazine/ 2013/ 04/ lizzie-bennet-dia ries-taking-austen-to-youtube/ (16 April 2015). Austen, Jane (2001). Pride and Prejudice (1813). Donald Gray (ed.). London, New York: Norton Critical Edition (3 rd edition). Burgess, Jean & Joshua Green (2009). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Butler, Marylin (1975). Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Oxford: Claredon Press. Dena, Christy (2013). “How Sound can „Unify‟ Transmedia”. 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Silke Jandl Centre for Intermediality Studies University of Graz Bringing Bloom to the Screen Challenges and Possibilities of Adapting James Joyce’s Ulysses Maximilian Feldner The works of James Joyce are commonly considered unfilmable. Countering this notion, this article argues that it is indeed possible to adapt his literature for the screen. It does so by analysing two adaptations of his novel Ulysses, namely Joseph Strick’s Ulysses (1967) and Sean Walsh’s Bloom (2003). These films are compared to the novel in terms of narrativity, which is taken as a common basis of both literary text and film. The article concentrates on three main challenges that filmmakers have to face when adapting Ulysses, namely the novel’s sheer density and complexity, its interiorization, through internal perspective and other devices, and its heavy experimentation with literary styles. Although both films are far from successful in overcoming these challenges, largely because they are unable to sufficiently exploit the narrative potential of cinema, their example serves as a starting point for a theoretical discussion of the possibilities of filmic storytelling in the context of Ulysses. While film theoretically does have the potential to adequately translate even a text as complex and dependent on the verbal medium as Ulysses to the screen. It just has to be accepted that such an intermedial transposition entails certain changes due to the different preconditions of the media novel and film. 1. Introduction James Joyce and cinema - that is probably not an association most people would make. He is one of the greatest and most innovative writers, and his texts are among the most complex, challenging, and yet rewarding experiences of English literature. But there seem to be few links to the world of film. Especially for people who see a difference in value between the ‘high’ art of literature and the ‘low’ art of film, those two realms are not compatible. In addition, in contrast to such other heavyweights of English literature as Jane Austen and John F. Fitzgerald there are no AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Maximilian Feldner 198 popular films based on his work. Unlike Elizabeth Bennet or Jay Gatsby, one will not encounter Bloom on the big screen of the next multiplex. Yet, even though Joyce‘s ties to cinema are apparently rather weak, in recent years it has been established among Joyce experts that he was a great friend of the cinema and regularly went to see films, even as his eyesight increasingly started to fail him. It is also a well-known fact today that in 1909 James Joyce was one of the founders of the first cinema in Dublin, the short-lived Volta. Although his main reason for embarking on this project presumably was that he saw it as a scheme to bring in quick and easy money, his commitment nevertheless shows how aware of and interested in this emerging art form he was. In addition, Joyce‘s writings are clearly informed by cinematic techniques. A collection of essays, edited by John McCourt, Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema (2010), takes a close look at the several ways in which early cinema influenced Joyce‘s texts, especially Ulysses. As a result, his style can be called cinematic, as ―Joyce‘s writings offer verbal demonstrations of what are currently established cinematic techniques. In his work a reader finds repeated examples of voiceover narration, jump cuts, match cuts, tracking shots, montages and even a fade to black‖ (Meyers 2010: 174). In view of these insights, it is actually rather surprising that many critics deem Ulysses unfilmable. This is because despite Joyce‘s affinities with cinema, it is a common notion that Joyce‘s texts are difficult, maybe even impossible to be made into films. Shout, for example, clearly rejects the idea of movie versions of Joyce‘s literature when he claims that ―All of Joyce's work [...] is, among much else, a rumination on the workings of vocabulary, and thus the very idea of filmic equivalents is an extension of adaptation beyond permissible bounds‖ (Shout 1989: 91). It even seems that Joyce himself did not think that an adaptation of Ulysses was feasible. When Warner Brothers wanted to film the book in 1932, Joyce told them that he was ―in principle opposed to the filming of Ulysses‖, as he took ―the literary point of view‖ and therefore thought it ―irrealizable‖ (quoted in Spiegel 1976: 75). However, he considered it possible that the Russian filmmaker and film theorist Sergej Eisenstein might have been able to create an adequate filmic version of Ulysses. In sum, it might be true that some texts are more suited to adaptation than others. But, as James Michael Welsh is convinced, finally nothing is unfilmable: ―whatever exists in one medium might be adapted or translated into another, given the right imaginative initiative‖ (Welsh 2007: xv). Accordingly, Brian McFarlane argues that ―Complex and difficult novels and plays are not unamenable to film adaptation, but require the most intelligent and resourceful talents to address the task‖ (McFarlane 2007: 17). Bringing Bloom to the Screen 199 2. Film Adaptations based on Joyce That it is actually possible to adapt James Joyce for the screen is proven by the fact that there are indeed feature films based on his work, if only a handful. In the following, I will provide a brief summary of the films based on literature by Joyce, before I will concentrate on the two main adaptations of his novel Ulysses that exist to date, Joseph Strick‘s Ulysses (1967) and Sean Walsh‘s Bloom (2003). Arguably, The Dead (1987), John Huston‘s film version of Joyce‘s short story ―The Dead‖, is the most accomplished and successful of the Joyce adaptations discussed here. John Huston proves that the great variety of tools film possesses makes it possible to adequately translate a modernist text such as this short story to the screen. Like the story, Huston‘s film at first seems to be rather superficial and banal, but a closer look reveals layers of meaning that approach a similar depth as Joyce‘s text. The film manages very well to capture the general atmosphere and mood of the story without neglecting the thematic subtext underlying the story. By contrast, Joseph Strick‘s second adaptation of a Joycean novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977), is a disappointment. It does not add anything new to the adapted material, nor is it very watchable or interesting in terms of filmmaking. It does not manage to render in filmic terms the growing sophistication of the narrative voice that symbolizes Stephen‘s intellectual development and distinguishes Joyce‘s novel. It is also not able to sufficiently give access to Stephen‘s emotions and feelings and to emphasize key moments in his maturation process. Two filmic approaches to Joyce that are more avant-gardistic are Mary Ellen Bute‘s Passages from Finnegans Wake (1969), loosely based on Joyce‘s Finnegan‟s Wake, and German filmmaker Wener Nekes‘s Uliisses (1982), a film combining Ulysses, Homer‘s Odyssey and Neil Oram‘s 24-hour play The Warp. Roberto Rossellini‘s Journey to Italy (1954) can also be seen as an adaptation, as the inspiration for this film is clearly taken from Joyce‘s story ―The Dead‖. Although Rossellini does not credit Joyce, his modernist film can be claimed to be artistically one of the most interesting films based on a Joycean text (cf. Barry 2010: 152). Other films include the biographical movies, such as Joyce in June (1982), James Joyce's Women (1985), and Nora (2000). Although they are, strictly speaking, not literary adaptations, as they are not based on Joyce‘s works but on his life, it is not always possible to draw a clear line between the elements that are taken from his fiction and from his real life. Je rentre à la maison (2001) by Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira offers an interesting instance of a meta-adaptation, that is, a film about adapting a literary work for the screen. In it, John Malkovich plays an American director who miscasts a French stage actor (Michel Piccoli) to play Buck Mulligan in a film version of Ulysses. Together with a few international TV productions of Joyce‘s play Exiles, such as the Croatian Izgnanici (1973), the French Les Maximilian Feldner 200 Exilés (1975), the Italian Esuli (1976), and a small number of TV productions based on his other texts, these films constitute basically all the filmic approaches to Joyce‘ literary work. 3. Adapting Ulysses for the Screen This article is an exploration of the elements that make adapting Ulysses for the screen such a challenging task. In discussing two Ulysses adaptations, Ulysses (1967) and Bloom (2003), in terms of narrative, I will concentrate on three challenges each filmmaker wanting to adapt this book will have to face, namely the book‘s sheer density and complexity, its frequent use of internal perspective, stream of consciousness, and interior monologue, and its stylistic experimentation. I will try to establish how successfully both films deal with these challenges. Also, I will examine which filmic tools exist to allow the translation of the book to the screen, and how effectively the filmmakers make use of these possibilities. In sum, I want to show that it is not at all impossible to adapt Ulysses and other Joycean texts for the screen, even though there is no definitive film version of this book yet. By looking at the difficulties and possibilities of adapting these texts, I hope to further accentuate the similarities and differences between the media of narrative literature and film, and to explore the narrative potential of cinema. Literature and film have different ways of achieving narrativity, as they use different semiotic systems. While fiction uses symbolic signs (print on page), film employs symbolic signs (language, music) but also iconic (pictures) and indexical ones (gestures, tears, etc.). As a result, an adaptation, or intermedial transposition, that is, the transfer of a narrative from one medium to another, has to take into account these differences. In order to transform a literary text into a film it is necessary to translate the verbal language of the book into filmic language. Linda Hutcheon notes for adaptations that In the move from telling to showing, a performance adaptation must dramatize: description, narration, and represented thoughts must be transcoded into speech, actions, sounds, and visual images. Conflicts and ideological differences must be made visible and audible [...]. In the process of dramatization, there is inevitably a certain amount of reaccentuation and refocusing of themes, characters, and plot. (Hutcheon 2006: 40) This means that a story is necessarily told differently in film than in fiction. Chatman (1990: 134) uses the metaphor of the ―cinematic narrator,‖ which is ―a composite of a large and complex variety of devices‖. Generally, these devices can be divided into the auditory and the visual channel. The former consists of noises, voices, and music, both onand offscreen. The latter includes elements such as the location, the actors, and Bringing Bloom to the Screen 201 the props, and is created through cinematography and editing. Cinematography includes lighting, colour, mise-en-scène, and aspects related to the camera, e.g. distance, angle, and movement, while editing concerns the rhythm and type of cuts of the film (cf. Chatman 1990: 135). Joseph Strick‘s Ulysses (1967) and Sean Walsh‘s Bloom (2003) are the only straightforward adaptations of Joyce‘s Ulysses to date. Not surprisingly, considering the way the film industry works and the nimbus of Joyce‘s novel as unfilmable, both projects had to face a variety of difficulties - Walsh worked on his project for more than ten years, for example - and both were realized on modest budgets. The names of the production companies, Ulysses Film Production Ltd. and Odyssey Pictures Production respectively, indicate the independent status of both films, as they have obviously been set up solely for these projects. Since its release, Bloom has received very little though mildly positive attention. Strick‘s Ulysses, on the other hand, has largely been considered a failure. Critics seem to agree that it is a ―very flat, pedestrian, and ‗uncinematic‘ film‖ (Spiegel 1976: 78; also cf. Barsam 1981: 300). Ulysses, shot in black and white, is set in 1960s Dublin. This was less an artistic decision than a question of limited funds (cf. Barsam 1981: 293). Moving Bloomsday to July 16, 1966 solved the problem of having to disguise modern Dublin and explains the cars that can be seen in the background. But this temporal relocation of Joyce‘s story also shows its timelessness, as the events and themes fit as well into the 1960s as into the early 1900s. It also allows the film a realistic treatment of Dublin, which includes some of the original sites mentioned in the book. In this respect the film remains faithful to Joyce‘s intention of depicting Dublin in as detailed and real a manner as possible. Bloom, in comparison, is a colourful period piece. Generally, it is a very accessible film, capitalising on the humorous aspects of Ulysses, which makes it more of a comedy. Its setting has the feel of a fantasy or studio-set version of Dublin, and it offers none of the locations that Joyce mentions or describes in his book. Thematically, however, Bloom also feels modern and testifies to the timelessness of Ulysses. It even includes a metafictional nod to Bloom‘s status as a timeless everyman: after Molly‘s final ―yes‖ and a fade to black, there is a short scene of Bloom walking through modern-day Dublin. 4. Reading and Interpreting: The Problem of Selection It seems clear that attempting to fit the whole of Ulysses into two hours of filmic runtime is impossible. If any adaptation of a novel means a process of selection, of reduction and of summarizing the source material, this is especially the case here. In a way, every adaptation of a literary text can be seen as a reading or an interpretation of this text, something Keith Williams confirms: ―Both Walsh and Strick threaded narrative paths Maximilian Feldner 202 through Joyce‘s labyrinthine text, inevitably selecting particular routes and following particular thematic and stylistic features at the expense of others‖ (Williams 2010: 171). The relevant question for this section, therefore, concerns the path Strick and Walsh choose. How do they read/ interpret Ulysses? The first question when interpreting a narrative work concerns the plot. What happens in the story, what are the main events, and who are the characters? In the case of Ulysses it is rather clear who the characters are. The novel opens with Stephen Dedalus, whom Joyce already extensively introduced in his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Three chapters into the book suddenly a new character appears, Leopold Bloom, who soon emerges as the true protagonist of the novel. That the third central character is Molly Bloom is obvious from the fact that Bloom‘s thoughts revolve around her and that the last episode presents her own perspective. It is more difficult to determine what the events of Ulysses are. Considering that the novel depicts an ordinary day in the life of these characters in all its detail, one might justifiably have the feeling that nothing much happens. Instead, the novel seems to focus on the trivial, on the commonplace and on the everyday details of life. What makes this text interesting and important is the fact that the banal story elements are filtered through the perspective of the characters, which results in a collection of impressions, thoughts and memories. Nevertheless, it would be a misconception to say that there are no important outer events in Ulysses. On the contrary, on Bloomsday more things happen than on most other days. Just to give a few examples, this day sees a funeral, an extramarital affair, a horse race, and a vice-regal parade. The reason why there seems to be an absence of events in the book is that they are drowned in a wealth of information, as the character‘s thoughts and perceptions are recorded in great detail (cf. Füger 1994: 214). It is this wealth of information that to some extent drowns out the narrative of Ulysses. The ―rendering of the complete ‗details‘ of life almost obscure the sense of the story‖, even more so as ―no one particular incident in a life is considered to be of supreme importance‖ (Lawrence 1981: 39). What makes the matter of events in Ulysses even more complicated is the fact that the plot is informed by events readers are not explicitly told about. As Kenner shows in his illuminating study Ulysses (1987), there are events that take place on the story level but not on the discourse level and thus can only be inferred by the readers. Perhaps the most important of these events is the conversation where Molly tells Bloom that Boylan is coming at four o‘clock in the afternoon. She is never depicted uttering these words, and yet Bloom knows that Boylan is supposed to come at four, as his thoughts reveal - ―At four, she said.‖ (Joyce 2000: 335). The fact that such a scene is left out despite its importance for the narrative development and its considerable dramatic potential, contributes Bringing Bloom to the Screen 203 to the notion that Ulysses is an anti-climactic book. There are other instances as well where Joyce denies the readers an expected climax, such as the reunion of Bloom and Stephen. The theme of the father-son relationship between them is set up throughout the book, only for the readers‘ expectations and hopes for a positive reunion to be finally deflated. Clearly, this goes against the nature of narrative film, whose structure usually depends on a steady preparation and build-up that culminates in a climax. Related to this is the problem that the characters in Ulysses have no clear motivation. Bloom is generally a rather untypical hero (cf. Schwarz, 1987: 38), and as he and Stephen drift rather aimlessly through Dublin they lack the sense of purpose that provides ―narrative urgency‖ (Kenner 1987: 22). This lack of motivation makes transferring the story to film difficult, as the protagonist of a typical film has to reach a goal. Since this teleological movement is largely missing in Ulysses one problem an adaptation has to deal with is the fact that Bloom has no clear motive for the things he does, except perhaps the attempt to avoid or postpone his return home. Structurally, Strick‘s Ulysses opens with a shot of the Martello Tower and the title: ―Ulysses by James Joyce‖. It then cuts to the top of the tower where Buck Mulligan and Stephen begin their day. It concludes with Molly‘s final ―yes‖, voiced over an image of her and Bloom kissing on Howth Head. It thus stays true to the book, while Walsh in Bloom chooses a slightly different way, starting with Molly‘s monologue which introduces Bloom. The next four minutes consist of her monologue, where we are introduced to Bloom. As a result, the first impression we get of Bloom is through the eyes of his wife. As Molly also thinks about Boylan, we learn about her affair before Bloom‘s day even begins. Also, while in Ulysses the event still lies in the future, here it has already happened, and is therefore even more unavoidable than in the source text. After Molly utters the words ―I can‘t wait till Monday‖, revealing that she is looking forward to Boylan‘s next visit and indicating that she feels little guilt or remorse about her affair, the film‘s title sequence starts. Interestingly, there Bloom, Molly and Stephen appear with captions linking the characters to the actors portraying them (e.g. ―Stephen Rea is Leopold Bloom‖). Thus treated like characters of a popular TV show, this indicates that by now the protagonists of Joyce‘s book have become household names. It also shows that this is not supposed to be an art film but, focusing on the entertainment aspect, an invitation to an audience that might be intimidated by the reputation of Ulysses. But at the same time this introduction contributes to the notion that this film feels more televisual than cinematic. The film proper finally starts with the insert ―16 th June 1904, Dublin‖ and a view of the Martello Tower. In terms of chronology both films follow the sequence of the book. Especially Ulysses keeps the episodic structure, following Bloom and Stephen through their long day chapter by chapter. Apart from ―Eumaeus‖, Maximilian Feldner 204 elements from all episodes of the novel can be identified in the films, even though the films‘ versions of ―Lotus Eaters‖, ―Scylla and Charybdis‖, ―Wandering Rocks‖ and ―Sirens‖ are kept rather short. While Bloom spends more time on the book‘s early chapters, Strick‘s Ulysses depicts the latter parts in more detail, especially ―Circe‖, ―Ithaca‖ and ―Penelope‖. The two films‘ only obvious change of chronology compared to the novel is the order of the first six episodes, which are so arranged that Stephen‘s and Bloom‘s beginnings of the day unfold in parallel fashion. Other than in the book, the fourth episode (―Calypso‖) follows the first (―Telemachus‖), the fifth (―Lotus Eaters‖) the second (Nestor‖), and the sixth (―Hades‖) the third (―Proteus‖). While in the book Bloom‘s and Stephen‘s days start simultaneously in terms of story but not of discourse, here story and discourse concur. This rearrangement perhaps has the function of stressing the importance of Bloom, by introducing him earlier than in the novel. Although keeping with the book‘s chronology, Bloom discards the episodes and follows the events of the book more loosely. As in Strick‘s Ulysses the last image 1 of the film shows the couple lying on Howth Head kissing, as Molly sighs her final ―yes‖. While both films retain the book‘s final word, Bloom especially emphasizes the novel‘s circular structure having the first and the last ―yes‖ of Molly‘s monologue serve as parentheses for the film. Another area where an adaptation of Ulysses needs to be selective is the great variety of themes Joyce explores in this novel. One dimension that is completely missing from the films is the mythological underpinnings of Ulysses. Other than that, both films touch upon an impressive amount of its thematic concerns. Often it is necessary to be familiar with the book to recognize them, as they are just touched upon in passing, but in some cases the films emphasize them sufficiently to be understood without prior knowledge of the novel. In Strick‘s Ulysses, for example, Stephen‘s Catholic fear comes to the foreground when, encouraged by Buck Mulligan, he sings a blasphemous song, but is shocked that a loud thunder immediately follows his recitation. Likewise, the guilt he feels about his mother is referred to twice in both films; first in the morning with Buck Mulligan when he remembers her on the deathbed, and the second time when her ghost appears to him in the ―Circe‖ episode. An important theme of Joyce‘s novel which the films explore in greater detail is the symbolic father-son relationship between Bloom and Stephen. Both films stress the gap Bloom‘s son Rudy, who died only a few days after his birth, has left and which informs Bloom‘s ideas of adopting Stephen as a surrogate son. In Ulysses thoughts about Rudy are triggered when Bloom sees a picture of him, in Bloom by the letter from his daugh- 1 This does not include the two metafictional comments that come after the fade to black: Bloom walking through present-day Dublin and a last image of Molly in front of her mirror before the camera zooms out and reveals the film set. Bringing Bloom to the Screen 205 ter Milly. Later, his sighting of Stephen on the beach prompts his imagining how it would have been had Rudy lived. In Strick‘s Ulysses, in a scene adopted from episode 14 (―Oxen of the Sun‖), which otherwise is left out in both films, Bloom is visibly concerned about Stephen, as he first inquires after his condition and then follows him into Nighttown. When Bloom helps the drunken and beaten-up Stephen outside the brothel, he has a vision of Rudy. Similarly, in Bloom, Bloom follows a vision of Rudy into Nighttown, where he finds the unconscious Stephen. In the end, in the book and the films, Stephen rejects Bloom‘s offer of a place for the night, and thus any expectations the audience might have for a successful father-son reunion are deflated. Another theme that both films use is Joyce‘s criticism of the anti- Semitism that seems to have been latent in the Dublin of his time and that surfaces in several instances throughout the novel. All who know Bloom seem to be keenly aware of his Jewish heritage. In both films Buck Mulligan, for example, mockingly warns Stephen of ―the wandering Jew‖. In Strick‘s Ulysses the first two transitions from a scene with Stephen to a scene with Bloom are announced by an anti-Semitic comment. As Haines mentions the Jews to Stephen there is a dissolve to Bloom preparing breakfast in his kitchen (U, 00: 08: 00). Mr Deasy‘s anti-Semitic joke is immediately followed by a shot of Bloom leaving a store which displays a prominent David‘s star in the window (U, 00: 15: 57-16: 06). Both films additionally make use of Bloom‘s confrontation with the Citizen. Not only being an event in the most traditional sense and thus easily applicable for film, it is also a display of the anti-Semitism that the more nationalistic Dubliners seem to harbour. Generally, the ways both films select from the novel are in many cases very similar. One exception is that Bloom is more open and explicit about the more naturalistic aspects of Joyce‘s book than Strick‘s Ulysses. Because Joyce tried to be as realistic and exact in his portrayal of an ordinary day in the life of his characters as possible, he famously wrote about several aspects that are hardly ever written about in literature. These include bodily functions such as menstruation, defecation, urination, and masturbation. Unlike Strick, Walsh includes some of them in his film. In Bloom, for instance, Bloom, not only goes to the outhouse, but his facial expression, his verbalized thoughts, and the additional sounds he makes, leave no doubt of what he is doing there (B, 00: 21: 00-22: 50). Also, it is quite clear what Bloom‘s hand is doing in his pocket as he watches Gerty when she presents her legs to him (B, 00: 59: 00-01: 01: 21). In Strick‘s film, by comparison, Bloom stands behind a wall, so the audience cannot see below his chest (U, 00: 45: 55-47: 18). Additionally, the sex scenes in Bloom are more explicit and expressive, Stephen can be seen urinating on the beach (B, 00: 35: 44-36: 00), and Molly is depicted sitting on the chamber pot (B, 01: 37: 35-38: 25). Considering how meek Strick‘s Ulysses actually is, it is surprising that it was banned in Ireland until the year 2000. Maximilian Feldner 206 Despite these differences, in many instances the similarities of both films are conspicuous. Both films selected many of the same scenes, such as Stephen helping his pupil Sargent, Stephen‘s conversation with Mr Deasy, and Molly‘s memory of Boylan slapping her behind. Some scenes, most notably Bloom‘s and Molly‘s kiss in Howth, even have the same visual expression. This shows that both filmmakers had a similar idea of which elements of Ulysses are not only relevant and important but also presentable on film, while also indicating a certain influence the older film had on the newer. Because it should not be forgotten that whenever a work is adapted more than once, every subsequent adaptation is also a remake of earlier versions. 5. Visualizing Consciousness: The Problem of Interiorization A second major obstacle to any adaptation is the fact that Ulysses constitutes one of the prime examples of stream of consciousness fiction (cf. Steinberg 1973). More than most books it is concerned with the movements of the characters‘ minds, with their thoughts and feelings. Because Ulysses is the representation of one day through the eyes of three characters, anyone wanting to render it recognizable on screen necessarily needs to include a depiction of the mind‘s movements in some way. This is complicated, as the options of representing consciousness in film are limited. Over-framing is always necessary and the means to effectively capture thoughts on screen are more or less limited to voice-over, although inventive and creative filmmakers can always find visual ways to represent the inner lives of characters. The narrative style of the early chapters of Ulysses is a combination of figural narration and interior monologue. Grammatically, this unusual style is characterized by changes of person and tense, as the third person and past tense of the figural narration alternate with the first person and present tense of the interior monologue. ―The result is two-fold: a purely subjective expression of internal happenings, and a blending of objective and subjective viewpoints on external happenings‖ (Cohn 1978: 72; original emphasis). While figural narration can be translated into film without much loss, as what is described can usually also be shown, it is more challenging to use interior monologue. According to Chatman, ―Achieving interior monologue in films is easy enough technically. All that is required is that the voice-over be identifiable as the character‘s whose lips do not move‖ (Chatman 1990: 194-5), but it needs to be added that voice-over is generally regarded as an unfilmic and clumsy solution which is probably why Strick largely resists to use interior monologue in Bloom‘s scenes. However, the film grants Stephen Dedalus several instances of interior monologue, which is necessary, as he lives in his own Bringing Bloom to the Screen 207 mind even more than Bloom, and some of his episodes in the novel, such as the third (―Proteus‖), almost exclusively consist of interior monologue. Walsh‘s Bloom, on the other hand, to a great degree lives from the voice-over of its eponymous protagonist. This already starts with Bloom leaving the house to buy breakfast. As we see him closing the door and feeling his pockets, we hear his voice wondering about his key. The words are directly adopted from the pages of the book: ―Not there. In the trousers when I left off. No use disturbing her. Be a warm day, I fancy. Specially in these black clothes. Feel it more. Black conducts. Reflects. Refracts, is it, the heat.‖ (Joyce 2000: 67; B, 00: 04: 00-14). Thus, the film approximates the book‘s narrative voice very closely: we get both perspectives, the objective external perspective capturing the characters and their surroundings as well as the character‘s own thoughts. In both films, whenever voice-over is used it is very close to or identical with the corresponding text in the book. In other words, in these instances Joyce‘s words are adopted directly. In terms of focalization medium-specific changes necessarily take place. In the novel, Bloom and Stephen are the main focalizers making readers see the world through their eyes, so to speak. Unless in film a literal point-of-view perspective is taken - that is, the camera is placed where the eyes of the protagonist would be - focalization takes place under different auspices. Focalization has to be established through camera position, sequence of shots and other filmic devices. Instead of seeing through their eyes, viewers watch the protagonists. They identify with the point of view of the camera, which does not hinder them from also identifying with the characters directly. Thus, focalization in film is also a question of identification. Both films largely maintain the focalization of the book, which means a focus on Stephen‘s perspective in his first three episodes and on Bloom‘s in the rest of the film with the exception of Molly‘s monologue. One of the few moments where one of the films successfully uses a visual trick to translate the narrative style of the early episodes to the screen, occurs in Strick‘s Ulysses. When Stephen wanders along the beach and reflects upon the ―ineluctable modality of the visible‖ (Joyce 2000: 45) he experimentally simulates blindness. As he shuts his eyes, in the film the screen becomes dark for a moment. Then there is a cut where we see him stumbling blindly along the beach. When he reopens his eyes, the camera again adopts his perspective for a few moments (U, 00: 17: 40- 18: 18). Here the novel‘s switching between external and internal perspective, is imitated. Otherwise, both Ulysses and Bloom rely to a large degree on the expressive skills of the actors playing Bloom (Milo O‘Shea and Stephen Rea respectively) to convey his inner life. Especially Bloom‟s Stephen Rea very effectively uses his facial expressions to communicate with the audience. A good example is the scene where he picks up a letter at the post office under his false name, Henry Flowers, and throws an Maximilian Feldner 208 apologetic glance at the camera and thus at the audience (B, 00: 25: 30- 45). Such a metalepsis would seem disruptive if it was overused, breaking the aesthetic illusion, but in small doses like here they encourage the audience to identify with the protagonist. Film as a medium is actually very well suited to convey psychological states. Consider German Expressionism and its American successor Film Noir, with its skewed and distorted aesthetics to mirror the state of mind of their often eccentric characters. Another example is the horror film, which is known for its capability to visualize fear. Concerning the psychological adequacy of film, Hutcheon remarks that [e]xternal appearances are made to mirror internal truths. In other words, visual and aural correlatives for interior events can be created, and in fact film has in its command many techniques that verbal texts do not. (Hutcheon 2006: 58) As examples of these techniques she mentions close-ups that create psychological intimacy, and a separation of the sound and image tracks. Unlike the novel, film therefore has the necessary means to create a thorough exploration of a character‘s consciousness. Despite Steinberg‘s assertion that the combination of literary devices Joyce uses ―simulate the psychological stream of consciousness,‖ (Steinberg 1973: 60) the restrictions of the novelistic medium actually do not allow a truly accurate depiction of consciousness. Our thought processes do not rely on the verbal only, but also on images, sounds and other perceptions. More than literature, film thus allows a mimetic recreation of consciousness, because it consists of a visual and aural level in addition to the verbal and is able to approximate the multidimensionality of our mental processes. But Joyce was not interested in perfectly imitating mental processes but to achieve a verbal representation of them (cf. Füger 1994: 227-9). Dorrit Cohn stresses the same notion when she states that ―the thought streams [Joyce] creates are plausible imitations of mental language‖ (Cohn 1978: 87). This changes the situation for an adaptation, because film is not that adapted to the verbal. As a result, an adaptation of Ulysses accordingly would have to retranslate Joyce‘s verbal imitations of consciousness into visual and aural impulses. This is what both films largely fail to do and what contributes to them being unsatisfying as intermedial transpositions. Both filmmakers ultimately lack the imagination to find interesting ways of depicting Bloom‘s thoughts. Usually, the films simply combine the aural and visual levels to create insights into the mind of a character, for example in the form of hypodiegetic elements such as visual flashbacks to make visible a character‘s memory. The moments are rare when an outside event in either film actually renders visible a character‘s interior state of mind in an engaging way. One notable instance in Bloom gives a glimpse of what would have been possible. As Bloom goes out to buy breakfast he embarks on a flight of imagination. Via his voice-over Bringing Bloom to the Screen 209 we learn that he fantasizes about adventures in the East. Accordingly, his surroundings suddenly change from a street in Dublin to an oriental bazaar (B, 00: 08: 20-40). This example shows that one option to visualize consciousness would have been to manipulate the film‘s reality to fit the character‘s perception. But unfortunately, the films hardly ever use these possibilities. The main exception is the ―Circe‖ episode, where several different methods of visualizing consciousness are used. Bloom‘s changing outfits, for example, can be seen as an expression of his state of mind, and due to the theatrical form of the scene he is able to voice his thoughts in the form of monologues. Many things are on Bloom‘s mind as he wanders around in Dublin on Bloomsday. Due to the consistency of their appearance during the day, his thoughts serve to make him coherent as a character in the novel. One of the most central sets of thoughts are those revolving around the event that arguably lies at the heart of the novel and defines Bloom‘s day: Molly‘s affair with Boylan. Plausibly it is this event that makes him not want to return home and thus is the trigger for his rather aimless odyssey. In the book, thoughts about the affair keep resurfacing, although he struggles to suppress them. Early in the day, for example, he thinks of Molly‘s date in an unspecific way, such as ―He‘s coming in the afternoon‖ (Joyce 2000: 114) and ―Today. Today. Not think.‖ (ibid: 230). As the time of their meeting approaches his thoughts concentrate more on that fact, such as ―Not yet. At four, she said.‖ (ibid: 335), ―At four. Near now.‖ (ibid: 339) and ―Car near there now [...] Keep my mind off.‖ (ibid: 362). Finally, he imagines them to be done and just thinks ―O, he did. Into her. She did. Done‖ (ibid: 482). Similarly, in Strick‘s Ulysses and Walsh‘s Bloom, Bloom keeps being reminded of Boylan and the affair. The films make use of the fact that Bloom repeatedly encounters Boylan during the day. Both films depict Bloom‘s seeing Boylan from the funeral carriage, which not only triggers a conversation about Boylan among Bloom‘s companions but also releases images of Boylan and Molly in his head. Later, Bloom avoids Boylan outside the museum, only to see him again when he eats his dinner. Other than in the book, where Molly never is depicted telling Bloom that Boylan is coming at four o‘clock - that she told him so can only be inferred from his thoughts -, in Strick‘s Ulysses she does tell him, although the film does not make use of the dramatic potential that Hugh Kenner sees in a scene like this (cf. Kenner 1987: 45). The audience only gets a brief insight into his mind, as he imagines Molly and Boylan intimately together, an image that will repeatedly resurface during the day. This short hypodiegetic element is also important, because it makes clear that Bloom knows about the real meaning of Boylan‘s visit. The seed of the motif of the affair is already planted a few minutes earlier. When Bloom picks up his newspaper Boylan‘s letter is also there, and, for a moment, can be seen in close-up, which stresses its thematic importance Maximilian Feldner 210 (U, 00: 08: 40). In Bloom the time of Boylan's arrival remains unspecified and four o‘clock never acquires the same significance as it does in Ulysses, book and film. Although Boylan is set up as Bloom's antagonist, the films, as the novel, deny the audience the confrontational climax it has come to expect from traditional Hollywood style movies, which might in fact have contributed to the limited success of both productions. The films also attempt to show Bloom's preoccupation with the upcoming affair in other ways. In Bloom, for example, his oriental reverie mentioned above is interrupted when he sees Molly and Boylan, both dressed in oriental clothes, kissing behind one of the bazaar stands. It is also the first time the audience learns that Bloom is aware of the affair, which would indicate that possibly this is not the first time that Molly is unfaithful to Bloom. In Strick‘s Ulysses Bloom is reminded of Boylan when his conversation with Bantam Lyons turns to Boylan who is organizing Molly‘s tour. Lyons suggestively says, ―Oh, Boylan is getting it up‖, which, in turn, annoys Bloom, who tells Lyons to throw away the newspaper, which then causes the misunderstanding concerning the racehorse Throwaway. Moreover, Bloom notices a shop which bears Boylan‘s name, and an advertisement poster with Boylan‘s face on it. There is a second poster next to it that announces a fireworks display in the evening, thus providing a foreshadowing of the events Joyce describes in ―Nausicaa‖. Finally, both films also use the moment in ―Circe‖ where Bloom‘s humiliation causes him to imagine himself an eager servant to Boylan, who is allowed to watch the two through the keyhole (U, 01: 18: 28-33; B, 01: 26: 50-27: 04). In Strick‘s film, to leave no doubt about his role, he even wears horns in this scene. 6. Joyce’s Stylistic Experimentation: The Problem of Transposing Style After the book‘s volume and complexity, and its interiorization, a third problem an adaptation of Ulysses has to deal with is its ―odyssey of style‖ (Lawrence 1981; also cf. Schwarz 1987). Joyce effectively used a great variety of different styles that justify the book‘s reputation as a literary masterpiece. Especially after the first third of the book each of the episodes comes in new clothing. The styles used include the use of newspaper headlines and a play with rhetorical figures (―Eolus‖), the verbal imitation of musical forms (―Sirens‖), low Dublin vernacular and satirical comments of different styles (―Cyclops‖), the sentimental style of 19 th century romance novels (―Nausicaa‖), a chronological series of imitations of historical English prose style (―Oxen of the Sun‖), drama (―Circe‖), highly clichéd and tired language (―Eumaeus‖), and a question-answer style which imitates scholastic and scientific language (―Ithaca‖). A Bringing Bloom to the Screen 211 filmmaker has to consider how and to which extent they can incorporate these styles in their adaptation. It appears that the story as it is told in the first third of the book can largely be reproduced in film, as it is firmly grounded in the realistic tradition, at least for a text by Joyce. Reading its first episode (―Telemachus‖) makes it very much possible to imagine Ulysses as a film. Almost like a camera the figural narration follows the characters around and provides enough information to create a picture of the novel‘s external world (cf. Steinberg 1973: 60). Joyce‘s realism additionally helps, as he describes real places that are easy to imagine for everybody familiar with them, such as the top of the Martello tower, the room where they have breakfast, and their walk to the Forty Foot swimming place. As this first episode seems to be rather easily translatable into film, it is not surprising that both films depict its events almost identically to the book. As far as the story is concerned in the following few episodes, both films remain relatively faithful to Joyce‘s novel. But after the sixth episode (―Hades‖) the films only use brief vignettes from other episodes, if at all. Both directors probably regarded the hectic activity of the ―Aeolus‖ episode or the highly theoretical discussions of ―Scylla and Charybdis‖ to be inept to be used as scenes in a film. The concentration on the early episodes is also necessary for the introduction and development of the film‘s characters as well as for narrative and thematic concerns. In terms of events, little happens in the later episodes, and so the films use the few incidents that stand out, such as Bloom‘s confrontation with the citizen in ―Cyclops‖ and Bloom‘s and Gerty MacDowell‘s wordless encounter in ―Nausicaa‖. Concerning stylistic inventiveness, Bloom‘s oriental reverie is one of the very few occasions of creative usage of cinematic possibilities in Bloom. Strick‘s Ulysses, on the other hand, shows some attempts at recreating Joyce‘s stylistic creativity on the screen, despite the differences between the media. The thematic importance that four o‘clock in the afternoon assumes in Joyce‘s book and Strick‘s film, for example, is further emphasized by a cuckoo‘s clock shouting ―Cuckold! Cuckold! Cuckold! ‖ (U, 00: 38: 18-20) that interrupts Bloom‘s dinner in the film and that is Boylan‘s cue to leave the restaurant and head towards Eccles Street 7. In episode seven (―Aeolus‖) Strick finds an interesting solution to incorporate the headlines that interrupt the narrative flow of this episode. As Bloom and Stephen come to the newspaper office to run their errands, phrases can be seen on posters behind the characters that almost magically change after cuts. These phrases, including ―The House of Keyes‖, ―Exit Bloom‖, and ―Spot the Winner‖, are taken directly from the headlines Joyce invented for this episode, and they relate to what is happening at the moment of their appearances. As the editor, annoyed with Bloom utters the words, ―Kiss my arse‖, a boy with a billboard with the letters ―K.M.A.‖ written on it walks by (U, 00: 29: 50). Thus, Joyce‘s little joke here is also incorporated in the film. In what constitutes episode eight Maximilian Feldner 212 (―Lestrygonians‖) in the book, Bloom is looking for a place to eat his lunch and enters a restaurant, but quickly leaves again, disgusted by the people he sees there. In the film version, Bloom‘s disgust is realized with a simple but effective trick. Images of the men eating are accompanied by pig sounds on the soundtrack (U, 00: 31: 16-21). But the most daring attempt to adapt one of Joyce stylistic ‗masks‘ (cf. Lawrence 1981), comes towards the end of the film and consists of an approximation of the catechistic or scientific question and answer style that characterizes episode 17 (―Ithaca‖). Lawrence states that ―The narrative of the chapter dons the antiliterary mask of science‖ (Lawrence 1981: 180), and that ―instead of the human voice of a narrative persona, it offers a catalogue of cold, hard facts‖ (Lawrence 1981: 181). It is clear that this style can hardly be realized effectively in filmic form, but Strick manages to find a way that is successful in conveying Joyce‘s style, if somewhat clumsy in the filmic format. While we see images of Bloom and Stephen walking to Bloom‘s house in Eccles Street 7, Bloom inviting Stephen in for a cup of coffee, their conversation, Stephen leaving, and Bloom preparing for bed, a narrating voice relates some of the facts that can be found in the book. Joyce‘s language is adopted almost verbatim, if abbreviated. In fact there are two voices, those of Milo O‘Shea and Maurice Roëves, the actors who play Bloom and Stephen respectively, who take turns asking and answering the questions posed. But the two voices also abandon the strict question/ answer template of the book and engage in a somewhat freer conversation. As a result, two conversations occur simultaneously. One that exists only on the visual level - we see Bloom and Stephen talking and also get a certain idea what they are talking about, especially if we are familiar with the book - and one on the aural level. The voices we hear are not necessarily Stephen‘s and Bloom‘s but, like a narrator, rather exist on an extra-diegetic level. At the same time, the impression of an actual conversation between Bloom and Stephen remains intact because the audience is familiar with their voices by now. Aside from these occasional touches of creative usage of the audiovisual possibilities that the medium film offers, both films far from exhaust the potential of cinematic forms to adequately adapt Joyce‘s stylistic experimentation for the screen. This certainly has to do with the fact that those episodes that most depend on the effect of language, such as ―Oxen of the Sun‖, ―Eumaeus‖, and ―Ithaca‖, are especially difficult to film. However, even more cinematic episodes such as ―Wandering Rocks‖ are largely left out. Mark W. Osteen‘s criticism that ―Strick fails even to exploit the novel‘s more cinematic scenes‖ (Osteen 2005: 475) is true also for Bloom. The ―Wandering Rocks‖ episode, which ―is full of montage-like connections and camera-ready narrative movements‖ (Osteen 2005: 475), would have lent itself perfectly to a cinematic treatment offering a synoptic perspective of Dublin that could have been on a par with Joyce‘s verbal treatment of the city. However, both films, probably striving for a Bringing Bloom to the Screen 213 more personal perspective, limit themselves to showing only short vignettes from this episode. Another episode that almost finds no usage in the films is episode 11 (―Sirens‖). This is largely understandable because little happens in this episode and the literary style Joyce uses can hardly be appropriated for a filmic adaptation. But the lack of engagement with this episode points to a crucial omission in both adaptations. ―Sirens‖ is first and foremost about music, which is certainly an important element in the audio-visual medium of film. Film can fully exploit the possibilities the combination of sight and sound offers. On the level of sound, music can and does contribute to conveying a certain mood and atmosphere. However, using music effectively is something that Strick‘s Ulysses and Walsh‘s Bloom mostly fail to do. While in Bloom there is a lot of nondescript background music that is partly responsible for creating the positive mood and atmosphere of the film if little more, there is hardly any music in Ulysses. This foregrounds the few moments where music is used, such as Bloom‘s first appearance, Bloom‘s wistful looking at the picture of his son, and his orgasm when watching Gerty McDowell. But even then the potential of music is not exploited to its fullest extent. Simon Dedalus‘s song in the restaurant where Bloom eats his dinner, which accompanies his journey into his memory of the early days with Molly, is also done rather unremarkably and hardly leaves a lasting impression. Eschewing to capitalize on the musical element, an element which is such a constitutive feature in Joyce‘s literature, robs both films of considerable expressive potential. ―Circe‖, the longest episode of Ulysses, is also the episode that seems most appropriate for filmic realization. As it is written in the form of drama, a style very closely related to the screenplay, this episode can be adapted rather straightforwardly. Given the close relationship of film and drama it is understandable that both films spend so much time on this episode. In Strick‘s Ulysses the ―Circe‖ sequence lasts over 30 minutes, which is more than a quarter of the film. It follows the events that are described in the book closely and is thus a kind of abridged version of Joyce‘s play. Generally, critics seem to judge the transposition of this episode as successful (cf. Williams 2010: 170). The interesting aspect of the ―Circe‖ episode is that Joyce uses the dramatic style to dive into the depths of Bloom‘s unconscious. It is during his hilariously surreal time in Dublin‘s red-light district that the thoughts, wishes, and memories Bloom successfully suppressed during the day and that were accordingly missing from the narrative before come to the foreground. This might seem paradoxical at first, as drama seems not to be a very opportune way of rendering consciousness. Lacking fiction‘s mediating instance of a narrative voice that is able to describe a character‘s state of mind, drama seems hardly able to depict the unconscious. However, there is a long tradition in theatre where the events depicted are manifestations of the mind. Similarly, cinema has repeatedly shown - from Luis Buñuel to Alfred Hitch- Maximilian Feldner 214 cock to David Lynch - that it is well-suited for surreal subject matter. Hutcheon argues that [a]lthough it is a naturalistic medium in most of its uses, film can also create visual, externalized analogues to subjective elements - fantasy or magic realism - by such techniques as slow motion, rapid cutting, distortional lenses (fish-eye, telephoto), lightning or the various kinds of film stock. (Hutcheon 2006: 59) Unfortunately, the two Ulysses adaptations make little use of the possibilities of cinema to depict the surreal. Both stage the events rather statically and conventionally, as if filming the events on a theatre stage, without resorting to too many visual tricks. As a result, the surrealism of this episode exists merely on the story level and not on the visual level. The only thing the films do contribute are the abrupt and unlikely changes of scenery, setting and clothes, although such manipulations are also predetermined by the book and do not constitute an inventive concept of the films. Here, perhaps the most absurd aspect in Bloom is that he walks around without pants in most of the sequence - he has literally let his trousers down. Although the sequence starts promising in Strick‘s Ulysses - it is immediately possible to tell a change of mood, due to the cheerful and yet ominous music, the slightly sped-up and comical-looking movements of Buck and Haines, and the strange angles and shadows (U, 00: 53: 00) - both films ultimately make too little of the possibilities cinema would afford them. Because ―Circe‖ is the longest episode of Ulysses and because it is rather simple to transfer to film, its comparatively long treatment in both films is warranted. The same cannot be said about the book‘s final episode (―Penelope‖). In Strick‘s Ulysses it gets over 25 minutes and thus is almost as long as ―Circe‖. In Bloom with altogether 14 minutes it is not as long, but there the fact that it bookends the film makes it also rather dominating. Its disproportional length in both films is even more surprising considering that this episode consists almost exclusively of Molly‘s interior monologue while she is lying in bed in a dark room, a situation that could not be less cinematic. The reason why both films grant Molly‘s monologue such ample space is probably that the filmmakers wanted to give Molly more space of her own. Also, being the ―locus classicus, the most famous and the most perfectly executed specimen of its species‖ (Cohn 1978: 217), Molly‘s interior monologue is one of the most famous elements of Joyce‘s novel and therefore needed to be featured prominently. In Strick‘s Ulysses, we see Molly lying in her bed while her voice-over presents a condensed version of the books monologue. The shots of her lying in bed are intercut with images that visualize her thoughts and memories. But the scene is too static and too long to be cinematically appealing. Barsam‘s rather harsh opinion testifies to this notion: ―the richest interior monologue in English literature becomes an almost inter- Bringing Bloom to the Screen 215 minable bore, a long scene of exterior action, photographed by an omniscient camera‖ (Barsam 1981: 299). By dividing Molly‘s monologue into two parts, one at the very beginning and one at the end of the film, Walsh in Bloom manages to make it somewhat more engaging. Also, his Molly, who appears more playful and less serious than the Molly in Strick‘s film, is not exclusively shown lying in bed with her thoughts presented as voice-over. The bed scenes alternate with scenes of her sitting in front of her dressing table and telling her thoughts directly into the camera. Her interior monologue thus becomes a soliloquy, which, like Bloom‘s occasional metalepses, helps to create a connection with the audience. As a result, in Walsh‘s film Molly‘s monologue can be argued to work better than in Strick‘s film. 7. Conclusion Many people will consider film adaptations to be inferior to the source material. This has several reasons. First, often people are disappointed by an adaptation of a book they liked because they had too high expectations, or because they could not reconcile the story as seen on the screen with the story they saw in their minds when reading it. Secondly, film is still usually seen as a more popular medium than literature and is thus taken less seriously. Thirdly, it is difficult to adequately translate a literary text into the language of film, especially when highly literary texts are concerned. Sometimes filmic adaptations are really not able to tell the story as successfully as a purely verbal medium, which makes changes necessary. As I have shown, this applies partially to Strick‘s Ulysses and Walsh‘s Bloom. The problem with these films is not that they represent a failure to turn the novel Ulysses into a film, but a failure to adapt it in a cinematic and enjoyable way. In terms of narrative, both films are successful. They prove that the stories told in Ulysses can be told in the medium of film. The book is certainly narrative enough to work in both media. The films also hint at the ways to cinematically represent a character‘s consciousness, even though the options to do so could have been exploited to a much greater extent. What both Ulysses adaptations struggle with the most is the amount of stylistic experimentation in Joyce‘s book. This is why the films work well in the first third, as the style of the early episodes is the most traditional and expository. But in the latter part, as Joyce‘s stylistic experimentations grow more and more diverse and complex, the films start to falter. But this is due not to an ‗unfilmability‘ of these episodes but to a lack of vision and daring of the filmmakers, which is evident in the fact that they miss the opportunity to translate those episodes that lend themselves most to a filmic realization, such as ―Wandering Rocks‖ and ―Circe‖. McCourt argues that ―If anything, these two Maximilian Feldner 216 films suffer from being too loyal to Joyce and to his storyline and in so doing fail to take advantage of the cinematic potential latent in Joyce‘s original text‖ (McCourt 2010: 11). As a result, although both adaptations are generally considered unsuccessful, they still testify to the feasibility of adapting Ulysses. But the possibility of really adequately turning Ulysses into a film remains theoretical because a definitive screen version of it has yet to be created. Perhaps, the only way to do the complexity and stylistic variety of Ulysses justice would be a TV series with 18 episodes, each in a distinct style and ideally directed by different filmmakers. A project bringing Ulysses to screen episode by episode might be too ambitious for budgetary and organisational reasons, but this does not change the fact that film possesses the means to adequately visualize this book. One of the advantages of filmic adaptations is that they can clarify and comprehensively restructure complex narratives. In fact, French film critic André Bazin once claimed, ―The very principle of cinematic adaptation [...] is to simplify and condense a work from which it basically wishes to retain only the main characters and situations‖ (Bazin 2000: 25). It is therefore a pity that there are no successful and popular film versions of Joyce's novel although the adaptations Ulysses and Bloom suggest that such a film version could be a good introduction to the towering and daunting Ulysses. In the case of Ulysses this might have the added benefit of aiding the general understanding of this challenging text, as Harry Blamires attempted to do with his New Bloomsday Book. A film version that relieves the plot of the wealth of detail and the variety of stylistic changes, would make the novel more accessible. Audiences engaged by an interesting and enjoyable filmic version of Ulysses might be encouraged to read the actual novel. Especially if the adaptation is able to convey the humour of the book it might win new readers, formerly too intimidated by its reputation. With the film in mind, it might also be easier to navigate the many gaps and breaks in the novel, because readers would possess the appropriate images that allow orientation. As a result, adaptations of Joyce‘s texts are not only possible but also desirable. Because adapting such a literary masterpiece does not mean the devaluation of this work, as some cultural pessimists might suspect, but it implies the possibility of opening up the universe contained in Ulysses to a greater audience and readership. References Barry, Kevin (2010). "Tracing Joyce. The 'Dead' in Huston and Rossellini". In: John McCourt (ed.). Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema. Cork: Cork University. 149-175. Barsam, Richard (1981). "When in Doubt Persecute Bloom". In: Michael Klein & Gillian Parker (eds.). The English Novel and the Movies. New York : Ungar. 291- 300. Bringing Bloom to the Screen 217 Bazin, André (2000). "Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest". In: James Naremore (ed.). Film Adaptation. London: Athlone Press. 19-27. Blamires, Harry (2000). The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through James Joyce's Ulysses. London/ New York: Routledge. Chatman, Seymour (1990). Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds. Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Priceton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Füger, Wilhelm (1994). James Joyce. Epoche, Werk, Wirkung. München: Verlag C.H. Beck. Hutcheon, Linda (2006). A Theory of Adaptation. New York, NY: Routledge. Joyce, James (1922/ 2000). Ulysses. London: Penguin Books. Kenner, Hugh (1987). Ulysses. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lawrence, Karen (1981). The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McCourt, John (ed.) (2010). Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema. Cork: Cork University Press. McCourt, John (2010). "Introduction: From the real to the Reel and Back: Explorations into Joyce and Cinema". In: John McCourt. Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema. Cork: Cork University Press. 1-14. McFarlane, Brian (2007). "Reading Film and Literature". In: Debora Cartmell & Imelda Whelehan (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Literature On Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 15-28. Meyers, Jesse (2010). "James Joyce, Subliminial Screenwriter? ". In: John McCourt (ed.). Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema. Cork: Cork University Press. 174-186. Osteen, Mark W. (2005). "Ulysses (1922)". In: John Tibbets & James Welsh (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film. New York, NY: Facts of File. 475-476. Schwarz, Daniel R. (1987). Reading Joyce‟s Ulysses. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. Shout, John (1989). "Joyce at Twenty-Five, Huston at Eighty-One: The Dead". Literature/ Film Quarterly 17/ 2. 91-94. Spiegel, Alan (1976). Fiction and the Camera Eye. Visual Consciousness in Film and the Modern Novel. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. Steinberg, Erwin (1973). The Stream of Consciousness and Beyond in Ulysses. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Strick, Joseph (dir.). (1967). Ulysses [Motion Picture]. Walsh, Sean (dir.). (2003). Bloom [Motion Picture]. Welsh, James Michael (2007). "Introduction". In: Michael James Welsh & Peter Lev (eds.). The Literature/ Film Reader. Issues of Adaptation. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. xiii-xxviii. Williams, Keith (2010). "Odysseys of Sound and Image: 'Cinematicity' and the Ulysses Adaptations". In: John McCourt. Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema. Cork: Cork University Press. 158-173. Maximilian Feldner University of Graz Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 \ Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de Stand: August 2015 · Änderungen und Irrtümer vorbehalten! JETZT BESTELLEN! 113311 Auslieferung Dezember 2011.indd 10 29.11.11 17: 13 Winfried Fluck, Donald Pease (Hrsg.) Towards a Post-Exceptionalist American Studies REAL - Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 30 2014, X, 502 Seiten €[D] 148,00 / SFR 192,40 ISBN 978-3-8233-4185-7 American studies, envisioned in the 1930s and institutionalized after World War II, was from its very beginning tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. As recent debates have shown, this American exceptionalism does not merely claim uniqueness and difference for “America”, but asserts a political and moral superiority resulting from specific American visions and virtues. In response, American studies have begun to widen their analytical scope from national to transnational perspectives. Should Transnational studies be the new American studies, then? Recent debates have complicated this happy scenario of transition and insisted on a continuing need to also analyze social and cultural developments within the U.S. itself. How can this be done, however, without falling back into an exceptionalist framework? What can be the contours, themes, and methods of an American studies that is tied, neither to the idea of American exceptionalism, nor to an exclusively transnational perspective? This volume of REAL provides a contribution to the theory and method of a post-exceptionalist form of American studies. Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra The aim of this article is to give an answer to the question posed in the title. We will investigate whether there are any gender-typical aspects 1 of privacy by taking a closer look at women‟s and men‟s privacy concerns and management when communicating on the social web. A special focus will be on young adults and the potential threats to their privacy. We will try to find explanations for web users‟ attitudes and behaviors and an empirical study on gender and informational privacy which was conducted at the University of Passau, will be presented and included in the discussion. 1. Privacy and the social web The social web is described by Appelquist et al. (2010) as “a set of relationships that link together people over the Web.” This is a very broad definition that applies to almost any online activity. Wikipedia (Anon 2014, “social web”) also gives such an all-encompassing definition of the social web, stating that it comprises all social interaction online, i.e., online shopping, educational sites, games, as well as social networking 1 „Gender‟ in this article is used in the following dictionary sense of the word: “A person‟s gender refers to the fact that they are male or female” (Collins Cobuild Advanced Dictionary 2009). It is thus based on the biological categorization of people (which is often referred to as „sex‟ in the field of gender studies to distinguish it from „gender‟, which is then used to emphasize the role of social and cultural construction. We are aware of discussions and problems that are related to categorizations of gender (cf. e.g. Wawra 2004: 10-15)). Other commonly used categorizations like LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) are not part of the analyses here. This is also due to the fact that the majority of large-scale studies which have been conducted on social web use, ask respondents to classify themselves as either „male‟ or „female‟. It would be desirable to conduct more studies that take into account other genders as well. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Daniela Wawra 220 websites. Prototypical for the social web, however, i.e., its best example, are the social networking websites. I will mostly concentrate on them in the following discussion. Currently, among the best known and most popular social networking websites are LinkedIn (2003), MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004), Twitter (2007) und WhatsApp (2009). Flickr (2004) and YouTube (2005) started the trend of putting user-generated content on the web and sharing it with others (cf. Appelquist et al. 2010). The social web consists of communication which is often interpersonal. For many people it has become a taken-for-granted part of their everyday lives that fulfills various purposes: It is used for entertainment, as an information source, to establish and maintain relationships, to share interests and as a discussion platform (cf. also Thelwall 2011: 1). Following Storey (2014: 39), we could speak of a ‗mediatization‘ of our lives in the sense that media use has increased and that media have become more visible - in all areas of our lives. This view can be supported by empirical data that show an exponential increase of media use during the last few years. According to statista, out of 2.92 billion internet users worldwide (Anon 2015, ―internet users worldwide‖), 1.4 billion users have a Facebook account in 2015 (which is about equivalent to the total number of social network users worldwide in 2012) (cf. Anon 2015, ―social network users worldwide‖). The social web is an integral part of companies‘ communication strategies today and is, for example, used for marketing purposes. Social web platforms have also started to commercialize user data (Appelquist et al. 2010). In politics as well, social media have become a standard means of communication. Not only our public but also our private lives have almost become ―unthinkable without media‖ (Storey 2014: 40): Storey speaks of the mediatization of our lives also in this sense: […] media are increasingly part of the very fabric of everyday life […]. But this does not mean that media determines or controls everyday life - this is not or should not be another version of technological determinism. Rather what is being suggested is that media are now fundamental to how we live the everyday. (Storey 2014: 40) Appelquist et al. (2010) see great potential for innovation of social networking sites and user-generated-content services, but only if - among other things - the privacy of users can be protected and if they are left in control over what kind of information about themselves they are prepared to reveal. And this is currently a major problem: The social web threatens our privacy in that people often give away information about themselves, regretting it later. Often, the social web does not forget, and the damage is irreparably done. Social web enterprises sell personal data to third parties and technological innovations, such as data mining, allow for the automatic linking and processing of big amounts of data. These Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? 221 data are used, for example, for marketing purposes in order to make wellinformed guesses about what people are interested in buying in the future and to make corresponding offers (cf. Anon 2014, thefreedictionary; Anon 2014, webopedia). These examples give an impression of the various ways in which our privacy is threatened by social media. More precisely, it is our informational privacy in particular that is in danger. Rössler defines informational privacy as the right to be protected against unwanted access to personal information or personal data (Rössler 2001: 25). It is thus about control over who can have access to personal information. Personal information on the social web comprises anything from a photograph of yourself and your contact details to your communication with others. Informational privacy on the internet also includes control over the contexts in which information can be used (cf. Altman 1976 and Nissenbaum 2004 in Thelwall 2011: 1). This is important as web-contents can be recycled or forwarded (cf. Thelwall 2011: 1f). The purpose of the following discussion is to find answers to the questions of  how men and women use the social web,  whether they are equally affected by invasions of their privacy on the social web,  whether they feel equally threatened regarding their privacy,  how they generally deal with privacy issues,  what their general attitude is towards privacy and  what kind of explanations there are for the findings. The discussion will be based on large-scale empirical (meta-)studies and our own study that was conducted at the University of Passau, Germany. The following section gives an overview of empirical data with regard to women’s and men’s uses of the social web. 2. Is social web use gendered? 2.1. A global perspective Do men and women use the social web differently? Who uses the social web how, i.e., is the social web used more by men or by women and which offers of the social web do they use predominantly? According to the Global Web Index (2012; cited after World Newsmedia Network 2013: 12) people’s use of social media differs depending on country, gender, age and other factors. Social media engagement consists of three parts: participation, content generation and product related activities. The field of ‘participation’ covers the use of social networks, reading and commenting on micro-blogs, posting on platforms and commenting on them. ‘Con- Daniela Wawra 222 tent generation‘ includes uploading photographs and videos online and writing blogs or news stories. ‗Product related activities‘ concern evaluations of products online. Among the countries with the highest rate of social media engagement are China, Indonesia and India. In China, for example, almost 90% of male internet users and more than 80% of female internet users are engaged in social media activities. The Japanese are the least engaged with social media: Only about 20% of male and female internet users use the internet in this way. Globally, younger people are more engaged with social media than older people. Only in Saudi- Arabia it is the middle-aged group between 35 and 44 that is more engaged in social media than the youngest age group (ranging from 16 to 24). In Malaysia, the oldest age group is even slightly more active than the middle-aged group. A more specific look at selected countries renders the following: In Germany, about 25% of internet users between the ages of 55 and 64 engage with social media. Among those aged 35 to 44 it is 40%, while a little less than 60% of those aged 16 to 24 do so. Considering all age groups, slightly more than 40% of social media users are male and 35% are female. Only in Sweden is the rate of women who use social media lower than in Germany. In the USA, social media engagement by women amounts to slightly over 40%, while it is 35% for men. The numbers are thus just the reverse of those in Germany. In most countries, men‘s social media engagement is higher than that of women. The USA is thus an exception in this respect, as are Japan, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Taiwan and Thailand. The data clearly show that the use of social media differs according to culture, age and gender. A global tendency - according to this study - is that more men than women use social media and that younger people use it more than older people. The study says nothing, however, about the intensity of the social media use by men and women and about which kinds of social media they prefer. Social media engagement that was analyzed in the study cited earlier covered very heterogeneous aspects of social media use - from the uploading of photographs to the use of social networks and the writing of blogs. We have already seen in the introductory section to this article that ‗social web‘ is often defined differently to inor exclude a variety of activities on the internet. This alone can lead to considerable variation in the results of empirical analyses. In general, we also need to consider the fact that the analyses often do not take into account how active the users are and that they might include fake and inactive accounts as well. A striking result of the study on social media engagement is that social media use among internet users is considerably higher in China, Indonesia and India than in Germany or the USA. These last two countries are even among those countries where social media engagement is lowest. A follow-up research question would thus be to explain these considerable cultural differences. We need significantly more of such empirical grand- 223 scale research which at the same time addresses more specific questions, such as similarities and differences in usage patterns and the reasons for them. So far, we have access to the most detailed data for the USA. They include surveys that differentiate more and address more specific issues of social media use. We will therefore mostly concentrate on US-American data in the following overview of men‘s and women‘s typical social web usage patterns. 2.2. A US-American perspective According to Nielsen‘s Internet-usage index (cited in Garber 2012), US- American women use the social web more than men. This finding supports the results of the Global Web Index (2012) for the USA, while ‗social web‘ is not as broadly defined in the Nielsen index: Women (aged 18 and older) wrote or maintained a personal blog with an 8% higher probability than the average user. For men, this was 9% less likely than for the average user. More women than men are fans and followers of a brand or a famous person on the internet. Women had one or more social networking profiles with a 6% higher probability, while it was 7% less likely for men. The probability of women buying a product on the internet which had been advertised for on TV was 12% higher, while there was a 14% lower probability for men doing so (cited in Garber 2012). In line with the findings of the two studies cited so far, a PEW survey that was conducted in September 2014 (N=1597) (cf. Duggan et al. 2015) shows that Facebook is ―by far the most popular social media site‖ (Duggan et al. 2015: 2) and that women dominate on Facebook: 77% of users are female, 66% are male. These percentages are very stable: In 2013, 76% of Facebook-users were female and 66% were male (cf. Duggan et al. 2015: 5). The survey also renders more detailed information on the intensity of media use: Facebook has the highest number of users - 70% use it daily (in comparison to 36% daily Twitter users and 17% daily Pinterest users, for example) (cf. Duggan et al 2015: 10). According to a PEW study from 2012 (N=2255) (Hampton et al. 2012) ―the average female user made 21 updates to their Facebook status in the month of observation, while the average male made six‖ (Hampton et al. 2012: 4). A report by Rebtel (2011) shows that 68% of the women who want to stay in contact with acquaintances, friends and family, do so via social media but this is only true for 54% of the men (cited in Garber 2012). We can summarize following Garber (2012) and say that there is a ―Digital (Gender) Divide: Women Are More Likely Than Men to Have a Blog (and a Facebook Profile)‖. Bennett (2012) also comes to the conclusion that US-American women dominate social networks online. According to a survey based on Google Ad Planner (cf. McCandless 2012), women have 62% of all Twitter pro- Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 224 files, 58% of Facebook profiles and 72% of Pinterest users are female. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are used considerably more often per month by women than by men. A minority of social web services is dominated by men: Men use, above all, social bookmarking sites 2 more often than women: 74% of Reddit users, 66% of Digg and Spotify 3 users, 64% of Google+ users and 61% of Soundcloud users are male. Reddit - ―a type of online community where users vote on content‖ 4 - is a blend of the words ‗read‘ and ‗edit‘. It is meant to sound like ―read it‖ (‗read‘ in the participle form as in ―I‘ve read it‖). Users are able to provide contents consisting of links and text. How prominently they are displayed depends on the community‘s feedback and on how old the contributions are (Anon 2015, ―reddit‖). Digg ―is a news aggregator with an editorially driven front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues‖ (Anon 2015, ―digg‖). According to their advertising message, it ―delivers the most interesting and talked about stories on the Internet right now‖. 5 google+ advertises with statements such as ―share and discover all across google‖, ―get closer to family and friends‖, ―get more into the stuff you love‖ and also tries to attract clients with messages such as ―Make a great first impression‖, ―Show the world a little about who you are and what makes you tick,‖ ―Expand your audience‖, ―Share publicly and build a following as people discover +1 and re-share your posts with others around the world.‖ 6 The major difference between google+ and Facebook is that google+ advertises more with the offer to go public while Facebook puts emphasis on the possibility of a private space in which you can exchange personal information with people you trust. Correspondingly, Facebook‘s slogan on the German website is: ―Facebook ermöglicht es dir, mit den Menschen in deinem Leben in Verbindung zu treten und Inhalte mit diesen zu teilen.― 7 (‗Facebook allows you to connect to people in your life and share contents with them‘ (my translation)). The US-American Facebook website advertises with the sentence ―Connect with friends and the world around you on Facebook‖. 8 YouTube, google+ and Badoo are used significantly more often monthly by men than by women. Badoo is a networking site like Facebook which brings together people who share the 2 ―Social bookmarking websites are centralized online services which allow users to store and share Internet bookmarks. Such sites typically offer a blend of social and organizational tools, such as annotation, categorization, folksonomy-based tagging, commenting, and interface with other kinds of services like citation management software and social networking sites.‖ (Anon 2015, ―social bookmarking websites‖) 3 Spotify is a platform for music (cf. https: / / www.spotify.com/ de/ (18 May 2015)). 4 http: / / www.reddit.com/ about/ (18 May 2015). 5 http: / / digg.com/ about (18 May 2015). 6 http: / / www.google.com/ intl/ en/ +/ learnmore/ index.html; http: / / www.google.com/ +/ learnmore/ features.html (18 May 2015). 7 http: / / de-de.facebook.com/ (18 May 2015). 8 http: / / www.facebook.com/ (18 May 2015). 225 same interests. Badoo advertises as follows: ―Meet new people. With over 246m users, Badoo is great for chatting, making friends, sharing interests, and even dating! ‖ 9 According to Pingdom‘s social media study (2012) (quoted in Koetsier 2012), more than half of US-American users of social media are aged between 25 and 44, only 5% are 17 and younger and only 2% are 65 and older. 71% of the social media sites that were included in the Pingdom study are dominated by women. This is particularly true for Pinterest, where women‘s share is 79%. On this platform, users can share pictures including commentaries about personal interests with other users. Only websites like Slashdot and Hacker News, forums for computer nerds and freaks (according to Koetsier 2012), are dominated by male users, whose share is 70 to 90%. Reddit, Quora and Orkut also have more male than female users. Quora advertises with the slogan ―The best answer to any question‖ 10 , ―Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users‘ answers‖ (Anon 2015, ―quora‖). Orkut was a social networking and discussion site for people with similar interests. It was closed down in 2014 and was until then popular mostly in Brazil and India (Anon 2015, ―orkut‖). An earlier Pingdom study from 2009 rendered comparable results to the study from 2012 which illustrate that they are relatively constant. McCandless (2013) also comes to the conclusion that social websites like Pinterest, Myspace, Twitter and Facebook are used more often by women than men. Lenhart et al. (2010) found that US-American female teenagers aged between 14 and 17 use Twitter almost twice as much as male teenagers (quoted in Thelwall 2011: 1). Consistent with the studies cited above, it is again the social websites google+, Digg and reddit that are used more by men than by women. A study that was conducted by Advertising Age (Carmichael 2011) shows which kinds of interests and character traits men and women list on Facebook. It is remarkable that clearly more women than men give information about their personal circumstances and private details like their date of birth, the fact that they were married for less than a year or that they are parents. Sports in general are of interest to both genders - with women clearly in the lead. Many more US-American women than men say that they are interested in football, while more men are interested in baseball. Cats and cooking are other areas of interest that are strongly dominated by women while ‗alcohol‘ as a field of interest is somewhat more dominated by men (Carmichael 2011). A study by Vision Critical (cited in Stadd 2013 and Cohen 2013) again confirms that Pinter- 9 http: / / badoo.com/ en/ (18 May 2015). 10 http: / / www.quora.com/ (18 May 2015). Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 226 est and Facebook are used more by women. Only with regard to Twitter do the results diverge from the other studies in that it is said to be used more by men than by women. Among all social platforms, Facebook clearly is the one that is used most frequently: 75% of users state that they use it daily. Unfortunately, the study did not differentiate according to the users‘ gender. So far, we have seen that empirical data on the use of the social web are relatively consistent and show a clear overall tendency, at least for the USA. We can therefore summarize by quoting Garber (2012): ―Girls may not run the world, but they dominate on the social web‖. We can thus answer the question that was asked at the beginning affirmatively: Men‘s and women‘s social web use is gendered. We could also speak of a ―digital gender divide‖ (Garber 2012, see above). The genders‘ preferences regarding different social media platforms that have been documented illustrate a tendency for women to use social media predominantly for private purposes, for example, in order to stay in contact with people they already know. Men, in contrast, seem to use the social web more in order to make new contacts and to display themselves publicly (cf. e.g. Herring 2011 and Martin 2015). This conclusion is supported by a PEW survey that was conducted in 2011 (N=2277) (Smith 2011): When asked about their motivations for using social websites, 72% of female users stated that a major reason was to keep in touch with family members, while 55% of male users gave this answer (cf. Smith 2011: 3). Also, slightly more women (70%) said they used social websites to stay ―in touch with current friends‖. 63% of the men gave this answer. In contrast, more men (56%) than women (44%) said that it was to ―connect with others about a hobby or interest‖ (Smith 2011: 4). These data show that there is an enormous overlap concerning men‘s and women‘s reasons for using social websites with distinctly gendered preferences. 2.3. (Young) women’s and men’s privacy management 2.3.1. The privacy management of male and female adults How do women and men manage their privacy on the social web? This was investigated, among other things, by the PEW Internet Project 11 on ―Privacy management on social media sites‖ (cf. Madden 2012). PEW‘s survey about privacy management among women and men in the USA revealed that 67% of female respondents had at least once deleted somebody from their social network, while 58% of men had done so. 67% of female users but only 48% of male users were using the highest possible privacy settings, i.e. their profiles could only be seen by friends. 23% of men and 16% of women chose partial privacy settings. The profiles of 11 http: / / www.pewresearch.org/ about/ 227 26% of male users were completely public whereas this only applied to 14% of female users‘ profiles. Lewis et al. (2008: 94), who investigated college students‘ privacy management in online social networking sites, also come to the conclusion that female students have private profiles significantly more often than male students. This indicates that women tend to protect their informational privacy more than men. 2.3.2. The privacy management of male and female teenagers The topic of privacy in social media is a particularly sensitive issue regarding teenagers, who might be in danger of handling their privacy carelessly online because of a lack of experience and knowledge concerning this matter. They can become especially vulnerable victims of privacy violations. One of the worst possible consequences is teenage suicide. This can happen when young adults are desperate after having been attacked or insulted online, i.e., cyberbullied by their peers for some time. Therefore, we will take a more detailed look at this particular age group. Within the PEW Internet Project on ―Teens, Social Media, and Privacy‖ (cf. Madden et al. 2013) a survey was conducted in 2012 among US- American teenagers regarding their behavior on the social web. The results that are relevant for our topic of discussion will be presented below (if not indicated otherwise, all data are taken from the report by Madden et al. 2013): In general, the number of teenagers and adults who use social networking sites has increased during the last years. 81% of US-American teenagers aged between 12 and 17 use social networking sites like Facebook. 75% of the girls and 60% of the boys use it daily. In a very recent PEW report (Lenhart/ Page 2015: 27) that also looked into teenagers‘ use of Facebook, boys and girls were about equally likely to use it (72% vs. 70%), while older teenage girls (aged 15 to 17) were slightly in the lead in comparison to older teenage boys (81% vs. 78%). Which personal information do teenagers share? Older teenagers (aged between 14 and 17) post a photograph of themselves on social networking sites more often than 12and 13-year-old teenagers. They also give the name of their school more often (76% vs. 56%), state their relationship status (66% vs. 50%) and their cellphone number (23% vs. 11%). 84% of the teenagers post their personal interests like favorite movies, music and books. There is no gender difference in this regard and neither is there one when it comes to information concerning a teenager‘s birthday. Often, this information is obligatory when registering, so that there can be no gender difference. Remarkable gender differences can be found in the following areas: 94% of the girls but only 89 % of the boys said that they posted a photograph of themselves on their profile. Their place of residence was revealed by 73% of the boys and 69% of the girls. 57% of the boys posted Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 228 their e-mail address but only 49% of the girls did so. Videos of themselves were uploaded by 27% of the boys and by 21% of the girls. Their cellphone number was revealed by 26% of the boys but only by 14% of the girls. Among the teenagers aged 14 to 17, it is even 32% of the boys and only 14% of the girls, while both groups owned mobile phones about equally often: 83% of the boys and 82% of the girls had a cellphone. Earlier US-American studies with adults also come to the conclusion that women are less likely to post their telephone number and address on the web (a summary can be found in Thelwall 2011: 2). With the exception of posting photographs of themselves online, teenage girls thus protect their informational privacy more than teenage boys. A first answer to the question of why girls post photographs of themselves more often than boys can be found in the following commentary of a 15-year-old girl who took part in the PEW study: And there‘s something that we call ‗like whores‘ because it‘s like people who desperately need ‗likes‘ so there are a couple of things they do. First is post a picture at a prime time. And I‘m not going to lie, I do that, too. So it seems that teenage girls try to present a favorable photograph of themselves on social media sites in order to be liked by others. This suggests that looks are more important to girls than to boys in connection with their desire to be appreciated by their peers. Many of the examined teenage attitudes and behaviors do not show any gender differences. The authors of the study explain this with the fact that some personal information is obligatory on social platforms or that these websites are composed in a way that make it very likely that teenagers will give this kind of information voluntarily. 12 Let us return to the PEW study. Girls have more Facebook friends than boys. A majority of teenagers feared third-party access to their personal information only ―somewhat‖ to ―a little―. Boys considerably more often (25%) said that they did not mind at all if third parties were able to see their personal information; only 19% of the girls said this. Reputation management was more important to girls than to boys: 58% of the girls had at some time already deleted comments by others about them but only 48% of the boys had done so. Also, 58% of the girls had already removed a photograph of themselves but only 33% of the boys had done so. This supports the claim made above that girls seem to be more concerned about their appearance in relation to their reputation than boys. 35% of the girls and 27% of the boys had already deleted an account completely. All this points to the 12 The following difference concerning ethnicity that was revealed in the study is also notable: African-American teenagers are less likely to give their real name in their profiles (77%) than white teenagers (95%). 229 conclusion that their reputation is more important to girls and that they are therefore more concerned about what others think about them. Girls (67%) blocked their profile for others much more often than boys did (48%). Girls (82%) deleted others more frequently from their network than boys (66%). Insider jokes and codes were also used more often by girls than by boys. Girls more often posted false information about themselves. All of this underlines the fact that girls control access to their informational privacy more than boys do. The PEW study shows that since 2006 it has become increasingly common to share personal information with others on social media platforms. A clear trend can thus be observed that informational privacy is less protected than in previous years. What are the reasons for this? According to the study, it is above all the design of the social media platforms which increasingly encourages users to give away more and more personal information. The frequent changes undertaken on these platforms and new technical possibilities like, for example, the possibility to use social platforms via smartphones and similar mobile devices, also play a role. Furthermore, an increasing number of adults, including the teenagers‘ parents, use social media. It has thus become more widespread and common to give away personal information. Also, parents‘ attitudes towards privacy issues on the social web are often careless, meaning that they do not worry about it and consequently do not raise it as an issue with their children. What kind of privacy settings do teenagers have? Girls (70%) more often than boys (50%) have private profiles that are only visible to friends. Boys on the other hand, more frequently have a completely public profile (20% of boys compared to 8% of girls). The reasons for their chosen privacy settings can be found in the following representative comments from the teenage respondents: A male teenager (aged 16) said: ―I have privacy settings I just don‘t really use them because I don‘t post anything that I find private.‖ An interesting follow-up question here would be about where he would draw the boundary between private and public matters. A female teenager (aged 15) explained: ―I don‘t think I have mine [profile or account] as private. I think mine‘s public. I really don‘t care. I don‘t really have anything to hide.‖ A female 13-year-old teenager stated that she filtered what she put on the social web: ―I feel like I kind of just have a filter in my brain. I just know that‘s not a good idea [to post revealing content].‖ As is to be expected, those teenagers with a public profile tended to say that they did not care if strangers had access to their personal information, while teenagers with private profiles were less likely to say so (41% versus 20%, respectively). Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 230 2.4. An empirical study among German students We conducted an empirical study at the University of Passau among German students in order to see whether the findings of the studies cited above would be confirmed or whether there would be cultural differences. 74 female students, the great majority of them from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and 57 male students, most of them from the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, completed a questionnaire 13 concerning their attitudes and behaviors with regard to their informational privacy online. The respondents were aged 18 to 34 and most of them were in their early twenties. Some of the results that are relevant with regard to our earlier discussion will be selected in the following. Students were asked to indicate on a scale from 1 to 10, whether they felt in control of how much of their personal information (i.e., information about themselves) was revealed to others online. 10 indicated the highest level of control, 1 the lowest. The average result was 5.9 for the female respondents and 6.28 for the male respondents. The female students thus felt slightly less in control of their privacy when being online than the male students did. The results of the Passau study are in line with earlier findings which show that women are more careful in giving away personal data than men: 37.83% of female respondents but 45.61% of male respondents stated that their e-mail address was available on the internet for others to see (not just friends and family). For 10.81% of the female students and 21.05% of the male students this was true in the case of their home address. 12.16% of the female respondents answered the question affirmatively with regard to their home phone number, while the score was 15.79% for male respondents. 8.10% of the female students stated that their cellphone phone number could be found online, whereas 12.28% of the male students said so. Only 2.7% of the female students had information about their party or political affiliation on the internet but this was the case with 7.01% of the male students. Of 13.51% of the female students, a video can be found online while this is the case with 29.82% of the male students. The groups or organizations they belong to were revealed online by 32.43% of the female and 57.89% of the male students. Only with regard to the following questions did women answer affirmatively more often than men: Whether a photograph of them could be found online was answered positively by 95.94% of the female respondents and by 85.96% of the male respondents. This supports the results of the PEW study cited above. Also, 68.91% of the female students 13 The questionnaire was compiled on the basis of the Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Pew Research Center‘s Internet & American Life Project (2013), http: / / www.pewinternet.org/ 2013/ 09/ 05/ anonymity-privacyand-security-online/ (23 May 2014). 231 said that their date of birth was available online, whereas this was the case with 52.63% of the male students. A further finding of the Passau study is that considerably more male than female respondents said that there were things they had written with their name on it to be found on the internet: 45.61% of the male students said this but only 24.32% of the female students did so. This is in line with the conclusion drawn above that men tend to display themselves publicly more than women. It is also supported by recent studies: Martin (2015) researched ―online news commenting in the UK, US and Australia‖. 14 She found out that even in moderated comments sections, men dominate the posts. [The study] also suggests women commenters may be adopting pseudonyms to avoid gender stereotyping and abuse. […] It found that contributors with female user names generally make up less than a third, and as low as 3% (in the case of the Guardian) of the top commenters. They were also less likely to be represented among those who posted most often. The findings were consistent across digital native sites, as well as legacy print and broadcast-based services. They applied to international, metropolitan and local publications. […] The findings tally with a recent study done by Oxford statistician Emma Pierson but also with sociological accounts of men‘s control of public debates. 15 Bennett (2015) reports about a study on tweets that had been conducted by Allison Shapp and which also supports the finding that men display themselves publicly more than women on the social web: For a study on gender differences in hashtag use, Shapp pulled together a library of tweets that included 1,633 hashtags, which she then divided into ―traditional‖ tags (people, places, subjects, and events) and ―expressive‖ tags (used to express feelings, tell jokes, or otherwise offer a personal take). About 14 ―The research involved the capture, computational and content analysis of 9m comments made on homepage news and opinion stories from 15 news services, including the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post and Sydney Morning Herald, public service broadcasters, the BBC, NPR and ABC, and newer sites like the Huffington Post, the Conversation and Texas Tribune.‖ (Martin 2015) 15 In an earlier study, Herring (2011) states: ―I was not surprised to read that 87 percent of contributors to Wikipedia are men. I‘ve been researching gender dynamics in Internet communication for 20 years, starting with mailing lists back before there was even a World Wide Web, and the Wikipedia gender imbalance is consistent with observations from my research, dating back to my very first study on the topic in 1992. In that study, I investigated the reasons for women‘s low rate of participation in an online discussion list for academic linguists. Linguistics is a field in which more than 50 percent of the Ph.D.s are earned by women, and women made up close to 40 percent of the subscribers to this particular list. The fact that they contributed less than 15 percent of the content to the discussions, even on topics of broad general interest to professional linguists, seemed anomalous.‖ Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 232 59 percent of female users‘ hashtags were expressive. Males‘ hashtags, however, leaned dramatically in the other direction—77 percent were traditional. The men in Shapp‘s sample seem to be prioritizing function over expression—using tags to try to get their tweets seen. 16 Men‘s tweets then are in fact seen more, they have more followers on Twitter and are all in all more successful in influencing public opinion than women‘s tweets: […] although roughly equal proportions of American men and women use Twitter, women appear to trail male users in terms of influence. Back in 2009—admittedly an eon ago in social-media terms—a Harvard Business Review study found that both men and women were significantly more likely to follow men on Twitter. Today, men dominate lists of influential Twitter users, and recent analyses using the tool Twee-Q suggest that they are approximately twice as likely to be retweeted as women are. (Bennett 2015) With regard to their reputation management activities, female students from Passau were more active than their male counterparts - which confirms earlier findings: 90.54% of the female and 89.47% of the male students said they had deleted or edited something that they had posted in the past. 77.02% of the female and 49.12% of the male respondents stated that they had asked someone to remove something that had been posted about them online. The male and female students were also asked, on a scale from 1 (not at all important) to 10 (extremely important), how important it was to them that they were in control of how much of their personal information was revealed to others on the internet. The results from both female and male students are almost the same. Their personal privacy was only slightly more important to female students than to male students: The average score for female respondents was 8.54, for male respondents it was 8.4. The study thus shows that the students feel that they are less in control of their personal privacy than they wish they were (cf. the results above for the question of how much in control they felt of their personal information: the score was 5.9 for female respondents and 6.28 for male respondents). A slightly higher percentage of male respondents were worried about how much information about them was available on the internet: 82.21% of the male students said this and 79.72% of the female students. In this respect, the Passau study did not confirm earlier findings. With regard to their reputation, more men than women said that they had had their reputation damaged before because of something that had happened online: 17.54% of the male students answered affirmatively in this regard, while it was 13.51% of the female students who said so. Ob- 16 My emphasis. 233 viously, the more thorough reputation management of the female students (see above) pays off here: Women seem to watch out more in the first place, put less potentially damaging information about themselves online and generally avoid activities more that could be potentially damaging to their reputation. Male students took measures to hide their identity more often than female students did: 85.96% of the male students said they had tried to hide or mask their identity online from certain people or organizations before, while 66.21% of the female students said so. 81.08% of the female respondents said they used their real name when posting comments, questions, or information on the internet while this was the case for 66.67% of the male respondents. Fake names or untraceable usernames were used more often by male than female respondents (77.19% compared to 70.27%, respectively). Also inaccurate or misleading information about themselves had been given more often by male than female students (70.20% compared to 51.35%, respectively). We do not know, however, in which contexts these anonymizing practices occur. They could be used to protect oneself against harassment and cyberbullying but also to stay anonymous when attacking others online for example. Contradictory to what might be expected according to the studies cited earlier, more male than female students in the Passau study said that they had tried before to keep people who might criticize, harass, or target them from being able to see their online activities: 56.14% of the male respondents gave an affirmative answer and 41.89% of the female respondents. Also, more men than women said that they had experienced something happening to them online which put them in physical danger: 12.28% of the male students and 5.4% of the female students had experienced this. A higher percentage of female respondents (20.27%) has been stalked or harassed online - in comparison to 19.3% of the male respondents. According to the Passau study, therefore, the male students clearly hide their online activities more than the female students. The reason for this could be that most of the male participants taking part in the study were students of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. They might have a greater knowledge of how to go about it technically than most of the female students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. This is supported by answers that were given to the question of whether they had ever tried to hide their identity from certain people or organizations on the internet. If the answer to this was ―no‖, the follow-up question was asked: Was this because they did not care or because they lacked the technical competence or would have known how to do it but it would have taken too much time. 16.22% of female respondents said they lacked the technical competence (of 22.97% ―no‖-respondents), while only 3.5% of male respondents (of 10.53% ―no‖-respondents) said so. In addition, 78.95% of the male students (in comparison to only 32.43% of Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 234 the female students) said that they had used services that allow you to browse the web anonymously, such as a proxy server, Tor software, or a virtual personal network. Furthermore, 57.89% of the male respondents had sometimes encrypted their communications before, but only 22.97% of the female respondents had done so. When asked about whether they thought the law provided reasonable protection of people‘s privacy online, a clear majority said that they did not consider legal protection to be sufficient, with women clearly in the lead here: 87.83% of the female students said that current laws were not good enough to protect their privacy online while 68.42% of the male students said so. Women thus express a greater need than men for protection of their personal privacy online. 3. Explanations for the gendered use of the social web 3.1. Explanations for women’s and men’s preferences of different social web platforms and activities How can the results of the studies presented above be explained? Let us first address the question of why some social websites are dominated by women and others by men. Those topics that are being searched for most frequently on social networking sites, can give us a first hint: The gendered usage patterns reflect men‘s and women‘s major interests, which obviously differ (see above). Pingdom (2009-2012) 17 directly asked its users in a survey starting in 2009: ―Why do you think certain sites attract more males than females and vice versa? We‘d love to hear what you think, so please let us know in the comments.‖ The following selection of typical answers can indicate plausible explanations for a gendered social web use: ‣ ―These statistics are interesting. I was surprised to see that females actually dominate facebook, myspace and twitter, but like one of the comments stated: women do converse more‖ (Loren Jaslyn, Jan 21, 2010). ‣ ―I guess women have more "sharing needs" than men. Most women like to tell how the day was, and to say what they want, like, talk about their feelings, etc. Why? Well, I really don‘t know. But I‘m almost sure it‘s a question of XX (not only a Social Behavior). Maybe because sharing it‘s something even physical for a woman, since we share our own bodies with babys (sic! ). Maybe... This is just my own opinion.‖ (Ana, Nov 30, 2009). 17 http: / / royal.pingdom.com/ 2009/ 11/ 27/ study-males-vs-females-in-socialnetworks/ (22 May 2015). 235 ‣ ―Hi, I agree with Ana. I see this on our site, women join and have the need to connect and share with other women. I think they also value and place high importance on building strong relationships in a different way then (sic! ) men do. So whether they are online or offline, women are reaching out and connecting― (Sandy, Nov 30, 2009). ‣ ―One word: GOSSIP― (Jules, Feb 28, 2010), i.e. this user states that women gossip more than men or put more neutrally: They talk more about social relations, which is part of connecting to others and establishing or maintaining personal relationships. ‣ ―I would say Reddit 18 and so on are about competition such as in "Who is larger, better, more attractive to the audience." Whereas the others are more about connecting with each other and staying in touch.‖ (Karin, Nov 30, 2009). ‣ ―[…] Many of these sites force you to embrace your inner being, and be authentic when expressing yourself. Reddit and the like are kind of like the obnoxious guy who just forwards links all of the time on Twitter.‖ (Matt Dollinger, Nov 30, 2009). ‣ ―This doesn‘t surprise me at all. I think women on average are drawn to create community more readily than men. And no surprise that the one exception is the geeky slashdot! ― (John Williams, Nov 30, 2009). Male users dominate Slashdot, which is a social website that mostly concentrates on technical news. 19 The next comment relates to this: ‣ ―I think only now women becoming (sic! ) more tech savvy. Because guys have always been very interested in technology and most of these sites might focus on technology based information which attracts more male users. Its (sic! ) just a (sic! ) opinion but i (sic! ) am not meaning to say that woman (sic! ) are not tech savvy but they are becoming one (sic! ).‖ (radhika, Mar 4, 2010). These comments attribute the gendered usage patterns of the social web to a more pronounced tendency of women to use social web services in order to connect with others, build personal relationships and to selfdisclose. Men, in contrast, are seen as using the social web more for competitive purposes, to retrieve technical information and less to share personal information. These explanations reflect communicative behavior that has been described as being typical for one or the other gender in various offline studies: Women generally tend to share more of their personal information with close friends, while men tend to talk more with their friends 18 Reddit is one of the social media platforms that are dominated by men. 19 cf. http: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Slashdot (18 May 2015). Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 236 about common experiences. Women reveal more about themselves, i.e., they open up more and their tendency towards self-disclosure is more marked. If women have a problem, they tend to communicate with someone in order to get advice, to unburden and to have a sympathetic listener. This is less the case with men. Women also tend to seek professional help more often when they have emotional, physical or mental health problems. This tendency is reflected in women‘s more frequent use of the social web in order to share personal information and problems (cf. e.g. Wawra 2004: 74f; Nosko et al. 2013: 2; Thelwall 2011: 2, 4f). Consistent with the findings from offline studies which show that women tend to communicate more in private circles and tend to choose more personal topics than men, women prefer social media that offer a platform for personal communication with people they already know and trust. Nosko et al., for example, have shown that women write more personal blogs than men and thereby reveal more about themselves (cf. Nosko et al. 2013: 2). Bennett (2015) states: [This] echoes a broader observation that linguists have made about male versus female communication: namely, that women tend to be more expressive than men. This tendency plays out in a number of contexts. Studies have found that women do more diary-style blogging, while men‘s blogs tend to feature more informational content; and that women are inclined to write with more personal pronouns, more emotive words, more abbreviations like lol, more emoticons, and more expressions such as ahhh, ugh, and grrr. (Bennett 2015) Thelwall (2011: 5) also mentions studies which show that women tend to self-disclose more than men, e.g. by communicating more ―positive sentiment‖ and including a greater number of emotional signals, i.e. emoticons, in their online communication. Following Thelwall (2011: 3) we can say that the communicative needs of women ―are particularly well met by the Social Web‖. This may explain why - overall - women dominate on social web platforms. The statistically less pronounced tendency towards self-disclosure of men is a widespread stereotype that is often addressed in popular culture. Men are typically portrayed as being very uncommunicative when it comes to talking about social relationships and feelings. They tend to appreciate and look for possibilities to present themselves publicly more than women (cf. e.g. Wawra 2004: 74f; Borchardt 2015; Martin 2015). 20 This is reflected in their domination of social web services that advertise with and specifically allow for public display. 20 Explanations as to why this is the case are extensively discussed in, e.g. Wawra (2004: 129-131, 148-150). 237 Men and women therefore tend to pursue different goals by using social web services: While men are more interested in public self-display and less in sharing personal issues, women, on the contrary, value the opportunity of private and personal exchange more. This may explain, for example, why men use badoo more, while women prefer Facebook: Badoo advertises prominently with the prospect of meeting new people, while Facebook, in contrast, explicitly states that it enables you to stay in contact with friends, i.e. the people who are already in your life. While this supports the assumption that men are more interested in displaying themselves publicly, it might also reflect the fact that women are more careful when it comes to entering into contact with strangers. The reason for this might be that they are more at risk here than men - we will return to this later. Herring (2011), who also found out that men dominate public debates on the internet in her research spanning over 20 years, identified the following reason various users had cited for not participating in an online discussion on a platform for academic linguists: Both men and women said their main reason for not participating was because they were intimidated by the tone of the discussions, though women gave this reason more often than men did. Women were also more negative about the tone of the list. Whereas men tended to say that they found the ―slings and arrows‖ that list members posted ―entertaining‖ (as long as they weren‘t directed at them), women reported that the antagonistic exchanges made them want to unsubscribe from the list. One women said it made her want to drop out of the field of linguistics altogether. (Herring 2011) It might sound a bit far-fetched to those with no or only rudimentary knowledge of evolutionary biology, but we still think it is worthwhile discussing it: Men self-displaying publicly more than women and being more interested in a platform that provides - according to them - ―the most interesting stories of the web‖ (see Digg above) is consistent with their evolutionary role of wooers in courtship (cf. Miller 2000: 92-93, 351-387 and Wawra 2004: 129-131). It is particularly beneficial for a man‘s reputation to present himself to large (female) audiences, to know interesting stories and capture his audience with them. This trait has been selected more for the male than for the female gender over evolutionary time spans, which is reflected in a greater tendency of men to seek opportunities that allow for public self-display. With this evolutionary rooted drive for displaying themselves publicly comes a higher frustration tolerance (which helps, among other things, during courtship) - i.e., most men are less bothered than most women when they are criticized. 21 21 Due to space constraints, we cannot go into detail here but if you are interested in this line of thought, see Wawra (2004: 124-131, 138-153). Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 238 It is important to note that we always cite statistical tendencies here when we make claims about men and women. Therefore, we must keep in mind that of course the respective ‗communities‘ are not homogenous and that many men can actually prefer social web services that were found to be used more by women and that many men can actually show behavior that has been described as being typical of women and vice versa. Still, the data demonstrate clear trends and allow for remarkable empirical tests on a larger scale regarding hypotheses that were proposed in offline studies about men‘s and women‘s preferences and communicative behavior before the age of ‗big data‘. The online surveys confirm that men and women tend to have different preferences in certain respects and that there is gender-typical communicative behavior to be found. Our discussion has shown that offline gender differences are mirrored online. Does it not matter at all then, whether we look into gendered offline or online behavior? And what consequences do these findings have in relation to online privacy threats? 3.2. Threats to women’s and men’s privacy online 22 Researchers widely agree that online media encourage self-disclosure more than offline media. At the same time, the risk of personal information falling into the wrong hands is potentially much greater online. It is thus essential to take precautions (e.g. by using privacy settings) if you want to make it at least less likely that your privacy will be breached (cf. also Nosko et al. 2013: 1). Women‘s typical communicative behavior, i.e., their more marked tendency towards self-disclosure, makes them more vulnerable in terms of their privacy than men and leads to greater risks for them online. Violations of privacy also always occur when a person‘s right to stay anonymous and not draw (public) attention to themselves is violated (cf. Rössler 2001: 20-22; Wawra 2014: 12). This might happen through physical and verbal harassment. In fact, women, online as well as offline, are more often stalked and cyberbullied than men (cf. Thelwall 2011: 1, 3, 5; Borchardt 2015: 13; Martin 2015). Consequently, it makes sense that it is women who worry more about their informational privacy online (cf. 22 Parts of Thelwall‘s (2011: 3-5) ―Social Web Gendered Privacy Model‖ were integrated into the following discussion. The model is supposed to explain gender differences with regard to attitudes towards privacy and corresponding (or noncorresponding! ) behavior. Thelwall‘s model includes four central dimensions that influence concerns about privacy and claim to explain gender differences in dealings with privacy. The four dimensions are physical security, harassment, social communication skills and social communication needs. 239 Thelwall 2011: 2) and who express the greater need for protection of their personal privacy online in the Passau study (see above). 23 An advantage of the social web is that nobody can be physically harmed online. If somebody annoys you, it is usually quite simple on social web platforms to just exclude them from further online communication or leave the platform yourself. Also, the web offers the means for privacy protection so that aggressors cannot find and harass you in the offline world if you are careful with your privacy management. Women can stay anonymous on the social web, if they do not (and are not required to) give away their contact details. Therefore, it is only logical that women, more so than men, control access to information that would allow people to track them down and harass them physically and/ or verbally in the offline world - i.e., their address and telephone number (cf. the Passau study and Nosko et al. 2013). Some studies also come to the conclusion that women use more aliases and code names online (cf. Nosko et al. 2013: 2; Thelwall 2011: 2). It is problematic - particularly for women - when users do not have the choice of withholding certain information: As we have seen, social web services often require certain personal information or at least encourage users to give away personal data such as their address, phone number or a photograph of themselves. Women can also protect their privacy by not posting any photographs at all (if they are given this choice), by posting fake ones or by posting modest photographs. Thelwall (2011: 2) states that women tend to post rather modest photographs of themselves. These are pictures that do not show much of women‘s physical privacy, i.e., most of the photographs on the social web do not show women revealing much cleavage, wearing very tight-fitting clothes, short skirts or bikinis. This can be explained by the fact that images on the web tend to be more harmful for women than for men. Facebook started out as a platform containing photographs of female students that were ranked by their male fellow-students according to the women‘s physical attraction. There have been similar websites which violate women‘s privacy if pictures of them are posted there without their consent. Such recontextualizations of photographs are particularly easy to be achieved on the social web. These recontextualizations cause people to lose their right to stay anonymous and to not draw attention to themselves, i.e. their privacy is violated. In fact, women are, more often than men, victims of ex-lovers, stalkers and aggressive young men, who post compromising photographs of them online (cf. e.g. Borchardt 2015: 13). In general, women in Western cultures tend to show more of 23 The claim that women worry more about their informational privacy than men do could not be unequivocally confirmed in the Passau study. This could be due to cultural differences and/ or women‘s more thorough reputation management online, i.e., being more careful with regard to which kind of personal information they put on the social web and to whom they make it accessible. Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 240 their bodies than men in many contexts. This makes women potentially more vulnerable to privacy violations. In Muslim societies, the contrary is true: Women hide much more of their body by wearing a veil or a burka for example, i.e., their privacy is protected more in this respect. Social networking sites are well-known to be popular among sexual offenders as they make it easy to find victims, who are above all women (as well as children). In 2007, MySpace was publicly attacked when it became known that thousands of convicted sexual offenders had been using the platform and that MySpace, being well aware of this fact, did not take any precautions against it (cf. Lewis et al. 2008: 82). This demonstrates that the social web also offers protection for criminals and sexual offenders, who themselves are able to stay anonymous and use aliases, allowing them to harass people, for example. We may summarize then that on the one hand, the social web potentially bears more threats for women, which is also due to their typical communication behavior. On the other hand, the social web can be a protected space which offers better protection against verbal and physical harassment than the offline world. 4. Conclusion: The social web and privacy as blessing and curse So far the discussion has shown that the social web can be blessing and curse for both genders, but particularly for women. It depends a lot on the individual and how they handle their privacy, whether it is more of one or the other. In the same way, privacy can be blessing and curse as will be explained below. In 1988, Allen published Uneasy access: Privacy for Women in a free society. The book has been widely and controversially discussed in the USA since then. In 2000, Allen published a follow-up article titled ―Gender and Privacy in Cyberspace―. In both of these publications, she establishes several hypotheses that are relevant to our topic. In Uneasy Access, Allen defines privacy as ―inaccessibility to others― (Allen 2000: 1177) and ―noninterference― (Allen 2000: 1180), i.e., others do not get access to a person, and privacy is seen as the right to be left alone. In Uneasy Access (1988), Allen states that women in the USA have too much of the wrong kinds of privacy. According to Allen (1988), these wrong kinds of privacy consisted of externally imposed modesty and restraint, chastity and domestic isolation. She traces these back to dominant social and economic patterns, where the man of the house goes to work while the women cares for the home. Women needed more decisional privacy according to Allen (1988). They were not independent enough in their decisionmaking. This situation has improved considerably during the last decades. Women can now live more self-determined lives when it comes to 241 their privacy. However, women are still not equal to men - neither offline nor online - with regard to the desired extent of and kinds of privacy: Women still tend to be attributed an inferior status and to be seen as easy targets. We saw this in our discussion which showed that women are more often the targets of harassments than men. Allen also identifies a lack of respect towards women and their preferred forms of privacy and intimacy (cf. Allen 2000: 1177-1179). On the other hand, the author concedes that women can use the web to their advantage in order to satisfy their specific needs (cf. Allen 2000: 1179). This is because social contacts can easily be established with other people, while the web also offers privacy, anonymity and confidentiality (cf. Allen 2000: 1186). Allen said that women would want the ‗right kinds‘ of privacy if they were available to them. Today, the social web offers that possibility. However, some women choose less privacy and less intimacy as well and voluntarily make themselves particularly accessible to others (cf. Allen 2000: 1184f) - despite all the risks related to this. Consequently, Talbot (1998) asks the question of whether it was possible to violate one‘s own privacy (quoted in Allen 2000: 1185). It is important to differentiate between women who are forced to do so, women who make a free, conscious decision (cf. Allen 2000: 1186) and women, who accidentally do so. Allen states that as liberals, we can criticize this but must tolerate it nonetheless. We would go further and prefer an attitude of actual acceptance if a woman makes a conscious decision. Only then would her decisional privacy really be respected. Allen‘s discussion of privacy prior to and in the digital age leads to the following conclusion: Privacy is often important, but there can be too much as well as too little privacy; subordinating as well as equalizing forms of privacy; fairly distributed, as well as unfairly distributed privacy; privacy used for good, as well as privacy used for evil […]. (Allen 2000: 1200) Thus, cyberbullying and ‗shitstorms‘, for example, flourish under the protection of anonymity, while at the same time the web allows for protection from harassment. Giving fake information about oneself on the web can be a case of privacy used for ‗evil‘ purposes or it could mean protecting one‘s privacy. We can easily create ‗the perfect‘ identity online, which bears the danger of trying to please others too much and to neglect one‘s real self and individual needs. The following two comments made by young adults who participated in the PEW study are revealing in this respect (cf. Madden et al. 2013): male (aged 16): ―[…] a lot of people either glorify themselves on Facebook or post stuff that doesn‘t show what they‘re really about, or them in real life.‖ female (aged 15): “You need to pretend that you’re something that you’re not.” Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Daniela Wawra 242 Consequently, there is a greater temptation and risk on the social web in comparison to the offline world regarding people presenting themselves as they want to be or as they think others would want them to be. People can thus lose their authenticity. Also, since you often communicate to a larger number of people online, the possibility is potentially higher that there will be some people among them who do not agree with your opinion. If you want to be liked by as many people as possible and avoid attacks and ‗shitstorms‘, then a convenient strategy is to adopt mainstream opinions. In comparison to boys and men, girls and women seem to be particularly in danger of losing their self as they still tend to be socialized more in a way that makes them want to please others. Consequently, they tend to be more sensitive to criticism and suffer more when exposed to verbal attacks as illustrated above. Therefore, they are more likely not to engage in (potentially) controversial discussions in the first place or to adopt the opinions of powerful others or majorities. As we have seen, women consequently have less influence on public opinion and resulting policies. During adolescence, the development of an independent, authentic personality is particularly vulnerable and this vulnerability can be even greater when the social web plays too big a role in a young adult‘s life. ‗Big data‘ and an insufficient protection of our informational and decisional privacy threaten our freedom and autonomy and our self which in the end makes us human (Lynch 2013). This is even more true for young adults whose self is still more moldable. 5. Outlook In 2011, Thelwall (2011: 13) stated that there was still a great need for systematic studies of all kinds of social websites in different national and cultural contexts. This is still true. Such studies are also relevant in practice for the owners of these platforms who could be sensitized, for example after our discussion, to rethink privacy issues, such as the settings of websites that force users to reveal certain personal information, which can be especially detrimental to women. Some authors (e.g. Lewis et al. 2008: 95-96) hope that social websites will regulate themselves once knowledge about threats to privacy has spread among their users. The social web is expected in this sense to be a self-regulating system. 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[online] www.wnmn.org (18 June 2014). Daniela Wawra Chair of English Language and Culture University of Passau Digital Communication and Privacy: Is Social Web Use gendered? Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG \ Dischingerweg 5 \ 72070 Tübingen \ Germany Tel. +49 (07071) 97 97-0 \ Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 \ info@narr.de \ www.narr.de Stand: September 2015 · Änderungen und Irrtümer vorbehalten! JETZT BESTELLEN! This book presents a synchronic and diachronic investigation of two derivational English affixes. The suffixes -age and -ery are analysed on the basis of dictionary and corpus data and an adapted semantic map method is introduced as a new way of accounting for the semantic structure of derivatives. This study shows that the semantic structure of morphological categories can change signi ficantly over time, and that semantic maps can represent this change in a straightforward manner. The semantic maps visualise the relations and interdependencies of the readings expressed by derivatives, which leads to a new understanding of the semantic complexity of these categories. Marion Schulte The Semantics of Derivational Morphology A Synchronic and Diachronic Investigation of the Suffixes -age and -ery in English Language in Performance (LIP), Vol. 49 2015, 245 Seiten €[D] 58,00 ISBN 978-3-8233-6963-9 …or not to be. The Strategic and Non-Strategic Use of Negative Identifiers in Online Forums Eva Triebl Negative identifiers, that is, expressions of the type [I + copula + not + indefinite NP], serve to defeat explicit or implicit identity claims present in the immediate co-text, the situational context or the wider cultural context of the utterance. This means that on the one hand they can serve as situational strategic moves in a conversation, supposed to guide the interpretation of the speaker’s utterance, and that on the other hand they might have implications for identity construction that go beyond the immediate conversational situation and can thus be related to the wider, socio-cultural context of selfreflexive identity construction and individualization characterizing late modern society. In this paper, I will set up a formal-functional framework of negative identifiers, arguing that they are functionally similar and can thus be approached like discourse markers. Based on a pilot study of a derived corpus of 85 negative identifiers in context, I will then demonstrate how such a framework could be operationalized in a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of negative identification. 1. Introduction I’ve never been a conformist, I’m by no means a racist and I wouldn’t consider myself an expert. Why do people state what they are not when they could just positively assert what they are? And how does that relate to the cotext and context of particular conversational situations or even the broader context of changing conceptualizations of identity in late modernity (cf. Giddens 1991, Beck 2002)? In this paper I will present a formalfunctional framework for the analysis of such utterances which can be AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Eva Triebl 248 applied when addressing social questions about beliefs, identities, and relationships. Negatives, rather than just being the pragmatically less favoured counterpart to affirmatives (cf. Leech 1983: 100), ―display significant contextual and interpersonal meanings in addition to their ideational sense‖ (Jordan 1998: 706) in that they are used to defeat explicit or implicit identity claims present or felt to be present in the immediate co-text, the situational context or the wider cultural context of the utterance. Indeed, negative identifiers do much more than just provide (non-) information: for instance, while the utterance I‟m not a hipster could be used assertively, as a response to a question by another speaker for instance (e.g. Are you a hipster? - No, I‟m not a hipster), it could also serve as a disclaimer modifying the interpretation of some other part of the speaker‘s turn (e.g. I‟m not a hipster, but I like my moustache), as a defeat of identity claims felt to be present in the situational context of the conversation (for instance, in a discussion in a beard forum, the speaker may want to pre-emptively distance himself - or, more rarely, herself - from possible identity claims evoked by his participation in such a forum), or even to dissociate the speaker from identity categories perceived to be of relevance in the wider cultural context (if I am wearing a shirt saying I‟m not a hipster, this could suggest that ‗hipsterness‘ is a culturally salient identity category from which I want to distance myself). In the following I will, firstly, develop a taxonomic framework of the forms and functions of negative identifiers. On the one hand, negative identifiers, except if used assertively, function like discourse markers in that they can serve to strategically structure and modify ongoing discourse (cf. Aijmer & Simon-Vandenbergen 2004) rather than to provide information, which means that their interpersonal function overrides their ideational function (cf. Kim 2010: 86). On the other hand - and this is where the broader socio-cultural context comes in - negative identifiers can indicate how speakers, by contrasting themselves with social groups, ideologies or other categories in particular communicative situations, conceptualize their self-identity beyond the immediate conversation. In the second part of this paper, I will present a pilot study on negative identifiers in which I operationalize this framework by qualitatively and quantitatively analysing a derived corpus of 85 instances of negative identifiers used by participants in online forum discussions. 2. Why no(t) Viewed in isolation, negative utterances are an odd thing: they are grammatically more complex and consequently harder to process, some see them as ‗non-events‘ which are cognitively less salient than their positive counterparts (cf. e.g. Givón 1993: 191), and in terms of Grice‘s Coop- …or not to be 249 erative Principle, they are less informative than affirmatives (cf. Leech 1983: 100). Still, it seems that people routinely use negative identifiers in authentic discourse contexts - for example, 17% - i.e. one in six - of all occurrences of the construction I‟m a in the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) are not-negated. The reason for this is that while talking about what is not the case is, indeed, not very informative, negative identifiers have interesting functions for their textual and contextual environments. Linguistic expressions whose function is largely non-propositional in that they do not convey any information themselves but signal how the speaker wants an utterance to be understood in relation to the text preceding or following it and manage the interaction between speaker, hearer and message, are dealt with under the label of discourse markers in pragmatics (cf. Noveck & Sperber 2004). Discourse markers have - under myriad different names 1 and with diverse analytical categories - been extensively studied by linguists with different research interests (cf. Fung & Carter 2007: 410). Among the works that have paved the way for a wealth of research on the topic are Schiffrin (1987), Blakemore (1992), Fraser (1996), Brinton (1996), Jucker and Ziv (1998), and Aijmer (2002, 2013). As Brinton (1996: 30) explains, there are many different definitions of discourse markers depending on which aspect is deemed most relevant. The following criteria for categorizing a word or a particle (or, as in my argumentation, a clause) as discourse marker stand out as important according to Brinton‘s overview of the concept: firstly, discourse markers generally have little semantic or truth-conditional meaning, but are used for pragmatic reasons and occur mainly in spoken discourse. Popular examples of these ―seemingly empty expressions‖ are actually, oh, right, well, I mean and you know (cf. Brinton 1996: 29). There is agreement that discourse markers signal how an utterance is to be related to its co-text or its context: they can, for example, indicate the relevance of one utterance in relation to another, they can serve to focus the attention on the upcoming utterance or ‗comment on‘ a sequential relationship between two utterances. While for some the structuring or demarcating function of discourse markers is the most important (cf. Erman 1986), others mainly see them as conventionalized response signals (cf. Schourup 1985), as continuity and floor keeping devices (cf. Crystal & Davy 1975), or as means of establishing interpersonal relations (cf. Stubbs 1983). 1 As Brinton (1996: 29) explains, there is a ―plethora‖ of over twenty different names used to designate the ―seemingly empty expressions found in oral discourse‖, of which the term discourse marker is the most frequently used. As Jucker and Ziv (1998: 2) argue, this term is the one with the ―widest currency and with the least restricted range of application‖, which is why I will adopt this term in my study, too. Eva Triebl 250 As for the functions of discourse markers, Aijmer and Simon- Vandenbergen (2004: 1782) remark that despite the constantly growing scholarly interest in discourse markers, there is still a ―lack of generally accepted terminologies and classifications, [and] uncertainty regarding essential formal, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics […].‖ 2 Generally, most functional models distinguish between either two or three main functions of discourse markers. Aijmer (2013: 17) introduces Östman‘s (1995: 99) three functional categories, viz. discourse organizing (i.e. moving a text forward and structuring it: for example, Bob Ross, painter and host of the legendary TV show The Joy of Painting, often uses the discourse marker now to indicate the upcoming description of a new step in the painting process 3 ), interaction-signalling (e.g. signalling understanding or eliciting responses through tags such as right), and attitude/ involvement-signalling (i.e. signalling epistemic and deontic commitment to or evaluation of the relevance of the proposition expressed). The two characteristics of discourse markers most relevant regarding the analysis of negative identifiers are, firstly, their function as metalinguistic monitors used by speakers to reflexively manage how their utterances fit with what they have said or what they are about to say on the one hand, and with the context - conceived here cognitively, i.e. in terms of what information is assumed to be given at a particular moment in a particular communicative situation - on the other hand. Thus, discourse markers ―emerge as overt indicators of (or windows on) ongoing metalinguistic activity in the speaker‘s mind‖ (Aijmer 2013: 4). Secondly, discourse markers serve as contextualization cues, which Gumperz (1996: 379) defines as a ―cluster of indexical signs […] that jointly index, that is, invoke, a frame of interpretation for the rest of the linguistic content of the utterance.‖ This means that discourse markers, to take a Relevance Theoretical perspective (cf., e.g. Blakemore 2002: 47), signal to hearers what inferential route they should take in a particular communicative situation, providing a kind of ‗catalyst‘ restricting the interpretatory options of an utterance in a given context. Thus, discourse markers ―do not have a fixed meaning but a meaning potential‖ 4 (Aijmer 2013: 12), but can index various dimensions of a communicative situation depending on the context. 2 For a comprehensive overview of the features and functions that have been claimed to define discourse markers, see Brinton (1996: 32-35). 3 As can be seen, for example, in this video: http: / / www.youtube.com/ watch? v =MghiBW3r65M 4 Although I am not sure if this property can be claimed to be specific of discourse markers - after all, it is a general assumption in theoretical pragmatics that linguistic elements or structures are ―systematically underdetermined and must be contextually enriched‖ to arrive at their fully-fledged meaning (Grisot and Moeschler 2014: 8). …or not to be 251 Negative identifiers share these two important properties with discourse markers, i.e. they are both reflexive and indexical. Crucially, as Ochs (1996) suggests, discourse markers - and negative identifiers - can ―reach beyond the utterance‖ (Aijmer 2013: 13) and index other dimensions, among them social identity. This leads me to the questions I seek to address in my study: Is it possible to identify formal-functional regularities in the use of negative identifiers to manage the ongoing conversation on the one hand and to index aspects of the speaker‘s identity on the other? How does that relate to the value of the indefinite NP in the structure [I + copula + not + indefinite NP]? And, ultimately, can we relate the situated use of this structure in context, if examined across a large sample of authentic data, to broader social research questions like the reconceptualization of self-identity in late modernity? In the rest of this paper, I will present an approach that might help find answers to these questions. 3. From form to function 3.1. Methodological challenges In the following, I will set up an initial framework of formal and functional categories of negative identifiers and apply it to the analysis of authentic data. I am drawing on other studies that have investigated the relation between lexico-grammar, utterance function and discourse context as well as on a pilot study on negative identification with feminism in online forums. 5 The initial difficulty of conducting an empirical study to yield insights about the functions of negative identifiers in authentic informal discourse is that, since they work similarly to discourse markers and thus have a contextually variable meaning potential, they can only be accounted for by explicating how their linguistic properties interact with the co-text and contextual factors to serve particular discourse functions (cf. Noveck & Sperber 2004). However, as Adolphs (2008: 8) explains, a study that has the goal of empirically exploring the patterns emerging from the use of a particular linguistic structure necessarily starts with form, and not with function. Taking linguistic forms as departure point to analyse functions sounds like a relatively straightforward thing to do at first and has proven to work well with questions that can be answered by looking at forms alone: for instance, studies such as Louw (1993) and Sinclair (1991) have used corpora to analyse semantic prosodies, i.e. recurrent associations, of lexical items whose meaning is also defined by the - mostly evaluative - 5 This study examined a derived corpus of 126 instances of negative identification with feminism in online discussion forums and was presented at the CADAAD Conference 2014 in Budapest. Eva Triebl 252 meanings of elements they collocate with. An example of such an item is set in, the (subject) collocates of which are usually negative, e.g. pain, rain or panic. In the case of negative identifiers, things are a bit more complicated, because we can neither determine their function by looking at their form or forms in their immediate co-text alone, nor postulate formal categories without making a priori assumptions about their functions. As for the first difficulty, negative identifiers are often used non-ideationally to guide the interpretation of what is explicitly stated in the proximate co-text or - and this is the methodological challenge - in the more distal co-text or even implied by the context. For example, while I‟m not a feminist can be a response to an identity claim raised by another participant in the previous turn, i.e. within the proximate co-text of the negative identifier, it can also be used to dissociate the speaker from an identity category that is part of the situational context of the conversation. To give an example, the forum in which a particular discussion takes place might be a feminist discussion board, which could be reason enough for a speaker to distance heror himself from feminism and which should therefore be considered in the analysis. But to take this contextual aspect into account, looking at the immediate co-text of the utterance alone is obviously not enough. The key importance of co-textual and contextual aspects for creating functional profiles is a theoretical and methodological challenge in corpus pragmatics and has already been recognized as such by other scholars. For instance, Carretero et al. (2014), who study the functions of expressive speech acts used in a corpus of e-forum history logs of students, stress ―the need to have access to non-immediate co-text in order to assign a specific pragmatic value to a given sentence.‖ For the same reason that it is difficult to determine the function of negative identifiers without taking their co-texts and contexts into account, it is hardly possible to separate their formal properties from their functions: for example, the position of a negative identifier within a sentence can already be seen as having functional implications (for the interdependence of form and function, cf. Hasan 1999 and Swales 2004). What this means for my study is that it requires the a priori postulation of an analytical framework which defines textual, co-textual and contextual aspects that guide the corpus design and structure the analysis. The initial formal-functional framework which I will propose in the following should thus be seen as a first analytical grid whose categories are likely to be adapted, modified or omitted once it has been applied to the analysis of actual language in use. 3.2. Three analytical levels My research on negative identifiers seeks to answer questions on three levels of discourse, which correspond to those established by Fairclough …or not to be 253 (1989: 25) and further developed by Marko (2008: 101) to describe the methodological practice in Critical Discourse Analysis. I will adapt this model to operationalize the objectives of my study, which can be located at the level of textual form, the level of situational context and the level of wider social significance of the discourse practice under scrutiny. Description of forms and local functions of negative identifiers in their proximal co-text and context Interpretation of (patterns of) meanings created by the use of negative identifiers in authentic discourse contexts Critical evaluation of how these patterns of meanings can be related to social research questions on language and identity Fig. 1: Methodological practice of CDA, adapted for my research purposes. While the impetus for conducting research in CDA is usually situated at the third level of this model, i.e. at the level of the wider socio-cultural significance of a particular discursive phenomenon, the actual analysis in my case starts with the description of a concrete linguistic structure in use, which is examined in its co-text and proximal context, and, by abstracting from the concrete by means of a quantitative analysis, works its way up to the evaluation of socio-cultural significance. In other words, contrary to methods in CDA such as Fairclough‘s (2003, based on Bhaskar‘s (1986) ‗explanatory critique‘), which proceed top-down by identifying a ―social problem which has a semiotic aspect‖ (ibid.: 209) and work their way down to textual analysis, I am reversing this order by taking a corpus-pragmatic approach, using a ―speech function that is generally realized in a small number of variant patterns‖ (Jucker, Schreier & Hundt 2009: 4) as my departure point. What this means for the operationalization of my research goal - to start with a concrete form to address social questions about beliefs, identities, and relationships - is that my analysis takes place on three analytical levels which differ in their degree of abstraction: at the most basic, specific level, I qualitatively analyze the forms and local textual and interpersonal metafunctions of negative identifiers in their immediate coand context. By taking a quantitative approach, examining which patterns of using this structure in particular discourse contexts emerge across larger samples of data, I abstract from the concrete, situated use of a linguistic structure to recurrent relations between form and context. By examining in which discourse contexts negative identifiers become a salient linguistic choice, I can eventually ―draw conclusions about the socio-cognitive resources standing behind these [recurrent linguistic choices]‖ (Marko 2008: 79). Eva Triebl 254 I have formulated the following research questions on the three analytical levels just introduced. On the first plane, i.e. at the level of textual form, my analysis describes the formal properties of negative identifiers and their interaction with their co-text. As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to neatly separate form from function in the case of negative identifiers, because while the form of the structure per se is more or less fixed, describing its textual links with the co-text has functional implications. The research questions at this analytical level are: 1. Description of textual form in its proximal co-text: What are the formal properties of negative identifiers? I.e.: ‣ The structure itself ‣ The structure in relation to its co-text, i.e. what role do negative identifiers play for the local information structure of the conversation? On the second plane, the textual meanings created by negative identifiers are examined, which requires taking into account the context, i.e. aspects of the concrete communicative situation as a dynamic event with particular semiotic output (the text) and specific contextual configurations (who is talking to whom about what, where, when, and why) (cf. Marko 2008: 79). At this analytical level, features of online forum discussions as my main data are taken into account (e.g. the topic of the forum) because, as Adolphs (2008: 31) stresses, interpreting the functions of negative identifiers as discourse markers ―relies heavily on the context in which it is used.‖ 2. Interpretation of discourse meanings at the level of situational context: What are the functions of negative identifiers in authentic communicative situations? I.e.: ‣ Strategic functions: How do speakers use negative identifiers strategically to manage possible interpretations of what they say in concrete communicative situations? ‣ Non-strategic functions: In how far do negative identifiers index something about the speaker‘s social identity relevant beyond the immediate conversational situation? On the third plane, i.e. at the level of wider socio-cultural significance, I will critically evaluate whether and, if so, how patterns of conceptualizations of self-identity can be viewed in the light of wider socio-cultural questions of identity construction in late modernity. Since this paper presents a pilot study for a larger project on negative identification, I will not draw any major conclusions about the socio-cultural implications of the discourse meanings identified at this point: instead, the following …or not to be 255 should be seen as an exercise in testing and modifying a framework so that it can be applied in Critical Discourse Analysis - so it is a paper about asking better questions rather than as a presentation of definite answers, which I do not have at this point. 3.3. An initial formal-functional framework 3.3.1. The structure and its co-text As for the formal properties of negative identifiers per se, we can consider possible variations of the structure [I + copula + not + indefinite NP] on the one hand, and the conceptual category of the indefinite noun phrase (e.g. the category the speaker dissociates her-or himself from) on the other. The former can appear in the variants listed below. It needs to be mentioned, though, that it is one goal of my study to find out if and to what extent formal variations of the negative identifier can be related to functional differences:  Contraction: I‟m not  Tense/ aspect: e.g. I‟ve never been  Modality: e.g. I may not be  No-negation: I‟m no  Adverbs: e.g. I‟m not really, I‟m definitely not As for the conceptual category of the noun phrase, the following categories might play a role:  Profession: I‟m not a lawyer.  Lifestyle: I‟m not a vegetarian.  Ideology: I‟m not a feminist.  Ascribed negative ideology: I‟m not a racist. 6  Evaluative: I‟m not a hater. A first step in creating a formal-functional profile of a discourse marker is to establish the various positions in which it occurs (cf. Cuenca & Marín 2009, Erman 2001). Arguably, the position of negative identifiers in a conversation is a formal feature likely to correlate with their function. Consider, for example, the following examples taken from the corpus of instances of negative identification with feminism: (1) I‟m not a feminist per se, but I am a liberal white woman. 6 This category includes attitudes that people cannot positively associated with due to their inherently negative connotations. It is, for instance, odd - if not impossible - to say I‟m a racist. Eva Triebl 256 (2) It‟s interesting to see that you guys have listed so FEW female actors as potential legends - probably due to that lack of great roles for women in modern films no, I‟m not a feminist. While in (1), the negative identifier is reflexively used as an anticipatory disclaimer, supposed to pre-emptively avoid possible implications of the coordinate clause I am a liberal white woman, the negative identifier in (2) refers back to and modifies the interpretation of the speaker‘s utterance preceding it. Concerning the relation between the negative identifier and its co-text, I think the categories defined below will be relevant in my study. As can be seen, the local function of the identifier closely relates to its position in the sentence and in the turn, i.e. to the information structure of the utterance. Also, the framework already shows how difficult it is to neatly separate co-text from context. 1. Endophoric reference: The negative identifier refers to something internal to the speaker‘s utterance(s). a. Anaphoric reference: the negative identifier refers back to something the speaker her/ himself has said  Within the same sentence: as a subordinate or coordinate clause (e.g. I respect women, but I‟m not a feminist.)  In a previous turn b. Cataphoric reference: the negative identifier anticipates something the speaker is about to say  Within the same sentence: as a superordinate or coordinated clause (e.g. I‟m not a feminist, but I respect women.) 2. Exophoric reference: The negative identifier refers to something external to the speaker‘s utterance(s). a. Utterance-referring: to something another speaker has said b. Paratext-referring: to text belonging to or surrounding the current text without really being part of it (e.g. forum/ thread titles) 7 7 The terms endophoric and exophoric are used here for the relationship between an identifying phrase and anything that relates to it in content. It does not refer to the relationship between two identifying phrases. Endophoric thus does not mean that, for instance, the NP a feminist has been used in the same utterance, nor does exophoric mean that it has been used outside of this utterance. …or not to be 257 3.3.2. Contextual aspects As Aijmer (2013: 9, referring to Verschueren 1999: 111) states, ―what makes pragmatic markers unique is that they ‗allow context into the linguistic analysis‘.‖ Likewise, Adolphs (2008: 31) stresses that the ―interpretation of a particular function of a speech act expression relies heavily on the context in which it is used.‖ Having ‗context‘ figure as an important criterion in a linguistic analysis has to be taken with a grain of salt because, as Aijmer (2013: 9) remarks, discourse markers, precisely because of their context-dependence, provide a ―testing ground for contextual theories of meaning.‖ While I will not go into much detail about different theories of context at this stage, I would like to briefly explain how I conceive of and how I will handle aspects that are ‗contextual‘ in that they are external to the structure of interest, viz. negative identifiers. The notion of context in my analysis and in the model I introduced above firstly refers to aspects of the communicative situation that are not part of the proximate or more distal co-text, but elements of the situation that might be of import when analysing negative identifiers. For instance, the purpose of the discussion forum in which the discussion takes place or aspects of the participants‘ social identity feature in this category (e.g., it might make a difference whether a discussion on feminism takes place in an academic forum or on the website of Men‟s Health). Secondly, the level of context in my study is the level of analysis that examines the meanings that negative identifiers create as instances of language in use in authentic communicative situations, i.e. in interaction with their context. It is thus at this second analytical level where I want to find out what communicative work negative identifiers do, i.e. which pragmatic functions they fulfil in the conversation on the one hand and which identity-constituting functions they might serve beyond the immediate conversational situation on the other hand. While it is the aim of the qualitative analysis of my data to find out what pragmatic and nonpragmatic functions negative identifiers fulfil and how they can be related to formal aspects, the goal of the quantitatively-oriented part of the analysis is to reveal if patterns of form-function correlations can be detected across a larger sample of data. Context, in pragmatics and probably in all fields of linguistics, is a much theorized and contested concept. As Adolphs (2008: 31) explains, mainstream pragmatics has traditionally mainly relied on invented contexts for the interpretation of utterance functions. The analysis of authentic language in use has led to the development of various theories of context, which is one of the reasons why there are now quite heterogeneous notions of context in pragmatic research. Along with Aijmer (2013: 15), I will draw on Ochs‘ (1996) model of context, which posits five sociocultural dimensions (social identity, social act, activity, affective stance and epistemic stance), allows for the indexing of more than one dimen- Eva Triebl 258 sion at a time, and recognizes the possibility of utterances having implications beyond the immediate situational context. For example, a speaker might primarily dissociate himor herself from a particular social category to take epistemic stance in the sense of ―I‘m not an expert in this matter,‖ and this might secondarily index his or her social identity (being a layperson might be important for this person‘s social identity in a particular context - imagine, for instance, medical discussion forums which can serve to create an in-group of non-experts). This broad understanding of context seems important for the purposes of my study: after all, it will eventually feature a critical element, trying to explain how situated linguistic choices form patterns that might have socio-cultural implications far beyond the immediate conversational situation. For the purposes of my pilot study, the following elements of the situational context seem to be important and will therefore be considered in the corpus compilation and analysis. Medium of communication As already mentioned, the data I will use for my analysis are discussions taking place in forums and similar online communication platforms. The reason why I decided on this type of data in the first place is that these platforms allow participants to interactively negotiate paradigmatically defined - i.e. with reference to shared features rather than social relationships - social categories, such as particular lifestyles (cf. Marko 2012: 249). According to Hodkinson (2007: 625), ―online communications have proved to be a significant factor in the development of fragmented, fluid patterns of individual identity.‖ While I will not elaborate in much detail on the issue of new forms of identity in this paper, suffice to say here that online forums, because they enable people to construct a global identity (cf. Arnett 2002: 777) appear to be an ideal site for studying how new forms of identity are created and negotiated in discourse. Online discussions are also an interesting medium of communication from a linguistic perspective: for example, recent studies such as Landone (2012), which investigates discourse markers and politeness in a digital forum, have observed that written dialogues, though different from oral conversations because of their asynchronous nature and the absence of signals such as body language and intonation, share many properties of spoken interaction, among them the use of discourse markers. In the case of negative identifiers, I would even assume that they occur more frequently in online discussions, because making statements about one‘s (non-identity) seems to be an important feature of Internet communication in general (just think, for example, of forum signatures 8 ) - a reason might be the absence of other linguistic and non-linguistic identity-signalling elements 8 A forum signature is the message that always appears at the bottom of one‘s posts. (cf. http: / / wiki.scratch.mit.edu/ wiki/ Scratch_Discussion_Forums) …or not to be 259 such as dialects, clothes etc. and the larger numbers of interactants not knowing each other (outside the forum). Finally, online discussion forums ideally lend themselves as data for my pilot study because they are easily accessible and seemingly endless in number, which is advantageous for a quantitatively-oriented study. Paratextual elements Another contextual aspect I am taking into account in my pilot study is the paratext, i.e. text belonging to or surrounding the current text without really being part of it. In my pilot corpus, I include information about the website, the topic of the discussion and the title of the thread in the header of the file. The reason for this is that dissociation from particular social categories might be influenced or even prompted by the topic of a discussion or the purpose of the website in general. Participants Theoretically speaking, who speaks to whom is a key contextual feature: for example, whether a discussion about feminism takes place among women only or in a mixed group might have an impact on the participants‘ self-representations as reflected in their arguments, their style etc. Likewise, features such as age, ethnicity, etc. seem to be relevant information about the participants. While I will control the larger corpus to be used for the main study of negative identification for these features, the only information about the participants included in this pilot corpus is via the forum name, purpose and target audience. 9 3.3.3. Meanings in context: functional aspects As mentioned earlier, postulating functional categories before actually carrying out a study is not unproblematic because it means imposing categories on the data which might turn out less relevant than previously assumed. Still, based on previous research on discourse markers and my (preliminary) study on negative identification with feminism, the following functions of negative identifiers might play a role in my analysis: 9 This has practical and ethical reasons. Practically speaking, this is a pilot corpus serving to explore the kind of data to be analysed for the main study and controlling Internet data for these features is nearly impossible. For the main study, I am therefore planning to create a derived corpus from existing corpora of online discussions, which include more detailed information about the speakers. Ethically speaking, creating a corpus from online forum discussions requires maximal anonymity of the speakers whose utterances I am examining, which is another reason why I decided not to control this pilot corpus for the mentioned features (cf. Fielding, Lee & Blank 2008). Eva Triebl 260 Endophoric negative identifiers Relation of negative identifier to co-text Example of co-text Relation of co-text to negative identifier Cataphoric modification: the negative identifier guides the interpretation of the co-text following it. but I support equality. 10 Contrast because I don’t believe people can be bundled into categories. Reason so I don’t share your opinion on this subject. Consequence In fact, I hate the word with a vengeance. Intensification Anaphoric modification: the negative identifier modifies co-text preceding it. I'm for equal rights, but Contrast I like men’s attention, so Reason I can’t say I support your views here because Consequence Exophoric negative identifiers Referring to another speaker’s utterance A: You are basing all your arguments on the feminist assumption I presented to you in my first post […] B: I don’t subscribe to any particular group. I’m not a feminist. Rejection of another participants’ identity claim. Referring to paratext (i.e. to an identity category present in the context of the communicative situation) Example: a user of the explicitly feminist forum www.reddit.com initiates her turn by stating that she is not a feminist as such. Disclaimer: the speaker, aware of identity claims potentially implied in the context of conversation, uses a negative identifier as a disclaimer. Table 1: Initial formal-functional framework of negative identifiers. 10 The examples in this table are mostly taken from the pilot study on feminism mentioned earlier, but were partly modified for reasons of space. …or not to be 261 4. The pilot study I am currently testing the initial formal-functional framework against a larger sample of authentic data in order to find out which categories actually play a role and if negative identifiers can be seen as cues to identity concepts beyond the immediate conversational situation - and how such a correlation between the situated use of a concrete linguistic form and broader social questions can be explicated. Eventually, my study seeks to demonstrate how we can bridge the gap between micro-linguistic analysis of a concrete structure and critical analysis of the wider sociocultural implications of the use of this expression in context. The data I am using for my pilot study is a derived corpus of currently 85 instances of negative identification used by participants in online discussion forums (I am constantly enlarging this corpus, so this paper is a snapshot). A derived corpus is a corpus which consists of the target structure, i.e. negative identifiers and the co-text that is relevant for their interpretation and which is, in my case, enhanced with contextual information required to arrive at a sufficiently full scenario of the communicative situation in which the structure is used. It is derived because it consists of - variously enhanced - concordance lines (or their equivalents) yielded by online searches rather than of full - whatever this may mean - texts. Creating such a corpus is somewhat unusual in the study of discourse markers: firstly, most studies use existing corpora that were not specifically compiled for the study of the said structure (e.g. the CANCODE corpus in Fung and Carter 2007, the Bergen Corpus of London Teenager Language (COLT), and the London-Lund Corpus (LLC) in Erman 2001; the CAP (Corpus Audiovisual Plurilinguë) in Cuenca & Marín 2009). Secondly, studies in pragmatics in general and of discourse markers in particular have examined corpora of spoken language, which is unsurprising since discourse markers prototypically occur in spoken language. There are, however, some studies which have investigated Computer Mediated Communication to answer pragmatic questions and which have convincingly argued for the suitability of online discussions as data for this kind of study. For example, Carretero et al. (2014) conducted a corpus-based study of expressives in online communication. They explain that social computing media such as blogs and e-forums are invaluable sources of information about online communication and ideally suited for pragmatic studies because on the one hand, they share many features of oral discourse including the use of discourse markers, and on the other hand, they are ―complete transcriptions of the linguistic production of the participants‖ (ibid.: 262). Generally speaking, it is more the interactive di- Eva Triebl 262 mension that makes people use discourse markers than the medium of communication by itself. As for the criteria guiding the compilation of my corpus, I am using customized Google searches which allow me to collect occurrences of the structure [I + copula + not + indefinite NP] (and its formal variants, see 3.3.1.) in forums and threads. In contrast to the previously mentioned first study on negative identification with feminism, which I used to set up the initial formal-functional framework introduced above, I am not specifying the value of the indefinite NP for this study - after all, I want to find out what identity categories people dissociate themselves from, and if there are patterns of categories recurring in connection with particular functions of negative identifiers. To prepare my data for the quantitative part of my analysis, which employs the concordancing software WordSmith Tools 5.0, I annotated my samples to be able to easily retrieve the following information:  Different speakers  The negative identifier itself  The indefinite NP the speaker negatively identifies with  Name of the forum and the topic of the discussion/ title of the initial thread To provide an example of my annotation system, let us look at the following extract randomly selected from the mass of hits my search yielded: <forum subject: diabetes.co.uk: the global diabetes community> <thread>I'm cold! </ thread> Since going low carb and losing a lot of weight. The winter has well and truly arrived. I've worked outside for a number of years and have never felt the cold even when it's freezing. I'm feeling it now even the thermals aren't working! Has anyone noticed this? <NI>And no I'm not a <IC>southern softie! </ NI> As can be seen, what I did with this sample was to add information about the forum subject in the file header (which I framed with triangular brackets so that it is easily searchable with a concordancer, but not treated as part of the text to be analysed by the software). I also indexed the title of the thread starting the discussion (in this case, the speaker himor herself initiated the discussion) and tagged the negative identifier as well as the identity category it is used to dissociate the speaker from. This makes it possible to search, for example, for all categories speakers …or not to be 263 negatively identify with by means of a concordancer, i.e. just by looking for the tag. 4.1. Qualitative analysis I will now look in more detail at the example presented above and see how it could be qualitatively analysed according to the provisional formal-functional framework I set up earlier. The negative identifier is used as an assertion, and the fact that it is initiated by ―and no‖ is interesting because no does not only intensify the negative identification by cataphorically referring to the polarity of the clause, but also makes the negative identifier sound like the rejection of an explicit identity claim which cannot be found in the immediate coand context. In other words, the speaker rejects an identity category which s/ he her/ himself just brought up. The negative identifier can thus be classified as endophoric, anaphorically referring back to and modifying possible interpretations of what the speaker has said before (namely that s/ he is constantly cold etc.). The category of the indefinite NP is interesting because it can, as Ochs‘ (1996) model of the socio-cultural dimensions of context predicts, be seen as indexing two aspects of the speaker‘s concept of self-identity at the same time: the negative identifier is used as anaphoric disclaimer supposed to avoid association with ‗southern softiness‘. This, on the one hand, shows that he (I suppose the speaker is male) thinks that complaining about feeling cold might expose him as ‗softie‘ and, on the other hand, shows awareness of stereotypes relating to geographic and climatic affiliation (and acting upon the presupposition that ‗people from the South are softies‘). What I also consider relevant for the interpretation of this statement in this context is that the forum in which this discussion takes place is a diabetes forum which, we might assume, mainly contains posts from people affected by this condition. Contrasting oneself with ‗southern softies‘ in this context is interesting because it might be interpreted as showing that the speaker, by invoking two identity categories which have nothing to do with his condition (qualities he considers to present a contrast to the concept of a ‗softie‘ and being ‗cool‘ as opposed to other people from the South), could suggest that having diabetes is not an identity category he perceives as central enough to bring it up (maybe just because it is evident from his participation in the forum anyway). This brief exploratory analysis of one instance of a negative identifier in use already has interesting implications for the formal-functional framework I postulated earlier because it shows that data is hardly ever as neat and easily categorizable as taxonomies suggest. In this case, for example, the co-text of the negative identifier (i.e. what the speaker says about feeling cold) is as important for the interpretation of its functions as the situational context (i.e. that we are dealing with a diabetes forum). By contrasting himself with a ‗southern softie‘, the speaker indexes differ- Eva Triebl 264 ent aspects of his identity, depending on what is seen as the identity category ‗southern softies‘ can be assigned to: is it a gender identity category (‗softies‘ as opposed to, say, ‗real men‘), a geographic (‗cool northerners‘ versus ‗softies from the south‘), or a climatic stereotype (‗weatherresistant northerners‘ versus ‗weather-sensitive southerners‘), and how does the speaker‘s negative identification with these identity categories relate to his (presumable) condition of having diabetes as another possibly relevant identity category? 4.2. Quantitative analysis My pilot study has clearly underlined the merits of combining qualitative and quantitatively-oriented analysis: undoubtedly, examining individual instances of negative identification such as in 4.1 is vital to grasp the conceptual complexity of the topic - as we have seen, contrasting oneself with a particular identity category can have various reasons and implications, which is why rigid either/ or-taxonomies alone bear the risk of missing out on interesting aspects that only come to light by means of indepth analysis. On the other hand, looking at the data from a bird‘s eye view by examining negative identifiers quantitatively has been extremely revealing in this study, because while the data seems to speak a clear language, it does not seem to say what I assumed it would after having qualitatively analysed a few instances of negative identification. What I did was to analyse my corpus of 85 negative identifiers with WordSmith to find out whether and, if so, how often the functional categories specified in 3.3.3. occur and how they are related to each other. The first step was to search for the values of the indefinite NPs speakers negatively identify with, with the result that most NPs refer to professions or levels of expertise, followed by lifestyle categories, as can be seen in table 2 below: Identity category Examples Tokens Professional magician, poet, artist, doctor, marketing expert, keyboard player, mechanical engineer, pianist, IT professional, real estate mogul, CAM designer 32 Expertise newbie, expert, novice, beginner 18 Lifestyle off-piste fan, trekkie, addict, abuser, MP player, Zuul player 16 Evaluative Jerk, nice person, idiot, grammar nazi, attention seeker 9 Ideology Pro-lifer, feminist, racist, religious nutter, elitist 7 Table 2: Identity categories. …or not to be 265 It should be mentioned that the categorization of NP values is by no means a straightforward either/ or-task, because categories may change depending on what aspect defining the category is seen as most important. For example, it is debatable whether terms such as elitist or religious nutter can be unproblematically classified as referring to people‘s ideological position: for example, the concept of an elitist, which refers to a person‘s beliefs about how the social world should be structured and can thus be assigned to the category of ideology, can also have implications for the referent‘s lifestyle (an elitist lifestyle might also involve consuming particular ‗exclusive‘ products etc.). The fact that professionalism features so prominently as dissociated identity category alone is interesting, because I had expected a greater variety of different identity categories: if late modernity is marked by a pluralisation of choices to make for the individual (cf. Giddens 1991), who has become the central unit of social life (cf. Beck 2002), and if authenticity is the ―pre-eminent value and framework for self-actualization‖ (Harris n.d., online), I thought that this might be reflected linguistically in a greater variety of categories people contrast themselves with. The clear predominance of the categories of professions and expertise made me wonder about the functions of speakers‘ frequent dissociation from these categories - and indeed, the functional analysis was quite revealing. In terms of my differentiation between endophoric and exophoric reference, the large majority (76 of 85) of negative identifiers were endophoric, i.e. served to modify parts of the speaker‘s own utterance, which is why I will focus on this type of negative identifier in the following. My data shows a strong correlation between the value of the indefinite NP and the type of reference, as there is a clear dominance of cataphoric negative identifiers used to contrast the speaker with a particular level of expertise or professional categories. It seems that speakers engaging in online forum discussions predominantly use negative identifiers epistemically to cataphorically mitigate utterances (most often introduced by but) that could be interpreted as claiming expert knowledge. The results are summarized in table 3 below (for reasons of space, I only include the categories with more than one token assigned to them): Function Identity category Total: 19 Example Contrast Expertise 7 I'm not aware of variation to window positioning (although I'm no expert on MM4) Contrast Lifestyle 7 I realize Fentanyl is a powerful drug, but I'm just not an abuser. Contrast Ideology 2 Women have been objectified for many years. I'm no feminist, well, not a militant feminist. reference Anaphoric Eva Triebl 266 reference Function Identity category Total: 57 Example Contrast Professional 21 I’m no IT professional but I know my shit. Contrast Expertise 12 I wouldn’t call myself an expert but I’m also not a novice. Contrast Lifestyle 8 I’m not Trekkie. But I really enjoyed this Prelude to Axanar. Contrast Ideology 4 I'm not a men's right activist myself, but these days, I can't ignore the feeling that we're living more and more in female paradise. Contrast Evaluative 3 I’m no white knight. But thankfully I’m also not an attention seeker. Table 3: Functions of negative identifiers. Admittedly, I was disappointed upon first realizing that negative identifiers are obviously most often used strategically as epistemic disclaimers in my corpus: my assumption was that the interesting cases would be the ones where negative identifiers ‗do more‘ than ‗just‘ modify their co-text, because I thought that these would be the instances of negative identification that might be relatable to broader late modern social trends like individualization associated with greater pressure to be ‗authentic‘ in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. However, being convinced that the ordinary, typical is usually more revealing than the rare, extraordinary, even though this often means the collapse of initial hypotheses, I decided to step back and look at my frequencies again. While I initially distinguished between strategic and non-strategic uses of negative identifiers, assuming that the non-strategic cases would be the ones with implications beyond the immediate conversational situation, the predominance of endophoric epistemic disclaimers have made me wonder if the answer - or, at least, new interesting questions - might be in front of my eyes: so speakers are very careful about voicing their opinions on things, or giving advice, without previously disclaiming expertise. The fact that having or not having expertise is an important issue in my corpus certainly relates to the text type examined: online forums are often used to get advice easily, fast and for free. Then again, if so much knowledge is circulating on the Internet anyway, then why do speakers feel the need to - out of their own volition - fend off associations with expert identities and, thus, responsibilities? Who would expect them to be experts? What this suggests is that, whatever the cause is, being an expert or not is an important source of identity in the speakers‘ conceptualizations of self. To refer back to the research questions I initially formulated, I had assumed that it would be possible to distinguish between a strategic, i.e. discourse marking use of negative identifiers to modify the interpretation of the rest of the utterance, and a non-strategic use of negative identifiers, Cataphoric …or not to be 267 serving to index aspects of the speaker‘s identity beyond the immediate conversational situation, and that this difference would correspond to the difference between exophoric (referring to utterance-external text) and endophoric (referring to parts of speaker‘s own utterance) negative identifiers. However, the results of the pilot study imply that formal differences between the strategic and the identity-indexing use of negative identifiers might not be as important as assumed: on the contrary, it seems that one form may simultaneously fulfil local, discourse-managing functions and more global, identity-indexing functions. After all, whenever we choose to express ourselves, ―we draw on discursive resources which have already been shaped to represent the world in particular ways‖ (Sealey 2009: 196). In other words, just because negative identifiers are predominantly used as discourse markers and, thus, for their textual and interpersonal rather than for their ideational metafunctions (cf. Bloor & Bloor 2004: 11), this does not mean that they do not give cues to the speakers‘ social identity. 5. Conclusion In this paper, I presented my approach to negative identifiers, which I am analysing on three levels to find out why and how speakers use them in concrete communicative situations, if there are patterns of usage manifesting themselves across larger samples of data and whether and, if so, how this can be related to social research questions in CDA. Arguing that negative identifiers are functionally comparable and can thus be analysed like discourse markers, I introduced my initial formal-functional framework and then demonstrated how I am applying this framework to the qualitative and quantitative analysis of negative identifiers in authentic discourse contexts. I wanted to find out what the main functions of negative identifiers are and if it would be possible to identify a ‗non-strategic‘ function with implications beyond the immediate conversational situation. The quantitative analysis of a pilot corpus of 85 negative identifiers showed that speakers predominantly use this structure to disclaim expertise and, related to this, that they most frequently dissociate themselves from professional or expert identity categories. These findings challenged my initial assumption that only the ‗non-strategic‘ use of negative identifiers would have implications for people‘s self-concepts. On the contrary: qualitatively analysing negative identifiers suggests that negative identification can be multifunctional and simultaneously have different implications for the speaker‘s self-representation and self-concept. Thus, while I still think that the initial distinction between strategic and non-strategic uses of negative identification is reasonable, the pilot study implies that negative identifiers can at the same time serve as discourse markers and give cues to more permanent concepts of self-identity. 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London: Arnold Publishers. Swales, John M. (2004). Research Genres: Explorations and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna (1976). ―Particles and linguistic relativity.‖ In: International Review of Slavic Linguistics 1(2-3). 327-367. Eva Triebl English Department University of Graz Rezensionen Roland Weidle, Englische Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit. Eine Einführung (Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik 37). Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2013. Isabel Karremann Eine Einführung in die Literatur und Kultur gleich welcher Epoche und Nationalphilologie ist ein wichtiges Hilfsmittel für Studierende. Eine gute Einführung ist ein Geschenk für die Dozenten. Der von dem Bochumer Anglisten Roland Weidle verfasste Band leistet beides. Er bietet nicht nur das von Studierenden sehr geschätzte, am Ende eines jeden Kapitels nochmals konzise zusammengefasste Überblickswissen, sondern auch eingängige Analysen ausgewählter Textpassagen, anhand derer das zuvor referierte Wissen zu konkreten Texten und Kontexten in Bezug gesetzt und damit ebenso lebendig vermittelt wie relevant gemacht wird. Dies unterstützen auch die insgesamt einundzwanzig Abbildungen - zweiundzwanzig, wenn man den Stammbaum der Königshäuser mitzählt, der statt im Anhang vielleicht besser im Teilkapitel zur englischen Geschichte (2.1), den Historiendramen (5.5) oder zu historiographischen Schriften (6.1.2) aufgehoben gewesen wäre. Die Einführung beginnt mit einer begriffsgeschichtlichen Annäherung, in der die Epoche unter den Blickwinkeln von ‗Renaissance‘, ‗Humanismus‘ und ‗Früher Neuzeit‘ im gesamteuropäischen Kontext beleuchtet wird. Hierbei wird auf hilfreiche Weise zwischen einem bestimmten Zeitraum des Rückgriffs auf antike Werte, Traditionen und Kunst (Renaissance), einer Geisteshaltung und Gelehrtenpraxis (Humanismus) sowie einem weiter gefassten, erst im Rückblick sichtbaren Prozess von Paradigmenwechseln in unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen (Frühe Neuzeit) unterschieden. An diese im europäischen Vergleich jeweils etwas unterschiedlich gelagerten Epochenbegriffe schließt sich eine umfassende Betrachtung der zeitgenössischen Entwicklungen in der Gesellschaft und Kultur Englands an. Nach einem historischen Überblick über die regierenden Herrscher vom ersten Tudorkönig bis zur Restauration der Monarchie unter Karl II. werden, ganz im Sinne AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rezensionen 272 von Thomas Kuhns Paradigmenwechseln, die markantesten ökonomischen und sozialen Umwälzungen der frühen Neuzeit beschrieben. Das Epochenbild, das sich daraus ergibt, ist schlüssig ohne dabei in das geschlossene ‗Elisabethanische Weltbild‘ Tillyardscher Prägung zurückzufallen. Im Gegenteil, die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungen werden in ihren gegenseitigen Zusammenhängen (z.B. soziale und geographische Mobilität) ebenso wie in ihren inneren Widersprüchen dargestellt (z.B. geographische Öffnung und xenophobe Vorurteile, Hexenglauben und proto-wissenschaftliche Alchemie). Es bleibt dabei allerdings etwas uneinsichtig, weswegen ‗Krone, Kirche, Staat und Religion‘ so kategorisch vom Bereich der ‗Gesellschaft‘ getrennt werden, waren doch Entwicklungen wie ‗Migration und Exploration‘ oder ‗Magie‘ aufs Engste mit der Staatsräson bzw. der Reformation konturiert und stellte doch die Herrschaft Elisabeths I. eine Herausforderung an patriarchale Vorstellungen von der Rolle und Natur der Frau dar, die sicher mehr als einen knappen Satz verdient hätte. Der historischen Situierung folgt eine kurze, aber sehr wichtige Darstellung der poetologischen Grundlagen: ohne ein Wissen um das zeitgenössische Verständnis von Poetik, Rhetorik und Gattungen droht Studierenden die Innovationskraft sowie literarische Qualität vieler frühneuzeitlicher Texte zu entgehen. Vor allem der Verweis auf die vielen Texten immanenten Poetiken schärft den Blick für selbst-reflexive Momente, die die Entwicklung literarischen Schreibens im Spannungsfeld von Tradition und Innovation (statt romantischem Originalitätsdenken) vorantreiben. In ähnlicher Weise lenkt auch das Kapitel zu ‗Drama und Theater‘ (das ich hier kurz vorwegnehme) zunächst den Blick auf die spezifische Theaterpraxis, ihre materiellen Gegebenheiten ebenso wie ihren performativen Charakter, um so die Dramentexte vor allem als Aufführung nahezubringen - eine vermeintlich banale Einsicht, die aber die Verständnisprobleme vieler Studierender in der Konfrontation mit dem Drama als (unzugänglichem, sprachlich schwierigem Lektüre-)Text ernst nimmt und ihnen - zumindest im Ansatz - eine gelungene performanzorientierte Hilfestellung gibt. Die drei Großkapitel zu den Gattungen Lyrik, Drama und Prosa sind unterteilt in weitere Subgenres und zeichnen ein detailliertes Bild der abwechslungsreichen Literaturlandschaft der Frühen Neuzeit. Hier werden nicht nur so prominente Genres wie Sonett, metaphysische Dichtung und cavalier poetry, sondern auch Studierenden in der Regel weniger zugängliche Formen wie Epos, pastorale und satirische Dichtung sowie die Ode vorgestellt. Das Kapitel zur Prosa zeigt die Bedeutung gerade der nicht-fiktionalen Prosa - von der King James Bible und Predigten über Francis Bacons Essays, politische Traktate und soziographische Schriften etwa zu London als schnell wachsendem urbanem Raum - als Ort, an dem die Frühe Neuzeit nach einer neuen Sprache für zeitgenössisch brisante Fragen und neue Weltsichten sucht. Besondere Beachtung findet, seinem Status als (zumindest aus heutiger Sicht) Leitmedium entsprechend, das Theater. Auf 75 Seiten werden ebenso ausführlich wie anschaulich seine Anfänge im mittelalterlichen Volkstheater, in Aufführungen an Schulen und Universitäten und die urbanen Spielstätten in Londoner Gasthäusern dargestellt, bevor die professionellen Bühnen der öf- Rezensionen AAA Band 40 (2015) Heft 1-2 273 fentlichen sowie privaten Theater und der Hofbühnen mit den jeweiligen theaterpraktischen und ideologischen Eigenheiten zur Sprache kommen. Wie bereits erwähnt, werden diese Punkte wo immer möglich an konkreten Textpassagen vorgeführt, was den Studierenden im modularisierten Kurrikulum selten gewordene Einblicke in mittelalterliche Dramenformen wie dem Townley Cycle, das Drama Mankind (ca. 1464-71) oder die pageants zu Ehren des Lord Mayor of London gibt. Die Tragödie und Komödie der frühen Neuzeit werden in Subgenres bzw. Entwicklungsphasen unterteilt (revenge, de casibus, domestic; frühe Tudorkomödie, höfische Komödie, comedy of humours, city comedy, Tragikomödie) und auch hier durch Ausschnitte aus Dramentexten illustriert. Shakespeare ist jeweils ein Unterkapitel gewidmet, wodurch gleichzeitig dem besonderen Status des Barden im Kanon englischer Literatur sowie dem Reichtum an Stücken anderer Dramatiker Rechnung getragen wird. Kann man aus anderen Einführungen den Eindruck gewinnen, das frühneuzeitliche Drama sei eine rein Shakespeare‘sche Veranstaltung gewesen, so wird dieser hier gerade gerückt. Allein das Unterkapitel zu den Historiendramen bricht aus: zwar war das Genre in der Tat von Shakespeares Zyklus über die Zeit vor und während der Rosenkriege dominiert, doch wird hier mit Prince Hals Monolog aus Henry IV, Part 1 gerade ein solches Textbeispiel gegeben, das nicht so sehr die Eigenheiten des Historiendramas beleuchtet sondern auch aus einer Tragödie stammen könnte. Geschichtsdramen anderer Verfasser werden lediglich erwähnt. (Dieser Kritikpunkt reflektiert allerdings eher die Interessen dieser Leserin und wird vom eigentlichen, studentischen Zielpublikum wohl nicht als Mangel empfunden werden.) Insgesamt ist diese Einführung in die englische Literatur der frühen Neuzeit für die universitäre Lehre sehr zu empfehlen. Eingängig geschrieben und informativ, dürfte sie darüber hinaus auch bei einem breiteren Publikum als Leitfaden zu dieser faszinierenden Epoche und ihren literarischen Errungenschaften auf Interesse stoßen. Isabel Karremann Institut für Englische Philologie Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt, Embracing Differences: Transnational Cultural Flows between Japan and the United States. Bielefeld: transcript, 2013. Walter Grünzweig Why should a German Americanist study the transnational flows between Japan and the United States? Why should a German publisher include it in a Rezensionen 274 series on Culture and Theory? One might simply claim that in our globalized world any important phenomenon deserves critical scrutiny - and that anybody, anywhere, is entitled to engage in it. Located in a middle ground between these hemispheric cultures, European critics are uniquely positioned (spatially and historically) to examine Japan-U.S. exchanges. The specific interest Europeans have in understanding this (increasingly) special connection - which threatens to replace that other ‗special relationship,‘ between the U.S. and Britain - becomes readily apparent in the threats regularly made against those who dare to raise their voices against TTIP and other transatlantic trade frameworks. If we are unwilling to come to an agreement with our eurocentrically-inclined American brothers, they might turn their faces towards the East (or rather: West, from an American perspective, completing, in Whitman‘s words, Columbus‘ ―Passage to India‖). The deals that will emerge from those pacts will then become the standards to which we, too, will have to submit, whether we want to or not. If Europeans need to understand this emerging special relationship, Iris- Aya Laemmerhirt‘s book on the subject is indeed a very well researched beginning. It turns out that the Asian perspective has long been a part of America‘s vision. Early on, in the 19 th century, the United States forced open isolated Japan to global trade. This was a humiliating experience, which led the Japanese to reconsider their place in the world and to send their youth to Europe and America to learn - and master - the efficient technological and military ways of the West. In a paradoxical reversal, going west helped the nation to become strong enough to ensure the survival and core of Japanese identity. From the outset, Laemmerhirt details the strength and cleverness of Japanese transcultural strategies. While American imperialism was, of course, an orientalizing force (Said), the Japanese reply in turn ―occidentalized‖ the American trader-explorers and investigated them in a wonderfully-termed Japanese discipline called ―Barbarian Studies‖ (―bangaku,‖ 36). This is just the delightful pre-history of the phenomenon whose main chapters (in the book and in real life) take place in the past two to three decades. Out of the multiple transnational flows between Japan and the United States (many of which traverse Europe), Laemmerhirt‘s book focuses on three particularly interesting and pertinent mass phenomena: the Tokyo Disney Resort, Japanese Food in the United States (especially Sushi), and Hollywood movies dealing with Japan. Her model of transnationalism draws centrally from Peter Hitchcock‘s influential Imaginary States: Studies in Cultural Transnationalism (2003). Transnationalism amends a theoretical blindspot in the postcolonial paradigm. Whereas the binary ―Other‖ was subject to exploitation by the stronger power, transnationalism‘s ―differences‖, ―exchanges‖ and ―hybridity‖ grant the colonized a kind of agency, limiting, reducing, potentially even eradicating one-way exploitative antagonisms. Hitchcock, and to some degree Laemmerhirt‘s, message is therefore a happy one. Japan and America, while still suffering from the old orientalist and (to a lesser degree) occidentalist diseases, are experiencing a new para- Rezensionen 275 digm in their relationship. Whether this new paradigm is a result of the new phenomena studied here - or whether the paradigm itself has been eradicated, negated or simply forgotten - the earlier unequal and inimical footing of East and West is a question that remains somewhat open. Laemmerhirt‘s many delightful examples seem to suggest that in the age of the internet and globalization, cultural exchanges are indeed different in quantity and quality. Thus, while one might very well consider Disney or McDonald‘s as American companies pushing their own interests and cultural agenda, the consumers - the visitors, eaters, viewers - have become emancipated to such a degree that they can now watch out for their own interest(s). There is a good deal of reception theory (Iser) and British cultural studies (Birmingham) implied here, suggesting that the (playing, eating, reading, watching etc.) recipients now know better what to do with these goods that the companies might be trying to force upon foreign, unsuspecting customers. Multinational companies themselves have even recognized that in the age of globalization, they can no longer push a national, hegemonic agenda. When the Japanese visit Tokyo‘s Disney Resort, they are really enjoying ―the Mouse‖ on their own terms, rather than Disney‘s. Japanese Disney is about the Japanese view of America and thus about Japanese culture‘s interpretation of an American cultural product. When American sushi chefs trained by a California-based ―Sushi Academy‖ (the Bologna ECTS system with workloads and competencies might lend itself well for this venture in higher education) are adapting Japanese cuisine to the American palate (and then, to top it off, are actually re-exporting it to Japan under the label ―New York-Style-Sushi‖, 143), they are in fact self-consciously engaging in cultural hybridization and adaptation. When Hollywood allows Japanese characters to speak their own language (rather than dubbing them) and furnishes 19 th century American militarists with an insight gained through meaningful dialogue with the ―last Samurai,‖ this, too, suggests that the era of political correctness is affecting contemporary Japanese-American relations. I tend to believe Laemmerhirt that something has indeed happened in Japanese-American (and certainly also Japanese-European) relations. The contemporary saturation with Japaneseness not only in restaurants and movie theatres but also in our kids‘ playrooms from pokémon to manga suggests as much. Further, the electronic and digital foundations of these cultural networks makes adaptations and hybridizations that much easier. One must also admire Laemmerhirt‘s ability to bring together all these very different ‗texts.‘ She is indeed ‗reading‘ the set-up, structure and map, of Tokyo Disney alongside with its immortal cultural icons from the Ducks to the latter-day, Americanized and Nipponified Grimms. She masterfully reads sushi novels (Carla Lockwood‘s Dixieland Sushi) and Japanese cookbooks and places these texts next to Sushi restaurants (and menus) throughout the U.S. Finally, her readings of the - naturally - most accessible genre for interpretation, Hollywood movies, especially The Last Samurai and Lost in Translation, are very nicely done and truly insightful. To have brought these three areas together to formulate a coherent thesis about Japanese-American cultural relations is really one of the most produc- Rezensionen 276 tive results of this study and readers will very much enjoy the variety of areas and avenues to and into which these exchanges extend. However, the liberality of Birmingham might have profited by a bit of Frankfurt restrictiveness. Because while it is probably true that these cultural exchanges are now taking place on a more equitable plane, it is the democratic exchange of a profoundly commodified cultural world. While it is nice that Disney Tokyo is not dominated by Disney U.S., both have so deeply lost any cultural substance (in the Frankfurt, not the Birmingham sense), that maybe this equality no longer matters. The commodification has so far eradicated cultural substances in the majority of the examples Laemmerhirt is providing that the happy news she is bringing us, is maybe irrelevant politically. Or maybe not. Because this is not the fault of the author. She has truthfully - if maybe a bit enthusiastically - reported, commented and analyzed what she has observed, and what is, unfortunately, there. Possibly, after having read all of it and being left astounded, we sense why all of these ―cultural exchanges‖ are flowing so nicely - because there is no more substance that might resist this instantaneous movement between continents and around the world. As ―boundaries become increasingly permeable,‖ says the author at the very end of her engaging study, ―cross-pollination between Japan and the United States will continue. How these interactions will increase and what new scapes and dimensions of cultural flows will open in the future, remains to be seen.‖ (218) This may sound like a threat, but we should not worry. Following the cross-pollination, there will be neither material that flows, nor will it flow between places: the commodification will be so complete that the question of cultural flow will have to be completely rethought. What we can learn from this Asian-American relationship is that we need to find strategies to oppose the indiscriminate flows of capital - the virtue of these cultural forces may be that they will possibly block the flow. For that, too, Laemmerhirt‘s fine book will have prepared us. Walter Grünzweig English Department Technical University of Dortmund