Act Of Naming Research Articles

Lost in Space? Located in place: Geo‐phenomenological exploration and school

This paper aims at revealing the various meanings of schools as more than built physical environments from a geographical‐phenomenological (or ‘geo‐phenomenological’) perspective. This paper consists of five sections: the first explicates the meaning of ‘geo‐phenomenology’; the second reveals the meaning of ‘environment’ and a dialectics of strangeness and intimacy through geo‐phenomenological analysis; the third examines the meanings of environment as ‘space’ and ‘place’ and the act of naming as the process of constructing meaning between humans and environment; the fourth section attempts to explore the meaning of conceiving school as a particular environment; and the final is the conclusion.

L'onomastique comme potique de la (d) construction identitaire dans Tels des astres teints de Lonora Miano

Who am I is a question often asked in African, African American and Afro-Caribbean literatures. Lonora Miano answers this question of identity crisis in Tels des astres teints by exploring the intricacies of naming and identity of Diasporic Sub-Saharan Africans within the French space. Naming becomes a performative act, which defines the script of existence. The onomastics at work in Tels des astres teints operates as a poetic of identity (de) construction transforming the dichotomization of collective history and personal history into a transcendental mode of reasoning that attemps to negotiate historical tragedy and breakages of the self. This study offers an approach of self-knowing through naming. The act of naming gives birth to a concrete and abstract reality that operates from a psychological fracture. A productive tension dwells within this fracture that it is necessary to understand. Structuring her story through free adaptation of jazz themes, Miano displays a dissonant and resilient narrative polyphony through which identity belongs to the realm of becoming.

Mapping Australasia

Abstract History Compass divides the world into regions, one of which is an ‘Australasia and Pacific’ section. But where and what is Australasia? Does Australasia simply mean Australia and New Zealand? What happened to this idea over time, and does it exist in the twenty‐first century? This article examines the mapping of Australasia since the name ‘Australasia’ entered European language and consciousness in the eighteenth century. Informed by post‐colonial history yet following traditional archival practice, the method comprises analysis of a sequence of digitised maps in the National Library of Australia, which are available on‐line, followed by a set of maps of Australasia attached to this article, which are reproduced courtesy of the National Library of New Zealand. Three conclusions follow from the cartographic evidence. First, historical maps of Australasia exemplify how the act of naming is not neutral and reflects shifts in global power. Second, Australia and New Zealand share a history; and third, an ‘Antipodean’, ‘oceanic’ perspective as advocated by J. G. A. Pocock suggests that Australia and New Zealand may have a common future in a ‘new’ Australasia.

Un‐believing the matrix: queering consensual heteronormativity

Two key concepts arising from Butler’s work are the heterosexual matrix – the conflation of sex‐gender‐sexuality which leads to the normalisation of heterosexuality – and performative reinscription – the discursive process by which the marginalised Other brings new meanings to normative identity constructions. While we have found both concepts useful, we consider the extent to which the very act of naming – or in Althusser’s words, hailing – the heterosexual matrix reifies it. Drawing on our own research on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in primary schools, we consider disruptions (breaking what Butler describes as echo‐chains) and reinscriptions (forging new ones) as approaches to queering consent. This vision requires disorganisation rather than resistance and replaces the metaphor of the matrix as a system of externally imposed rules with an understanding of how the matrix – to the extent that it exists at all – relies on hegemony as organised consent.

After Midnight: Naming, West Indians, and British Children's Literature

AbstractAs British explorers and colonizers spread out over the world, they used the act of naming as one of many tools to indicate ownership of their new-found empire. British children's books, which were a major part of the colonizing and imperial effort, subtly (and not so subtly) indoctrinated young readers into their positions as owners and managers of the many nations around the world within the British sphere of influence. Because the area known as 'the West Indies' formed some of Britain's earliest colonies, it is instructive to follow the history of West Indian naming in British children's books. Naming in these books show how young readers were taught first to dominate, and then (as the empire crumbled) to try and contain, and only lastly to try and understand the lands and peoples of the Caribbean Sea.

To be or not to be: Buddhist selves in Toronto

Buddhist identity: a Buddhist by any other name?When we talk about a ‘Buddhist’ or ‘Buddhists’ in Canada and the United States, what exactly is our referent—a label or category, an identity, or perhaps something more? Is the term ‘Buddhist’ signifying a reified object (or subject?), one that subsumes all sorts of practices, beliefs, philosophies, and preconceptions under its umbrella? Or can the term be used to signify choice, personal commitment, motivation, partiality, and perhaps even struggle? We have a great many labels and categorizations of the differences among and between Buddhists, but can we really assume that the term ‘Buddhist’ itself is unproblematic? Calling someone a Buddhist in the West, or ‘naming’ them as such, appears initially and on the surface a fairly straightforward undertaking. And yet, the very act of naming itself is a composite of assumptions and expectations. In much of the anthropological literature on initiation rituals, the act of naming has been construed as more-or-less a societal quest for order and control of the individual. Naming marks who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. Being named is an important marker of social identity, socialness, and social belonging (inter alia, Jell-Bahlsen 1989; Jacquemet 1992; Cohen 1994).

‘Sticks and stones …’: naming and name-calling in Impressionist imagery

In our century, historians have recognized the agency of the act of naming, and art historians pay special attention to the titles created by artists as signs of intention. A variety of naming, name-calling, is an important part of reception history. The fine arts have a history of name-calling in which derogatory words are frequently created and applied to new or different artistic groups, styles, and theories. Many pejorative labels survive to become positive terms, for example, Baroque and Rococo, which were originally disparaging in order to indicate how out of date these styles appeared in comparison with the new classicism. By the mid-nineteenth century, European artists began to select group names for themselves before hostile critics beat them to it: Pre-Raphaelites, Itinerants, etc. In the 1870s, a new phenomenon surfaced, that of artists willingly adopting a freshly minted insult as their identity. The name involved was impressionnisme.

Of Barbers and Bottle Shops: Naming Businesses in South Africa

AbstractIt is well-known that African personal names are acts of linguistic creativity, in which almost any word, phrase or sentence may serve as an input base. Preliminary examination of a corpus of business names, collected during 1992-1996, suggests the same. Names are coined by both business owners and community members, and both types may become official registrations. Some name types are unsurprising, e.g. those in which businesses are named after their owners or the place in which they are located. However, with the exception of barber and beauty shops, these are relatively infrequent. Other types include: (a) general community-oriented positive messages, (b) advice/exhortation, (c) conflict/admonitory, (d) advertisement, (e) personal achievement, (f) thanking a relative or ancestor for success. Typological differences between African and Western naming of businesses are discussed.The basic orientation in the paper is to view business and shop names as exemplars of visual communication. One cannot ignore the social basis of the reader-directed message here. As in recent research on African anthroponymy, the focus here is on the relationship between names and their donors, and on the ways in which the act of naming is an act of social communication, embedded within a cultural framework.

Paradise Betrayed Or the Betrayal of Paradise: Vilna as Memory in Abba Kovner's Poetry

Abba Kovner's life and poetry are deeply identified with the city of Vilna, yet the city is never mentioned in his works. This paper sets out to interpret this absence as a case study of memory and history and about Kovner's particular place within, or without, the literature of the Holocaust. The dichotomy which characterizes the poet's attitude towards the city is partially resolved in his last book, where Kovner confronts his childhood and the memory of his mother. The symbolic act of naming, with its multiplicity of meaning, serves as a key to the interpretation of Kovner's poetry in both the personal and collective contexts.

The Scarlet Letter and the Book of Esther: Scriptural Letter and Narrative Life

Why does Hawthorne give Prynne name Hester? question seems an inevitable one for writer like Hawthorne, works at least partly in Spenserian tradition of allegory. Dimmesdale's first name, Arthur, and Hawthorne's daughter's name, Una, suggest some of influence of Spenser on Hawthorne's acts of naming. Hawthorne himself, as is well known, changed his family name from Hathorne, to distance himself from those Puritan ancestors whose achievements and excesses haunted his fiction. Scarlet Letter tells of Roger Prynne's reinvention of himself by an act of naming: when he finds his wife in disgrace in new he adopts name Chillingworth. names Pearl with reference to gospel of Matthew: she named infant 'Pearl,' as being of great price, - purchased with all she had, - her mother's only treasure! (1:89).(1) romance's central symbol, on other hand, scarlet letter A, resists sort of hermeneutic rigidity that naming entails. As an initial letter, or simply as an initial, A notoriously hints at all sorts of names while claiming none. As great orchestrator of meanings, Hawthorne is aware that names are full and even overfull of meanings, and he could in no way be said to arrive at his characters' names casually. It is surprising, then, that critics of Hawthorne have not carefully considered question of Hester's name. In The Custom-House Hawthorne calls up the figure of that first ancestor, Puritan who came so early, with his Bible and his sword (1:9), and Scarlet Letter participates deeply in Puritan biblicism. Chillingworth identitifies himself as the Daniel shall expound (1:62) riddle of identity of Pearl's father; on another biblical - or perhaps rather Miltonic - level he is version of Satan. Dimmesdale, when in final scaffold scene he declares himself the one sinner of world (1:254), becomes Christ figure. Hester, exposed to eyes of multitude, is likened to the image of Divine Maternity (1:56); in Conclusion Hawthorne plays with idea of as prophetess. D. H. Lawrence found in Hester's seduction of Dimmesdale story of Eve's temptation of Adam to eat forbidden fruit.(2) tapestry of chamber shared by Dimmesdale and Chillingworth depicts the Scriptural story of David and Bathesheba, and Nathan Prophet (1:126). multiplicity of biblical intertexts may reflect Hawthorne's desire to write story of new Puritanism that would acknowledge and, moreover, incorporate extreme textualization of that society. Puritans could perhaps only be brought back to life in fiction if fiction were as saturated in Bible as Puritans were themselves. Yet one key biblical intertext, Book of Esther, which serves as sort of sunken groundwork or hidden scaffolding for Hawthorne's tale, has been missing from discussion of Scarlet Letter. That is named for biblical Queen Esther has been briefly noted in handful of critical studies, though it has probably been quietly taken for granted by many more readers. Sacvan Bercovitch remarks that Prynne builds upon tradition of biblical Esther - homiletic exemplum of sorrow, duty, and love, and figura of Virgin Mary . . . . But primarily Hawthorne's 'sermon' traces education of an American Esther. He continues that a major source for Hawthorne, it seems probable is Cotton Mather's Ornaments for Daughters of Zion, conduct manual in which Esther is one of biblical heroines adduced as models of proper behavior.(3) Bercovitch does not draw any further parallels between Book of Esther and Scarlet Letter. Kristin Herzog and Luther S. Luedtke mention coincidence of names in reference to Hester's magisterial bearing.(4) Jean Normand observes elliptically that Hester before Governor is comparable with Esther before Ahasuerus, but elaborates no further. …

"Distance," Desire, and The Ideological Matrix of Winter in the Blood

STEPHEN TATUM "Distance," Desire, and The Ideological Matrix of Winter in the Blood At the end of part one ofJames Welch's Winter in the Blood the unnamed narrator-protagonist discovers in his jacket pocket a letter written to his mothet, Teresa First Raise, from a Catholic priest in nearby Harlem, Montana. Pondering the envelope with her name written on it in "big, solid, unreal" letters, the narrator concludes that "the name did not belong to the woman who was my mother. It belonged to somebody I didn't know, somebody so far away that the picture on the stamp of a man I didn't recognize seemed familiar" (58). Although he thinks briefly about opening the envelope and reading the correspondence , he decides instead to tear up the letter held between his legs and watch its pieces fall to the floor. He feels "vaguely satisfied" that "a lettet written by a white man who refused to bury Indians in their own plots, who refused to set foot on the reservation" (59), will never reach its destination. Framed by his troubled recall of the previous evening's boozy escapades and by the street sounds that interrupt his thoughts that afternoon while he sits in a tavern, the narrator's gesture binds together several formal and thematic elements at work in the novel's opening section. In terms of characterization, this conjunction of naming, letters , and the power to "bury" humans in plots both magnifies the narrator 's isolation from the social matrix depicted in the novel and deArizona Quarterly Volume 46 Number 2, Summer 1990 Copyright © 1990 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-1 6 10 74Stephen Tatwm fines, in particular, Part One's illustration of an Oedipal scenario. In terms of theme, this rupture of the communication circuit foreshadows the novel's overall investment in recording acts of repression or censorship . It also discloses its thematic interest in interrogating the consequences of an indifferent "official" culture's authority to plot a local, native culture's fortunes. Finally, because the narrator's action severs the connections potentially offered by any written discourse, it underlines the reader's burgeoning sense that the twin dynamic of a novel's traditional plotting—to chart meaningful intersections, to announce and eventually "resolve" enigmas—will not dominate the texture of Winter in the Blood. Moreover, what seems initially to be a heightened textual moment charting the narrator's emergent will to power also opens up a basic epistemological question concerning how the truth ofanything, past or present, can be known. To state the question in the novel's language, is it possible to make any written representation "familiar" rather than "distant"? This question surfaces here because the narrator insists on the distinction between representation itself and what is represented. The "I" who speaks in this passage believes that both the individual letters forming his mother's name ("T-E-R-E-S-A" [58]) and the epistolary discourse constituting the priest's "Teresa" do not "belong to the woman who was my mother," do not bear any relation to the Teresa known and jealously guarded by her son. Taken together, his remarks during the course of this scene raise epistemological questions because they suggest three problems associated with naming. Knowing Teresa— or any other person, object, or domain—becomes problematic when names are severed from the context of their utterance, and when certain experiences seem to overwhelm any effort to control them via the act ofnaming. In addition, the effort to articulate experience in written signs can also be frusttated by knowing of all that contradicts what the signs designate. Such problems are not simply introduced here and dropped. They are bound together later in the novel when the narrator examines his father's tombstone—on which "were written the name, John First Raise, and a pair of dates between which he had managed to stay alive"—and realizes that such engraved marks "said nothing about how he had liked to fix machines and laugh with the white men of Dodson, or how he came to be frozen stiff as a plank in the borrow pit by Earthboy's" (137). Winter in the Blood75...

Language universals: Papers from the conference held at Gummersbach/Cologne, Germany, October 3-8, 1976 Ed. by Hansjakob Seiler (review)

BOOK NOTICES Language universals: Papers from the conference held at Gummersbach/ Cologne, Germany, October 3-8, 1976. Ed. by Hansjakob Seiler. (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 111.) Tübingen: Narr, 1978. Pp. 328. DM 68.00. The conference from which these papers come was sponsored by the Cologne Project on Language Universals (Kölner Universalienprojekt ), with a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The Cologne Project had been in operation for four years, and had already developed a number of theoretical concepts and methods that formed the basis of discussions. Extensive materials circulated prior to the conference have been published under the title Materials for the DFG International Conference on Language Universals (ed. by Seiler), as vol. 25 of the Arbeiten des Kölner Universalienprojekts. Twenty-four participants are listed; seventeen of them produced articles for this collection. France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States are the countries represented, with Germany having the most participants. Of the nineteen articles, fourteen are in English, with the remainder in German and French. The topics for the five conference days were: (1) the concept of universals, (2) determination, (3) descriptivity, (4) typology, and (5) noun and verb. Seiler (pp. 11-25) introduces the collection with a statement on the objectives, theoretical notions, and strategies resulting from research at Cologne before, during, and after the conference. He lists 'Twelve questions,' previously distributed in Materials: these deal with the definition of universals; generalizations that lead to universals; diversity among languages; relationship to typological research; the problem of arguments and examples from levels other than phonology; the purposive aspect of communicative function; the relationship among conceptual (cognitive), semantic, and grammatical categories; the status of N, V, ADJ, and adv in the research; unifying principles that might account for both linguistic and extralinguistic behavior; the number oflanguages which must be researched before one reaches the point of diminishing returns; typological clustering; and a comment on a quotation by G. von der Gabelenz (1901). Paul Garvin (27-31) initiates the discussions with an epistemological perspective. He deals with the definition of 'linguistic universal' and its offshoots: implicational, regional, typological, definitional, and empirical universals. Herman Parret (125-40) lists the wide range of acknowledged universals (he gives eleven examples) that shows the need for criteria in their classification. He also points out that Plato, Leibniz, and Husserl were concerned with language universals, and that we gain perspective by looking back at the developments that brought us to our present position. This collection has particular value because of its cross-cultural perspectives, especially in articles like that by Russell Ultan (249-65) on the development of the definite article, with examples from Finnish, Germanic, Bulgarian, Romance, and Mandarin. The relative order of adjectives is discussed by Robert Hetzron (165-84); he summarizes studies since A. A. Hill (1958) and then explores this syntactic device in Hungarian, Turkish, Indonesian, Basque, Amharic, Japanese, Chinese, and Chichewa. In his recapitulation, he discusses the matter of semantic classification as a basis for the ordering principle. Of particular value are his warnings about the technical problem ofprosodyas aneglected aspect (this involves ambiguity), about idiomaticity, and about a euphonic principle. Also important in this collection is the new material brought into discussions of universals , e.g. neurolinguistics and extralinguistic (non-verbal) concomitants. Walter Huber (185-206) deals with 'universal neuro-anatomical substrates', and reviews recent work on the cerebral organization of language. Research on the brain—whether through studies of aphasia, injection of sodium amytal, or dichotic listening—can give insight into, e.g., syntactic processing, the act of naming, and 'natural' phonological processes. But neither can non-verbal aspects —intonation, symbolic gestures, facial expressions , mimicry, and other emotional expressions—be ignored in research on 464 BOOK NOTICES 465 universals; thus it has often been noted that deictic expressions are accompanied by an appropriate gesture (250). The article by Franz Stachowiak (207-28) further explores the matter of naming and descriptivity. When does naming become descriptive? The faculty of categorizing perceptual data is presupposed in the act of naming. How are the universals of space and time dimensions expressed in language ? How do speech errors (slips of the tongue) contribute to our...

Tension and Extension: Thoughts on Scottish Surnames and Medieval Popular Culture

The answer to the question “What's in a name?” is plenty, according to W.F.H. Nicolaisen in his essay on Scottish surnames and what they can tell us of medieval popular culture. Place names, for example, often provide information about prehistoric strata and come to be equivalent in significance to material items which provide archeological insight into cultures. Surnames, when tied to place names, can give us information on migrations, while other types of names reveal occupational histories. and patterns of kinship. The very act of naming has both communal and personal importance and can yield significant socio‐cultural data.

Die Sprachforschung der Aufklärung im Spiegel der grossen französischen Enzyklopädie By I. Monreal- Wickert (review)

BOOK NOTICES 465 universals; thus it has often been noted that deictic expressions are accompanied by an appropriate gesture (250). The article by Franz Stachowiak (207-28) further explores the matter of naming and descriptivity. When does naming become descriptive? The faculty of categorizing perceptual data is presupposed in the act of naming. How are the universals of space and time dimensions expressed in language ? How do speech errors (slips of the tongue) contribute to our knowledge of language universals ? The articles in this collection do not represent a clique of like-minded thinkers; there are healthy differences of opinion and approaches, with historical perspective. This book should be in the library of every college and university that offers linguistic courses. [Mary Ritchie Key, University of California, Irvine.] Die Sprachforschung der Aufklärung im Spiegel der grossen französischen Enzyklopädie. By I. MonrealWickert . Tübingen: Narr, 1977. Pp. 199. This book is a study of the linguistic conceptions of the French Encyclopedists of the 18th century, based on the articles concerned with grammatical terminology and linguistic analysis in their monumental work. MW has made some heavy restrictions: only four authors are discussed (Beauzée, Dumarsais , Turgot, and Diderot); and of the 340 grammatical articles, only 21 are cited here. Among the secondary literature (bibliography, 186-93), one misses the works of Acton, Arens, Bartlett, Couturat, Derrida, Grimsley, Hildebrandt, Juliard, and Stéfanini. Chapter I outlines Beauzée's conception of general grammar and of language. Disregarding the non-existent link which MW establishes between speculative grammars of the Middle Ages and general grammars of the 17th—18th centuries, and her candid distinction (pace Aarsleff) between a-priorism and empiricism, we can see that she fundamentally misunderstands Beauzée's distinction between general and particular grammar (35). The section entitled 'Langue', devoted to Beauzée's language typology, is marred by the absence of a thorough methodological discussion based on modern theories such as Skaliöka's, Greenberg's, and Keenan's. Chapter II, devoted to Dumarsais, does not offer a general view of his grammatical theory : MW provides only a detailed analysis of three articles ('Cas', 'Article', and 'Construction'). Chapter III is a study of two articles in the Encyclopédie, one by Turgot on etymology and the other by Diderot ('Encyclopédie'). These articles are thoroughly examined, but again with no methodological criticism. I cannot accept the following parallel drawn by MW: 'Die allgemeine Wissenschaft von der Sprache und die Etymologie stehen in einem ähnlichen Theorie-Praxis-Verhältnis zueinander wie Allgemeine und einzelsprachliche Grammatik im Artikel Grammaire von Beauzée' (150). Besides the anachronistic use of the notions 'Theorie' and 'Praxis' (which in fact do not apply to the distinction 'Grammaire générale' vs. 'Grammaire particuli ère'), the relation between general and particular grammar (according to Beauzée) is not a relation of inclusion, while the relation between the ' general science of language' and 'etymology' (according to Turgot) is in fact a relation of inclusion. Furthermore, following a remark by M. Piron, MW regards Turgot as a precursor of the distinction between synchrony and diachrony (159). I have been unable to locate one instance in Turgot's text which could confirm this statement: Turgot never made the methodological (de dicto) distinction between synchrony and diachrony —a distinction which Piron, and also MW, probably interpreted as an ontological (de re) one. Furthermore, it is rather surprising that MW has made no use of the important debate between Turgot and Maupertuis on the origin of language, or of some important chapters in the Port-Royal Logic on the arbitrariness of linguistic signs. The section on Diderot's 'linguistic philosophy ' is rather disappointing, even if one takes into account the captatio benevolentiae (160). The exposition is based mainly on Diderot's 'Encyclopédie' and on secondary studies—a narrow base indeed for a survey of Diderot's highly complex linguistic thinking. MW handles three problems: definition (with no reference to the major works of De Pater and Robinson), the structuring of knowledge (with no reference to Foucault), and communication within the scientific community. As a result, MW's study appears to be an 466 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 56, NUMBER 2...

On naming the oppressor: What Woolf avoids saying in A Room of One's Own

Synopsis Woolf's 1929 essay on Women and Fiction has been touted as the radical feminist statement of its time. However, a thorough examination of Woolf's manipulation of sentence focus through the application of various transformations reveals Woolf's unwillingness to name the agent of woman's oppression. The essay contains a significant number of truncated passive constructions wherein the agent most often deleted is a word referring to men or to representatives of patriarchal society. My analysis shows that, through the use of the truncated passive, Woolf actually obscures the agentive role men have played in the oppression of women, often shifting the focus onto women as culpable for their own plight. This type of analysis is important to the feminist cause in that the act of naming is essential to the success of any liberation movement.

Naming in aphasia: Interacting effects of form and function

The naming difficulties of Broca's and anomic aphasics were explored in relation to a recently developed model of the normal mental lexicon which stresses the importance of integrating perceptual and functional information in the act of naming, and equally stresses the inherent vagueness of conceptual categories based on such information. Subjects were shown line drawings of various food containers varying in physical features such as height and width; they were required to select a name for the object from a multiple choice list (cup, bowl, or glass). Prototypical as well as nonprototypical objects were shown. The Broca's aphasics showed relatively normal naming profiles. In contrast, the posterior patients were unable to integrate perceptual and functional information and were insensitive to the fuzzy boundaries between conceptual categories. The results obtained for the posterior patients are interpreted as reflecting an impairment in the underlying conceptual organization of the lexicon rather than retrieval difficulties.

Names, indices and individuals

N this paper I will extend Geach's account of an 'act of naming',' which I will suggest can help to elucidate Kripke's account of names as rigid designators.- The importance of acts of naming for our understanding of names is that it is through such acts that names acquire the elusive indexical character which Russell, for example, was able to locate only in the case of demonstratives; and which led him to an acquaintance theory of reference.3 Russell seems ultimately to have been driven to the conclusion that the only items to which one can directly refer are objects of one's immediate experience-sense data. This conclusion, I suggest, is untenable; and Kripke's account of names as genuine indices -which I will argue for by comparing it with the account of names proposed by Peirce4-provides an effective way of avoiding Russell's conclusion. It is through the use of names in acts of naming that these expressions come to designate rigidly. I shall go on to suggest that the notion of a rigid designator is helpful in turn for coming to grips with the basic notion of an individual.

A IRÓI NÉVADÁS ÉS A NEVEK FORDÍTÁSA GION NÁNDOR „BANDAREGÉNYEIBEN”

A tanulmány Gion Nándor négykötetes, az ún. „bandaregények” műfajába is sorolható regényeiben vizsgálja az író névadás és a nevek fordításának problematikáját. A regények kronológiai sorrendben, négy évszakon keresztül beszélik el egy gyermekbanda kalandjait: a Kárókatonák még nem jöttek vissza vakációregény, a Sortűz egy fekete bivalyért ősszel folytatja a cselekményt, Az angyali vigasság télen, amikor a gyerekek a karácsonyi ünnepkör szokásait elevenítik fel, s az angyali vigasságot mondva keverednek bele a felnőttek dolgaiba, a Zongora a fehér kastélyból pedig tavasszal zárja a történetet. A négy regényt az azonos helyszínek, az előre- és visszautalások, az ismétlődő motívumok és szövegrészek mellett a visszatérő szereplők is összekötik. Az irodalmi művek interpretációjában a mű névrendszere gyakran kulcs az értelmezéshez. A tanulmány tipologizálja a regények névanyagát (személynevek, állatnevek), vizsgálja, a nevek milyen többletjelentéseket mozgósítanak, jellemábrázoló és stilisztikai szerepüket, hogyan tematizálódik a szövegekben a névadás folyamata (pl. egy-egy ragadványnév kialakulása) és milyen fordítói eljárások segítségével ültette át a regények szerb fordítója a neveket, hogy a célnyelvi olvasóban is ugyanolyan asszociációkat keltsenek, mint az eredeti szöveg befogadójában.