Native Writers Research Articles

Speculative realism and post-nature writing in Rick Bass’s “The Hermit’s Story”

As a rising contemporary nature writer, Rick Bass shows in his nature imagination some unique features distinct from previous eco-literature, features characterized here as “speculative realism”. A newly emerging school of philosophy which has just come to the fore in the past decade, speculative realism resolves the opposition of subject and object by recognizing the “reality” of the world independent of human subjectivity, thus minimizing the constraints imposed by human mind in understanding the world and leading us to what Meillassoux terms “the great outdoors”. Bass studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and then worked as a petroleum geologist for nearly 10 years before moving to the remote Yaak Valley in 1987, where since then he has engaged himself in the nature. “The Hermit’s Story”, a short story he published in 1999, is representative of his speculative realist post-nature imagination: nature has its own system of logic independent of human consciousness, and as one part of nature, mankind has its own animality beyond reason. With his speculative realist post-nature imagination, Rick Bass is making an attempt to bring his readers into the “real” nature, and this is different from the traditional nature writing, which, from the anthropocentric perspective, either describes the Utopian beauty of the nature or makes futile appeals to protect it.

Metadiscourse Features in English News Writing among English Native and Iranian Writers: A Comparative Corpus-based Inquiry

The aim of this study was to compare and contrast the distribution and application of metadiscourse features in news writings between English native writers and Iranian non-native writers. To this end, a comparable corpus of English news written by English native authors and Iranian authors were selected randomly. For the theoretical framework, Hyland’s model (2005) was exploited. As the data represent, the English authors were more relied than the Persian ones on metadiscourse features. Also, the data revealed that in both corpora, the interactional metadiscourse features were preponderant as compared to the interactive metadiscourse features. In addition, in the interactional corpus, hedges were the most frequent as compared to transitions which were the most frequent type of metadiscourse in interactive category.

Citation practices in Slovak and English linguistic research papers

Abstract Citation in research articles is an important gateway to acceptance by academic community. When citing others, scholars follow the conventions of the genre, of the academic discipline, and of their culture. This paper focuses on the cultural aspects of citation by comparing and contrasting a corpus of linguistic papers written in English and in Slovak. The results show that while English native writers prefer making their papers more objective through a higher incidence of generalisations and reporting verbs denoting the process of research, Slovak native writers opt for making the cited authors more visible by a greater amount of integral citations and reporting verbs denoting mental states and processes. A higher number of quotations, including floating quotations, suggests that Slovak scholars have a high regard for the work of others.

Ironbark and stone

This article discusses Sunshine Coast writer Inga Simpson’s nature writing in three recent novels, Mr Wigg (2013), Nest (2014b) and Where the Trees Were (2016c). It addresses Simpson’s self-categorisation as a nature writer, and shows how the recurrent motif of sacred trees allows three introspective protagonists to reach new understandings of universal themes: loss of love and innocence, ageing, inheritance, childlessness, sexuality, death, ancient cultures, cultural integrity and preservation of the environment. The article considers Simpson’s ‘anti-Gothic’ approach to landscape in her novels, yet also shows how her ‘realist’ depictions of place evoke unease surrounding the issue of white belonging in Australia. Simpson’s metaphoric self-identification with trees, particularly theAustralian ironbark, is pivotal to the quiet power of her fiction’s exploration of belonging in the Australian landscape.

Investigating the Application and Distribution of Metadiscourse Features in Research Articles in Applied Linguistics between English Native Writers and Iranian Writers: A Comparative Corpus-based Inquiry

Metadiscourse features are the elements that can show the presence of writer(s) in the writing process. The main objective of the present study was to run a quantitative corpus-based study on the way metadiscourse features (elements) were used by English native writers and Iranian non-native writers in the field of Applied Linguistics. To this end, 29 articles in the field of Applied Linguistics written by native speakers of English and Iranian non- native speakers of English were randomly selected; compiling together a corpus of 173839 words. Also, for the raw data and corpus analysis, the Sketch engine software was exploited by the researcher. The results of the study couldreveal the fact that in overall, writers of both corpora made use of interactive metadiscourse features more than interactional metadiscourse ones and that the texts written by native speakers enjoyed more metadiscourse markers compared to texts written by Iranian non-native speakers.

Renegotiating Nature: Writing the Post-Romantic Australian City

Nature writers of the Romantic movement responded to the exploitation of natural resources and loss of untamed nature in an age of technological innovation. This legacy of Romanticism pervades contemporary writings about nature and place. However, ideas advanced through Romantic writings of ‘nature as a redemptive force’ and the ideological separation of nature and culture remain problematic (Adam 1998). If one does not consider this legacy and question inherited conventions, myths about nature are likely to be reinforced. In this paper, I explore some of Romanticism’s legacies for nature writing and how contemporary writers draw on and resist the established conventions. I argue that Australian cities provide sites of resistance, where assumptions of Romanticism might be addressed by writers. Cities are places not traditionally associated with nature writing and places where nature/culture relationships might be re-imagined, complicating notions of place, nature and the urban to arrive at new post-Romantic ways of writing nature.

Metaphorical Construals of Nature in Thoreau’s Writings

The article investigates how the concept of nature is metaphorically construed in the writings of Henry David Thoreau, one of the earliest and most influential nature writers. The analysis has been inspired by insights from cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics, especially Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Fauconnier and Turner’s Blending Theory. Several different metaphorical construals of the concept of nature appear in Thoreau’s writings which have been examined in this study, including Walden, The Maine Woods, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, a selection from his journal, and two collections of his earlier and later natural history essays and manuscripts. One can encounter there, obviously, conventional personifications of nature, such as Mother Nature, which, however, is questioned by Thoreau, as well as the occasional construal of nature as a companion or a bride. Other conventional conceptual metaphors, which are more frequently employed by him, include the metaphorical construal of nature as a work of art or as a literary work and once, more unconventionally, as a concert. Natural entities are also construed as other kinds of products. An original metaphor, which frequently appears in Thoreau’s late manuscript on the dispersion of seeds, is the personification of nature as a forester.

投之以羊血，報之以水果：台灣文學獵人之禮做為個人、群體和生態的認同象徵

In Taiwanese aboriginal literature, most gifts are given by hunters and most hunters are gift givers. I see these fictional gifts as symbols of personal, tribal and ecological identity. I advance this interpretation based on my reading of anthropological gift theory. Anthropologists have described hunter's gifts as the foundation of social standing, and have gone on to discriminate between gifts and commodities; the former conducive to the formation of interpersonal and ecological relations-relations between people and nature-and the latter conducive to the formation of relations of value between commodities. Societies in which gift giving is the main form of exchange will tend to be communal, while those in which commodity exchange predominate will splinter. This article applies this interpretive framework to the study of contemporary Taiwanese indigenous literature. The gifts I discuss are literary, so we cannot see them as simple reflections of social practice. Rather, I would view them as symbols contemporary aboriginal writers use to contemplate identity. In order to question the notion of the independent individual, I divide identity into three aspects, personal, social and ecological. I discuss Husluma Vava's ”The Hunter,” Auvini Kadresengan's ”Home to Return To,” Ba Dai's ”Ginger Road,” and Topas Tamapima's ”The Last Hunter.” From ”The Hunter” to ”The Last Hunter,” aboriginal villages have been drawn into the international economic order, fragmenting in this process. Facing fragmentation, aboriginal writers not only contemplate but also try to construct or reconstruct indigenous identity. I end with a methodological self-critique, as an aid to further comparative research.

A Brief Take on the Australian Novel

A Brief Take on the Australian Novel

Lexical Richness of the Jakarta Post Opinion Articles: Comparison between Native and Non-Native Writers

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mencari kompleksitas perbendaharaan kata-kata yang ada di dalam artikel opini surat kabar. Dengan menggunakan dua buah artikel opini yang mengangkat topik yang sama mengenai President Donald Trump yang terbit di koran The Jakarta Post dan ditulis oleh seorang penutur asli bahasa Inggris dan seorang yang bukan penutur asli bahasa Inggris, penelitian ini membandingkan tingkat kompleksitas perbendaharaan kata antara kedua penulis. Kedua buah artikel tersebut adalah Trump’s muslim travel ban will spark radicalization yang ditulis oleh Moh. Zaki Arrobi dari Indonesia dan Trump is attacking religious liberty yang ditulis oleh Noah Feldman dari United Kingdom. Penelitian ini menggunakan sebuah program bahasa berbasis web melalui situs www.lextutor.ca yang bisa diakses secara bebas, bernama Lexical Frequency Profile yang digagas oleh Laufer and Nation (1995). Hasil penelitian ini membuktikan pendapat Laufer and Nation (1995) yang menyatakan bahwa penulis yang bukan penutur asli bahasa Inggris mempunyai perbendaharaan kata yang lebih sedikit dibanding dengan penulis yang merupakan penutur asli bahasa Inggris. Penelitian ini menunjukkan adanya perbedaan yang cukup penting.

Young Adults' Concepts of Nature Realized Online: Nature 2.0

Abstract This study explores young people's concepts of nature as realized online, using the Web as both research environment and research tool. Nature writers who examine concepts or visions of na...

Savage Jaguars, King Cats, and Ghostly Tigres: Affective Logics and Predatory Natures in Twentieth-Century American Nature Writing

The emerging subfield of historical animal geography provides an opportunity to trace the origins and evolutions of how affective logics framing the conservation of an animal species are co-constituted through embodied interaction between humans and nonhumans, revealing the dynamic ways in which charismatic species are imagined into and out of positions of priority within conservation agendas. This article takes an interest in the shifting perception of predatory species in the environmental conservation movement in the United States, looking to the appearance of jaguars (Panthera onca) in the work of prominent U.S. nature writers Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest Thompson Seton, and Aldo Leopold in the early- to mid-twentieth century. These human–jaguar entanglements reveal a period marked by dynamic changes in the ways in which interspecies encounters were constituted in place; a layering on of affective logics that reveal the complicated origins, practices, and potentialities at the outset of the modern conservation movement. The resulting narratives and images of predatory nature were taken up into dynamic assemblages of jaguar-ness, influencing the formation of new logics that framed public perceptions of predatory natures and provoking a reconsideration of long-held attitudes and policies toward these species.

« Les Gras et les Maigres ». Camille Lemonnier, Pieter Bruegel et la cuisine sociale

In 1872, Belgian naturalist writer Camille Lemonnier publishes “Un bon tour”: a story inspired by two engravings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the Thin and the Fat Kitchen. At first glance, these grotesque engravings appear to be essentially comical, but they were probably motivated by the painter’s social concern as well. Likewise, a close reading of Lemonnier’s “fairy-tale with neither head nor tail” reveals how behind what seems to be a comical narrative at first, there lies a social dimension as well. Lemonnier wrote a critical satire on the opulent bourgeoisie.

Radiation ecologies in Gerald Vizenor’s Hiroshima Bugi

This article examines atomic explosion and radiation ecologies in the trans-Pacific, trans-Indigenous context using the Hiroshima A-bombing as an entry point. Drawing on Elizabeth DeLoughrey’s critical model of radiation ecologies, I investigate contemporary representation and reflections on the first A-bomb to re-visit the history from the present eco-scholarship on nuclear radiation. Taking renowned Native American writer Gerald Vizenor’s Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57 as an anchor text, I venture a nuclear criticism that recognizes the violent history of the radioactive Pacific, connecting Indigenous subjects in the trans-Pacific context. My study concludes with Indigenous significance and environmental justice, probing into the ways in which Indigenous peoples bear testimony to radiation ecologies in the Pacific by invoking Indigenous narratives, cultural practices, and forms of resistance against radioactive imperialisms.

Held to Ransom? The South Asian Diaspora and Postcolonial Discourse

The present paper explores the critical approaches to postcoloniality and subalternity in the theoretical writings of the South Asian diaspora as it seeks to define the nature of postcolonial theory – is it a methodology, an approach, or a theory? Its close association with diasporic studies with its emphasis on exile, homeland and identity and its constant addressivity to the West identifies it with diasporic approaches. If so, where does its use lie for home cultures? Working with Arun Prabha Mukherjee’s two books, Bhabha’s essays on the “Postcolonial and the Postmodern” and “Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,” Gayatri Spivak’s translations of Mahasweta Devi’s stories alongside her Prefaces, Introductions and translator’s notes and her long essay “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern,” the discussion foregrounds the gap between political freedom and cultural independence.Even though there has been a visible shift in translation theories and in the use and intermittent inclusion of native languages, it has still not succeeded in reclaiming cultural territories of intellectual thought. The world of the diasporic critic, no matter where located, is still locked up in a one-sided approach (refer to Vijay Mishra and Satendra Nandan). There is an urgent need to return to a closer examination of the critical views of native writers in order to relocate our objectives and define our spheres and to complete the incomplete process of liberation and reclaim lost territories. This argument requires a better understanding of colonial histories and pushes us towards an in-depth exploration of power relations. The discursiveness which appears to inhabit this discourse must be sharpened towards making a coherent pattern.

THE COLONIAL STRANGER AND POSTCOLONIAL AGENCY: THE CONGO NARRATIVE

In Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (1996), the Irish critic Declan Kiberd argues “postcolonial writing does not begin only when the occupier withdraws: rather it is initiated at that very moment when a native writer formulates a text committed to cultural resistance”. While I agree with Kiberd that postcoloniality cannot be said to be synonymous with post-independence, in this essay I extend his formulation by adding another subversive initiator of the postcolonial moment, the sympathizing radical activist within the metropolis. I use the American case in relation to the Congo context in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to foreground my argument, especially with reference to the anticolonial activism of the African-American Presbyterian missionary William Sheppard and his co-worker Samuel Lapsley, and the anti-imperial stance of the American writer Mark Twain.

Dutch learner English in close-up

AbstractThis study presents a longitudinal Bayesian analysis of pre-subject adverbial (PSA) use in a 571,174-word corpus of Dutch learner English. Overall, learners use more circumstance and linking adverbials, but fewer stance adverbials than both novice and expert native writers. Learners also use more ‘local anchors’, i.e. adverbials that serve a cohesive purpose by linking back to an antecedent in the directly preceding discourse. Interestingly, untimed essays are more native-like than timed essays in their use of each of the adverbial types considered. Although learners generally develop in the direction of native writing, the use of linking adverbials in learners’ literature essays develops in the opposite direction. L1 transfer may account for more frequent use of some categories of adverbials, particularly local anchors, but the widening gap between learners and native speakers (NSs) in the use of linking adverbials suggests that the potential role of textbook and curriculum design warrants further research.

Argument Structure in Arabic and English: Re-assessing Purity and Redeeming Hybridity

This study presents a contrastive rhetorical analysis of 20 argumentative Arabic and English editorials in argument structure. Samples were selected from two daily newspapers with equally wide distribution, and articles were written by their respective native writers. Both graphical and textual analyses captured the argument structure in terms of macro and micro arguments. A core finding is that the argument structure in the sampled editorials did not conform to the current predominant model of argument structure, which tended to polarize argument structure in terms of through or counter argumentation. The study contributes to the existing literature by defying the polarized traditional purity typology of argument structure frequently cited in the literature, and emphasizes a more dynamic hybrid model to understanding and analyzing arguments in general and in Arabic and English specifically. Additionally, the study of the professional genre of editorails has implications for academic writing and second language writing pedagogy by sensitizing foreign language learners to existing models of argument structure and possible ways to structure their arguments in the target language.

The imagined parakeet: invention and fact irrelevance in the speculative essay

Despite the ascendancy of the lyric essay as a form over the past two decades, the essay, whether lyric or otherwise, is still pegged to the category of nonfiction, an amorphous genre that includes everything from journalism to criticism. Any definition of nonfiction will include some variation of the idea that, foremost, nonfiction considers what is ‘informative’ and ‘factual’. But are such definitions limiting where many essayists are concerned? Must an essay, as a subset of nonfiction, entertain ‘thing-ness’ or the empirical world at all? Or is the truth of an essay sometimes speculative without the need to admit things or facts, existing simply as a tidal wave of strange imaginings? A Speculative Essay concerns itself with the figurative over the literal, ambiguity over knowing, meditation over reportage. For some essayists, in all manner of subgenres, from nature writers to personal essayists, facts as such matter only in the path they open to speculation. While this kind of formal speculation is often conflated with the lyric essay, the lyric essay does not own speculation. Essays that tilt more towards metaphor than fact exist in a crack between genres that remains unclassifiable.

Le Poignard et le Poison : Des Promenades stendhaliennes à l’image romanesque de la Rome zolienne

The article underlines the negative apprehension that Emile Zola feels towards the city of Rome, influenced as it is by the anthropological vision of two writer-travellers: Stendhal and Taine. Although it was a source of admiration during the Romantic era, Zolian writing was influenced by the image of the Italian capital as a place of murderous violence. The motifs of the knife and poison become inseparable from Zola's representations of the Roman social world. It is no longer a question of the naturalist writer celebrating passions, but of a critical and pessimistic discourse on the future of Rome.