Problematic Text Research Articles

On translating Tintin au Congo in the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT Controversy has plagued Hergé’s Tintin au Congo for the last few decades, and numerous academics have discussed the phenomenon, particularly in the contexts of law and ethics. This article seeks to examine and compare three English-language translations of Tintin au Congo. As a particularly problematic text that continues to be pilloried, praised, and parodied, its different versions provide a fruitful corpus when considering various questions regarding translation strategy and the responsibilities of translators and publishers. Hergé’s representation of Black people is unacceptable, by modern standards, in a multi-cultural society. Indeed, given the current political climate, this article argues that the re-translation of texts such as Tintin au Congo is highly problematic. The paradox is that any attempt to erase the original racism is as fraught, ethically, as is the strategy of reproducing it. With no clear function or audience in the twenty-first century, how can Tintin au Congo survive in translation?

性齋 許傳의 『士儀』에 나타난 19세기 영남 예학의 위상

Throughout the 19th century, Sungjae Heo Jeon’s (1797~1886) ritual studies book 『SaUi』 which was active in near-capital area and Yeongnam quickly emerged as a problematic text for scholars in Yeongnam region rather than in near-capital area. It is difficult to guess why scholars in Yeongnam critically accepted and discussed the text of 『SaUi』 written by Heo Jeon of near-capital area, leaving behind many books published in his hometown, Yeongnam. This paper is a small attempt to find an answer to the original question of the influence of 『SaUi』 on the history of Youngnam Ritual Studies.
 As a result of contrasting with 『Sangbyeon Tonggo』, which holds a symbolic status in the history of Youngnam Ritual Studies in the 18th century, the theory of Simui dealt with in the <Beobbok> compilation of 『SaUi』 was the most characteristic. Heo Jeon’s 『SaUi』 came to the stage of expressing his personal opinions by questioning the point of doubt in earnest not only in 『Garye』but also in old rituals. The practical use of 『SaUi』 means a deeper approach to daily life. The clear difference between ritual studies books representing the 18th century in Yeongnam and 『SaUi』 appearing in the 19th century is evident at this point.
 The original theory related to deliberation advocated by Heo Jeon's writers and Lee Jin-sang's writers in 『SaUi』 was the subject of academic discussion, and a total of 11 of Heo Jeon's writers wrote writings related to <Beobbok>. The theory of the compilation of 『SaUi』 was the closest to daily life considering the customs of Korea by restoring the essence of rituals based on old rituals such as 『Garye』 and Yeongnam. 『SaUi』provided a foundation for scholars in Yeongnam to expand the base of historical evidence and discussion on old rituals and to present practical theories based on reality. At this point, this paper can confirm where the coordinates of『SaUi』 are in the history of 19th-century Youngnam Ritual Studies.

Mark 1:1: How to Display Differences in Biblical Manuscripts in Editions and Translations

AbstractThis study has selected Codex Sinaiticus and Mark 1:1 as a test case to propose a new way for Greek New Testament editions and translations to present textual uncertainties in manuscripts. The article suggests that editors and translators use a partial cancellation type of erasure in a continuous line over problematic text. This method draws inspiration from a technique used by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida known as sous rature (under erasure). This form of limited cancellation aims to expel indifference and elicit a visceral reaction in the reader. The technique also has a philosophical and theological aim, namely, to work within Heidegger’s view of truth as a process of hiding and revealing. Finally, the limited cancellation, which both conceals and shows, fits with the theme of “messianic secret” in Mark’s Gospel, wherein Jesus both reveals and hides his identity.

Development of a COVID-19-Related Anti-Asian Tweet Data Set: Quantitative Study.

Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals of Asian descent (colloquial usage prevalent in North America, where "Asian" is used to refer to people from East Asia, particularly China) have been the subject of stigma and hate speech in both offline and online communities. One of the major venues for encountering such unfair attacks is social networks, such as Twitter. As the research community seeks to understand, analyze, and implement detection techniques, high-quality data sets are becoming immensely important. In this study, we introduce a manually labeled data set of tweets containing anti-Asian stigmatizing content. We sampled over 668 million tweets posted on Twitter from January to July 2020 and used an iterative data construction approach that included 3 different stages of algorithm-driven data selection. Finally, we found volunteers who manually annotated the tweets by hand to arrive at a high-quality data set of tweets and a second, more sampled data set with higher-quality labels from multiple annotators. We presented this final high-quality Twitter data set on stigma toward Chinese people during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data set and instructions for labeling can be viewed in the Github repository. Furthermore, we implemented some state-of-the-art models to detect stigmatizing tweets to set initial benchmarks for our data set. Our primary contributions are labeled data sets. Data Set v3.0 contained 11,263 tweets with primary labels (unknown/irrelevant, not-stigmatizing, stigmatizing-low, stigmatizing-medium, stigmatizing-high) and tweet subtopics (eg, wet market and eating habits, COVID-19 cases, bioweapon). Data Set v3.1 contained 4998 (44.4%) tweets randomly sampled from Data Set v3.0, where a second annotator labeled them only on the primary labels and then a third annotator resolved conflicts between the first and second annotators. To demonstrate the usefulness of our data set, preliminary experiments on the data set showed that the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model achieved the highest accuracy of 79% when detecting stigma on unseen data with traditional models, such as a support vector machine (SVM) performing at 73% accuracy. Our data set can be used as a benchmark for further qualitative and quantitative research and analysis around the issue. It first reaffirms the existence and significance of widespread discrimination and stigma toward the Asian population worldwide. Moreover, our data set and subsequent arguments should assist other researchers from various domains, including psychologists, public policy authorities, and sociologists, to analyze the complex economic, political, historical, and cultural underlying roots of anti-Asian stigmatization and hateful behaviors. A manually annotated data set is of paramount importance for developing algorithms that can be used to detect stigma or problematic text, particularly on social media. We believe this contribution will help predict and subsequently design interventions that will significantly help reduce stigma, hate, and discrimination against marginalized populations during future crises like COVID-19.

Ethical scaling for content moderation: Extreme speech and the (in)significance of artificial intelligence

In this article, we present new empirical evidence to demonstrate the severe limitations of existing machine learning content moderation methods to keep pace with, let alone stay ahead of, hateful language online. Building on the collaborative coding project “AI4Dignity” we outline the ambiguities and complexities of annotating problematic text in AI-assisted moderation systems. We diagnose the shortcomings of the content moderation and natural language processing approach as emerging from a broader epistemological trapping wrapped in the liberal-modern idea of “the human”. Presenting a decolonial critique of the “human vs machine” conundrum and drawing attention to the structuring effects of coloniality on extreme speech, we propose “ethical scaling” to highlight moderation process as political praxis. As a normative framework for platform governance, ethical scaling calls for a transparent, reflexive, and replicable process of iteration for content moderation with community participation and global parity, which should evolve in conjunction with addressing algorithmic amplification of divisive content and resource allocation for content moderation.

The Self-perception of Text message Dependence Scale (STDS): A Brazilian-Portuguese validation and expansion of its psychometric properties.

Text messaging is the primary form of technology-mediated interpersonal contact and the most carried out activity on cell phones. Despite its advantages, text messaging is not exempt from risks. The present paper aimed to validate and expand the psychometric properties of the Self-perception of Text-message Dependency Scale (STDS) in a Brazilian sample of adult internet users. In this cross-sectional study, we recruited a convenience sample of Brazilian internet users aged 18 and over. A total of 1,642 (Mage = 38.6, SD = 13.5; 73% female) participants completed the STDS, the Mobile Phone Problem Usage Scale-27 (MPPUS), and the Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire – Short form – 9 questionnaires (PIUQ-SF-9). Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis showed measurement invariance for gender and age. Internal consistency was high when accessed by both McDonalds' Omega and Cronbach's alpha. Network Analysis provided insights into the core symptoms of problematic text messaging. Convergent validity of the STDS was demonstrated by the subscale’s correlation with MPPUS and PIUQ-SF-9. Due to its expanded psychometric properties and brevity, the STDS can be used in more comprehensive investigations about other excessive technology-related behaviors, such as problematic smartphone and internet use, allowing a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in problematic technology use.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-02957-8.

Self-Diagnosis and Self-Debiasing: A Proposal for Reducing Corpus-Based Bias in NLP

Abstract ⚠ This paper contains prompts and model outputs that are offensive in nature. When trained on large, unfiltered crawls from the Internet, language models pick up and reproduce all kinds of undesirable biases that can be found in the data: They often generate racist, sexist, violent, or otherwise toxic language. As large models require millions of training examples to achieve good performance, it is difficult to completely prevent them from being exposed to such content. In this paper, we first demonstrate a surprising finding: Pretrained language models recognize, to a considerable degree, their undesirable biases and the toxicity of the content they produce. We refer to this capability as self-diagnosis. Based on this finding, we then propose a decoding algorithm that, given only a textual description of the undesired behavior, reduces the probability of a language model producing problematic text. We refer to this approach as self-debiasing. Self-debiasing does not rely on manually curated word lists, nor does it require any training data or changes to the model’s parameters. While we by no means eliminate the issue of language models generating biased text, we believe our approach to be an important step in this direction.1

Decision Making in Translation: Translator’s Strategies and Decision Models for Rich Points in Titles

Recent developments regarding translation competence have led to the acknowledgement of the strategic role of decision making in the translation process. Researchers in different science fields have always seen problem-solving as an intrinsic part of any cognitive activity. The specific character of translation decision making is a challenging area of research which is primarily associated with the essence of the translation problem and strategies to solve it. The paper addresses translation decision strategies with the aim of classifying them and proposing clusters of translation decision models for problematic text elements collectively called Rich Points. The classification was verified on a corpus of 160 newspaper titles of articles published between July and August 2020 and translated into Russian. The correlation between the source text and target text (TT) Rich Point patterns afforded ground for proposing a set of translation decision models. Quantitative assessment of Rich Points frequency revealed a tendency to eliminate them in the TT. However, translation decision strategies and assessment of models productivity rate revealed it was due to the translators’ loyalty towards factual information. The results suggest that although translation problems involve meaning disintegration, they can demonstrate patternlike nature, and pattern recognition seems to form the core of translation decision strategies and models.

On the Grammaticality of Poetry: The Asyndetic Verb-Late Clause in Otfrid’sEvangelienbuch

This article discusses asyndetic verb-late clauses in Otfrid’sEvangelienbuch, which has long been considered a problematic text within the Old High German corpus in part because of clauses like these. Clauses with a dependent clause’s verbal syntax and no complementizer have been characterized as ungrammatical and/or rare (Behaghel 1932, Schrodt 2004, Axel 2007) and thus have not been included in accounts of early German syntax. I argue that asyndetic verb-late clauses are grammatical and that they can function as main or dependent clauses. Crucially, they demonstrate that main verb fronting was not obligatory in 9th-century German. Although Otfrid marked the main-subordinate asymmetry by various grammatical means, including verbal syntax, I demonstrate that verbal prosody also influenced syntax: Heavy verbs are more frequent in clause-late or -initial position and light verbs in clause-second position, regardless of the main–dependent distinction. I suggest that prosodically-sensitive verbal syntax is characteristic of Otfrid’s exclusively oral vernacular. In contrast, Otfrid imports the concept of differentiating main and dependent clausesgrammaticallyfrom Latin. TheEvangelienbuch, then, represents an attempt to transform an oral vernacular into a written language by imposing, however imperfectly, the norm of grammatically distinct main and dependent clauses onto a prosodically-sensitive verbal syntax.*

Whose Story? Which Sacrifice? On the Story of Jephthah’s Daughter

Abstract The story of Jephthah and his daughter (Judg. 11:29–40) is a peculiar and problematic text. This article explores the question of the accountability for the sacrificial act with which the story culminates, and which provokes sharp disapproval in certain quarters, especially because of its gender bias. Applying the hermeneutical framework of René Girard and his distinction between sacrifice in Greek mythology (divinity in charge) and sacrifice in Judeo-Christian revelation (everyone responsible for his/her actions), I investigate the question: Is Jephthah’s daughter a mute puppet in a drama staged by her tyrannical father, or perhaps fate, or is she rather a woman who is responsible for her own actions and accountable only to herself? The answer is twofold: she is a woman fully responsible for herself; however, the responsibility for her premature and violent death is shared by her father, herself, and the biblical author–redactor. After identifying Jephthah’s daughter as a person responsible for her own actions, I aim to overcome the dialectic of “the text of terror” (post-structuralist interpretation) and the search for “herstory” (neoliberal interpretation). I suggest that in her powerlessness against patriarchal tyranny, Jephthah’s daughter nonetheless exerts power and authority in condemning the existing power structures. Without approving any form of sacrifice, reading the story through a lens of powerful powerlessness can help us discern different forms of power and, ultimately, reject the aggression and violence that has dominated our world to this very day.

The Tactful Chorus: Euripides,Alcestis326–327,Hecuba846–849

This article suggests that the brief choral comments that intervene between the speeches of two characters in Euripidean dialogue scenes may sometimes be more dramatically significant and interesting than is usually supposed. In Alcestis 326–7 and Hecuba 846–9 the chorus-leaders’ comments are directed obliquely toward (respectively) Admetus and Agamemnon, and are designed in a suitably tactful manner to influence their responses to the appeals of Alcestis and Hecuba. The problematic text of Hecuba 846–849 can be explained accordingly, and is so explained in a little-noticed comment by a Byzantine scholiast.

Del conflicto por la tierra a la Parábola de la viña. El problema teológico de Mc 12,1-12

Desde la perspectiva hermenéutica en clave liberadora, Mc 12,1-12 es un texto problemático a nivel socioeconómico y teológico. Un análisis de la parábola desde los conflictos por la tierra en la Palestina del primer siglo y en contraposición con la parábola –como se lee en el Evangelio de Tomás– cuestiona la lectura alegórica tradicional para devolver al texto su importancia como discurso de crítica ante los abusos económicos sobre el campesinado. Con Tomás se verá que un latifundista como imagen del Dios de Jesús es inadecuado e impensable en algunos de los movimientos cristianos de mediados del primer siglo de nuestra era.

The Bible and Disability: A Commentary ed. by Sarah J. Melcher, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong

Reviewed by: The Bible and Disability: A Commentary ed. by Sarah J. Melcher, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Amos Yong Kirsty Jones sarah j. melcher, mikeal c. parsons, and amos yong (eds.), The Bible and Disability: A Commentary (Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017). Pp. xi + 498. Paper $59.95. The Bible and Disability: A Commentary is a welcome addition to Baylor University Press's series entitled Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability, with a lineup of veritable experts in the field. Covering a huge amount of material, the volume "addresses both disability and non-disability imagery in each book on a case-by-case basis" (p. 94). For biblical scholars, the book issues an invitation to consider familiar and forgotten texts anew, with honest and sensitive exegesis. The authors remain grounded in more traditional academic biblical scholarship while at the same time engaging broader, critical questions about disability. None of the chapters falls prey to the desire to redeem or sugar-coat a problematic text. This is most refreshing and speaks well of the exegesis in the book. Despite the range [End Page 759] of perspectives of the various authors, the book has overall cohesion and Melcher, Parsons, and Yong are to be commended for masterful editing. Many of the authors choose to look at how embodiment and impairment are part of being fully human. Some chapters could use a little more nuance to avoid falling into an overly simplistic, facile presentation of disability, but on the whole the emphasis on embodiment is a helpful, unifying theme throughout the book. Authors do not only focus on figures with disabilities and disability language but also consider broader questions of embodiment, the senses, creation, and empowerment. Authors grapple with significant themes of disability studies and introduce core concepts that are generally well explained for a nonspecialist audience (though an index of key terms might be helpful). Repeatedly, authors refer to the difference between disability and impairment, explaining these concepts and applying them to texts. This divide, however, is somewhat out of vogue in disability studies today, and it would be interesting to see what the ancient texts have to say that might support or refute the move away from this system. In general, the integration of disability and biblical studies gives a useful heuristic lens for exegesis of texts. The authors use multiple approaches and refer to multiple disciplines with great ease and success. It is a difficult task to discuss Hebrew and Greek grammar, versions and authorship, source criticism and contemporary legislation, disability poetry and anecdotes in adjacent sentences, but the authors do so with success. The articles in the collection are the following: Sarah J. Melcher, "Genesis and Exodus"; David Tabb Stewart, "Leviticus–Deuteronomy"; Jeremy Schipper, "Joshua–Second Kings"; Kerry H. Wynn, "First and Second Chronicles–Esther"; Sarah J. Melcher, "Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes"; Jennifer L. Koosed, "Psalms, Lamentations, and Song of Songs"; J. Blake Couey, "Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Twelve"; Candida R. Moss, "Mark and Matthew"; David F. Watson, "Luke–Acts"; Jaime Clark-Soles, "John, First–Third John, and Revelation"; Arthur J. Dewey and Anna C. Miller, "Paul"; and Martin C. Albl, "Hebrews and the Catholic Letters." In her commentary on Genesis and Exodus, Melcher looks at creation in the image of God and the foundation of the nation through males and females with disability. Setting the tone for the book, she undertakes a striking exposition of how being imago dei underscores the divine–human relationship with implications for disability and identity. Noting that language about disability is often used to refer to things other than disabled people's actual experiences, Schipper looks at how disability is used in a narrative framework, the link between disability and divine punishment, "disability as a deviation from the norm" (p. 94), and disability as a structuring device. Schipper is keenly aware of normate biases and highlights how nondisability is assigned to characters even when the text does not evidence this (a common normate tendency). Schipper must also be commended for helpfully integrating rabbinic sources into his chapter and reminding readers of the myriad traditions of reading these central texts. Koosed's analysis of Lamentations...

Ruth Nisse. Jacob's Shipwreck: Diaspora, Translation, and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. xiii + 235 pp.

Reviewed by: Jacob's Shipwreck: Diaspora, Translation, and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England by Ruth Nisse Robert Stacey Ruth Nisse. Jacob's Shipwreck: Diaspora, Translation, and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. xiii + 235 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009418000661 Debates between Christians and Jews over the proper interpretation of biblical texts were staples of medieval Christian religious discourse. For the most part, Jews participated unwillingly in these debates; sometimes they did not participate at all, the Jewish position being supplied by the Christian author simply as a foil for his own exhibition of exegetical ingenuity. Over the past half century, the texts of these debates, real and imagined, have been studied by a number of notable scholars. We have all learned much from their efforts. But while new discoveries may yet be made, one cannot help but feel that most of the gold in this particular vein has by now been extracted. Ruth Nisse's extraordinary book, beautifully designed and produced by Cornell University Press, leads us in a new and altogether welcome direction in the study of the intellectual relationships between medieval Jews and Christians. Her focus is on England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, not generally regarded as a center of Jewish learning in this or any other time period. But evidence has been mounting in recent years that the Jewish scholars of medieval England were far more accomplished than we had previously realized, and that there are aspects of Jewish and Christian intellectual life in England that are both distinctive and important. This book pushes that discussion forward in exciting ways. Nisse's particular contribution is to draw our attention to the ways in which Jewish and Christian scholars sought to appropriate extrabiblical texts for their own religious traditions through translation, interpretation, and the creative compilation of diverse texts into anthologies. In her first chapter, Nisse looks at the tangled history of Flavius Josephus's Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War. Written in Greek in the first century of the Common Era, by the end of the fourth century Josephus's works had been epitomized by a patristic Latin author known as the Pseudo-Hegesippus, who presented the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE as God's punishment for the crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews. In the mid-tenth century, a Hebrew translation and rewriting of the Pseudo-Hegesippus had been composed in southern Italy, which circulated widely, together with several other ancient texts, in an anthology known as Sefer Yosippon. But Sefer Yosippon was no mere translation. As Nisse notes, "Yosippon … engages Hegesippus polemically and transforms this … Christian narrative about … the fate of Jerusalem into its own diasporic account of Jewish self-destruction and heroic sacrifice," creating "a new kind of Jewish spiritualizing rhetoric of resistance that later became particularly influential following the persecutions of 1096 during the First Crusade" (22). In twelfth-century England, these two competing versions of Josephus's work, one Latin and the other Hebrew, collided for the first time. Both versions laid explicit claim to present historical truth, a claim given additional weight by the fact that Yosippon was written in Hebrew, the sacred language of the Jews, [End Page 468] but acknowledged by many twelfth-century Christian scholars to be essential to interpreting the Hebrew Bible and hence to establishing the truth of the prophecies that proved Jesus to be the messiah. Yosippon, however, was a problematic text for Christian intellectuals. Not only did it omit the testimony to Jesus's messiahship that the Christianized Latin versions of Josephus and Pseudo-Hegesippus featured, it also included the Toledot Yeshu, a Hebrew version of Jesus's life that in Christian eyes was nothing short of blasphemous. Nevertheless, in twelfth-century England, any resulting suspicion of Hebrew as a language of mendacity, such as was expressed by Gerald of Wales, remained a minority position among English Christian intellectuals. By the mid-thirteenth century, however, this had become the majority view, not only of intellectuals but of the English Christian population at large, with serious consequences for Jewish-Christian relations and for the continuance of Jewish life in England. Among many other...

Deproblematizing The Merchant of Venice

Abstract The Merchant of Venice remains a ‘problem play’ for contemporary production. Whether the play is inherently antisemitic or not, it remains one of the most popular of the canon. I will consider how actors and their directors can, with the wisdom imparted by twentieth-century psychology and Stanislavskian-derived ideas of objectives, circumstances and subtext, seek to circumvent the challenges and infuse problematic text with more acceptable interpretations. Possible reinterpretations of Shylock are centrally considered, but the characters and motives of Jessica, Portia, Antonio and Bassanio are also scrutinized. Such re-evaluation of the underlying motivations seems a reasonable resolution for keeping the text intact while undermining any inherent negative stereotyping. However, once we admit of this subversion of a writer’s intentions, what might the consequences be if there are those who wish to use the same tools to create anti-humanitarian theatre?

Walter Map and the Matter of Britain. Joshua Byron Smith. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Pp. xii+254.

<i>Walter Map and the Matter of Britain</i>. Joshua Byron Smith. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Pp. xii+254.

Not Sparing the Child: Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World and Beyond. Studies in Honor of Professor Paul G. Mosca

Not Sparing the Child: Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World and Beyond. Studies in Honor of Professor Paul G. Mosca

Messages textes instantanés (MTI) : psychopathologie, styles d’attachement et traits de personnalité limite en population étudiante

BackgroundText messages sent from a mobile phone have considerably increased over the last few years and it now dominates the landscape of interpersonal communication among young adults. With this increasing number of text messages users, numerous studies have focused on both its positive and negative effects. The excessive use of text messaging has attracted attention from psychiatrists, psychologists and educators, who pointed out its associations with many psychiatric disorders. Although numerous studies have been conducted worldwide, there is no study in a French sample. ObjectivesThe main goal of our study was to assess the rate of problematic text messaging in a French students sample, and to explore its relationships with some psychopathological, attachment and personality variables, taking gender differences into account. Materials and methodsThe study was conducted among 518 participants aged from 18 to 35 (M=23; SD=2.75). Data were collected trough a global online questionnaire constituted of several scales. This questionnaire consisted of a sociodemographic section (age, sex, marital status, studies), a questionnaire assessing the Self perception of Text Message Dependency (TMDS), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D10), the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and Social Phobia Scale (SIAS-SPS), the attachment styles using the Relationship Scale Questionnaire (RSQ) and borderline personality traits with the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (PDQ-4+). ResultsIn the entire population, almost 5 % (n=25) of participants were affected by a problematic text messaging use, 40 % (n=207) had a risk to develop one, and 55 % (n=286) were not considered as problematic or at risk users. There were significant differences between the two populations. The dependent sample displayed social and phobia anxiety, borderline personality traits, depressive symptoms, secure and anxious attachment styles, while the non-dependant sample revealed only depressive symptoms. Among men, problematic text messaging, was associated with secure attachment style and borderline personality traits, however women combined depressive symptoms, social anxiety, secure attachment style and borderline personality traits. ConclusionsFew studies have examined the relationships between problematic text messaging use, psychopathology, attachment, personality variables, and none among a French sample. This explorative research should be completed with studies focusing on causal relationships between problematic text messaging use and psychopathological, interpersonal and personality characteristics.

Living with Rodolfo and Cervantes's "La fuerza de la sangre"

Living with Rodolfo and Cervantes's "La fuerza de la sangre" Elizabeth Rhodes "La fuerza de la sangre," the sixth of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares, is widely recognized as a problematic text. In it, the nobly-born youth Rodolfo abducts, blindfolds, rapes, then completely forgets Leocadia, a lovely sixteen-year-old of the impoverished nobility. Dissimulating the family shame, Leocadia's supportive parents raise the child born of the rape as their nephew, and the narrator consistently represents the boy as a blessing. In the end, the perpetrator and his victim marry, further reproduce, and live happily ever after, to the delight of their four parents and the ongoing consternation of readers. The story's ending leaves one wondering why Cervantes weds his endearing protagonist to a man who clearly does not deserve her, and why he allows the rapist to reach the novella's end with everything he wants and nothing he deserves. As Ife and Darby protest, "[Rodolfo] is not required to show any remorse for the crime he committed against Leocadia, nor does he volunteer any… No punishment is expected or extracted" (175). Lappin puts it more acutely: "Can one talk of exemplarity and unpunished rape in the same breath?" (148).1 Indeed, if read literally, "La fuerza de la sangre" could be an apology for rape, evidence of what wondrous things happen to the victim in [End Page 201] its wake, for on the surface Leocadia's fortunes ultimately do nothing but rise as a consequence of Rodolfo's having violated her: her honor is restored, aristocrats legitimize her son, she and her family ascend from the poor nobility to the wealthy upper class, supported by in-laws who embrace the young wife and a husband who does as well. Along such lines, González Echevarría contends that the novella endorses "the positive power of evil, incarnated in sexual desire and the acts that it induces" (192).2 The narrator's repeated insistence that the heroine and her parents were thankful for the child born of the assault, and Leocadia's final proclamation that it was all worth it ("lo doy por bien empleado," 409), make the entire business very hard to swallow today.3 Ironic readings of the text have made it possible to live with Rodolfo and Cervantes as his creator.4 At the same time, an ironic reading—the text says one thing, but means something else—tends to obviate the need for archival research, investigations that can open up spaces for understanding something that is otherwise incomprehensible. Nonetheless, positioning the text inside its own social and literary context makes it possible to reconsider its three main stumbling blocks: Leocadia marries Rodolfo, she falls in love with him and weds him happily, and Cervantes appears to leave the rapist unrepentant and unpunished.5 It bears mention that the fictional mode of the tale exacerbates readers' discomfort, for Cervantes wrote "La fuerza de la sangre" dripping with the features of romance, which is to say wish-fulfillment fiction. Those features include heavy doses of symbolism, such as the cross Leocadia takes from Rodolfo's bedroom, loud narrative echoes of the romance vita of St. Leocadia, insertion of the divinity at crucial moments in the plot, and perfect structural symmetry.6 He padded the [End Page 202] narrative with unusually dense epithets, pre-placed adjectives signaling high expectations, opening with "anciano hidalgo," "deshonesta desenvoltura," "malos gustos" and "crueles entrañas," to cite a few (387; 388; 388; 389). The lexicon droops with the weight of symbolic hyperbole: Rodolfo and his prowling cohorts are wolves, Leocadia's family the sheep; the former are headed down a dark incline whereas the latter are headed up; Rodolfo leaves Toledo three days after raping Leocadia and returns when their son is seven years old, for example. The heroine's exclamations immediately following the rape, stylized, very long, and highly self-conscious, can hardly be called verisimilar, and the happy ending, as robust as it is superficial, closes the case with the resonance of a judge's gavel. These romance markers, combined with Leocadia's hyper-heroic features, lead readers to surmise that Rodolfo will suffer, in accordance with...

A TYPOLOGY OF ERRORS IN VARRO AND HIS EDITORS: A CLOSE LOOK AT SELECTED PASSAGES IN THE DE LINGUA LATINA

Abstract: Varro's De lingua Latina, our first grammatical treatise of any length written in Latin, is a problematic text: Varro's linguistic theory and practice are often at odds with what later grammarians do, and the text has come down to us in a very poor state. This article examines how modern scholars have often approached the transmitted text with preconceived notions, and how this has influenced editorial choices and subsequent interpretations. The piece also looks at Varro's own linguistic practices and predilections, and how he sometimes reaches conclusions that are logically inconsistent and indefensible.