Prosaic Language Research Articles

Phonology of Kafi Noonoo ideophones

This paper is the first and original work on the phonology of Kafi Noonoo ideophones. All of the data used in this study are collected through fieldwork. Ideophones are attested word classes with peculiar phonology in that they break some phonological rules of the prosaic language. Kafi Noonoo ideophones also undergo unique phonological features from the regular phonology of the language. Kafi Noonoo ideophones use all the phonemes of the regular language and additional five click-like sounds (ʘ, ǃ, ǁ, ʞ, and tchip). The click-like sounds do not found in the language and the regular phonology of Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic languages in general. Kafi Noonoo ideophones show different suprasegmental features from the regular phonology of the language. Another striking phonological feature in ideophones of the language is that ideophones break the phonotactics and suprasegmental features rules of the prosaic language. Moreover, Kafi Noonoo ideophones exhibit some syllable structures that are specific to ideophones. These are the (C1VC2C2), (CVVV…), (C1VVV…C2) and (C1VC2C2C2…). Furthermore, Kafi Noonoo is a tone language. The language has high and low tones. As the result of the study depicts ideophones of the language constitute both open and closed syllable shapes.

Review: A Taste of My Life: A Memoir in Essays and Recipes, by Chitrita Banerji

Review: <i>A Taste of My Life: A Memoir in Essays and Recipes</i>, by Chitrita Banerji

Forms in Motion: The Poetic Prose of Robert Macfarlane and Kathleen Jamie

Abstract This essay examines the use of poetic prose in recent non-fiction by Robert Macfarlane and Kathleen Jamie. Drawing on selected chapters from Macfarlane’s The Old Ways (2012), Jamie’s Sightlines (2012), and a prose poem from Jamie’s The Bonniest Companie (2015), it demonstrates the hybridity of contemporary nature writing by paying attention to the works’ transgressions of the bounds of verse and prose. After introducing the nineteenth-century debate on differences between lyric and prosaic language and outlining Romantic efforts to poeticize prose descriptions of nature and environment, the article discusses Macfarlane’s and Jamie’s role in this conversation. I argue that formal transgressions – evident in metrical and rhyming effects, typographical experiments, imagery, and allusion – are especially strong in passages that describe movement: in accounts of walking or in observations of the shifting motions of light and weather. Prose forms that approximate and integrate lyricism here enhance a sense of transience as well as exhibit the continuity of human and non-human worlds. Self-consciously tracing the footsteps of other poets who have traversed genre boundaries, Macfarlane’s and Jamie’s work establishes nature writing as a form that is persistently on the move.

İngiliz Toplumunda Sınıf Farkındalığının Hicvi: John Arden’in Live like Pigs Adlı Tiyatro Oyunu

John Arden’s 1961 play Live like Pigs presents a mockery of the clash between British underclass, working class, and middle class. In its playful tone that is enhanced by the juxtaposition of the prosaic language with the poetic use of songs, the seventeen-scene play aims to make fun of class-conscious British society in a bitter way. With several characters representing the underclass way of life, such as Old Croaker, Blackmouth, and Daffodil, as well as the Sailor’s household, the play touches upon several behavioral codes and living patterns in the multiple layers of the class-conscious society of Britain. Those codes and patterns vary from conforming or not conforming to the expectations of the government and society as a whole, economic dependence on welfare support, the use of the gardens as tools of establishing the norms of moral and aesthetic values, as well as expected gender roles. This article seeks to read Arden’s play closely from a cultural studies perspective, which reveals the author’s mockery of the clash between these three classes. Using the theories of hegemony and ideology as a springboard for discussion, it analyzes how these three classes are in a power struggle with one another.

Reading Between the Lines

The non-normative structural possibilities of poetry, with its focus on emotion, imagery and sound, makes it a useful way to portray inner experiences that are difficult to express through traditionally descriptive, more prosaic language. As a lecturer, artistic designer and researcher with dyslexia I have often had to use alternative paths to succeed professionally. Both professionally and privately I share arising complexities of my inner intellectual and felt life through poetry. This is a flow of consciousness about my dyslexia.

Women prefer men who use metaphorical language when paying compliments in a romantic context

Language plays an important role in romantic attachment. However, it is unclear whether the structure and topic of language use might influence potential mate choice. We investigated 124 female students’ preference for compliments paid by males incorporating either literal or metaphoric (conventional/novel) language and targeting their appearance or possessions (house) throughout their menstrual cycle. Male faces paired with novel metaphorical compliments were rated as more attractive by women than those paired with literal ones. Compliments targeting appearance increased male attractiveness more than possessions. Interestingly, compliments on appearance using novel metaphors were preferred by women in a relationship during the fertile phase but by single women during the luteal phase. A similar pattern of altered face attraction ratings was subsequently shown by subjects in the absence of the verbal compliments and even though they were unable to recognize the faces. Thus the maintained attraction bias for faces previously associated with figurative language compliments appears to be unconscious. Overall this study provides the first evidence that women find men who typically use novel metaphorical language to compliment appearance more attractive than those using prosaic language or complimenting possessions. The evolutionary significance for such a language use bias in mate selection is discussed.

Music and Language in Ancient Verse: The Dynamics of an Antagonistic Concord

In antiquity, the relationship between “music”, “poetry”, and “language” was very different from the way they relate to each other today, for back then each of these mediums was endowed with a distinct, independent signifying code expressing a semiosis all its own. However, these separate “semiospheres” nonetheless never ceased growing towards and into one another. This is so because music and “melic” poetry were believed to have the capacity to denote something ordinary language could not denote but could not do without, namely “etymonic truth”. As a result, the users of ordinary language were obsessed with divining the “hyponoia” poets encoded in music and chant. Above all, they wanted this hyponoia to constitute the signifié of their language. For this reason, the meaning expressed in language was subject to a process in which it was constantly being “deported” from its ordinary acceptations and transported towards meanings encoded in music. However, this “deterritorialization” of ordinary meaning never resulted in a full “reterritorialization” upon the terrain of the truth encoded in music. Musicians and poets would not tolerate it. As far as they were concerned, music and poetry would cease being “truthful” if the semiosis they conveyed and the semiosis conveyed by language were interchangeable. For, again, as a signifying code, prosaic language was sui generis incapable of representing the truth. Hence, the relationship between these three codes consisted of a sort of intersemiotic dynamic equilibrium in which language was continuously evolving towards a non-linguistic expression of meaning which conferred truth upon it and what it means. And yet the music and poetry which were the source of that truth deliberately kept language from consummating the aspiration of accosting the truth they encoded. This paper explores the mechanics of this intersemiotic dynamic equilibrium.

A LINGUAGEM E A PAISAGEM NA TRÍADE DO RIO DA POÉTICA DE JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO

This paper proposes a representation of the geographical landscape that is part of the formation of Brazilian identity process and the literature was a way that materialize this conception, from a study of Joao Cabral de Melo Neto poetry, approaching the poems: O CAO SEM PLUMAS, O RIO and MORTE E VIDA SEVERINA, in them the landscape and water stand out in the language as a scuffle fight, tortured landscape, twisted branches as hands beg are caused by refined poetic writing and by portraying the degradation of Capibaribe River, one of the most important symbols of the city of Recife (PE), discusses the landscape and issues related to individual and social aspects of being human. In these poems, the poetic built reflects the experience of the riparian man with environment. It adopts the prosaic language as metaphorical sign to give voice to the river, prints the concreteness and reality in the man. We seek to link through the study of the poems the landscape aspects, images described and still a relationship with water and the frantic search for northeastern man for quality of life. The article is in a bibliographic review in which it has the theoretical referential as authors: Vesentini and Vlach (2002); Marandola and Mota (2007); Rocha (2011), among others. These studies reinforce the interest in studying literary papers analyzing them from a geographical way.

Specifying intent at the Museum of Childhood

In a 2009 interview, architect Peter St John of Caruso St John Architects defined a good architect as one who makes few compromises, highlighting precise instructions as imperative in achieving this. An architectural project, St John stated, 'is far more likely to work well if you put an enormous effort into defining what you want, to achieve quality’. At Caruso St John Architects' 2006 entrance addition to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, London [1], the precise specification of mortar and mastic joints throughout a cut-stone facade was employed to define expectations of quality in the constructed facade. These specifications, written in accordance with the recommendations of professional practice, set out stringent expectations of dimensional perfection. When dimensional variations during design development and construction threatened to disrupt these expectations, the precise definition of quality shifted, becoming less defined by dimensional perfection and more reliant upon the ‘architectural intentions’ underpinning the project. In referencing conceptual, ideological, historical and technological intentions which were difficult definitively to express, this critical phrase – ‘architectural intentions’ – is examined here in terms of its ambiguity in the context of the written specification [2].Ambiguity in the written specification is emphatically rejected by regulatory and advisory bodies in the architectural profession, which frequently advise that the written specification must provide, above all else, certainty. In The Architects' Journal in 1989, author Francis Hall went as far as describing the properly drafted specification as the ‘one certain opportunity’ for an architect to set down a ‘definitive and enforceable expression of standard and quality’. ‘Properly drafted’ is typically translated as a prosaic language, specifically devoid of poetic content. The ability of the unambiguous written specification to convey adequately the poetic content of architectural intentions has, however, been under critique since its inception.

Valéry’s Meta-formalism

Valéry’s Meta-formalism Steven Winspur T HERE IS a WIDESPREAD BELIEF that Paul Valéry’s poems and essays epitomize formalism’s major weakness—to remain cut off from what we sometimes call “ the real world.” 1 “ La vraie malédiction en ce monde,” declares Yves Bonnefoy in an essay on Valéry’s poetry, “ est d’y être réduit au jeu.” 2Valéry, it would seem, is one of the main players in this game. To show just how wrong such a view is—not only for an understanding of Valéry but of formalists in general—I shall discuss in turn three propositions that underpin the stan­ dard interpretation of Valéry’s formalism. The first of these contends that poetic language, unlike everyday speech, does not have the function of telling bits of information. It is “ intransitive,” as Valéry called it—which is why the standard form of the novel, modelled on such openings as “ La marquise sortit à cinq heures. . . seemed so worthless to him. Literary language becomes effective only when it gives up any transitive or representational role. Or, as he wrote in his volume Tel Quel, “ Tandis que l’intérêt des écrits en prose est comme hors d’eux-mêmes et naît de la consommation du texte —l’intérêt des poèmes ne les quitte pas ni ne peut s’en éloigner.” 3 The second commonplace culled from Valéry maintains that the necessity of a poem is purely internal to the poem itself, with the result that the poem seems to be cut off from any “ world” beyond its confines. To support this point one might quote Valéry’s dictum that “ Un beau vers renaît indéfiniment de ses cendres, il redevient—comme l’effet de son effet—cause harmonique de soi-même” (O I, 1510), or else his com­ ment on Mallarmé’s poetry that “ le ‘fond’ n’est plus cause de la forme: il en est l’un des effets” (O I, 710). The third, and final, commonplace is this: whereas Valéry does believe in such a thing as poetic necessity, it is in fact very limited in scope, since poetry is essentially an exercise built upon arbitrary rules: “ Les trois meilleurs exercices,” wrote the poet in his Cahiers, “—les seuls peut-être pour une intelligence sont: de faire des vers; de cultiver les mathématiques; le dessin. Ces trois activités,” he continued, “ sont par excellence exercices—c’est-à-dire des actes non nécessaires à conditions imposées, arbitraires, et rigoureuses.” 4 Vol. XXXI, No. 2 39 L ’E spr it C réa te u r I. If we start with the first of these propositions, namely that there is a fundamental opposition between poetic and prosaic language, we find that on closer inspection Valéry is establishing a much more subtle dis­ tinction. While it may be true that prose exhausts itself in its pragmatic goal (i.e., the transitive communication of its message: e.g., “ Pass me the salt!” ), it is not the case that poetry is cut off from pragmatic goals. For as most readers of Valéry have pointed out, the term “ Charmes,” which the poet used as a title for his second volume of poems, designates precisely this sort of pragmatic effect on the reader—it is the enchant­ ment produced by poetry itself. Indeed his 1942 re-edition of the volume made the necessary connection between poetry and its goal quite explicit —“ Charmes: c’est-à-dire Poèmes.” The enchantment cannot be sepa­ rated from the poem that produces it; the goal of the text cannot be cut off from the text itself, and vice versa, so that poetry becomes defined by its effects. Here we find the true difference between prose and poetry, since as Valéry wrote in Tel Quel, “ Est prose l’écrit qui a un but exprima­ ble par un autre écrit” (O II, 555), whereas the goal of a poem cannot be separated from the poem itself and translated into another form. I repeat the quotation I gave earlier: “ Tandis que l’intérêt...

Wittgenstein: The Nature of Philosophy

Wittgenstein, con mayor profundidad que cualquier otro filósofo, comprendió la naturaleza de la filosofía. Sus observaciones acerca de ella se asemejan a los diagnósticos de un sicoanalista sobre su paciente. La filosofía era para él una aberración neurótica en espera de tratamiento. De ahí que, desde su perspectiva, comprender un problema filosófico sea de hecho solucionarlo. Lo que el filósofo pretende es alterar los modos establecidos de expresión, creyendo al mismo tiempo que dice algo profundo acerca de la naturaleza de las cosas. No se percata de que sus proposiciones.son semánticamente ociosas. Ejemplos notables son las tesis de Heraclito de que todo fluye y la solipsista de que sólo mis experiencias son reales. Como en muchos otros casos de proposiciones filosóficas, en estos se pretende retirar de la circulación una frase (e.g., 'permanece el mismo') mientras que se mantiene fija su antitesis. Las tesis filosóficas se refuerzan por fantasías inconscientes a las que dan expresión intelectual. También el solipsismo es una propuesta de cambio de convenciones lingüísticas, sin consecuencias para la conducta. Afirmaciones como la de que sólo yo soy real tienen, empero, la apariencia de una aseveración factual, pero en el fondo sólo crean la ilusión de que se esta diciendo algo profundo. Ésa es precisamente su función. Las oraciones solipsistas le confieren a sus usuarios un "monopolio del ego" altamente satisfactorio, presentando como una teoría lo que no es mas que una modificación lingüística. La posición solipsista tiene tres componentes: 1) un uso académico de palabras como 'real' que hace que esta se aplique únicamente a la referenda del pronombre 'yo'; 2) una apariencia engañosa de que la oración solipsista es parte de una teoría que sirve para enunciar hechos y 3) una fantasía inconsciente de auto-agrandamiento narcisista generado por las connotaciones del uso académico de 'real'. [Alejandro Tomasini Bassols]

Essaying Montaigne: A Study of the Renaissance Institution of Writing and Reading (review)

Reviews137 porary applications, and varied associations" (p. 7) of certain key words of Blake's myth. Unlike some previous scholarly expeditions into Blake-land, Hilton's archaeological effort uncovers much more than linguistic potsherds, and at times his excavations approach the profundity of the rich semantic mines explored by Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida. In investigating, for example, the significance of"chains" in Blake's poetry, Hilton links Blake's chains to "the eighteenth century's mainfold chains" (p. 56) of being, time, cause and effect, gravity, love, society, thought, and language in order to demonstrate how, for Blake, "the chain's logic of restraint is finally located and manifested in the prison of prosaic language continuously forged by reason and memory" (p. 76). Blake's strategy for escaping these chains, Hilton reveals, is through "the multiplication ofsignificance, breaking the vocal chain at its weakest link, the univocal sign" (p. 64), "through . . . contradictions in logic . . . and by dint of repetition . . . , [whereby] we are driven to wonder what the words mean and how they mean" (p. 66). Hilton concludes that "Blake's treatment of chains directs itselftoward an apocalyptic uncovering oflanguage, an unchaining of thought and association . . . , where the chains begin to dissolve and melt together, where, rather than a universe interlinked and netted with univocal lines ofdiscourse, each in its very existence bespeaking absence or loss, we participate in the plenum of beingpresence , 'the Universal Brotherhood of Eden'" (pp. 77-78). Other words which Hilton explores include "lamentation," "fibres," "veil," "vale," "spectres ," and "stars." "Veil," for example, is found to assimilate "in sound with 'vale,' in sound and graphics with 'vein' and 'vile,' in literal similarity and reversal with 'live' and 'evil,' and in semantic association with 'tabernacle,' 'chastity,' and 'nature'" (p. 2). Although one might wish, at times, for a more systematic exposition both of Blake's myth and of his poetics, such a desire should not be taken to indicate a shortcoming of Hilton's work, which is less like a lecture on botany than a genial tour of a lush and spacious botanical garden; the stroll is at once delightful and enlightening, and its goal lies not so much in its conclusion as in the sights perceived along the way. Thus despite the inherent limitations of a method which considers Blake's words apart from their context in the poems, Hilton's analysis, by recontextualizing Blake's words, not only expands our understanding of Blake's meaning and method but also instructs us in a more rewarding manner of reading. Where previous readings had reduced Blake's poetry to a thin melodic line, Hilton's performance, although only of a few chords, produces a rich, polysemous resonance which provides not only a rewarding experience but also a new awareness of the possibilities of signification. Iowa State UniversityMark Bracher Essaying Montaigne: A Study of the Renaissance Institution of Writing and Reading, by John O'Neill; 244 pp. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, $25.00. John O'Neill is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, and has an impressive list of previous publications in the general area of sociology of knowledge. It is somewhat surprising, then, to see that his latest work is a study ofMontaigne's Essays, and that it tackles many of the traditional problems of Montaigne criticism, as well as the critics themselves. 138Philosophy and Literature The introduction is entitled "To the Reader," thus mimicking Montaigne's "Au Lecteur." Many of O'Neill's positions are articulated in this introduction: particularly his belief that friendship should be the model for reader and writer who "participate freely in making sense together as a personal and historical institution" (p. 9). The concept of "making sense together" is familiar to us from O'Neill's sociological work. The problem which arises in applying this concept to literature is that it involves a confusion of "real" and "ideal" writers and readers, who are never sorted out in the volume. Montaigne's "To the Reader," for example, is taken seriously as a program for the real twentieth-century reader, without considering the literary conventions behind Renaissance prefaces and dedications. O'Neill's strong bias against most previous Montaigne criticism also...

The Psalms and Personal Counseling

The therapeutic role of the symbolic language in the Psalms is discussed. First, the symbolic language of the psalm allows for the expression of difficulties and emotions not expressible through normal prosaic language. Second, the depth of expression may allow the troubled person to identify with another human being in comparable difficulty and thus find hope through the other's experience. Third, the symbolic language of the psalm may restructure the symbols by which a person lives his life and thus lead to a new manner of living. With the analysis of the language completed, the technique is applied to three psalms by tracing their potential impact on the reader's mind. Finally, suggestions are made for use of the Psalms in individual or group therapy.

The Intellectual in Politics: The case of the Webbs

In some obvious respects, the Webbs were the very quintessence of the ‘intellectual in politics’, the latter-day version of the philosopher-king. They themselves were given to more prosaic language. Beatrice Webb described their marriage as a ‘partnership’, and Sidney gave as their aim the ‘permeation’ of politics. And like good intellectuals, they were not satisfied simply to permeate; they developed a theory of ‘permeation’ to explain how and why they were permeating. What is more - and this was part of their theory — they permeated incessantly, at meetings of parliamentary committees and the London County Council, at soirees and dinner parties at other people’s houses and their own. Beatrice Webb prided herself on her subtlety and ingenuity in converting social occasions into political ones, but she seems to have deceived no one. H. G. Wells described her home as a ‘political factory’, and other of her guests confessed that on entering her parlour they were uncomfortably reminded of the parable of the spider and the fly. - Introductory paragraph.

God Send Us Men

As the verses succeed each other, the qualities of the good teacher stand forth. A change in emphasis or wording here and there is all that is needed for a perfect description of the kind of teachers the colleges want. My task is to state that description in more prosaic language. I shall begin with some obvious comments, not always clearly recognized or remembered, about the nature of a college. A college is not a small edition of a universitv. A universitv has the obligation to discover as well as to disseminate knowledge. It is a society of scholars whose function as teachers is incidental to their function as guardians of our intellectual heritage, interpreters of the present scene, and pioneers along the frontiers of the intellectual world. As the name implies, a university is a place of universal knowledge. A college, however, is a society of teachers and students, and the primary purpose of the society is the education of the students. This was well expressed by Elton Trueblood in an address before the Association of American Colleges. A college