Prose Fiction Research Articles

Pragmatic particles as distinguishing features of registers

Abstract The study explores the potential of utilizing particle use data to differentiate between seven Estonian registers: everyday conversation, institutional interaction, printed media (newspapers), prose fiction, academic prose, instant messaging, and internet comments. The objective is to develop a simple yet effective model that enables researchers to comprehend the internal logic behind register differentiation based on particle use. Particles are considered promising differentiators due to their independence from text content. The article outlines the chosen method, the model creation, and the testing process. A key finding reveals that hierarchical relationships between particles within registers prove more reliable indicators than general use frequencies. The method involves establishing correspondences between particle pairs and register pairs, facilitating the measurement of distances between registers. During testing, the model demonstrates high accuracy across registers, encountering some difficulties in categorizing fiction and institutional interaction. Overall, the study confirms the efficacy of the proposed method in distinguishing registers based on particle use, underscoring the significance of particles in linguistic analysis.

Approaches and Benefits of Teaching English through Literature Curriculum at Myanmar Universities: Insights from Stakeholders

The curriculum serves as a fundamental bridge between teachers and students, fostering an effective learning environment. This qualitative research investigates the pedagogical approaches employed by English literature teachers and evaluates the perceived benefits of using an English literature curriculum in EFL classrooms of Myanmar. The study involved 27 English literature teachers, six government officials, and three local business leaders through interviews, classroom observations, and focus group discussions. Four primary teaching approaches were identified: Paraphrastic, Information-Based, Language-Based, and Integrated Approaches. These methodologies are specifically designed to meet the diverse needs of students, thereby enriching their educational experiences. The research employed purposive sampling to select participants and conducted thematic analysis on the collected data through content and document analysis. The findings underscore the significance of integrating various literature genres, such as prose fiction, short stories, novels, poetry, and drama, into language education. This integration not only enhances language proficiency but also fosters critical thinking and cultural awareness among students. The study highlights the importance of a multifaceted approach to teaching literature, which can cater to different learning styles and preferences. To advance research in EFL education and pedagogy, future studies should focus on investigating specific pedagogical approaches, assessing the impact of digital technologies, and conducting longitudinal studies to deepen the understanding of literature’s role in language learning. The insights from this study provide valuable implications for curriculum developers, educators, and policymakers in enhancing the effectiveness of literature-based language education.

Comic timing in prose fiction

Abstract This article explores the perception of comic timing effects in prose fiction and the involvement of this effect in a reader’s ability to recognise and appreciate humour. It suggests that the effect of comic timing, generally, results from perceived changes in pace rather than absolute timing. In a written text, a comic timing effect can be constructed linguistically through changes in perceived narrative urgency. In the passages analysed here, this change is from a state of impeded urgency, where textual features that encourage a sense of pace are combined with features that diminish this, to a state where the impediment to urgency is removed. This corresponds with and contributes to the reader’s sense of emergence from the text world, a positional shift that encourages their sense of sharing humour with the author.

Women, Horses and Dogs. A Reading of Sorana Gurian's Novel from the Animal Studies Perspective

Sorana Gurian's proverbial passion for pets, almost unnoticed in Romanian literary history, deserves a careful analysis, especially because it was directly recognized as and even constituted the foundation of some substantial pages of memoir or fiction prose, written by this cosmopolite, intriguing, and spectacular author, who linked her biographical existence to several Moldavian, Romanian and French spaces. Animals have a completely exceptional importance especially in the novel "The days never come back" (1945) – where the number of animal references is huge (compared to any other Romanian fictional prose, regardless of the era in which they were written). The text contains over two hundred references to dogs and their equivalents from the general semantic field (puppy, whelp), or from the particular one (basset, greyhound, borzoi, fox, etc.), over a hundred references to horses and several hundred other references to cats, rodents (mice, voles, rats, ferrets), birds (from swallows or sparrows to eagles) and insects of various kinds (from crickets to dragonflies). Of all these species, dogs and horses – by far, the protagonists' (Vivian, Ann and her father, nicknamed the Chief) favorites – are frequently particularized even nominally, because from the perspective of the doctor's extended family, they are true friends and communication partners, with rights sometimes superior to servants, acquaintances, or human friends. Far from being perceived as fictional ”commodity objects” or simple tools, used only to build or furnish the narrative world, animals are integrated, to varying degrees, in the families of main characters, they accompany, silently but expressively, their steps – either as partners with equal rights, either as identity doubles or complements – and even reflect, metonymically, the human's narrative evolution. Starting from these premises, my study (which combines elements of gender, trauma, and animal studies) will analyze both the various functions of the numerous elements of bestiary and animal characters, and the provocative stakes of their narrative valorization.

On Freedom-Loving Roosters and Beloved Goats: Animals, Humans, and Iraqi Narrative Prose 1948–1954

Abstract This article explores the relationships between humans and animals in Iraqi prose fiction from the 1940s and 1950s. It argues that Iraqi authors wrote about animals to underline not only the inhumane conditions in the nation’s rural regions but also the inhumanity of urban existence, which was associated with greed, deception, the absence of family and ethical values, and social death. More specifically, the article studies two short stories: ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī’s (1921–1992) “The South Wind” (“Rīḥ al-janūb”), and Shalōm (Shālūm) Darwīsh’s (1913–1997) “A Convoy from the Countryside” (“Qāfilah min al-rīf”). Both stories suggest that animals have emotions, and in both, the act of urbanization involves a woman’s sacrifice of an animal. The pairing of these two stories accentuates the need for class-based, anti-sectarian and ecocritical readings of Iraqi narrative prose. Reading texts written by Iraqis of various religions liberates such texts from impositions created by nationalists and from their insistence on allegorical meanings. What determines the humans’ fate in these stories is not their religion but rather their environment, their dwelling in southern Iraq, their relation to capital (and lack thereof), their family relations, and the very meaningful roles animals play in their lives.

The Emergence of Modern Prose Narrative in Iraq: Maḥmūd Aḥmad al-Sayyid and the Search for Form

Abstract This paper examines the efforts of the early twentieth century writer Mahmud Ahmad al-Sayyid (1903–1937) to remake literary culture in Iraq. Al-Sayyid’s essays advocated abandoning what he characterized as socially disinterested and decorative prose, urging Arab writers to embrace a literature of social commitment. Al-Sayyid charted a path that sought to distance Arabic cultural production from European influence, envisioning literary rebirth through the politics of anti-colonialism and by establishing solidarity with other colonized peoples. Yet these efforts were itinerant and often contradictory. Al-Sayyid’s circuitous path toward an embrace of the realist short story embodies the complexities of cultural formation during a dramatic historical shift. Aesthetically, these complexities manifest in the syncretism of al-Sayyid’s fiction, which engaged with and reproduced extant Arabic literary forms and themes. This article historicizes the emergence of a modern prose tradition in Iraq through critical assessments of the early modern Iraqi maqāmah and the short prose form of the ruʾyā, arguing that the circulations of these local forms were critical to the making of the reformist prose of al-Sayyid. It then examines the novella Jalāl Khālid, arguing that the text’s formal indeterminacy and narration of romantic and revolutionary failure inscribes an ironic stance toward the project of the nation and its aesthetic corollary, the novel. Finally, the article analyzes al-Sayyid’s short story “Sakrān” (1929), which is emblematic of a decades-long realist trend in Iraqi prose fiction that reoriented Iraqi prose toward a global trend of literary realism in the global south.

Development of teaching materials for writing short stories based on multi-modal through the Glide Apps platform

Developing a multimodal short story writing application is an innovative step in improving students' understanding and ability to write short stories. This study aims to develop and test the effectiveness of an application for learning to write short stories through the Glide Apps platform. This study adopts a research and development (R&D) method to develop multimodal short story writing teaching materials through the Glide Apps platform by integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches. The effectiveness test was conducted using a pseudo-experimental method for students of Kuningan University taking the anatomy of fictional prose course through a one-group pretest-posttest design to evaluate the impact of the application. The results of the effectiveness test provide a positive picture of the potential of this application as an effective tool in improving short story writing skills as a whole. This application presents various learning methods, theories, and exercises that gadgets can access flexibly. This application also provides short story writing assignment facilities via email. The results of this study have positive implications, especially in developing innovative learning methods that can improve students' literacy and creativity in writing short stories.

Form, Function and Meaning of “Satua I Siap Selem” (A Cultural Linguistic Review)

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to describe the form, function (of language) and meaning of Satua (Folklore) I Siap Selem from a Cultural Linguistic perspective. Research methods: This research is descriptive qualitative in nature using primary data collected using the observation method with the help of note-taking techniques. Data were analyzed using the matching method and the agih method and the results were presented using formal and informal techniques. Results and discussion: The form of Satua I Siap Selem is a discourse in the form of fictional prose. The general function of Satua I Siap Selem is as a means of entertainment, while based on the communicative function of language its functions are informational, expressive, directive, aesthetic and phatic. The implied meaning of Satua I Siap Selem states mutual love and togetherness, mutual respect and mutual help, evil or cunning, ingenuity and responsibility, as well as stupidity. Implications: Satua I Siap Selem contains a good life philosophy and moral messages so it is very good to serve as bedtime entertainment and character education for children.

The Value of Life from the Poem "Senja Di Pelabuhan Kecil " by Chairil Anwar with a Mimetic Approach

Literary works are works composed of the author's thoughts and feelings which describe imaginative thoughts and then express them into a work in oral or written form. Poetry is a text consisting of lines. The mimetic approach is an approach that views fictional prose as a human creation written based on materials taken from the universe. The aim of this research is to find out the meaning in Chairil Anwar's poetry and to improve the writer's understanding of the mimetic approach. The research method used in analyzing this poetry is the qualitative descriptive method. Based on the results of the analysis of the poem "Sunja Di Pelabuhan Kecil" it can be concluded that this poem contains the meaning of sadness about loss and the lesson taken from this poem is that as humans we must remain sincere about all destiny because in this world nothing is eternal.

Using Informal Language in Prose Fiction (In the Example of the Novels by Ch. Aitmatov)

The article deals with informal language used in the novels by Ch. Aitmatov. In the literary works of art authors don’t always state facts, narrate events and describe the setting, they also show the real conversation between characters or someone’s thoughts and feelings explicitly in the text. In such cases the authors use informal language taking into consideration age and mood of characters, settings and location where this or that dialogue or monologue is taking place. It’s revealed that informal language used in prose fiction has a figurative meaning, and depending on the context it may have both positive and negative meanings. It’s clear from examples that informal language is used purposefully by the author to create authentic atmosphere of informality and intimacy, to make sense of immediate communication with readers and to have satirical and ironic effect making his speech emotive and expressive.

Figures of discourse in prose fiction

Abstract The essay demonstrates the relationship between specific figures of discourse dominant in particular novels and the thematic concerns or plot patterns of each individual novel. The figures discussed are (1) enthymeme, prominent in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and important also in Joyce’s Ulysses; (2) hypallage, part of the rhetoric of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, reflecting its plot pattern and its cluster of concerns; and (3) blazon, which helps to convey the implied author’s critique of the attitudes of the first-person narrator of Lolita.

Symbolics of ‘The White Cloud of Genghis Khan’ by Chinghiz Aitmatov Through the Spectacle of Mythopoetics

The presented article is devoted to the most important aspects of the interaction between mythologization and the principles of constructing a symbol in the text structure of original prose fiction. The author attempted to reveal the process of transforming the mythologization and symbolization of the image into one of the conceptual components of the link-building mechanisms in a 'novella towards a novel’ by Chinghiz Aitmatov - ‘The White Cloud of Genghis Khan’. The author focuses on the myth, acting in the structure of the novel ‘The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years’ at the level of symbolic-ideological, idea-bearing, and spatio-temporal paradigm while being aesthetically implemented through composition, plot, image/coding system, certain motives, symbols, and other artistic and aesthetic means and thuswise forming various combining components of cited works into a single structurally whole artistic expression.Aitmatov's artistic endeavour is characterized by the original focus of the myth in solving such universal ontological issues as ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘betrayal’, ‘meaning of existence’, ‘mystery of death’, etc. Also, to depict the contrast between the eternal universal categories, Aitmatov often resorts to binary opposition. Thus, since the latter performs a structure-forming function in the architectonics of the artwork (determining the dynamics of the plot development), it also helps explain the dynamics and statics of characters and their actions in time and space. The article reveals the features of mythopoetic means that perform auxiliary functions of expanding the philosophical, ideological, and original artistic concept of the literary work. The conducted study summarized and identified three ways of considering a symbol as a text-generating and text-binding factor: in terms of peculiarities of the author's writing techniques, from the standpoint of its involvement in the general poetics of the writer, and the point of view of the formation of a literary text’s conceptual and philosophical basis.

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC MANIFESTATION OF MODALEM AND SPECIFICS OF DIALOGIC DISCOURSE TRANSLATION (based on the parallel corpus)

The article centers on the description of the category of subjective modality of dialogic discourse in terms of its semantic and pragmatic nature, exemplify the concept of modalem as a semantic marker of a verbal message, a means of expressing the subjective modality and a semantic quantum of the speaker’s remarks in a literary discourse. It alsо provides a semantic typology of modalems and illustrates the role of modalems with equivalent verbal content. The structure of dialogic discourse includes: producer – reference situation – remark – recipient. These are the components of communicative situation. The semantic load of such a communication conveys an obligatory modal aspect which is formed by the superposition of semantic and pragmatic coordinates. The process of subjectification (modalization) of the speaker’s remark in fictional discourse begins with the subjective view and perspective one of objective reality, described through a selected subjective mode of comprehension which represents the subjective modality of discourse. In other words, the subjective modal marking of discourse implies the speaker’s intention. Modalization is a complex process of including additional meanings onto the verbal information of a remark, determined by the author-producer’s intentions and their attitude towards the referential meaning. It serves as a pragmatic and axiological quantum of information that the producer embeds in their verbal message. The deciphering of modalem in the context of direct communicative interaction, as exemplified by the dialogic discourse of fictional prose, represents the semantic link that binds together “what the speaker said” and “what they meant to say” into a single semantic whole. For beginner translators, working with corpora for identifying the ways to convey modalems in different languages serves both a reliable basis for successful translation activities and an essential source for practicing interpreting and simultaneous translating.

Revealing the Commonalities Existing in Depictions of Disabled Female Characters in Prose Fictions: A Study of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”

Literature has numerous dimensions, among which novels and short stories are worth the mention. Stories from the past have been including disabled male and female characters in their plots, but the question of how these characters have been depicted is still debatable. When it comes to writers of the disability study, it has been noticed that they have been trying to establish the present state of people with impairments with the help of their deformed or disabled characters. It has been witnessed that novels and short stories concentrate on bringing out the darker side of a disabled person by focusing on his/ her issues and sufferings. The objective of this paper is to expose that literary works rarely focus on the brighter facet of a disabled character, especially a woman. It projects the differences that are endured by fictional individuals. The analysis undertakes the theory of Intersectionality to support its arguments of projecting the discrepancies in the picturisations of disabled female dramatic personas in novels and short stories. Hence, the research with the aid of select prose narratives brings out the conventional sketches of fictional impaired women.

An intertextual reading of the novel Defend the Name.

The general objective of this intertextual analysis's was to explore Wolde's novel Defend the Name (1969) with the view to identify and interpret the several thematic and stylistic intertexts that are woven throughout the narrative. Based on available research, there is a scarcity of critical studies that have utilized the theory of intertextuality for the analysis and interpretation of Ethiopian prose fiction in English, particularly within the novel genre. The current study was aimed to partially fill in this critical gap. In doing so, the theory of intertextuality is employed as theoretical-analytical framework of the study. The findings of this intertextual analysis concentrated on the thematic and stylistic intertexts that were woven throughout the plot of the book Defend the Name. These intertexts included biblical allusions, colonial literary devices, contemporary theoretical and ideological works, and cultural and historical discourses that the book intertextually engages with in addition to other literary and nonliterary works. This study provides insightful information about the thematic diversity of Defend the Name and its involvement with multiple intertexts through its intertextual analysis. It enhances the reader's comprehension of the story, characters, and larger sociopolitical situations that the novel addresses, demonstrating the author's skill in fusing together a variety of literary, scriptural, ideological, and cultural aspects.

Literature Review of Implementation HOTS-Based Assessment Instruments in Learning to Write Prose Fiction in Higher Education

Competence in writing prose fiction is one of the writing competencies that Indonesian literature students must have. The higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) based fiction writing competency assessment instrument is something that cannot be separated from students' achievement of fiction prose writing competency. HOTS-based competency assessment is one of the measuring tools in the process of developing student writing competency. This research was a literature review research on the implementation of a HOTS-based fiction writing competency assessment instrument in higher education. This research used the PRISMA method. A search for relevant literature was carried out through Google Scholar database with the criteria being limited to articles published in Sinta 1-3 indexed journals in 2016-2023. 12 articles met the criteria and became material for analysis. The results of these findings indicated that the research related to learning to write HOTS-based fiction prose in higher education had not yet been carried out. The HOTS-based writing competency assessment instrument in higher education had only been used for general Indonesian language learning, it had not been used in the realm of literature learning. The findings of this systematic literature review recommended that there was a need for further research in the field of development, implementation, and evaluation of Indonesian literature learning assessment instruments, especially the development of HOTS-based fiction prose writing competency assessment instruments in higher education.

World-Building and the New Astronomy in Seventeenth-Century Prose Fictions of Cosmic Voyage, by Evelyn Koch

World-Building and the New Astronomy in Seventeenth-Century Prose Fictions of Cosmic Voyage, by Evelyn Koch

“El prisionero”: a romance in a story by João Guimarães Rosa

Recorded since the 16th century by oral and written traditions, the romance “El prisionero” was transmitted by different ethnic groups, from the Iberian Peninsula to Spanish and Portuguese colonies of the New World. Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa rephrased this vast repertoire of traditions in his prose fiction. Considering this premise and reference works on the Iberian romance, this study aims to discuss the possible influence of “El prisionero” in “Quadrinho de estória” (1967), examining themes and motives of the tale and the romance.

How Literary Texts ‘Stage’ Code-Switching

Abstract This article explores the possibilities and limitations of the sociolinguistic notion of code-switching for the analysis of multilingual texts, in particular those belonging to literature as it is commonly understood (prose fiction, drama and poetry). In such (con)texts, I argue, code-switching is ‘staged’: produced rather than reproduced. Even when texts stage bilingual conversations with the aim of imitating real-life speech events, mimesis is mediated by the shift from spoken to written mode, which contrasts with the presence and proximity typical of (spoken) verbal interaction. While this mediation limits the applicability of sociolinguistic notions when discussing literary corpora, several examples from both North America (Junot Díaz, Gloria Anzaldúa and Ana Lydia Vega) and Europe (Lydie Salvayre, Ágota Kristóf, Franz Kafka and Leo Tolstoy) show how literary texts ‘stage’ code-switching.

СПОСОБЫ РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИИ НЕВЕРБАЛЬНЫХ КОМПОНЕНТОВ ОБЩЕНИЯ В ПОВЕСТИ А. П. ЧЕХОВА «СТЕПЬ»

The dialogical fragment of text is a part of prose fiction, where responses (characters’ speech) and remarks (author’s speech) represent the communication between characters. The characters’ dialogue may include the description of nonverbal components that make fictional dialogue closer to the natural one due to the constant presence of nonverbal components in the oral communication. In this article the ways of including the nonverbal components of characters' communication have been analyzed. The remarks accompanying the characters’ words may be placed in the different parts of dialogue according to the characters’ responds. The nonverbal components are more often included in the interpositive and postpositive remarks and are located after the verb with the meaning of the speaking process which is obligatory for the structure of the remark. The verbs, gerunds, verb and noun phrases represent the nonverbal components in the text. The remarks that accompany the characters’ speech of the dialogical fragments of text represent the characters’ emotional state and feelings (laughter, crying, wonder, joy, dryness, contempt). In the work the description of the nonverbal components that accompany the characters’ speech may be correlated with the author’s description of the character out of the communication. It contributes to the creation of the holistic artistic images. Key words: dialogical fragment of text, response, remark, nonverbal components, images of characters