Stock Phrases Research Articles

Semantics and Experience: Universal Metaphors of Time in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho.

Are there universal as well as culturally particular experiences and expressions of time? In Semantics and Experience, Alverson questions the widely held anthropological assumption that temporal expression and experience represent little more than local cultural constructions. Drawing on extensive data from four widely divergent languages and cultures - English, Mandarin, Hindi and Sesotho - he argues that people everywhere experience in fundamentally similar ways. Alverson begins by studying expressions in collocations - stock phrases, idioms, aphorism, or other formulaic expressions. He then examines the metaphors that often compose these collocations and discovers that five basic, universal categories of temporal expression and experience appear in all four languages - despite the independence of these languages from one another and despite the differing conditions of belief, knowledge and institutional structure among their respective cultures. While metaphorically constituted collocations do reflect culturally particular features of ideology, Alverson concludes, they clearly reflect universals of time as well. Semantics and Experience offers linguistic analysis of expressions in four radically different languages and cultures. It reveals not only how such expressions vary as a function of ideological and cultural differences but also how, despite these differences, they reveal a basic similarity that points to their origin in a pan-human approach to the construction and cognition of space.

Authority and Orality in the Mahāyāna

AbstractThe Mahāyāna sūtras, acknowledged by scholars to have been composed centuries after the death of the Buddha, almost invariably begin with the stock phrase, “thus did I hear,” thereby maintaining the conceit of orality. The paper explores the role of this orality as it figures in strategies of authority for the Mahāyāna sūtras in Indian Buddhism. The paper considers at some length recent scholarship (notably that of Richard Gombrich) on the question of when Buddhist texts were first written down, in light of the widely read but highly problematic theories of orality put forth by Walter Ong and Jack Goody. The paper next compares the positions on speech (and by extension, orality) in the Mīmāmsaka view of the Vedas and in the Buddhist view of the word of the Buddha. Although Buddhist scholastics devoted a great deal of energy to attacking the Mīmāmsaka position of the eternal nature of the Vedas as sound and although scholars have tended to regard the Hindu and Buddhist positions as antithetical, there are significant unacknowledged affinities between the Mīmāmsaka and Buddhist positions which help explain why the Mahāyāna sūtras begin, “thus did I hear.” The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible significance of writing in the rise of the diverse association of cults of the book which we have come to call the Mahāyāna.

Drawingthe message across: A successful approach to the improvement of communicative interactions in aphasia?

Abstract It is certainly a prime goal of aphasia therapy to improve the communicativeskills of language-impaired individuals. However, depending on the overall severity of the language impairment only a rather limited set of stock phrases and a few vocabulary items become available again—in spite of considerable therapeutic efforts. A number of attempts have been made to augment the communicative skills of patients with severe aphasia by teaching them an alternative non-verbal mode of expression. Before commenting on the value of drawing as a communication aid it might be revealing to review the results of some of these attempts.

"Words Cannot Express": "Frankenstein's" Tripping on the Tongue

In Universal Pictures' 1931 Frankenstein, the creature, probably because he is outfitted with a brain that is sadly abnormal, degenerate, and without the usual assignment of furrows, can manage only rather pointless bestial (or motorcycle) noises. Meanwhile, his creator is gabbling on with a kind of manic Cary Grant aplomb, spilling even the secret of his resuscitating science (a ray in the spectrum beyond ultra-violet) and letting us know that, however questionable his control over his little boy, he is never at a loss for words, and good ones too. That's quite a switch from Mary Shelley's version. There, the self-educated creature has developed into some kind of Demosthenes/Joseph Goebbels whose dangerous fluency very nearly has the power to neutralize or obliterate the evidence of the senses and trap one within its eloquence. At least that's his creator's view of the matter, a view we may suspect a little, given that Victor is no master of the media himself. Sour grapes is a possibility that may urge itself on us as we listen with some annoyance to Victor's mumblings, his stock phrases, his wild and inclusive adjectives, and especially his verbal equivalents of quitting the game altogether: cannot express, I cannot describe, inexpressible pleasures, unspeakable rages. He's the editor, after all, and has an authority over the words that might even seem unfair; so when we find him throwing in the towel with something like No word, no expression could body forth ..., we may be tempted to sneer, Sure they could! Don't blame the language for your own inadequacy! Just ask your creature. He'll find the right words, and plenty of them! All this is pretty strange, this matching of the glib against the dumb, this apparent contest which is not really between words but between that which can be in words and that which cannot be in words or which reaches beyond words or which distrusts words or which doesn't know which words would suit or

Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory

Whether or not the term spectacle was originally taken from Henri Lefebvre's Critique de la vie quotidienne, its currency emerged from the activities in the late 1950s and early 1960s of the various configurations now designated as presituationist or situationist.1 The product of a radical critique of modernist art practice, a politics of everyday life, and an analysis of contemporary capitalism, its influence was obviously intensified with the publication of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle in 1967.2 And twenty-two years later, the word spectacle not only persists but has become a stock phrase in a wide range of critical and not-so-critical discourses. But, assuming it has not become completely devalued or exhausted as an explanation of the contemporary operation of power, does it still mean today what it did in the early '60s? What constellation of forces and institutions does it designate? And if these have mutated, what kind of practices are required now to resist their effects? One can still well ask if the notion of spectacle is the imposition of an illusory unity onto a more heterogenous field. Is it a totalizing and monolithic concept that inadequately represents a plurality of incommensurable institutions and events? For some, a troubling aspect about the term spectacle is the almost ubiquitous presence of the definite article in front of it, suggesting a single and seamless global system of relations. For others, it is a mystification of the functioning of power, a new opiate-of-the-masses type of explanation, a vague cultural-institutional formation with a suspicious structural autonomy. Or is a concept such as spectacle a necessary tool for the figuration of a radical systemic shift in the way power functions noncoercively within twentieth-century modernity? Is it an indispensable means of revealing as related what would otherwise appear as disparate and unconnected phenomena? Does it not show that a patchwork or mosaic of techniques can still constitute a homogenous effect of power?

Editor's Note

In the May 3, 1987 issue of Izvestiia S. V. Tiutiukin, a specialist on the Russian revolutionary movement, published a much deserved critical assessment of the Soviet historical establishment, in which he offered some urgent suggestions for how the new moods of reconstruction [perestroika] and openness [glasnost'], which promise to transform and revitalize Soviet society, might be applied to the historical profession. "The time has come," he said, "to rid history of various extraneous features and deformations, to return her civic spirit, honesty, and fortitude. Moreover, we must put an end to the irresponsibility, the negligence, the feckless repetition of stock phrases, and to the superficiality of which there is more than enough in historical science."1 To date, Soviet historical journals have yet to publish an outstanding piece of writing reflecting the new climate in the Soviet Union; however, maverick historians have raised criticisms similar to Tiutiukin's as well as related concerns on the pages of major newspapers.2 For those of us who monitor developments in Soviet historiography, the immediate years ahead promise to add unprecedented excitement to what can be a soporific and tedious interest.

Claudian, Christ and the Cult of the Saints

Current scholarly opinion holds that the poet Claudian was a pagan who was able to hide sufficiently his personal views at a largely Christian court. This opinion is not unanimous: Claudian has in the past occasionally been considered a Christian, and recently that view has reappeared in print. That Claudian wrotecarm. min.32,de saluatore, should not be doubted; yet this collection of stock phrases cannot be considered Claudian'scredo. As Gnilka has shown, Claudian's treatment of the traditional gods and goddesses displays warmth and fondness beyond the requirements of epic and consequently reveals his true beliefs. The poem is an Easter card for Honorius, displaying not religious convictions, but an instinct for survival at a Christian court. The exegesis ofCarmina Minora50 here proposed suggests that Claudian was familiar enough with Christian ideas to criticise them. Nothing hinders him from repeating them when it proved advantageous.The interpretation ofcarm. min.50 depends in some measure on the literary relationship between Claudian and the Christian poet Prudentius. Specifically, it is important to ascertain whether Claudian was aware of the work of his contemporary. Several studies have argued that Prudentius read and used Claudian, but only recently has Cameron suggested Claudian also read and used Prudentius. His arguments and example are convincing and conclusive, revealing at the same time the nature of Claudian's use of his contemporary's words and ideas. Because similar echoes of Prudentius' poetry will appear in the interpretation ofcarm. min.50, it will be useful to cite the example here.

The Quack Doctor in the Russian Folk and Popular Theatre

VIOLET Alford wrote: 'In the farces, still sometimes played in La Soule, a Doctor often appears. He tells boastfully of his travels and the far countries in which he learnt his work. Apres avoir fait le tour de la Prussie, et de la Russie, de l'Angleterre et de la Turquie je suis revenu chez moi: In almost the same words does the Doctor of our Mummers' Play extol himself. It is quite likely that the Masquerade Doctor used the same stock phrases. Where do they come from? Miss Alford's puzzlement at the similarities between the Basque and English Doctors is understandable and might apply equally well to other national parallels, for the comic Doctor in one guise or another is one of the most ubiquitous characters of popular theatre and embryonic dramatic' forms across Europe. Wace's description of the Doctor in a play performed by villagers from Semarina in the Pindus ('First he felt the pulse, then he listened at the soles of the feet to see if the heart was beating . ..)2 must strike a familiar note to anyone who has watched an English Hero-Combat Play, and Frazer's Dr. Iron-Beard from Swabia, who bleeds a sick man 'who thereupon falls as dead to the ground' but whom he subsequently restores to life 'by blowing air into him through a tube,'3 is likewise a part of an age-old European tradition. The Basque mummer spoke of his visit to Russia. Curiously enough in Russia, as it happens, the comic Doctor has a long and complex pedigree in the world of popular entertainment. In his earliest form he took part in the New Year and spring fertility games which involved the death and resurrection of a goat, horse, bull or some anthropomorphic figure. He was the central figure in the cycles of farcical interludes, originally performed between the serious acts of plays in the repertoire of the Academic theatres in the late 17th and 18th centuries, but which in the hands of serm

Dejected authors

I should like to protest about the way scientific and technical authors are treated by many publishing houses. It is by no means uncommon for publishers to retain a manuscript for three months or more and then return it with a meaningless stock phrase such as ‘This does not meet our highly specialized list’ or ‘This does not fit in with our present publishing plans’.

Iván T. Berend and György Ránki, Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1974. 402 pp. $18.00

BOOK REVIEWS COMPTES RENDUS Iván T. Berend and György Ránki, Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1974. 402 pp. $18.00. At the start of this ambitious work, Hungary's leading economic historians define "East- Central Europe" to include not only the Habsburg lands and the successor states but also Poland, Russia and Southeastern Europe save Greece. Hence the interest to readers of this journal. Professors Berend and Rinki deserve high praise for writing from Marxist first principles without the stock phrases and schematic analysis that have marred much of

Frank Wedekind: A German Dramatist of the Absurd?

Frank Wedekind: A German Dramatist of the Absurd? Robert A. Jones While it is almost common nowadays to find Frank Wedekind numbered among the predecessors of the Theater of the Absurd, it is equally common to have the matter summarily dismissed with a few lines to the effect that Wedekind “ has always been acclaimed” as a principal forerunner to the modern avant-garde (Absurd) theater, and that that theater’s “debt” to him cannot be denied. For example, the “sell” to the prospective buyer on the back cover of a recent Fawcett paperback, The Lulu Plays, concludes with the impressive statement that it is difficult “ to overestimate Wedekind’s role in con­ temporary drama, as a vital force in modem expressionism and as a direct forebear of our Theater of the Absurd.” 1 Now in the first place it is debatable whether Wedekind’s importance for the modem theater has ever been “ acclaimed” or “overestimated.” For the most part, references to him rarely move beyond simplifications of the kind cited above. Wedekind’s admirers have concentrated principally— and quite legitimately— on his role as a forerunner to much that took place in the theater during the Expressionist movement, and subse­ quently in the theater of Bertolt Brecht. But with the greater attention paid to his successors, Wedekind’s position has become almost entirely an historical one, and in that quarter his significance has become very generalized. Secondly, such claims all but imply that Wedekind exerted a genuine “influence” on the much later Absurdists, although the evidence now available would not justify our assuming that they paid Wedekind’s works any significant attention; at least none have acknowledged even the slightest debt to him. In short, these rather stock phrases and assertions are rapidly becoming clichés. O f course the suggestion of a tenable similarity between the post-war Absurdists and the much earlier German play­ wright is a very intriguing thesis; but it is one that is sorely in need of examination and clarification. If all the catch phrases are valid, then one ought to be able to demonstrate that at the turn of the cen­ tury Wedekind was indeed experimenting and making innovations in the theater, as well as using techniques and devices, similar to those 283 284 Comparative Drama of the Absurdists who followed him by several decades. If the as­ sertions break down under scrutiny, then they should be forgotten or, at the least, amended. Possibly the most strategic factor in a comparison of Wedekind and the dramatists of the Absurd, and likely the root of many of the original claims, is their common desire to make the theater more the­ atrical and the innovative way in which they sought to put this into practice. In Wedekind’s case the majority of his innovations stemmed from a reaction against the naturalistic theater of his day, a theater that, in his opinion, was too intellectual, too wordy, and too super­ ficial because it overlooked the real governing forces of life. He ob­ jected to the emphasis on purely social aspects, and the naturalist’s attitude of reform which paid virtually no attention to the bourgeois values. Instead of being genuine works of art, he felt, the products of the naturalist playwrights were nothing other than Tendenzstücke aimed at arousing sympathy for a passive hero. He publicly voiced his rebuke in Büchse der Pandora, when Aiwa Schön, justifying his association with Lulu, condemns the contemporary “curse” of intellectualism and literariness: Das ist der Fluch, der auf unserer jungen Literatur lastet, dass wir viel zu literarisch sind. Wir kennen keine anderen Fragen und Probleme als solche, die unter Schriftstellern und Gelehrten auftauchen. Unser Gesichtskreis reicht über die Grenzen unserer Zunftinteressen nicht hinaus. Um wieder auf die Fährte einer grossen gewaltigen Kunst zu gelangen, müssten wir uns möglichst viel unter Menschen bewegen, die nie in ihrem Leben ein Buch gelesen haben, denen die einfachsten animalischen Instinkte bei ihren Handlungen massgebend sind.2 Applied to the Naturalist stage, Wedekind’s lament was aimed at the absence of theater for its own sake, and the almost total lack of any appeal to the senses. Early in...

A Rationale for the Use of Common Business-Letter Expressions

Are the so-called stock phrases and stereotypes of business language really as bud as most writing teachers claim 1 Or do they indeed deserve a closer look! In this article Professor Janis argues that our liuguis tic prejudices may have to give way to the pressing needs of correspondence efficiency and to the realities of our busi ness culture.

The Dialectic in Action -- Vicissitudes in Industrial Management in China

FOR YEARS JOKES ABOUT the have been manufactured in and outside the Communist camp. The general tone of these jokes has been that everything is its opposite at every moment. Most of these jokes probably had their origins in the terrible days of the Russian purges of the mid-1930's when a friend of the people' became a mortal enemy of the people overnight, or rather his true nature was unmasked. If the reception which these jokes received in the West mirrored the horror that Stalin's principled inhumanity aroused, the fact that so many originated in the Soviet Union revealed the contempt into which dia-mat had fallen among the Soviet people. Since the death of Stalin, despite continuing official sanction for the philosophy of dialectical materialism,? it is rather the materialism than the dialectic that is emphasized-more and more concern with techniques and technology.2 When reading the speeches of Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders, one senses a strong practical strain, arising from what is perhaps the greatest obsession of the Soviet leaders at the present time: overtaking the United States economically and technologically. Little is evident of a dialectical mode of thinking, except for a few stock phrases about the contradictions of communism and capitalism.

Reply To Mr. Danière and Some Reflections on the Significance of the Debate

We have reason to be grateful to Mr. Danière for bringing the thesis of Professor Labrousse to our attention once again. For this is not just an ordinary thesis. Since its statement in the thirties, it has become a staple of French historiography, shaping and informing the work of a whole generation of scholars. Such terms as “crise d'ancien type,” “crise de sous-production agricole,” and “économie des blés et des textiles” have become stock phrases, and few French historians would think of discussing any trade crisis before the middle of the nineteenth century without laying special stress on the causative role of inadequate harvests. Indeed, the fame of this thesis has so flourished with time and Professor Labrousse had become so closely identified with the problem of agriculture and the cycle, that any kind of link between harvests and farm income on the one hand and business conditions on the other–even where the relationship observed is the opposite of what the Labroussian model would lead one to expect–has been enough to make scholars cite his name in evidence.

The Recognition of Minimal Pulmonary Infiltrations

With the present wide use of antibiotics, many pneumonic processes are prevented or aborted at their inception. A ‘classic’ lobar consolidation has become comparatively uncommon. Radiographic examination may show no more than small segments or patches of infiltration. When these patchy shadows are small, there is frequently a legitimate difference of opinion as to whether or not they actually exist. The same observer, examining the same film, will occasionally see a density on one day and not on the next. At times it is not feasible to differentiate mild or questionable changes from the normal vascular pattern. Some lump all mild, minimal, questionable, and normal variations together, reporting them under the stock phrase “exaggerated bronchovascular pattern.” Such a report is relatively meaningless and gives the physician receiving it little help. In an effort to identify these small patchy densities with more certainty, films of obvious small pneumonic processes were reviewed and a number of secondary o...

Building a Philosophy of Education by Harry S. Broudy

BOOK REVIEWS 419 thinking of the faithful will have to be weighed and the apostolate made more direct and personal in its scope. Secularism should be recognized as the principal obstacle to the success of the ministry and the help of the laity should be sought for the intensification of apostolic work. Finally, there must be a recognition of the various levels of social stratification so that the apostolate may be diversified according to the social milieu in which the priest must work. In a recent address to the pastors and preachers of his own diocese of Rome, Pope Pius XII warned them against superficiality in estimating the condition of the parish and urged them to employ more exact methods in their pastoral care of souls. Calling for " a statistical effort made with seriousness, exacting realism and quiet impartiality ," the Holy Pontiff suggested that such research would be an effective antidote to clerical complacency and an accurate method of gearing the apostolate to the needs of the faithful. With Social Relations, Father Fichter has produced a representative sociological study which should benefit the ministry, provide enlightenment to the laity and be a guide to those working along similar lines. Although marred by a few typographical errors (pp. 46, 134, 147, 185, !l45, !l46), this work avoids the occasional triviality, repetition and unnecessary detail which were found in his first study. This reviewer looks forward to the publication of more studies of this nature, because he feels that those who work, like Father Fichter, in this field of parish sociology can contribute much to the mission of the Church. Providence College, Providence, R. l. JOSEPH L. LENNON, o. P. Building a Philosophy of Education. By HARRY S. BROUDY. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954. Pp. 495 with index. $5.00. It has been alleged tha.t most books on education read as if they had been badly translated from the German. Mr. Broudy's Building a Philosophy of Education does not. It is a very readable book written in an unpretentious and sometimes witty manner. He manages to be informal and simple without over-simplifying or talking down to his readers. Students of philosophy and of education will note the freedom from the stock phrases and the circumlocutions so often used by writers in both these fields. Mr. Broudy tries to avoid the use of expressions that everyone thinks he understands as well as a technical vocabulary that gives a professional air to a book but prevents its being read outside its field. He has written a book that can be understood by a college student regardless of the amount or kind of course he has had in philosophy or education. 420 BOOK REVIEWS For Mr. Broudy "education is the process or product of a deliberate attempt to fashion experience by the direction and control of learning." (p. 9) The philosophy of education could mean either the application of philosophy to education or a philosophical analysis of educational problems. The author here regards the philosophy of education as " the systematic discussion of educational problems on a philosophical level, i. e., the probing into an educational question until it is reduced to an issue in metaphysics , epistemology, ethics, logic, or aesthetics, or to a combination of these." (p. ~O) His method, consistently followed in the book, is to examine the needs revealed in an educational problem, analyze various answers, and propose a solution. His solutions to the various problems ultimately make a coherent whole that responds well to the ends and principles from which the author works. Briefly, the order of the book is such that Mr. Broudy begins with a discussion of the aim of education, the good life. Then in several chapters he takes up the means either given by the nature of things or to be chosen by man in order to realize the aim: the structure of human personality, the roles of government, family, and churches in education, the habits and skills to be acquired in school, the content of the curriculum, method, and the organization of an educational system. Part Two of the work treats the way that education is concerned with values: economic, hygienic, recreational , associational, aesthetic...

A Much-Copied Letter of the Early Middle Kingdom

FIFTEEN years ago Dr. John A. Wilson published in the M langes Masperol six fragments of hieratic ostraka from western Thebes, written by student scribes of the late Middle Kingdom and containing portions of two or three copies of an apparently well-known model letter. By combining what remained of these copies and using as parallels two school ostraka, also of the late Middle Kingdom, in the British Museum,2 Dr. Wilson was able to reconstruct a number of stock phrases of greeting from the beginning of the letter. Since none of these phrases occurs in numerous real and model letters of the same period from el-Lahfin,3 it would seem that the Theban schoolmaster had selected as an

Homeric Epithets For Things

The assumption that a particular object mentioned in theIliadorOdysseymust be described by epithets which are consistent with each other and with the narrative has complicated every attempt to relate the evidence of archaeology to the poems. It may fairly be assumed that a modern writer wants to be consistent and that, apart from oversights, he will not use an epithet unless it is directly appropriate to the object which he is creating for his immediate purpose; but this is not necessarily true of a poet who had ready to hand a rich store of phrases in meaning appropriate to the various furnishings of his heroic world, and in form adapted to the needs of his verses. As within theKunstsprachethere is a group of epithets describing the moral and physical characteristics common to all heroes and used to suit not the race or actions of individuals but the scansion of their names and the place in the hexameter, so it is natural to suppose that descriptions of things in common use will include at least some similar stock phrases appropriate to types rather than to units. Once the existence of such phrases is established, there is no difficulty in their combination, as metrical convenience requires, in composite descriptions made up of elements each of which has its own real counterpart, but which need never all have existed together in the same object or even in the same age. The following tabulations of the descriptive words and phrases applied to a few familiar objects show that such metricalclausulaeare always present, though they vary in prevalence and behaviour.

Construction of Gifts "To A and His Children" (Herein the Rule in Wild's Case)

O NE OF the prized incidents of the institution of private property is the power of the owner over the devolution of his title. Yet, the careless way in which this power frequently is exercised makes one doubt whether it is appreciated. If the intention of the owner as to the choice of his successors in interest is so inadequately expressed that the courts are compelled to engage in a guessing contest to determine his intention, the exercise of this power by the owner becomes a mere matter of chance. The situations in which the most trouble arises are those where the beneficiaries of a disposition are described not by their individual names, but with reference to their membership in some group such as heirs, etc. The ambiguities inherent in these group descriptions are obviously not apparent to many persons who draft instruments using these phrases or far more care would be taken to avoid the disputes which are constantly arising. This article is concerned with the problems raised by one of these stock phrases frequently used to describe beneficiaries, namely, A and his children. Anyone fully conscious of the dynamite in those simple words would, I am sure, never use them. But since they have been and continue to be used rather widely, an awakening seems to be essential and that is the principal purpose of this discussion. When the beneficiaries of a disposition are described by the phrase A and his children, or some other equally incomplete expression, the technique employed by the courts to solve the disputes which arise is to adopt rules of construction which are to control in the absence of appropriate evidence manifesting some other desire. These rules of construction are designed to give effect to what the transferor probably would have intended had he thought about the problem which faces the court. Whether

Avoir Beau+Infinitive in Old French and Modern French

This paper has for object the study of the type avoir beau+infinitive in Old French and Modern French. While pursuing the research the author was led to the observation of several cognate types which will be treated later. These, however, may be occasionally referred to in the present paper by the following stock phrases: bel le salua, le blé leva bel, molt lor est bel. In all these types bel is used adverbially.