French Voices Research Articles

Toward Sham Interventions for Behavioral Voice Treatment Outcome Research in Female Students Without Dysphonia

Objectives/HypothesisTo develop sham voice treatment techniques to be used in voice treatment outcomes research, and to investigate their effectiveness as sham. This entails that the techniques induce no changes in voice or voice physiology, yet still lead to a perception of efficacy. Study DesignProspective randomized blinded controlled study MethodsThree distinct sham intervention protocols (SIPs) were conceptualized as placebic comparators for three common voice treatment approaches with focus on vocalization (SIP1), respiration (SIP2), and manipulation (SIP3). Forty-eight female students participated in the study. Each participant attended ten 30-minute sessions over five weeks, including a baseline evaluation, three sessions of one SIP, an inter-SIP voice assessment, three sessions of a second SIP, and a final post-SIPs assessment. Auditory-perceptual and instrumental voice evaluations were used as voice treatment outcomes measures. The participants' perception of voice-related quality of life was evaluated using the French Voice Handicap Index (VHIFR). Frequentist as well as Bayesian statistical methods were applied for group comparisons. The effects of combining two SIPs, the potential influence of SIP order, and experimenter/clinician effects were also investigated. ResultsThe respiration-based SIP2 showed changes only in sound intensity level on sustained vowel across the three sham intervention sessions. In contrast, the vocalization-based SIP1 impacted sound intensity level on sustained vowel, sound intensity level on read text, and maximum phonation time. The manipulation-based SIP3 affected smoothed cepstral peak prominence on read text, Acoustic Voice Quality Index, and Dysphonia Severity Index. SIP2 thus demonstrated the highest alignment with the study's objectives, followed by SIP1 and SIP3. GRBASI ratings revealed no statistical differences for any SIP. VHIFr decreased significantly after all three SIPs. Combining the SIPs generally replicated the effects observed when each SIP was used individually. There was no order effect or experimenter/clinician effect on the results. ConclusionsThis study demonstrated significant changes in participants' perceived voice quality (measured with VHIFr) across various sham intervention protocols, despite minimal impact on objective voice function measures. Further investigation is necessary to establish one or more protocols as genuinely sham interventions.

Regressive assimilation of voice in French

En français, des séquences de deux sons consonantaux différents peuvent apparaître, parmi d’autres contextes, à travers deux mots, de façon que la première consonne se trouve à la finale du premier mot et que la deuxième se trouve au début du deuxième mot (par ex., ro b (e) f endue ), les deux mots étant prononcés sans pause entre eux. Quelques auteurs proposent une analyse phonologique des deux sons selon laquelle la deuxième consonne ([f]) est le phonème (/f/) alors que la première consonne (/b/) subit le processus [b] > [p] par assimilation régressive de voix dans la réalisation de l’archiphonème /P/ qui résulte de la neutralisation de /p/ vs /b/. Je ne suis pas d’accord avec cette interprétation phonologique. En français, la première consonne est prononcée [b̥] (comme l’indiquent depuis longtemps les phonéticiens) qui est une variante combinatoire du phonème /b/, et les deux consonnes en question sont /b/ et /f/. Il n’y a donc aucune neutralisation de /p/ vs /b/. En français, dans un pareil cas, l’assimilation régressive de voix est indépendante de l’assimilation régressive d’énergie, non comme en russe où l’assimilation régressive de voix et l’assimilation régressive d’énergie sont concomitantes. Lorsque, en français, les deux consonnes différentes apparaissent comme dans ro b (e) f endue à la jonction de deux mots, il n’y a pas neutralisation là où on trouve [b̥] ( b de ro b e ). Ce qui n’est pas le cas lorsqu’une succession de deux consonnes différentes apparaît à l’intérieur d’un mot, comme dans mé d ecin [me t sɛ̃] et ane c dote [ane g dɔt] . Dans ces cas, il y a neutralisation là où [t] et [g] apparaissent. Les analyses phonologiques doivent être en accord avec, et se fonder sur, des observations phonétiques correctes.

Seeing More Clearly

The spate of sharply critical think-pieces published over the past few years might seem to suggest that the digital humanities are in crisis, but the discipline continues to thrive: public and private funding bodies remain robustly supportive of digital humanities initiatives, laying the groundwork for research that is orientated towards the capacity for communication beyond traditional readerships. The digital humanities glow with such promise that some of us – among whom I must include myself – have quietly set aside our misgivings, instead finding ways of incorporating digital technologies and methodologies into our work. But mute complicity is not the only alternative to vocal censure, as is made clear by the many accounts of experiments and other personal experiences posted on blogs and, increasingly, published in peer-reviewed journals. Grounded in self-reflective practices, this sort of autoethnography offers a productive means of coming to terms with our complex and sometimes contradictory motivations for engaging with the digital humanities. In this essay, I reflect on a digital network visualization and analysis project I have pursued over the past five years, the final iteration of which – entitled ‘Visualizing the French Voice’ – attempted to use algorithms to make sense of the relationships between professors and pupils active at the Paris Conservatoire around the turn of the nineteenth century. I try to understand my motives at each turn, which are clearly bound up with that seductive promise of a broader readership, but also, albeit much less clearly, of ‘impact’.

Етиката на грижата: прочити и перспективи

The article examines the main emphasis in the evolution of the concept of care. It, on the one hand, builds a different ethics (C. Gilligan) and, on the other, is an attempt to justify a new political philosophy (J. Tronto) and new forms of solidarity arising from the understanding of vulnerability as universally shared situation. Particular attention has been paid to the French ethical voices – Sandra Logier and Patricia Paperman, who contribute to the enrichment of care readings: it is a leading relational ethic and political weapon that valorizes all that remains beyond the reach of ethics of justice. Possible political projections range it between the reduction of the feminist charge of the concept in case of over-reduction in favor of a particular political context (J.-M. Chahsiche) and the promising future of this “holistic” concept, bearing resources to enrich the political (S. Logier). Further arguments in favor of ethics of care have been sought in Hunyadi’s theory of the role of context as a combination of factuality and counter-factuality, and the opportunity for ethics of care to formulate its own normativity (St. Collins). The ethics of care is a contribution to feminist theories of difference and an example of a moderate deconstructionist approach: it practically realizes the calls of the deconstruction to “retain aporia” (Fr. Laruelle), but without reaching its possible extremes.

The Circulation in English of Voices Theorizing Translation in French: Which Voices, When, and Why (or Why not)

This paper examines how French voices theorizing translation from 1960 to 2015 circulate in English. A small, manageable, corpus of key French scholars who have published book-length studies in different areas of Translation Studies (interpretation, pedagogy, sociology, history) is identified. The translation of their texts into English, as well as into other languages, for comparison, is then mapped out. Non-translative forms of circulation (e.g. citation, bibliographical indexing, multilingual scholarship, productions directly in English) are considered. The influence of disciplinary issues and the role of the author in the circulation in English of his/her works in the translation and interpreting community are also discussed. In conclusion, some general observations are made about other factors to be considered with respect to understanding how voices theorizing translation in French circulate internationally in English, and in other languages.

Francuska wizja zróżnicowanej integracji europejskiej w kontekście debaty na temat przyszłości UE i strefy euro

Being one of the founders of the European Union (EU), France has always wanted to take the lead in shaping the European integration process. In this article, I argue that there are two major reasons why the variable geometry model is so much promoted by France. First of all, it is because of the effects of accession of Central and Eastern European countries. The second reason is that France misses the bygone small Europe where the French voice was more decisive than it is now. The idea of differentiated integration has been revived in France due to the outbreak of the Eurozone crisis that has provoked many tensions within the EU and shown even more clearly that the French economy lacks competitiveness. Therefore, French proposals how to reform the Eurozone are very often linked with the attempts to build a small core of Europe within the large EU. The aim of these proposals is to help France to compete within the Common Market and globally. Moreover, many French people believe that this kind of EU would help fulfil the idea of Europe-puissance with the leading role of France.

Voice in French dubbing: the case of Julianne Moore

ABSTRACTIt is an acknowledged fact that dubbing practices vary across countries. In France, it is common to have different dubbing artists lending their voices to the same foreign actor. For instance, Julianne Moore has had 11 French voices since the beginning of her career, and her French designated voice, Ivana Coppola, also dubs several other actresses, including Michelle Yeoh and Vera Farmiga. This paper presents a short case study on the voices of Moore in France. I consider four films that were all released in 2014 in which she has four different French voices. The possible effect changes in her voice might have on French audiences is discussed using Freud’s concept of the uncanny. This discussion is underpinned by a presentation of the different agents taking part in the dubbing process and a reflection on the methodological tools used, with a view to contemplating further research. My main goal is to show what happens to the voice of foreign actors in French dubbing, using Moore as a case study. The article also emphasises the importance of voice choice as part of a film’s artistic content, and eventually aims at triggering more conversations on voice as part of the dubbing process.

Translator's Note: Negotiating Four Generations of Voices (with a Little Help from Google Earth)

T he Herring and the Saxophone (Le Hareng et le saxophone), a hybrid work by Sylvie Weil, is listed as a novel, yet just as in Tim O’Brien’s The Things We Carried and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the narrator ’s voice carries the author’s own name. It’s written in the first person, but the narrator doesn’t fully introduce herself until chapter 5. An autobiographical work centered on family more than self—if the two can be separated. Not Weil’s own family, but her in-laws, generations of them, down to the little boy Ricky, who would one day grow up to be Eric, Sylvie’s husband. “The Cadillac,” recounting a family gathering to celebrate a bar mitzvah, is the first chapter of this family saga that skips back and forth through time and space, without the vast arc of an epic narrative. One moment, we’re in early nineteenthcentury Ukraine; then, it’s 1980 and we’re in the Bronx. The stories are at once iconic and idiosyncratic: fleeing the Russian pogroms, petitioning to acquire an anglicized name in the New World, only to see the magistrate restore its Jewish flavor, giving us a glimpse of America’s limited religious tolerance. Chapters are like the snapshots occasionally referenced by Weil, and reading the novel is like flipping back and forth through the pages of a photo album: we point at familiar faces peering out from different moments in their lives and ask, wanting to weave together the strands of this family history, “Which cousin is he again? And how was he related to that woman? Are they the ones who left Ukraine and somehow ended up in Ontario, or did they come to New York?” Weil takes us back and forth from Uman to New Rochelle, with detours to Nikolayev, Brooklyn, Toronto, Queens, Connecticut. As the daughter-in-law, the reluctantly accepted Franco-American object of curiosity “just off the boat” from Paris when she met the man she would marry, Weil as author/narrator sits both inside and outside the family. In “The Cadillac,” we meet four generations of Shackmans. Many of the stories have been handed down to Weil by Clara, wife of Mounya of the Cadillac-with-Dagmars. Clara, the family historian, carried oral archives in her memory across time and borders, almost two centuries of lore stretching back deep into the old country. As co-translator Catherine Zobal Dent and I work our way into this cast of characters who have already worked their way into our hearts, we are constantly negotiating voices, places, and eras. Using Google Earth, we follow the peregrinations of the various family branches from old Russia to New York. We research idioms, vocabulary , exclamations to choose words that fit time and place, personality and situation. One curious aspect of this project is that we are translating the younger generations of this family into their own language: in this chapter, for example, we understand from the French original that everyone but the elderly cousin from Toronto is speaking English. The original itself is a translation, making our work something of a reclamation. Our method involves each of us translating a draft of a given chapter independently before we meet for our collaborative sessions. Sitting together at the screen, Catherine and I comb through our drafts one sentence at a time, discussing them, melding them in a process that spawns surprising solutions. Working together helps us keep our eye on the immediate sentence and the larger narrative, simultaneously . We’ve learned to articulate our choices to each other and, ultimately, to integrate our varying interpretations. We find it rewarding to let go of our egos and focus instead on bringing these voices alive for a new readership. Notebook Lynn E. Palermo’s translations, some in collaboration with Catherine Zobal Dent, have appeared in journals including Kenyon Review Online, Exchanges Literary Journal, and World Literature Today. In 2015 Palermo and Dent were awarded a French Voices Award for their co-translation, Destiny’s Repairman, by Cyrille Fleischman. Editorial note: Turn to page 30 to read Palermo and Dent’s translation of Weil’s...

Wallace Stevens, Poetry, and France: "Au pays de la métaphore." ed. by Juliette Utard, Bart Eeckhout, and Lisa Goldfarb

Reviewed by: Wallace Stevens, Poetry, and France: "Au pays de la métaphore." ed. by Juliette Utard, Bart Eeckhout, and Lisa Goldfarb Lee M. Jenkins Wallace Stevens, Poetry, and France: "Au pays de la métaphore." Edited by Juliette Utard, Bart Eeckhout, and Lisa Goldfarb. Paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm / Presses de l'École normale supérieure, 2017. Wallace Stevens, Poetry, and France germinated in a conference on "Stevens in France" held at the Université Paris-Sorbonne in 2015. The conference title signaled a different tack from the 2008 special issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal, guest-edited by Anne Luyat, on "Stevens and France." The titular shift from conjunction ("Stevens and France") to preposition ("Stevens in France") enabled the contributors to the present collection to encounter Stevens, as he envisaged encountering himself, in a country he never visited—in a France that for Stevens was synonymous with the "pays de la métaphore" which is the poet's habitat. Juliette Utard's brave and brilliant introduction, "A 'Special Relation'? Stevens' French, American English, and the Creolization of Modern Poetry," takes Stevens scholarship into the new and fertile theoretical terrain mapped out by Caribbean theorist Édouard Glissant in an essay entitled "The Unforeseeable Diversity of the World" (included in the recent volume Creolizing Europe, Liverpool UP, 2015). As Utard demonstrates, Glissant's relational poetics prove "highly applicable to Stevens' baroque poetic polyglotisms" (20), to the frequent interpellations into American English of French and of what Antoine Cazé terms "Near French" that characterize Stevens's poetic lingua franca. Utard thereby prepares the semantic ground for the chapters comprising the first of the four parts of the collection, "Stevens' Uses of French." In "'Luminous Traversing': Stevens' Near French and the Vagaries of Translation," Antoine Cazé asks "what happens to translation" if we subscribe to Stevens's adage that "French and English constitute a single language" (32; CPP 914). Cazé finds that French "as it is used in English" in Stevens's verse constitutes an "interstitial space" (37) in which the difference (or différance?) between French and English is perhaps paradoxically obscured by a "luminous traversing" between the two (CPP 24). In the following chapter, Lisa Goldfarb builds on her authoritative scholarship on Stevens and Paul Valéry to compare the ways in which the two writers treat the relationship between the senses and thought, before performing assured readings of two Stevens poems that embody sensory experience, "A Postcard from the Volcano" and "A Dish of Peaches in Russia." Valéry's notebooks, Goldfarb shows, "serve as prelude" to Stevens's poems insofar as in both, the sensory pertains to sensibility—to "the blood of thought," as Valéry puts it (47), and to what Stevens in "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" calls "An abstraction blooded, as a man by thought" (CPP 333). In "'The lingua franca et jocundissima': The Comedian as a French Speaker," Aurore Clavier—a splendid name for a Stevensian—continues Cazé's exploration of the interstitial nature, in Stevens, of French and of a France that is an "exotic foyer," both "domestic and foreign" (56). In Clavier's fine reading of Stevens's mock epic, "The Comedian as the Letter C" is "a model stage for the poet's French voices to resonate" (62). Lisa M. Steinman concludes this first part of the collection with an adroit assessment of Stevens's perception of French not only "as the language of sensuousness and the erotic" but also [End Page 270] as "being inflected, by association, with the language of order and regulation, that is, the language of the law." French for Stevens is again a liminal linguistic zone, Steinman shows us, "both inside and outside of civilized culture" (73). Part Two, on "Stevens' Poetic Legacy across the Atlantic," comprises four fine chapters, in the first of which, "Hoobla-hoo and Hullabaloo: Divagations with Stevens," poet-critic Maureen N. McLane engages Stevens, creatively and critically, in a "complex reckoning" (81). McLane, who like other contributors attends to "Stevens' bravura naturalization of a register of French into his own ludic American English" is also alert to the operations of "French" and "German" as "frequencies within the emergent bandwidth of [Stevens's...

La Classe américaine

On 31 December 1993, French pay TV channel Canal+ broadcast a 70-minute film called La Classe américaine, directed by Michel Hazanavicius and Dominique Mézerette. They took excerpts from about fifty Warner Bros. productions, edited them to build a story and had the characters (played by A-list actors such as John Wayne and James Stewart) dubbed over by well-known French voice actors, resulting in what is known technically as a ‘détournement’, combining the techniques of film collage and dubbing. This paper sketches the origins and the production context of this very unusual audiovisual object, relying on insights from film theory, with particular reference to adaptation techniques like remixes and collages. The analysis also shows how meaning and humour are created through the montage of originally completely disconnected scenes and the addition of funny or crude dialogues that one would not expect from cinema legends like John Wayne. A final part highlights the film’s cult status and its influence on the creation of more détournements.

Fathers of Botany: The Discovery of Chinese Plants by European Missionaries by Jane Kilpatrick

Reviewed by: Fathers of Botany: The Discovery of Chinese Plants by European Missionaries by Jane Kilpatrick John Grimshaw Fathers of Botany: The Discovery of Chinese Plants by European Missionaries. By Jane Kilpatrick. (Kew Publishing, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Distrib. University of Chicago Press. 2015. Pp. x, 254. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-226-20670-7.) Every Western garden derives at least some—and perhaps most—of its plants from the extraordinary natural diversity of China. Their very names remind us of this—innumerable sinensis or chinensis epithets, and plenty of geographical locations, have been rendered into Latinate orthography: yunnanensis, szechuanica, hongkongensis. But gardeners also are aware of the plethora of Chinese plants known by epithets commemorating Westerners: henryi, wilsonii, forrestii, davidii, delavayi, fargesii, souliei, and many others. All played some part, great or small, in revealing the riches of the Chinese flora to Western science and horticulture. [End Page 656] To an Anglophone gardener the stories of the first three—Augustine Henry, Ernest Wilson, and George Forrest—are well known. The narratives of their travels in China, easily available in English, have led to their being accorded special status as horticultural heroes. But they were not the only botanists and seed collectors to be active in (especially) western China from c. 1860 to 1930; there are others whose achievements are recorded principally in French. In Fathers of Botany Jane Kilpatrick particularly explores the extraordinary contributions to plant science made by some of the dedicated priests of the French Missions Etrangères de Paris. However culturally arrogant the missionary movement now appears to be, there is no doubt of the courage and devotion of these men as they went to China to bear witness to their faith. Often leaving France when comparatively young—the earnest, bearded faces in their formal photographs have a remarkably contemporary appearance—they expected never to return, living their lives in poverty in isolated mission stations, often several days’ travel from their nearest confrères and separated from other Europeans for years on end. Evangelical success was scanty, trials and tribulations numerous. Despite this, many of the fathers took up botanizing as a hobby and worked their patches with the intensity that only prolonged residence in an area can achieve. Among them were Père Armand David, whose discoveries in Sichuan included the Giant Panda, the common Butterfly Bush Buddleja davidii, and Handkerchief Tree Davidia involucrata. Père Jean Marie Delavay, who went to China in 1867, became the pre-eminent missionary botanist, immensely fortunate to have been based in the botanical wonderland of Yunnan. He died peacefully in 1895, under European care at Kunming, but many other missionaries were brutally murdered after seeing their churches and works put to the torch. In 1904 Yellow Hat lamas attacked the missions in the Tibetan borderlands, and several missionaries were tortured and killed such as the botanical Jean Soulié, whereas the elderly Pères Pierre Bourdonnec and Jules Dubernard were captured and killed while attempting to escape in the company of Scottish plant hunter Forrest. The fitter Forrest managed to evade the lamas; his journey through extreme danger became part of the British legend of glorious plant-hunting endeavors. One theme explored here is the botanical competition between French and British interests—both were very keen to outdo the other in the number and quality of their discoveries, supported by the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh respectively. For Anglophones, the British narrative has prevailed, but now the French voice can be heard through this book, and the balance is somewhat redressed. A summary of the careers of the dramatis personae would have been useful, but this beautifully produced and illustrated book is heartily recommended to anyone interested in the history of plant discovery or that of the Missions Etrangères and its brave men. [End Page 657] John Grimshaw The Yorkshire Arboretum Copyright © 2016 The Catholic University of America Press

La guirlande térésienne: A nineteenth-century “Teresian bard” sings the praises of Teresa of Avila

This study presents and analyses a newly discovered French manuscript by the nineteenth-century Jesuit Marcel Bouix, a translator, scholar and devotee of Teresa of Avila. In the work, a remarkable series of 19 poems entitled La guirlande térésienne, Bouix praises Teresa and other important Carmelite figures, and displays an intimate familiarity with Teresian spirituality and history. It is a unique document whose equivalent has not been seen elsewhere, and in it Marcel Bouix, already the most productive Teresian scholar in France of his time or of any previous age, sought to make his the definitive French voice of Teresa of Avila.

Notas sobre uma estética do trauma no Brasil

RESUMONeste artigo, o objetivo é demonstrar como a midiatização de casos de tosquias de mulheres constroem, na e pela linguagem, uma estética do estranhamento que referenda discursos flagrantes de fronteiras sócio-histórico-culturais. Para isso, articulam-se, teoricamente, o pensamento bakhtiniano, sobretudo sua insistência na dimensão semiótico-ideológica da linguagem, e postulados barthesianos, em especial o entendimento da constituição semiológica de trauma. Metodologicamente, cotejam-se registros e divulgação de tosquia feminina em duas inscrições históricas: na França, por ocasião da chamada Liberação na década de 1940, e no Brasil da atualidade, em comunidades cariocas que convivem com a cultura do tráfico. No estudo apresentado, procura-se responder à seguinte questão: como, depois de tantas décadas, essa voz do pós-guerra francês emerge no contexto brasileiro (res)significando as mesmas práticas? A análise empreendida aqui mostra que a “prosa” das tosquiadas mobiliza vozes diferentes que, ao imprimirem suas marcas nos enunciados, estratificam a linguagem e desenham fronteiras sócio-culturais.

Language exposure facilitates talker learning prior to language comprehension, even in adults

Adults show a native language advantage for talker identification, which has been interpreted as evidence that phonological knowledge mediates talker learning. However, infants also show a native language benefit for talker discrimination, suggesting that sensitivity to linguistic structure due to systematic language exposure promotes talker learning, even in the absence of functional phonological knowledge or language comprehension. We tested this hypothesis by comparing two groups of English-monolingual adults on their ability to learn English and French voices. One group resided in Montréal with regular exposure to spoken French; the other resided in Storrs, Connecticut and did not have French exposure. Montréal residents showed faster learning and better retention for the French voices compared to their Storrs-residing peers. These findings demonstrate that systematic exposure to a foreign language bolsters talker learning in that language, expanding the gradient effect of language experience on talker learning to perceptual learning that precedes sentence comprehension.

Lechevalier, Sébastien: The great transformation of Japanese capitalism

The book covers the manyfold, albeit gradual, institutional changes of the Japanese political economy since the 1980s. Sebastian Lechevalier, an associate professor of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, is the editor and is in fact also the author of most parts of the book: Only one chapter is written by someone else, Yves Tiberghien, with an overview over 30 years of so-called neoliberal reforms in Japan, and another one by Lechevalier and Arnaud Nanta on the Japanese education system. In addition, there is an extended foreword by Robert Boyer, who may be seen as the doyen of the French regulationist school; he offers his own interpretation of the recent institutional changes in Japan, with some nuances compared to the main text. Sebastian Lechevalier himself can be considered a leading younger French voice on the Japanese political economy. One of the book’s intentions is to provide a non-technical introduction to 15 years of his research, so the book offers a valuable introduction to recent French political economic scholarship and thinking on Japan, quoting important other authors along the way. It was originally written in French and published in 2011, while the 2014 English language edition was translated by J. A. A. Stockwin, a renowned specialist on Japanese politics. Actually, at least in parts of the book, events and issues emerging after 2011 are also discussed, particularly the December 2012 election of Shinzo Abe from the Liberal-Democratic Party as prime minister, and the early months of his unconventional economic policy proposition (“Abenomics”). In his introductory chapter, Lechevalier explains his research interest and methodological perspective: During the heyday of Japan’s economic prowess, the 1980s, the dominant position on studying different economic systems was to recognize the

Exposure to an unfamiliar language bolsters talker learning

Listeners are better at identifying talkers who speak their native language than talkers who speak a foreign language, showing that phonological knowledge of a language facilitates talker identification. However, research with infants indicates that language comprehension is not necessary for improving talker identification. In this study, we asked whether language exposure alone could improve talker learning. Two groups of English-monolingual adults were recruited: one group from Montreal, Quebec, who receive regular French exposure, and the other from Storrs, Connecticut who receive no French exposure. In Experiment 1, we used a four-alternative forced choice task (4AFC) to train listeners about the voices of four English talkers and four French talkers. Results show that Montreal participants were faster at learning French voices than Storrs participants, showing that exposure to a foreign language is sufficient in boosting talker learning in that language. However, in Experiment 2, a 2AFC was used to ...

The Matiushin Case by Oleg Pavlov

lingers long after the book has been set aside. Indeed, the conceit of a neighbor’s cat who happens to spontaneously “adopt” a different “owner” is really little more than an expedient for extended metaphysical ruminations on the vicissitudes of life in the face of uncertainty. This is a situation not unfamiliar to most readers, and it is, perhaps, the greatest strength of this slim novel, for no answers are provided: only hints of what may be possible. Erik R. Lofgren Bucknell University Scholastique Mukasonga. Our Lady of the Nile. Melanie Mauthner, tr. Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2014. isbn 9780914671039 Our Lady of the Nile (Notre-Dame du Nil, 2012) won the Prix Renaudot, the French Voices Award, as well as the 1994 Ahmadou Kourouma Prize. Scholastique Mukasonga lived the ethnic conflicts in Rwanda and lost twenty-seven of her family members as a result of the Tutsi genocide, while being forced to take refuge in France. The novel reflects glimpses of a tensionfilled past and slowly moves to uncover racial strife and the increase of genocidal actions against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda through the eyes of lycée girls enrolled at a Catholic boarding school that stands isolated on the Ikibira mountaintop by the river Nile, gated and guarded. The lycée was built by the Belgium colonizers in Africa and encompasses an isolated, delineated area above the poor village of Nyaminombe, with an exotic garden, a guest bungalow, and foreign teacher villas. When the lycée opens, luxurious cars travel to the mountain to bring daughters of businessmen, governors, and the country ’s elite. They will all be trained accordingly to maintain status, increase their chances of an advantageous marriage, and make a fortune. The only Tutsi girls in the lycée, Virginia and Veronica, are a minority (the yearly quota is two Tutsi students for twenty of other origins). Veronica accepts the veneration of Mr. de Fontenaille (a former plantation owner who discovered the shrine of a local queen and is fascinated by the idea of Tutsi Egyptian roots), and she participates in ritualistic performances centering on the image of Isis. Virginia draws away from the pagan rites and searches out the advice of a witch doctor in her aunt’s village; she is determined to put the discovered shrine remains to rest and perform a traditional ritual cleansing of Fontenaille’s desecrated burial site. She is driven by the apparitions of former local queens in her dreams. The chain of authority reverses toward the end of the novel: at the beginning, Mother Superior maintains the religious place of authority, seconded by Father Hermenegilde , but toward the end of the novel Gloriosa, one of the lycée’s students, takes advantage of her father’s political influence and status to become the feared head of racial persecution in the school. She orders beatings, rapes, and executions. Gloriosa not only represents the feared militant political youth ready to commit atrocities against the Tutsi but also the abusive force that eventually destroys the religious symbol of the Lady of the Nile’s statue in order to make sure it does not have a Tutsi nose and reflects only Hutu facial features. The destruction of the statue’s head under Gloriosa’s hammer blows signifies the decimation of faith and the dominance of the New Man, tormented by racist thoughts and extreme violence. Andreea Gabudeanu Bristow, Virginia Oleg Pavlov. The Matiushin Case. Andrew Bromfield, tr. London. And Other Stories. 2014. isbn 9781908276360 In his novel The Matiushin Case, author Oleg Pavlov delves deep into the psyche of a troubled young man during the last years of the Soviet Union. The book explores trauma, fear, and belonging against the backdrop of a military family and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Full of dark humor and dark characters, this book, while not for the faint of heart, is nevertheless an intriguing view into a life that experiences much pain and hardship with very little that is positive or beautiful to relieve its characters of the cruelty of their world. World Literature in Review 60 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2015 Pavlov’s main character, Vasilii Grigorievich Matiushin, is one of the most interesting , if...

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

lingers long after the book has been set aside. Indeed, the conceit of a neighbor’s cat who happens to spontaneously “adopt” a different “owner” is really little more than an expedient for extended metaphysical ruminations on the vicissitudes of life in the face of uncertainty. This is a situation not unfamiliar to most readers, and it is, perhaps, the greatest strength of this slim novel, for no answers are provided: only hints of what may be possible. Erik R. Lofgren Bucknell University Scholastique Mukasonga. Our Lady of the Nile. Melanie Mauthner, tr. Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2014. isbn 9780914671039 Our Lady of the Nile (Notre-Dame du Nil, 2012) won the Prix Renaudot, the French Voices Award, as well as the 1994 Ahmadou Kourouma Prize. Scholastique Mukasonga lived the ethnic conflicts in Rwanda and lost twenty-seven of her family members as a result of the Tutsi genocide, while being forced to take refuge in France. The novel reflects glimpses of a tensionfilled past and slowly moves to uncover racial strife and the increase of genocidal actions against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda through the eyes of lycée girls enrolled at a Catholic boarding school that stands isolated on the Ikibira mountaintop by the river Nile, gated and guarded. The lycée was built by the Belgium colonizers in Africa and encompasses an isolated, delineated area above the poor village of Nyaminombe, with an exotic garden, a guest bungalow, and foreign teacher villas. When the lycée opens, luxurious cars travel to the mountain to bring daughters of businessmen, governors, and the country ’s elite. They will all be trained accordingly to maintain status, increase their chances of an advantageous marriage, and make a fortune. The only Tutsi girls in the lycée, Virginia and Veronica, are a minority (the yearly quota is two Tutsi students for twenty of other origins). Veronica accepts the veneration of Mr. de Fontenaille (a former plantation owner who discovered the shrine of a local queen and is fascinated by the idea of Tutsi Egyptian roots), and she participates in ritualistic performances centering on the image of Isis. Virginia draws away from the pagan rites and searches out the advice of a witch doctor in her aunt’s village; she is determined to put the discovered shrine remains to rest and perform a traditional ritual cleansing of Fontenaille’s desecrated burial site. She is driven by the apparitions of former local queens in her dreams. The chain of authority reverses toward the end of the novel: at the beginning, Mother Superior maintains the religious place of authority, seconded by Father Hermenegilde , but toward the end of the novel Gloriosa, one of the lycée’s students, takes advantage of her father’s political influence and status to become the feared head of racial persecution in the school. She orders beatings, rapes, and executions. Gloriosa not only represents the feared militant political youth ready to commit atrocities against the Tutsi but also the abusive force that eventually destroys the religious symbol of the Lady of the Nile’s statue in order to make sure it does not have a Tutsi nose and reflects only Hutu facial features. The destruction of the statue’s head under Gloriosa’s hammer blows signifies the decimation of faith and the dominance of the New Man, tormented by racist thoughts and extreme violence. Andreea Gabudeanu Bristow, Virginia Oleg Pavlov. The Matiushin Case. Andrew Bromfield, tr. London. And Other Stories. 2014. isbn 9781908276360 In his novel The Matiushin Case, author Oleg Pavlov delves deep into the psyche of a troubled young man during the last years of the Soviet Union. The book explores trauma, fear, and belonging against the backdrop of a military family and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Full of dark humor and dark characters, this book, while not for the faint of heart, is nevertheless an intriguing view into a life that experiences much pain and hardship with very little that is positive or beautiful to relieve its characters of the cruelty of their world. World Literature in Review 60 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2015 ...

Primary Placement of a 16 French Voice Prosthesis at the Time of Tracheoesophageal Voice Restoration

Objectives: Tracheoesophageal voice restoration (TEVR) has traditionally been described with fistula tract creation, catheter placement, and secondary prosthesis placement. Successful primary prosthesis placement at the time of primary or secondary puncture using a 20 French prosthesis has been previously described. We now wish to evaluate whether 16 French prostheses can be used safely and effectively. Methods: All cases of primary 16 French tracheoesophageal voice prosthesis (TEVP) placements at a large academic medical center were retrospectively reviewed from January 2011 through December 2013. Perioperative complications attributable to device placement were recorded. These included inability to place prosthesis during procedure, intraoperative issues with primary placement, postoperative infection, prosthesis dislodgement, leakage around/through the prosthesis, or inability to obtain voice. Results: Twenty-two patients received primary placement of a 16 French TEVP. All prostheses were successfully placed, and there were no intraoperative complications. Approximately 18% of patients had a postoperative complication, including leakage through the prosthesis (3 of 22) and prosthesis displacement (1 of 22). These were addressed with prosthesis change and replacement, respectively. Conclusions: Placement of 16 French TEVPs is effective and safe, with a low rate of complication directly attributable to the prosthesis itself. Therefore, a smaller prosthesis may be primarily placed at the time of TEVR and is preferred over the previously described 20 French prosthesis.

Vive les différences? Voice in French MNCs' overseas workplaces: a comparative study of voice in French, German and US subsidiaries in the UK

Foreign-owned firms help to disseminate management practices across UK companies; this includes the ability of indigenous firms to learn improved human resource management (HRM) practices from leading foreign companies. Analysing the transfer of HRM policies forms an important strand of the international HRM and comparative capitalisms literatures; however, large-scale, comparative studies of voice patterns in German, US and, in particular, French subsidiaries in the UK are limited. This paper draws on a major survey that includes the, to date, largest sample of French MNC subsidiaries. It does not simply identify the existence of different kinds of voice mechanisms, but examines how these different practices come together in the implementation of subsidiaries' voice policies. This enables the detection of subtle, but important, differences in the subsidiaries' voice practices. French subsidiaries are significantly less likely to pursue a partnership approach to voice than their German and US counterparts. French and US establishments are significantly more likely to adopt a ‘bleak house’ approach than German ones. Importantly, these key differences only emerge at a fine-grained level of analysis that examines how subsidiaries implement voice practices.