Journal of English Language and Literature (JELL)
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A Parody of Psychoanalysis in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
No full textIn Lolita (1955), Nabokov is playing a game with all his readers. Who do you think the winner is and what the game is all about? Nabokov who is a brilliant author wants to criticise Freud and his theory of psychoanalysis. He wants to rebel against Freud and his ideas. This paper aims to show you how successful Nabokov was in conveying his own ideas. We want to see whether or not psychoanalysis can be rejected by the help of Nabokov using a parody and trying to put psychoanalysis three key concepts: sexuality, memory, and interpretation into questioning. In this attempt, Nabokov takes a journey from conscious to unconscious and guides the readers with himself through this journey. He shows them symbols which may not represent real symbols, and simple characters which may not be that simple and plain; characters which have a wound in their Superegos and a dark side in their Ids and Egos
Language and Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel
No full textThe play, The Lion and the Jewel by Soyinka has been projected variously as a triumph of African culture over the Western culture. This is because it is a post-colonial write-up that came almost after the end of the struggles that got Nigeria its independence. There have been different approaches to the study of this text with respect to the struggles between the two traditions as represented by Lakunle (the Western tradition) and Baroka (the African tradition). However, this paper takes a different dimension. Its concern is to investigate, using Fairclough’s tools of Critical Discourse Analysis, some of the ideologies and power relations embedded in some discourses in the text which reveal, in the same context, that Yoruba (African) traditional marriage ideology of bride price oppresses and marginalizes women whereas Western marriage ideology empowers and helps women to discover their self-worth. In addition too, the play reveals that chauvinism in African man cannot be completely eroded no matter the level of Western education acquired. In other words, there were still other levels of imperialism within the so called “independent world” of the traditional Yoruba and at large, Africa
The Deforming Mirror of Truth: A Reading of Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
No full textIshmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo calls for a national history that incorporates black experience and culture. Focusing on the form of the content as well as the content of the form, the present paper discusses the process of constructing another history, which subverts the icons of Western hegemony: social codes, reality, conventions, etc., in order for a hybrid culture to prevail. In other words, it elaborates on the way Mumbo Jumbo juxtaposes both cultural histories, integrating indeterminacy with the effect of de-totalizing the meta-narrative of the Western culture
Silhouetting the Shifting Perspective of Bollywood from ‘Machismo’ to ‘Metrosexuality’
No full text “Machismo” and “Metrosexual” are two trending but contradictory terms that are used to fathom the portrayal of men in the visual art such as cinema, media, advertisements etc. Derived from the Spanish word ‘Macho’, ‘Machismo’ reflects strength, aggression and masculine pride whereas ‘Metrosexual’ is a portmanteau word combining– ‘Metropolitan’ and ‘Sexual ‘referring to men who are living in an urban society and investing a great deal on their appearance and lifestyle. The paper intends to focus on the transition of this portrayal of men in Hindi films, popularly termed as Bollywood. To elucidate further the paper will take its references from the films of the Sholay era till the contemporary times in which films like Ki n Ka changed the sketch, the set and the setting of the male word/world. In between these two films, one can truly demarcate the world of Hindi films in terms of how the audience will see their men. Therefore, the paper, broadly taking its references from Hindi Films, Advertisements and Daily Soaps will establish the men’s makeover over a period of time
Construction of Gendered Identities through Cultural Memory in Moses Isegawa’s Novel, Snakepit
No full textCreative writing from Uganda hardly passes without the mention of the Idi Amin era which has significantly influenced the writing from that country. In this paper I examine how Isegawa narrates a people’s cultural memory to define gender identities in his novel, Snakepit. Cultural memory permeates individual as well as social identity formation. Narrating cultural memory results from long interactions with others as well as semiotic objects in a particular social setting. Snakepit was purposively sampled to underscore the interpenetrating relationship between cultural memory and gendered identity formations. The discussion applies itself to the post-colonial theory to explore and make meaning out of the narrative
Altered Perception of Parent Child Relationships in the Works of Khalid Husseini
No full textHusseni uses relationships between fathers, mother, sons and daughters which was with pain and longing. Relying on children to cover up their shattered lives infecting them and the influence of which would span several decades
Halliday’s Functional Grammar: Philosophical Foundation and Epistemology
No full textIt is difficult to track the philosophy foundation and epistemology of systemic functional grammar (SFG) formulated by Halliday in the 1980s as this kind of grammar views language as a systemic resource for meaning. Besides, it has had global impacts on linguistics and flourished in contemporary linguistic theory. Anyone who is familiar with Halliday’s work realizes that his SFG is an approach designed to analyze English texts. Halliday (1994: xv) explicitly states that “to construct a grammar for purposes of text analysis: one that would make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any text, spoken or written, in modern English.” The aim of this study is not about the applicability of SFG to text analysis as many researchers and scholars do. Our efforts are made to clarify the philosophical foundation of Halliday’s SFG. The paper presents on triangle: (i) language, mind and world; (ii) and empiricism in Halliday’s SFG
Rhetorical Functions of Reporting Verbs in Author Prominent Citations of Graduate Students’ Research Papers
No full textThis study investigates the rhetorical functions of reporting verbs employed in the author prominent citations of research papers written by graduate students. Specifically, this study aims to 1) describe the use of reporting verbs functioning as research acts, cognition acts and discourse acts in the graduate students’ research papers, and 2) evaluate the appropriateness of those uses of reporting verbs in each research paper. Thus, the examples of the use, misuse, and overuse of the reporting verbs committed by the students were presented in this study. Following this, Hyland’s (2002) insightful framework is used as preliminary identification of the functional activities of research verbs, cognitive verbs, and discourse verbs. Documents analysis with checklist worksheet was used to obtain the data. The data comprised eighteen research papers completed as the final project of linguistic subject. The findings show that the students tend to use reporting verbs in discourse act category instead of research act and cognitive act categories. More specifically, the findings reveal that 1) for research act category, the most used verbs were ‘find’, ‘show’ and ‘identify’, 2) only the verb ‘believe’ was found in cognition act category, 3) the verb ‘state’ which belongs to the functional categories of discourse verb has the highest occurrence in all of the data. It means that the students tend to overuse and misuse the verb ‘state’ to present any kinds of cited sentences without fully understanding its functional meaning within the context. And 4) for the appropriateness of reporting verbs, the students’ problems were found on the misuses verb choice, tense choice, and syntactic pattern of the reported sentences. This indicates the students are likely to be unaware of the functional use of reporting verbs in cited sentences. To achieve successful communicative purpose in citing others’ work, students should be encouraged in advancing their knowledge to familiarize the meanings of reporting verbs within the context in academic writings
Impact of Dyslexia on Reading Comprehension Achievement of Students in Lagos State
No full textThe study investigated the impact of dyslexia on the performance of students in English comprehension in Lagos State Secondary Schools. This study adopted an ex-post facto design approach. The target groups for the study were Lagos State Senior Secondary School students in Nigeria. The samples were drawn from four (4) geo-political areas in Lagos State of Nigeria (Ikorodu, Badagry, Lagos Island and Epe). Multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select five co-educational Public Secondary Schools from each of the four geo–political zones. Where fifty (50) Students were selected from each of the schools making a total number of two hundred and fifty (250) students from each of the zone totaling to one thousand (1000) respondents from the four (4) geo-political areas in Lagos State of Nigeria. Two instruments, Reading Deficiency questionnaire which is a researcher based questionnaire and an achievement test in English Comprehension were used to collect data from the respondents. The instrument has two sections; Section A of the instrument focuses on demographic information of the Students while Section B of the instrument contains items eliciting information from the students on reading deficiency. The achievement test was based on reading comprehension. The validity and reliability of the instrument were determined by trial testing the instrument on the similar set of the sample in some other schools that were not part of sample population and the Kurder-Richardson 21 formula was used to obtain the inter-item reliability coefficient of 0.85 and 0.80 respectively. The data were subjected to Descriptive statistics, Pearson product moment correlation coefficient and t-test. Data were tested for significance at the 0.05 level. Based on the findings, it was detected that there is a significant relationship between reading deficiency and students’ performance. Part of the recommendations made was that teachers should help students develop strategies for building a good reading habit and proper understanding of language system