International Journal Online of Humanities
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Decolonization of Mind in Amitav Ghosh’s Writing: A Postcolonial Study of The Shadow Lines
Get PDFThe present paper is an attempt to explore the spirit of decolonization through the representation of the characters’ sensibility that creates the room in their mind for the sense of nationalism against the Eurocentric culture. Ghosh in The Shadow Lines has tried to restore the national identity of the characters with a sense of liberalism and universal brotherhood. Through the presentation of the characters with their sentiments, he obliquely satirizes the lines that create the gap among the nations. In this novel, Tha’mma, a major figure, tries to free her own nation from the despotic clutch of British rule by showing her earnest desire to contribute in the activities of national leaders, where as Tridib and the narrator believe in their intellectual imagination that is far beyond the grip of all kind of boundaries constructed by the imperialistic demand of the Eurocentric zeal. Again, Ila, another character of the novel, tends to adopt the western culture but is criticised by Tha’mma for her blindly following nature of western culture. However, the characters in their presentation bring forth the sense of nationality to strengthen the decolonizing spirit of mind.
Imposition of Civilization by Depriving Livelihood and Vanishing Ethnicity of Tribal’s People
Get PDFSioux nations and to retrieve their lands and to preserve their ethnicity and the demises of their predecessors at Wounded Knee massacre and superseded unwritten literature and history of Dakotas and massacre in at the start of fourteenth century and devastation of livelihood of the indigenous people and the cruelty of American Federal government still lingers in their mind. Treaty conserved indigenous people’s lands but Dakotas had been forced off their homelands due to the anti-Indian legislation, poverty and federal Indian – white American policy. The whites had no more regard for or perceiving the native peoples’ culture and political status as considered by Jefferson’s epoch. And this article exposes collecting bones and Indian words, delayed justices, inter- state issues and ignorance, racism and imperialism and the struggles of the Dakotas, whose future filled with uncertainty by reality and lose of land and cattle over the recent past centuries.
Verbal Impoliteness, Strategies and Typology
Get PDFThis article has as a starting point the linguistic theories of politeness and the opposed phenomenon, verbal impoliteness. The theories of impoliteness and conflict are parallel, but opposed to those of politeness. However, new research does not admit the description of impoliteness as a mere deviation from the politeness theories or as a phenomenon that breaks rules and maxims of cooperative and polite communication. Verbal impoliteness, a constitutive aspect of conflictive communication, is a prototypical non-cooperative type of behaviour, but this behaviour is not always necessarily and completely irrational or competitive
Noun Phrase Construction in Academic Research Articles
Get PDFThe study explored the syntactic complexity and semantic function of noun phrases in TESOL academic research articles. The corpus was comprised of 60 articles (572874 words) from three TESOL journals including TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, and Journal of Second Language Writing. POS tagging was added to the corpus using TagAnt 1.2.0 (Anthony, 2015). A list of 20 highest-frequency nouns was generated using wordlist tool in AntConc 3.3.4 (Anthony, 2014). Based on the specific contexts of these nouns, the researcher analyzed the syntactic complexity of noun phrases in light of their pre-modifiers and post-modifiers. The semantic function of noun phrases was analyzed based on the excerpts generated by the Concordance tool. The results showed that the complexity of noun phrases was dependent on the complexity of their premodifiers and postmodifiers. A complex postmodifier usually contained more than one element, embedding prepositional phrases, nonfinite clauses, or relative clauses. The use of noun phrases enabled the writer to increase cohesion and coherence within and across the text. The findings were of value to both L2 learners and young scholars in developing their writing performance for the target journals in the fiel
Basaveswara and Thoreau: A Comparative Study of Their Religious Thought
Get PDFThat great men think alike is borne out by a comparative study of the religious thought and philosophy of Basaveswara, a twelfth century mystic and social reformer of Karnataka, India and Thoreau, a nineteenth century American Transcendentalist. Although there is a time gap of seven centuries and a spatial gap of about three thousand miles between them countries and background the ideas propounded by them are so similar that one feels that either of them must have copied from the other. But they did not know each other by any chance whatever. But they were placed in similar circumstances though not the same ones. Some of the similarities in their views may be studied at some length in the following paragraphs.
Inner Purity
The concept of inner purity is common to both Basaveswara and Thoreau. They insist upon the subjective improvement which automatically paves the way for objective or social betterment. Both of them attach an extraordinary importance to inner purity as they associate it with the principle of divinity in man. Inner purity should be simultaneous with the external purity. As Basaveswara says in one of his vacanas or mystic utterances:
You shall not steal
Shakespeare’s Othello: The Esteemed, Reviled, Shunned, and Integrated?
Get PDFIn Shakespearean literature, one can find themes that challenge the Elizabethan conventional way of thinking and life, and the tragedy of Othello is no exception. In a dramatic presentation, Shakespeare challenges the way in which Black people are seen in Elizabethan society by placing a Moor in the context of Venice, Italy who is both hated and respected in his place in a racist society. There is no doubt that there is racism in Elizabethan society. According to Eldred Jones, during the era in which Othello is composed, Queen Elizabeth enacts legislation that calls for all Black people to leave the country (Jones, 1994). Racism is not the core theme of the dramatic piece; however, the existence of racism is illustrated and expressed via Shakespeare’s artistic medium. Just as feminism, greed, jealousy, hubris, and varying other matters dealing with the human spirit do not seepage Shakespeare’s consideration, nor do race matters. Furthermore, just as he dramatizes human issues, he dramatizes race matters. There are fictional elements in Othello that are intertwined with nonfictional matters of human behavior and racial unrest. In the middle of racial unrest, Shakespeare composes a theatrical production with a Black character who is esteemed, reviled, shunned, and integrated into such a society, capturing the complicated nature of communal racism itself
Postcolonial Dilemmas in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss
Get PDFThe paper will try to analyze Kiran Desai’s Booker winning novel The Inheritance of Loss as story dealing primarily about the problems of migration faced by her characters, their tensions and dilemmas. One of the major concerns of diasporic literature is the problem of exile, displacement and the resulting consequences. Uprooting from one’s own home land is an agonizing process that brings numerous material and emotional traumas in the process of rerooting in an alien land. The characters are often victims of circumstances and by the time they realize the problems, they are exhausted, miserable and frustrated. Even when they come back after their traumatic experiences, like the Judge in the novel, they often develop a sense of distrust and anger. They are in a state of confusion from which they find it difficult to come out. The paper will focus on the experiences of some of the characters in the novel – Jemubhai Patel, the Judge, and Biju, the son of Judge’s cook who is the central character of the novel. The book seems to suggest that true happiness does not lie in material wealth or comforts, but in one’s own dignity, identity and sense of belonging. In the novel, the characters especially Biju has to undergo number of traumatic experiences that brought a lot of material loss, but he has a spiritual gain- the realization of what brings true joy in life
Dr Radhakrishnan as a Philosopher
Get PDFDr Radhakrishnan’s thinking was Upanishadic. He also firmly believed in the birth of a new order based on ancient Indian wisdom. Drawing his inspiration from the Vedas, the Upanisads and the Gita, Radhakrishnan believed that humanity must become one. What kind of religion did Radhakrishnan advocate? Not a credal or dogmatic one, not an intellectual theology disputing over dogmas and contemplations. Radhakrishnan takes pride in the fact that Hinduism is not bound up with a creed or a dogma, with a founder – prophet or a historical personality, with a book like the Bible or the Quran, but a “persistent search for truth on the basis of a continuously renewed experience”. Radhakrishnan, as an ardent Hindu, could not transcend Hinduism itself. He was respectful of all religions, but it is ultimately Hindu standards by which he judged other religions. Hinduism was always for him the ideal religion, of course, a Hinduism re-interpreted, purged of all that he found distasteful in it. That President Radhakrishnan was a dhvajasthambalam in the temple of our nation’s consciousness: upright and resplendent in rough weather and fair, inspiring us to a higher purpose. K R Srinivas Iyengar noted that without the reserves of the spirit, the inner poise, the hidden fire, all other endowments cannot count for much. And the spirit that moved and sustained our ancient Indian Rishis and Acharyas is not foreign to Professor Radhakrishna
Eternalising Cultural Memory Through Cultural Parallels in Literary Narratives
Get PDFCultural memory represents the collective perceptions and creations of the distant past. Such collective memories are best documented and secured in Literature. What matters is not the real facts but rather the consensus of conventions shared by both the cultural history and the literary creator. However, literary narratives do not always give a compilation of such memories under a single wrap. It is on this distinctive point that Jakkana stands out in eternalising cultural memory. Basavaraj Naikar’s novella, Jakkanna is the retelling of the life and history of the Amarsilpi Jakkannacharya, the famed architect of the Hoysala dynasty. The plot is replete with events that have been happening from the ancient times. Parallels of such incidents that have endured to the modern times can be drawn from the two great epics and other ancient Indian philosophy and literatures. This article aims at highlighting such aspects of our lives that seems to have been greatly influenced by the past. It also looks at such events that have endured eras
English Language and The African Literary Experience: An Examination of Selected Works of Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo
Get PDFThe aim of this study is to investigate how the African novelists have domesticated the English language to suit their environments, experience and purpose. Specifically, the literary pieces – The Last of the Strong Ones (Strong Ones), House of Symbols (symbols), Children of the Eagle (Children) and the Trafficked of Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo were xrayed. This exploration adopted the Hallidian Systemic Functional Linguistics, which highlights how language is used. The textual method of data analysis, the primary and secondary data collection methods were employed and the results showed that the African literary artists in general and the Igbo Nigerian novelists in particular have taken on a unique style of writing in the African vernacular style. For that reason, the speeches of the characters are laced with dignified local appositives, high profile Igbo songs and tales, studded local proverbs, lexical transfers, ritzy transliterations and so on; and these have given African rhythm to the English language. This notwithstanding, the aura, glamour and credibility of the English language as the medium of communication are retained